Joan Baez: “We’re being run by a bunch of really incompetent billionaires.”
“Tree Gremlin”
Olympus TG6, f/4.9, 1/100s, ISO 250. Yesterday at Mount Pisgah.
“Sweet Smells”
Olympus TG6, Ultimaxx .43x Wide Angle Lens, f/4.9, 1/160s, ISO 100. Yesterday at Mount Pisgah.
E.P.A. Declares ‘Greatest Day of Deregulation Our Nation Has Seen’
If you’d rather die than support this administration, Trump’s stooges will be happy to make that happen faster.
“Spring is Near the Ground”
Olympus TG6, Ultimaxx .43x Wide Angle Lens, f/4.9, 1/400s, ISO 400. Yesterday at Mount Pisgah.
Nebraska lawmakers advance bill allowing parental notification for school library checkouts
More performative legislating. Do they seriously think any student over the age of 10 can’t find whatever book they want for free on the internet?
The fact that they’re idiots doesn’t make this a good thing.
Finished reading: A House Divided, by Pearl S. Buck. 📚 I inherited a 10-volume signed limited edition of some of Buck’s works. As far as I could tell, they’d never even been cracked open. Well that’s just silly, and I’ve been working my way through. Simple, slow, and lush reading, wildly out of fashion, and quite enjoyable. This is the third volume of the Good Earth trilogy, tracing the fortunes of the Wang family across three generations. Buck’s writing seems to capture much about a Chinese culture now long-vanished, though how can I know how true-to-life the portrayal is?
More Republican Nonsense
Restore Medicaid’s intent: Prioritize the most vulnerable over able-bodied childless adults
Prepare for a lot of this ahistorical nonsense as the Republicans ramp up their effort to give money to billionaires by taking it away from everyone else. In fact, Medicaid grew out of Harry Truman’s push for universal healthcare and was envisioned as one of the first steps (along with Mediare) on that path by Lyndon Johnson, who was a savvy enough politican to get what he could passed instead of waiting for perfection.
All this bad AI is wrecking a whole generation of products
Personally, I look forward to the (unlikely) day when generative AI goes the way of the Cuecat and Microsoft Bob.
Regardless of their tagline, “playing with” your pets and kids via a $200 robot and your phone does not, in fact, make you “always there, always caring.”
Senate Democrats appear ready to back down in government shutdown fight
Have Senators not noticed that Musk&Trump are already shutting down the government? The lack of aggressive messaging from the Democrats is truly upsetting.
Why I Left the Washington Post
Ruth Marcus traces the decline and fall of the WP under Jeff Bezos, Includes a copy of the column that they wouldn’t run and which she resigned over - which shows just how thin-skinned the oligarch class has gotten, because it’s barely a defense of free speech.
Musk Seeks to Put $100 Million Directly Into Trump Political Operation
The corruption really is right out in the open, isn’t it?
Trump turns the White House lawn into a Tesla showroom
The only mystery here is how co-President Trump managed to find time in his busy schedule of screaming on Truth Social and doing Putin’s and Netanyahu’s bidding to kiss co-President Musk’s ass on the White House lawn.
TikTok will play ‘calming music’ to remind teens to stop using the app
It won’t work. No matter how good their AI-driven age verification technology gets, I have faith that teens will stay ahead with AI-driven age spoofing technology.
What Really Happened With the DDoS Attacks That Took Down X
Looks like co-President Musk was flat-out lying when he claimed last night (on Fox News, of course) that the latest round of attacks on Twitter, er, X originated in Ukraine. What a surprise, huh?
File under "Things we used to know"
Ran across this in the 1964 (!) ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA this morning in the article on AIR:
Carbon dioxide in the air reduces the loss of heat by infrared radiation from the earth. The widespread burning of fossil fuels (e.g., coal and oil) increased the carbon dioxide content of the air by about 12% during the first half of the 20th century. This, in turn, caused an increase in the average temperature of the earth of 1.1° C during the same period. It is estimated that all of the fossil fuels will be consumed in about 1,000 years, if the present rate of consumption is maintained. It has been further estimated that this will cause the temperature of the earth to rise 7° to 14° C. (13° to 25° F.), giving most of the earth a tropical and semitropical climate by the end of the period.
District Court ruling.
Prediction: it will turn out that DOGE didn’t write anything down, and still won’t, and there will never be any documents responsive to FOIA requests.
White House: Stock market plunge is not as ‘meaningful’ as business activity
Looks like the next administration tactic is whistling past the graveyard. Good luck with that. Dow futures are already off another three hundred bucks since the market close a few hours ago.
The Verge reports on the status of Mahmoud Khalil. This sort of coverage is the reason that I became a subscriber this year. With the shrinking number of free press outlets, it’s important to support the ones doing good work.