| Time |
Event |
| 4:57a |
Sniper bullet finds fireworks boy, ISR
An Israeli
sniper
in East Jerusalem shot and killed a Palestinian boy who was holding a firework that makes
pretty lights. At a time of celebration.
|
| 4:57a |
Int'l study accredits Havana Syndrome
There are once again claims that symptoms called the "Havana syndrome" result from
Russian
ultrasound beams. But scientists have found
no sign of any hostile cause.
Before the question of whether Russians are intentionally generating some sort of ultrasound,
the first question ought to be, is there any unusual ultrasound in the places and
times where people report having the "Havana syndrome"?
Sound waves are well understood physically. Has an ultrasound spectrum scanner been developed,
and used to determine for certain whether the symptoms' onset is associated with anything
unusual in the sonic spectrum?
|
| 4:57a |
Iran, extranational stabbing, UK
An Iranian
dissident
living in London and working for a Farsi news channel was stabbed by a group of attackers
outside his home.
One must suspect they were sent by some organ of the Iranian government.
The channel says that
Iran
has been harassing relatives of their employees for over a year.
|
| 4:57a |
|
| 9:57a |
|
| 9:57a |
Privatizing
Margaret Thatcher did Britain great harm through privatizing many
public services, including water supply. Since then, the "investors"
in water supply have extracted profits without actually investing in
the upkeep of the facilities.
Now they have run it into the ground and want to raise rates,
supposedly to pay for the belated investment that they skimped on
before. But it appears the government has decided to make them go
bankrupt instead.
That could create a great opportunity to re nationalize those facilities,
but I can't believe Tories would want to do that.
|
| 9:57a |
|
| 9:57a |
|
| 9:57a |
|
| 9:57a |
Spyware
*Poland launches inquiry into [right-wing] previous government's
spyware use.*
|
| 9:57a |
California atmospheric rivers
Although atmospheric rivers in California have caused floods and
mudslides, doing lots of damage, they have lifted the state out of the
drought that has lasted many years.
The drought was a stage in global heating, and the heavy rains another
stage. We don't know what the next stage will be.
|
| 9:57a |
|
| 9:57a |
Geothermal power
Research aims to generate 10% of electricity demand from geothermal
power by 2050.
If the technology works, we could do it faster than that -- by
spending money to build faster.
|
| 9:57a |
|
| 9:57a |
|
| 9:57a |
Urgent: Ban voting obstacles
US citizens: call on Congress to ban voter-ID laws and other
artificial obstacles to voting, by passing the Right to Vote Act.
|
| 8:57p |
Bookseller of Kabul
The "Bookseller of Kabul" rebuilds the book store destroyed by the
Taliban and accumulates copies of
the books they destroyed.
I expect that there is no way to buy from his business except via
unjust nonfree software, and that makes me sad. Of course, people in
Afghanistan face much bigger attacks on their freedom than this. But
this is saddening nonetheless.
|
| 8:57p |
Expanded gag order
The corrupter is seriously attempting to bully courts into letting him
be a
above the law.
He seems to believe it is possible, and he may be right.
If he can indeed do this, it is a reflection of the fact that these
charges are legitimate and his trials are honest. No one facing bogus
charges in China, Russia or India could entertain hope of overcoming
them this way.
|
| 8:57p |
System to track hornets
A machine learning system has been trained to distinguish bee-eating
Asian hornets
from other types of wasps.
If this works in practice, I will judge it to be artificial
intelligence, since it will have demonstrated some understanding of a
narrow but important domain.
|
| 8:57p |
Hamas airstrikes
Sources in Israeli intelligence agencies say that Israel approved
killing 20 civilians to get one low-ranking HAMAS fighter,
who may have been
identified only by heuristics.
Two sources said that during the early weeks of the war they were
permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking
militants. Attacks on such targets were typically carried out using
unguided munitions known as "dumb bombs", the sources said, destroying
entire homes and killing all their occupants.
"You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it's
very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those
bombs],"
If someone's death was not important enough to use a smart bomb, but
worth killing 20 civilians, those civilians' lives must have been
valued at very little.
|
| 8:57p |
|
| 9:26p |
|
| 9:26p |
Abu Ghraib torture case
Iraqis subject to privatized US government torture at Abu Ghraib
are about to
have their case heard.
One of the reasons why government activity must not be privatized is
that the company is not the state and its employees are not state
employees. If they do horrible things, it is much harder to hold them
accountable. If the company outsources its workers, that makes
it even harder.
|
| 9:26p |
Capitol rioter sentenced
One of the leaders of the corrupter's attack on the Capitol was
sentenced to
7 years in prison.
Despite the influence of the corrupter, who claims that these
convicts are "hostages", juries keep on convicting them.
|
| 9:26p |
Fishermen left shoeless
Canada's enforcement of laws against over fishing of eels was carried
out in a way that endangered the lives of
accused illegal fishers.
Over fishing leads to extinction. Around the world, treaties are cited
as an excuse to continue over fishing, but no treaty can justify
causing extinction. Where the world has the benefit of real
enforcement against over fishing, it should enforce them against
everyone, regardless of per ethnicity.
However, thugs must protect the lives of those they arrest. The thugs
should have brought those men to a place where they could stay indoors
and be safe without shoes. A police station would have sufficed.
Confiscating people's shoes outdoors in a cold region can result in
maiming or even death, so it should be prosecuted as attempted murder.
Countries should enforce this against everyone, including uniformed
thugs. Likewise against the person on duty at the gas station, who
threatened their lives by making them walk into the cold.
Every gas station should be required to make its phone available for
people to call for help. This should be a legal requirement.
However, things should not have reached that point. The thugs
presumably had a phone, or a radio. They also had a responsibility to
make this call.
|
| 9:26p |
Rules of engagement
Israel's rules of engagement in Gaza are secret, but evidence shows
that either they are so lax as to be meaningless, or else generally
ignored in practice.
*Zomi and her colleagues [killed in the aid convoy] were saving
lives.
Their deaths deserve our outrage.*
Things like this happen in war, and no army can make them absolutely
impossible. But a civilized army takes steps that make them far less
frequent. Israel seems to be shrugging that off.
|
| 10:57p |
|
| 10:57p |
|
| 10:57p |
Windrush victim
The British government promised to compensate the harm it did to
thousands of immigrants who moved lawfully to Britain from colonies
decades ago, when young, and had no proof of what happened. That was
five years ago. But it is so slow to carry out that promise that it
seems to be "waiting for them to die" so it won't have to
compensate
them for real.
The UK government seems to become incompetent when facing any sort of
task that involves correcting mistakes or
dealing with unusual
situations.
Sometimes it is due to privatization of dealing with
citizens — something that is generally harmful to the citizens how
need
whatever service.
I suspect that putting computers in charge is a cause,
and cuts in spending on functionaries is another.
|
| 10:57p |
Farmer climate change solution
Proposing to pay farmers to grow trees instead of cows, as a way of
ending global heating.
As stated, that proposal is too simplistic. There are many places on
Earth where the native ecosystems did not include many trees,
including the Great Plains in the US.
|