| Time |
Event |
| 2:51a |
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| 2:51a |
Superbugs
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria *"could kill 39m people by 2050" amid
rising
drug resistance.*
This problem is mostly avoidable. It is caused by various sorts of
carelessness in
the use of antibiotics.
Few new antibiotics are developed, because drug companies are no
longer
interested in them.
They are no longer led by people whose
background was in medicine and thought that curing disease was a goal
in itself. Now they want to develop "the next Viagra", something that
millions of people will take when they are not sick.
For-profit drug development is
corrupting in many ways.
One consequence is that our systems of medicine and drug development
no longer encourage people to make curing disease their goal.
We should replace the system driven by lust for monopoly megaprofits
with a system of government funding for finding new drugs that will
not be covered by monopolies.
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| 2:51a |
Enforcement-first mentality
Two New York City transit thugs cornered an alleged fare evader who
allegedly pulled a knife. At that point, they proceeded to make the
subway substantially more dangerous by hitting two other innocent
passengers and one other thug, as well as the
alleged fare evader.
It is quite possible that the many really did try to evade the fare.
That is no grounds for shooting him. It is possible that he pulled out
a knife, which would be a much more serious crime. However, I won't
take thugs' word that he did so. They might be "testilying", to use
the term that thugs coined for this.
Adams, NYC's night-mayor, is a former thug himself, and no matter what
harm thugs do in the city, he always claims it's not their fault.
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| 2:51a |
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| 2:51a |
Reece Richards
Actor Reece Richards, performing in a play in London, says that four thugs
pepper-sprayed him and held him down on the ground, They were
chasing someone
else who was in a vehicle.
Everyone makes mistakes, so I can't condemn those thugs for mistakenly
thinking that Richards had something to do with the fleeing vehicle.
But since that was just a suspicion, they should have realized that
Richards might have been a bystander. And even if he were guilty,
they had no grounds to be so violent to a person who was not fighting
them. That is the typical dangerous excess of thugs.
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| 2:51a |
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| 2:51a |
The Dark (Money) Side
Kamala Harris formerly campaigned for limiting hidden campaign
donations from the rich, but she isn't
advocating that this year.
|
| 2:51a |
FEC inaction
The Federal Election Commission decided to take no action to against
fraudulent political deepfakes.
If there is any effective method to deter, prevent or delete them, the FEC
should have done so. I don't know what methods might be effective.
|
| 2:51a |
Court-ordered block
Musk refuses to pay Brazil's fines on ex-Twitter and challenges the
state to stop Brazilians from accessing that site. So the court
imposed a bigger fine, around 1.5 billion dollars per year, for
ex-Twitter's
circumvention of the ban.
The court also ordered that Starlink, likewise owned by Musk, be
required to pay the fines if ex-Twitter does not; Starlink is very
widely used in Amazonia where there is not much communications
infrastructure, and I think it makes a lot of profit in Brazil.
The muskrat has the support of Bolosonaro, the fascist-leaning ex president
who, after losing the last election, launched an attack on the
main government
buildings in Brasilia.
As I recall, he faces trial for this. Can anyone tell me where that
trial stands? Why isn't Bolsonaro in prison?
|
| 2:51a |
Unpaid food tab
Some US states will report parents to the Parent Gestapo ("Child
Welfare Services") for "neglect" if they don't pay the bill for
their
child's school lunch.
That isn't neglect of the children, it is neglect of the state.
But I think it is the state's fault anyway, not the parent's
that that parent is too poor to pay for the
child's lunch.
It ought to do that.
In reality, what is the usual cause of parents' neglecting children?
I expect it is poverty — what a child needs costs a lot of money and
many parents can't get that much money. Growing up in poverty may
result in real neglect, but punishing the parent(s) won't help
them get more money.
Taking the child away from the parent(s) and giving per to a foster
parent might help per, by making more money available; but if the
state is willing to provide that extra money, it can just as well give
that to the child's parent(s).
Thus, the only case in which to consider taking a child away from per
parent(s) is when the cause is something other than poverty.
|
| 2:51a |
Ed Miliband's pledge
Labour says it will legally require all rental housing with poor air
insulation to be
repaired so as to need less heating.
If a private landlord says, "I can't afford to do the repairs that the
law now requires," there is an easy response: "So sell that house."
Most of them will then discover some money that they had temporarily
forgotten possessing. As for the rest, it's no disaster if they do
have to sell.
For housing owned by local governments, it is another matter. They
are cutting all sorts of important public services because the Tories
cut their budgets to the bone, and Labour refuses to raise them. Some
are already going bankrupt. If Labour really wants those buildings
repaired, it will have to provide money.
|
| 2:51a |
Vast surveillance
*Social media and online video firms are conducting
"vast surveillance" on
users, FTC finds.*
I am sure this is true, but the FTC has missed much of the problem by
defining "surveillance" too narrowly. They presume that collecting
data about people only becomes "surveillance" when the platform makes
the data available somehow to unrelated companies.
See
The FTC also made the typical pernicious assumption that unjust
treatment of adult users is not important.
I am not sure whether the report included allowing other companies
to target categories of users in the category of "surveillance".
In that practice, the other companies do not actually receive
data about individual users, but do get to exploit them.
|
| 2:51a |
California plastic bags ban
California has banned distribution of plastic shopping bags at grocery
stores. Only
paper bags will be available.
I prefer thicker plastic bags to paper, but to avoid causing waste, I
reuse each bag until it wears out. I set out the bags to reuse on he
belt along with what I will purchase, and say to use these bags and not
give me a new one. I get a new bag perhaps once a year.
But the things we buy include lots of plastic packaging. To reduce plastic
waste we need to do something about that, too.
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| 2:51a |
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| 2:51a |
Ocean acidification
*Ocean acidification close to critical threshold, say scientists, posing
threat to marine ecosystems and
global livability.
This means Earth may have breached seven of nine boundaries.*
|
| 2:51a |
Systematically overcharged
Six of England's privatized water companies appear to have
fraudulently increased their charges to customers by misrepresenting
the level of sewage pollution that they
were releasing into waterways.
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| 2:51a |
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| 2:51a |
Court acquits Hakamada
Iwao Hakamada was convicted of murder in 1968 in Japan. Now a retrial
judge has ruled that investigators falsified evidence him and bullied
him into a
false confession.
Hakamada is 88 years old, and is mentally unwell as a result
of spending years on death row. He was unable to attend the retrial
because of that.
|
| 2:51a |
Anti-pipeline protesters
Fossil fuel lobbyists work with supportive legislators to criminalize
nonviolent (but inconvenient)
protest around the US.
I suspect that they collaborate with AIPAC to achieve their common
goal, so that protesters calling for an end to Israel's bombing and
siege can be imprisoned too. The measures seem similar in practical
effect to those recently used by the UK to convict
climate defense
protesters.
|
| 2:51a |
Professor Finkelstein
Muhlenberg College fired Professor Finkelstein, a tenured professor,
for condemning Israeli atrocities in Gaza, by making the usual false
equivalence between
"Zionists" and "Jews".
The American Association of University Professors may sue on her behalf.
|
| 2:51a |
|
| 8:51a |
Court acquits Hakamata
Iwao Hakamata was convicted of murder in 1968 in Japan. Now a retrial
judge has ruled that investigators falsified evidence and bullied him into a
false confession.
Hakamada is 88 years old, and is mentally unwell as a result
of spending years on death row. He was unable to attend the retrial
because of that.
|
| 8:51a |
Global-oligarchy obstructionism, Oxfam
*"Global Oligarchy" Reigns as Top 1% Controls More Wealth Than [least wealthy]
95% of Humanity.*
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