Friday, February 9th, 2024

Time	Event
10:54a	EU pesticides *"Bitter Blow" to Biodiversity and Health as EU Pulls Proposed Pesticide Rule.* (Comment on this)
10:54a	Inadequate ministerial code The UK has a procedure for ministerial staff to raise complaints of mistreatment by ministers, but staff say that invoking it is so painful to use that it discourages anyone from filing complaints. (Comment on this)
10:54a	Climate protests *Repetition has blunted the art museum protests so much that the pumpkin soup assault on the Mona Lisa felt pathetic. More effective tactics are needed.* (Comment on this)
10:54a	Plan to cut greenhouse emissions *EU lays out plan to cut greenhouse emissions by 90% by 2040.* *Far-right group Project Veritas admits it had ‘no evidence’ of voter fraud in Pennsylvania.* Often you can detect these right-wing systematic liars by their constant pretensions to be telling the truth. Compare with the bullshitter, for instance. (Comment on this)
10:54a	Saboteur and climate change *[The saboteur-in-chief's] allies and advisers have hinted at a more methodical second term: driving forward fossil fuel production, sidelining scientists and overturning rules.* (Comment on this)
10:54a	UK university funding cut The UK government has cut funding for universities to the point where many will have to shut down entirely, if they cease to get foreign students from wealthy families who pay heavy fees. (Comment on this)
10:54a	Urgent: Reject all LNG projects US citizens: call on President Biden and Secretary Granholm to reject all LNG projects. (Comment on this)
10:54a	Urgent: Protect abortion pills US citizens: call on the US Supreme Court to protect the abortion pill. I usually don't post (or sign) petitions addressed to courts, because courts are likely to ignore public opinion about the judgment. But this time they might calculate they should heed it. (Comment on this)
10:54a	Dicamba *US court bans three weedkillers [based on dicamba] and finds EPA broke law in approval process.* *Federal Court Halts Spraying of Monsanto’s Dicamba Pesticide Across Millions of Acres of Cotton, Soybeans.* (Comment on this)
10:54a	Missing bolts The door plug that blew out of a Boeing 737 Max 9 airplane was missing four bolts meant to hold it in place. They were missing because Boeing maintenance removed them and did not put them back in again. Some workers actually made the mistake, but they were working as part of a work system that Boeing management was responsible for setting up and running. That's where the real fault is. I suggest passing a law to require aircraft manufacturing and repair companies to have a certain fraction of licensed commercial pilots on their boards. Perhaps 66%. (Comment on this)
10:54a	Probably futile counterattack Groups that support Iran attacked US troops in Iraq. The US counterattacked, but that was probably futile. I would expect that the attackers are religious fanatics and would be thrilled to be martyrs, so fighting them will tend to be ineffective unless the US army can destroy them. That would be quite difficult. The US must refuse to be intimidated by them. If the US were to drop its support for Israel's fighting in Gaza to appears fanatics, that would only make the US seem weak. However, for the US to insist on supporting Israel's fighting in Gaza in order to spite hostile fanatics would be childish. The US should do the right thing in Gaza, and the right thing is to make Israel stop its war crimes. (Comment on this)
3:24p	Labeling all LLM-images posted on FB Facebook and Instagram plan to label all images that were created with generative machine learning systems. It is misleading to call generative machine learning "intelligence", but labeling its output is a good thing to do. (Comment on this)
3:24p	Immigrants suffering torture, US *U.S. immigration authorities locked thousands of people in solitary confinement in 2023 as the United States continues to flout international human rights standards in its sprawling network of immigration detention facilities.* (Comment on this)
3:24p	Whyever give up quitting smoking? *Quitting smoking reduces cancer risk at any age, says study.* (Comment on this)
8:48p	Ugandan climate activists *Ugandan climate activists face charges after a month in maximum security jail.* Thugs already brutalized them. Now they could be imprisoned for a year for a nonviolent protest. The law being used to prosecute them was imposed by Britain when Uganda was a British colony. Ironically, Britain is on nonviolent climate defense protesters. </li> (Comment on this)
8:48p	Taylor Swift private jet Taylor Swift threatened to sue Jack Sweeney for posting public data about the movements of her private jet. I would expect that any one rich person's private jet contributes too little to global heating to be worth a moral fuss for its own sake. But all the private jets do amount to a significant (though small) fraction, and a campaign calls on people to stop using them. Keep in mind, when considering the excuse repeated in the article, that many "carbon offsets" are bogus and that the system of ill-checked "carbon offsets" is of substantial help to the planet roasters in deflecting justified public pressure for true decarbonization. This is why I call for a carbon tax rather than "carbon trading". </li> (Comment on this)
8:48p	Inadequate Air Defense *American Base in Jordan Where Drone Killed 3 U.S. Troops Dogged by Inadequate Air Defenses.* I expect that it would be cheaper, as well as wiser, to provide better defenses than to retaliate. A group of religious fanatics can't be deterred by retaliation or threats, but its weapons can be defeated like anyone else's. </li> (Comment on this)

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