| Time |
Event |
| 1:05a |
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| 1:05a |
Ex-twitter requires phone number verification
Ex-Twitter has started requiring (in certain countries) every new user
to verify per phone numbers and a payment method.
The user is required to pay a trivial sum, but the surveillance
implied by the payment is more important than the payment itself.
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| 1:05a |
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| 1:05a |
Texas's age-verification law
*Judge rules Texas's age-verification law violates First Amendment.*
If we had a standard system for verifying a user's age online
without identifying per, I would not object greatly to requiring this
for some sorts of publication. As far as I know, there is no such standard and
what sites would actually demand is to see government ID.
|
| 1:05a |
Pharma companies suing US government
Pharma companies are suing the US government, claiming that a price
cap on a product constitutes "taking property".
That claim is something that right-wing economist that worship the
concept of property might believe, but clashes with the US legal tradition.
Alas, we can't count on the right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court
to follow that tradition rather than bow to billionaires.
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| 1:05a |
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| 1:05a |
Ferdinand Marcos Jr drops Philippines holiday
*Ferdinand Marcos Jr drops Philippines holiday marking toppling of
father.*
His father was a corrupt dictator who was toppled by massive protests.
It looks like this adds to Marcos Jr's campaign to cover up the truth
about that dictator.
The book Controlling Corruption, by Robert Klitgaard, describes in one
chapter the measures that Marcos Sr used to stamp out corruption in
the Philippine Customs Agency. In most of the government agencies,
Marcos encouraged agents to take bribes and give part of them to him.
But anyone practicing corruption in the customs agency was stealing
from Marcos and he did not like that. The book points out that the
measures in question were effective in the customs agency despite the
fact that the whole government around it was pervasively corrupt.
|
| 1:05a |
Executed without time to finish appeals
Texas rushed to execute Jedidiah Murphy without allowing time
to finish his appeals.
Texas law arbitrarily rules out DNA testing of the convict to call into
question a death sentence. In effect, it says, "Whether we kill you is not
important enough to justify checking the truth of conclusions on which
we based that decision."
|
| 1:05a |
Sufficient justification to declare a climate emergency
*New IEA Report gives President Biden sufficient justification to declare a
climate emergency.*
|
| 1:05a |
Killings of Israeli Jews
*Why are some of the left celebrating the killings of Israeli Jews?*
When people bitterly condemn an injustice, for valid reasons, and are
stymied in trying to do anything to reduce it, that condemnation can
fester and develop into irrational hatred of the "side" that carries
out the injustice. In this way, condemnation of the many unjust
Israeli occupation policies that add up to oppression of Palestinians
(one form in the West Bank, another form in Gaza)
can develop into hatred of Israelis, even hatred of Jews in general.
I think that is what has happened. How sad it will be if those who
oppose injustice to Palestinians turn into irrational haters instead
of champions of justice. They will be unable to persuade people of
the validity of their cause if their cause is antisemitic hatred.
They could gain their goal only by deploying the bigger force and the
more powerful cruelty.
As Naomi Klein writes, by adopting antisemitism they will give violent
Zionists a justification to point to for their violence.
But worst of all, by letting their sense of justice morph into hatred
and celebration of death, they will move from the side of good to the
side of another kind of evil.
Just as we should not let condemnation of the occupation's injustice
against the Palestinians lead us to excuse murderous antisemitism, we
should also not let condemnation of HAMAS for its murderous
antisemitism blind us to injustices of the occupation of Palestine.
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| 1:05a |
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| 1:05a |
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| 1:05a |
The Achilles' Heel Of Propaganda
*The Achilles' Heel Of Propaganda — Julian Assange, Nick Cohen And
Russell Brand.*
This describes how the mainstream media, in unison, work to boost
sexual accusations against some people, and bury charges against
others, in each case with little regard to the truth.
I know a fair amount about the campaign to destroy Julian Assange for
his work as a journalist for Wikileaks, and I see how sex accusations
were faked and used as an excuse to prosecute him for journalism.
By contrast, I have barely heard of Nick Cohen and Russell Brand (the
famous British one), and know almost nothing about them. I do not
watch TV, I refuse to have a TV cable connection (it has DRM and it
snoops on what user watch — both of which I reject as injustice), and
I have hardly ever seen an article by Nick Cohen in the places I find
articles.
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| 1:05a |
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| 1:05a |
|
| 6:05a |
large-scale fossil-fuel Q&A
* Fatih Birol, The ED of the
International Energy Agency
said: "New large-scale fossil fuel projects not only carry major climate risks,
but also business and financial risks for the companies and their investors."*
In other words, those investors are making a big mistake even in
narrow terms of their own profit.
If they don't care about dooming civilization,
let's hope that they heed his advice. But they may not.
I suspect that "investment" in fossil fuels is driven to a large
extent by inside influence exercised by fuel barons who expect to
profit from getting institutions other people's money into the
companies the barons will profit from. |
| 6:05a |
Satire: TikTok stunt
(satire) *New TikTok Stunt Challenges Parents
To See How Fast
They Can Get Kids Taken Away By CPS.*
|
| 6:05a |
Official language push, JAM
A large fraction of Jamaicans
grow
up speaking Jamaican creole,
and when they later go to school and have to use English without
having used it before, many fail. Jamaica is now considering
converting the schools to a bilingual curriculum designed to teach
children both languages.
It is well established
that a carefully designed bilingual curriculum is effective at
graduating students who can speak and write both languages — more
effective than dumping students precipitously into taking class using
a language they don't really know. Americans who want to make sure
immigrant Hispanic children
in the US become good in English should support bilingual education.
I suspect that the opposition many right-wing Americans display
towards this is a way of venting resentment at those children for
being present in the US, not a serious effort to help them learn English.
|
| 6:05a |
General police misconduct, NYC
**NYPD [thugs] Sued for Misconduct Cost City Millions in Settlements —
Then Get Promotions.*
As long as thugs can continue to dump the cost of their depredations
on their cities, those cities have two reasons to get rid of thugs
that cause them: to protect the city's funds, and to protect the
public from harm. Either one should be enough. So why doesn't
NYC do it? I suspect there is a systemic problem to be found.
Six years in prison
*Teens 18 & 16 Had Consensual Sex. The
18-year-old Went to Prison
for Six Years.*
The primary business of adolescents is sex, and they need to learn to
make sex good — for themselves and for their lovers. It is absurd to
limit them to sex only with others as young and ignorant as they.
|
| 6:05a |
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| 6:05a |
Free-speech-truth v -myth
*"We're facing
another old enemy":
Rushdie warns against global authoritarianism [and specifically its US
form, the Republican Party].*
|
| 6:05a |
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| 7:50a |
|
| 7:50a |
Knocked off bike for brightly colored water pistol
UK thugs knocked a black 13-year-old off his bicycle because he was
pointing a water pistol. His mother said the water pistol was "brightly colored", which
implied it did not look much like a real gun.
|
| 7:50a |
Pharmacy strike
CVS and Walgreens are making enormous profits, but still trying to
increase those profits by understaffing their pharmacies. That puts patients at risk of errors.
|
| 7:50a |
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| 7:50a |
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| 7:50a |
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| 7:50a |
Jordan forced out from house speaker
Each time trumpet Republican Rep. Jordan held a vote on becoming speaker,
the number of Republicans voting against him increased. It is now clear
that the insurrectionists cannot elect a speaker.
That is something we can celebrate, but how can the House elect a
speaker? Since the speaker does not have to be a member of the House,
I suggest looking for a respected older leader, perhaps a retired
judge, who is known for more probity than partisanship, to seek support
among Democrats and Republicans.
|
| 7:50a |
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| 7:50a |
Censorship and punishment for opposing war
In Israel, Arabs and Israelis now face censorship and punishment
if they oppose the war in Gaza.
|
| 7:50a |
1/3 of Gaza housing damaged
Israel has damaged 1/3 of the housing in Gaza. It continues deliberately
bombing and destroying residential buildings.
The very old St Porphyrius Church, in which civilians were sheltering,
was damaged by a missile which hit a nearby building. Although the
missile killed some of them, at least nobody tried to attack the church.
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| 7:50a |
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| 7:50a |
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| 7:50a |
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| 7:50a |
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| 7:50a |
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| 7:50a |
Venezuela opposition has potential to beat President Maduro
It looks like an opposition candidate has
the potential
to beat President Maduro in Venezuela, if he permits a fair race.
What she says about the oil industry suggests a possibility that even
though she may respect human rights better than Maduro, her other
political views may lean towards neoliberalism and extractivism. There
isn't enough substance in the article for me to really tell.
|
| 7:50a |
Urgent: Pass the School Lunch Debt Cancellation Act
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the School Lunch Debt
Cancellation Act, which would pay all student lunch debt and provide
meals for all school children henceforth.
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| 7:50a |
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