| Time |
Event |
| 8:54a |
William Barber
*William Barber [co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign] Says
Presidential
Debates "Failing" the Poor.*
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I
denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that
practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles because I
consider them important — and I label them like this.
This article is important because the Poor People's Campaign
deserves people's attention.
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| 8:54a |
Nuclear Arms Race
When societies become more distrustful in general,
that can be exploited by politicians by promoting
belligerence, and arms companies
will fund them to do so.
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| 8:54a |
EU court rules
The European Union's highest court ruled that any Afghan woman is
entitled to asylum.
This seems valid to me — and I expect the same arguments apply for
various other countries.
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| 8:54a |
Proposition 6
Californians will vote on whether to abolish the practice
of
forcing prisoners to work.
That practice is bad for people outside prison, as the state collects
a low wage for the prisoners' labor. If not for that, people would do those
jobs by choice and get a fair wage.
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| 8:54a |
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| 8:54a |
Debate performance
*JD Vance's debate lines were so polished you
could forget they made no sense.*
This is the most deeply dangerous thing about the wrecker/Rants team:
they have developed s way of forming their public discourse out of
pure bullshit, treating real issues with contempts.
This is what makes them enemies of democracy in the US.
The most significant real point Rants made was the one he made by
refusing to acknowledge that Biden won the 2020 election.
They and their followers talk like gangsters (at least fictional
ones), making statements to threaten us, veiled with a pretense that
we're supposed to see through but gives them deniability.
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| 8:54a |
Assisted dying
A proposal to entirely disconnect assisted suicide from the medical system
and
medical practitioners.
I think it is a reasonable idea. The criterion of a terminal illness
has always seemed arbitrary to me. Intractable pain clearly should be
considered a valid reason.
However, that is not the only situation which is a good reason for
suicide. If I were sliding into dementia, and the most I could hope
ever to achieve by living was to have occasional moments when I could
be aware of what was happening, I would want to give an order to
dispense with my body's life when I myself (my mind) was fully dead.
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| 8:54a |
Iranian oil refineries
Netanyahu is talking about how to "retaliate" for Iran's attack
with many
ballistic missiles that caused almost no damage.
It makes no sense to "retaliate" for an attack that did almost no
damage. If you want peace, the useful strategy is to refrain from
responding and hope that opens a path to de-escalation.
I therefore suspect that Netanyahu is seeking an excuse for
more escalation.
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| 8:54a |
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| 8:54a |
Nuclear Power Deal
Microsoft and a utility company want to make a deal to
restart an old
nuclear power plant,
to power LLMs (bullshit generators, which it likes to call
"artificial intelligence")
which it will use to enshittify its search engine and other "services".
That plan includes a contingent gift from the US government. Worse, a
nuclear power plant's cost tends to increase enormously. If that
happens, they would ask the US government for
more money and use the
"sunk costs" fallacy
to manipulate the government into granting that request,
The government should respond, "Ask Microsoft to guarantee this loan".
But since enshittification harms the public, the ideal course of action
is to prevent it from happening.
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| 8:54a |
Shattered Asheville
Asheville, North Carolina, is far away from the coast, and people
called it a refuge from the danger of climate disaster.
Alas, Hurricane Helene was so powerful that it reached Asheville and
its rain flooded parts of the city.
I suppose that the flooding had to do with the major rivers that
meet there.
Fast, heavy rain can cause flooding in all sorts of places, and it
takes an engineering study to determine where that will happen. The
engineering works to prevent flooding generally are adequate up to
some postulated level of rain a heavier rain than that would still
cause floods.
Geography can make refuges for some global heating effects, but some
are not so limited. For instance, global heating effects are messing
up agriculture. If (or when) there is a national or global shortage
of food because of ruined harvests, you won't be able to escape that
just by choosing the right neighborhood to live in.
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| 8:54a |
Asylum restrictions
Biden adopted the bully's policy to block people from asking the US
for asylum at the border with Mexico. In practice, almost no one can
do that any more, but Biden wants to look even "tougher", so he has
announced a stricter theoretical criterion for maybe someday allowing
asylum requests to be taken again.
People who have been oppressed at home are entitled to political
asylum. The US is unable to respond promptly to all the requests
because its capacity to judge them is insufficient. The remedy for
this is to train and hire more judges so it can respond reasonably
fast with "yes" or "no". Then it could allow applicants to stay in
the US for the short time it will take to judge their requests.
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| 8:54a |
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| 8:54a |
Major storms
Data analysis shows that a hurricane hitting the US generally causes
7,000 to 11,000 excess deaths in the damaged regions over the
following 15 years. This makes it an important
cause of death in
those regions.
The study looked at statistics for the US, but I see no reason
this would not happen similarly in the rest of the world.
This method of analysis does not give information about the chains of
events that lead to these subsequent deaths. The researchers
speculate that the causes might include "fallout from resulting
economic and job losses after storms, suddenly overstretched local
government budgets that under fund [medical] providers, the release of
environmental toxins as storms hit industrialized areas and the
unhealthy impact of stress upon those who have to endure hurricanes."
These effects happen even where there is no hurricane, but a hurricane
makes them happen to more people. If we organize better social
responses to these problems after a hurricane, and they prevent some
of the delayed deaths, the same responses could help the people who
suffer these problems due to non-hurricane causes.
It looks like poverty plays a role in causing these deaths; it makes
people more vulnerable to whatever goes wrong. Indeed, poverty
generally correlates with
lower life expectancy.
If the US economic system were not based on dooH niboR, hurricane-caused delayed deaths
would be fewer. However, even as global heating has been
making
hurricanes more powerful,
and thus likely to kill more, plutocratist economic policies and laws
have been increasing poverty,
which likewise tends to kill more.
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| 8:54a |
H-2A worker program
*US farms are forcing workers to
buy inedible, expensive meals.*
Note that the workers described in the article are
US-government-authorized migrants. Farms need workers, so US law
arranges for Mexicans to come and work. The same law tries to
protect them from exploitation, but the greedy bastards that own the
farms never stop looking for loopholes in that protection.
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| 8:54a |
To stem ecocide
Putin's men poisoned the Seym river, which flows into Ukraine and
merges into the Desna river. This has killed all the animals in the
Desna as far as it has reached. Humans cannot drink the water or even
swim in it.
This is chemical warfare, banned by a treaty that Putin has visibly
violated.
This may resolve an ancient philosophical quandary. It must be
possible to step into the Seym river twice, but it may not be safe.
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| 8:54a |
Algorithmic surveillance
The UK may be planning to use massive surveillance on people who
receive government support, then use artificial intelligence to
heuristically raise
suspicion of fraud or errors.
If this task is done "correctly" it will identify many cases that
might involve fraud or error. To separate the real fraud or error
from the misidentified cases would require further investigation by
human beings. Then the whole system might work correctly.
But there will be a tendency to skip the expensive second step and
presume that the computer's results are correct. When they are not,
you may face a horrible runaround that could leave you homeless.
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| 8:54a |
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| 8:54a |
Giant hybrid sheep
Arthur Schubarth of Montana was convicted of using tissue from large
Asian Marco Polo sheep to make a
clone and then a "giant" hybrid.
The judge seems to have said that the real crime was modifying breeds
of animals, but that is done all the time. The article does not say
that the project involved any genetic engineering (as distinct from
ordinary breeding), but that is not a crime either.
Was this operation alleged to be harmful? If so, how? Are these
sheep dangerous to people? Could they become feral and overgraze
areas? I expect it would be easy to control their numbers by hunting,
or wipe them out if necessary.
Maybe all that is irrelevant to the accusation — it could be simply
that he did not have the required permits.
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| 8:54a |
Trumps small lead
Robert Reich: *[The bullshitter] is gaining on Kamala Harris in the
polls.
I have some theories why.*
Basically, he theorizes that the bullshitter is attracting the major
media from the issues of substance where Harris would have an advantage.
It would be true.
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| 8:54a |
Livestock emissions report
*Scientists criticize UN agency’s failure to withdraw livestock emissions
report,* which they criticized for understating the importance of reducing
these emissions for
avoiding climate disaster.
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| 8:54a |
Deep intelligence
The Israeli air raid that killed Nasrallah killed 90 other
members of Hezbollah — probably
many of them leaders.
It will not be easy to replace them with experienced new commanders.
There must still be hundreds of commanders who can order their units
to keep firing missiles. That doesn't require cleverness, great
authority, or special cleverness. For Hezbollah to change its course
of action will be far more difficult. Especially difficult would be
any reduction in the level of conflict. In effect, Hezbollah may now
be too weak to be flexible.
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| 8:54a |
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| 8:54a |
PACE hearing
Julian Assange spoke to the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of
Europe.
about how the US actions against him and others related to Wikileaks
put freedom of the press globally in danger.
The Council of
Europe
predates the European Union and has more countries as members.
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| 8:54a |
Disease of our times
Kenan Malik: *Too white? Too black? Too woke? Politics by labeling is
a
disease of our times.*
*There is, in fact, a long history of hate speech laws being used to
criminalize minorities.*
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| 8:54a |
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| 8:54a |
Water industry analysis
* Labour used “economically illiterate” analysis paid for by water
companies in order to argue against the nationalisation [of the
water companies] in
England.*
I am not surprised by this — it is the soft of thing that
Tory Lite would do.
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| 8:54a |
Tuvalu climate minister
Island countries in the Pacific are denouncing Australia for
authorizing expansion of some existing coal mines. One leader accuses
Australia of
proceeding to drown them.
This is true in the deepest sense, but superficially an exaggeration.
Humanity is indeed carrying out the inundation of the atolls. Of
their habitable land, nothing atoll will remain. Later, after global
heating and ocean acidification have caused the extinction of coral
(along with most mollusks and crustaceans), there will never be atolls
again.
The exaggeration is that this is not specifically the fault of coal,
nor specifically the fault of Australia. All fossil fuels contribute.
and so does deforestation. Australia participates in bringing global
disaster, but so do the US, China, Brazil, and many other countries.
It's inaccurate to put the blame on Australia alone. Every country
that opens new mines or wells for fossil fuel is more or less to blame
for this crime-in-progress. However, since Australia is one of the
major perpetrators, and located in the Pacific, it is entirely
legitimate for those victims-to-be to focus their ire there.
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| 8:54a |
Indict Blinken
Leaked documents show that Blinken lied when he stated, in an official
report, that "we do not currently assess that the Israeli government
is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of
U.S. humanitarian assistance.”
Veterans for Peace calls for him to be prosecuted. I'd be satisfied
if the US government officially reversed that false statement and began
applying the law to arms shipments to Israel.
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| 8:55a |
Arms firm protests
*Activists say they have proof [Tory] ministers tried to influence police over
[protests against]
Israeli arms firm [Elbit].*
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