memfree

joined 1 year ago
[–] memfree@beehaw.org 12 points 2 days ago

There are additional details from ammoland.com (emphasis from source article):

Mr. Soukaneh claims that Officer Andrzejewski demanded that he tell the officer where the prostitute and drugs were located. The officer searched Soukaneh pulled out pills from the man’s pocket. The officer thought he found illicit drugs. In reality, what the officer discovered was Soukaneh’s nitroglycerin pills for his heart condition. In addition to the heart medication, the officer seized the $320 in cash plus a flash drive that contained pictures and videos of Soukaneh’s deceased father. Neither the flash drive nor the money was returned to Soukaneh.

They also mention that the cops DID run a check on the gun permit before figuring out how to write Soukaneh up.

Officer Andrzejewski ran Soukaneh’s gun permit and found it to be valid. Shortly after, another officer and a sergeant arrived on the scene. Andrzejewski asked the two what he should “write him up for.” The sergeant told Andrzejewski what to write into the computer system.

Note, however, that the PDF of the ruling linked by techdirt has a footnote on page 6 saying, "It is unclear from the record when Andrzejewski determined that Soukaneh held a valid firearms license, and whether that determination occurred before, after, or during Andrzejewski’s search of Soukaneh’s car. Andrzejewski does not specify whether he ran the check on the firearm license before or after he searched Soukaneh’s vehicle. "

Of course, the medication, cash and flash drive were all found through an illegal search of the car, so that whole chunk is somewhat irrelevant, and thankfully, it looks like the lawyers all knew that because the PDF suggests it was only the cop who suggested a legal gun was probable cause to search the car.

So Soukaneh is suing the cop. It has now gone through two courts. Per the Techdirt piece:

Unsurprisingly, the lower court rejected the officer’s request for immunity, pointing out that while the initial encounter may have been justified, nothing that followed that (pulling Soukaneh from the car, handcuffing him, searching his vehicle, detaining him for another half-hour while trying to figure out what to cite him with) was supported by probable cause.

The Second Circuit comes to the same conclusion. Simply being made aware Soukaneh possessed an item millions of Americans also own legally is not probable cause for anything the officer did past that point.

[–] memfree@beehaw.org 1 points 2 days ago

As I recall, it wasn't just hot food, but any food meant to be consumed on the premises, such as fountain sodas instead of canned ones. I remember a talking point about that being would get more nutritious and cheaper food buying a bag of rice and dried beans than it would for them to buy pre-made burritos, chili or whatever.

[–] memfree@beehaw.org 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can adjust them, but it is better if you get them adjusted wherever you bought them because they know how to do it properly. In particular, the spot where they touch your nose might get sore, and maybe moreso on one side than the other. That'd be a sign to get them adjusted. Some people even have one ear slightly lower than the other, needing an adjustment to the arms.

Glasses have an optimum focal point so your glasses were meant to be a particular distance from your eyes and over adjusting might change that. On the other hand, the change is going to be so small that it probably only matters to the people selling glasses rather than the wearers.

[–] memfree@beehaw.org 6 points 1 week ago

Sorry, I was trying to add my support. You gave good evidence for a meat preference and I wanted to back it up with evidence of genetic aversion to the specific vegetable mentioned in the original article.

[–] memfree@beehaw.org 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Reminds me of the incident in February where a waymo tried to get through a bunch of street revelers, and their response was to set it on fire. From the old pcmag story :

San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson noted that it had tallied 55 incidents where self-driving vehicles had interfered with rescue operations in the city.

Edit: unrelated to above quote, pc mag also says:

In some cases, residents have put orange cones on the hoods of cars, which makes them temporarily immobile.

(see also the autopian story it references)

[–] memfree@beehaw.org 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

However, no one is born loving hot dogs or disliking broccoli

But we ARE! Doesn't anyone remember the whole kerfuffle about the 'bitter' gene and PTC sensitivity?

[–] memfree@beehaw.org 13 points 1 week ago

Reminder that Palantir is the same company whose bosses are deep in bed with AmericaPAC -- which got big write-ups (link is to one comment, but you can read more there and lots of places) because Elon Musk is gathering voter data seemingly for that PAC to target swing state voters with canvassing efforts.

[–] memfree@beehaw.org -4 points 1 week ago

Water/sewer systems

[–] memfree@beehaw.org 2 points 1 week ago

Ok, per NYT, "Yes, Trump Was in a Scary Helicopter Ride. But Not With That Politician."

“I said, ‘Willie, you know what? That’s me!’” Mr. Holden said. “And I told him, “You’re a short Black guy and I’m a tall Black guy — but we all look alike, right?”

(archive)

 

Instead, it was Nate Holden. archive

“It was Willie Brown,” Mr. Trump, who spent much of the last year hoping to make gains with Black voters, posted. “But now Willie doesn’t remember?”

Mr. Brown, 90, who was mayor of San Francisco and speaker of the California Assembly, gave several interviews on Thursday and Friday saying such a trip never occurred.

Turns out, however, that there was a Black politician from California who once made an emergency landing in a helicopter with Mr. Trump. It just wasn’t Mr. Brown.


Mr. Holden said that he called Mr. Brown to compare notes. Mr. Brown told him he had never been in a helicopter crash with Mr. Trump.

“I said, ‘Willie, you know what? That’s me!’” Mr. Holden said. “And I told him, “You’re a short Black guy and I’m a tall Black guy — but we all look alike, right?”

Mr. Holden gave his own height as 6-foot-1. “Willie has to be about 5-foot-6. Maybe 5-foot-5. He comes up to about my shoulders. And he’s bald. And I’m not bald.”

Mr. Brown, he said, “just laughed and laughed.”

Mr. Holden, summing up his assessment of Mr. Trump’s recollection, said: “I just think he makes things up. That’s what I think. He never thought anybody’s going to check.”

[–] memfree@beehaw.org 4 points 1 week ago

I wish I'd been online yesterday to see this because it is way worse than just not working, so I'm repeating this whenever I see it brought up: They're targeting swing state voters (via in-person canvassers) to vote Trump. The key pieces are Palantir, which compiles data to see trends and 'insights' and a new FEC opinion that says PACs can work with candidates for canvassing. CNBC had a big article on it and states (archive -- emphasis is mine):

[...] users who enter a ZIP code that indicates they live in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, the process is very different.

Rather than be directed to their state’s voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cellphone number and age.


So that person who wanted help registering to vote? In the end, they got no help at all registering. But they did hand over priceless personal data to a political operation.


“What makes America PAC more unique: it is a billionaire-backed super PAC focused on door-to-door canvassing, which it can conduct in coordination with a presidential campaign,” Fischer said. “Thanks to a recent FEC advisory opinion, America PAC may legally coordinate its canvassing activities with the Trump campaign — meaning, among other things, that the Trump campaign may provide America PAC with the literature and scripts to make sure their efforts are consistent.”

The America PAC raised more than $8 million between April 1 and June 30, according to FEC records. It has received donations from veteran investor Doug Leone, cryptocurrency investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and a company run by longtime venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, according to FEC records.

They also quote the NYT in saying Lonsdale is one of Musk's political confidants -- which is interesting because he's at Palantir which was you'd think of as his old buddy Peter Theil's gig. Palantir sells info. As long as they get good info, we can expect them tailor the perfect messages to win over swing states voters, because those voters are (unintentionally) telling them exactly how to do it.

[–] memfree@beehaw.org 4 points 2 weeks ago

Scratch that comment. Vote Harris! :-)

[–] memfree@beehaw.org 2 points 2 weeks ago

Wow, that's a long read, and IMO, it misses a key point. Namely: similar to plastic industries spending tons of money to convince us that recycling is an individual problem and responsibility (despite the fact that most plastic can't be effectively recycled), this article mostly frames Climate Change as an individual responsibility to stop eating meat and dairy. Thankfully, at the very end, it gets to a better solution, which is to stop spending our tax dollars on subsidies to harmful agro-businesses.

The start-point, however, is that Big Farming has co-opted natural conservation groups by giving them cash to join 'mitigation' groups that are "Greenwashing" the subject such that no one talks about real solutions (such as making meat more expensive). Have a bunch of quotes:

So the meat industry did what other industries have done under similar pressure in the past: demonstrate that it could change just enough to avoid being forced to change even more by the government.

In fact, that inaugural conference in 2010 was officially titled the World Wildlife Fund Global Conference on Sustainable Beef. (WWF has helped to found similar industry roundtables for poultry and soy — most of which is fed to farmed animals — and a certification program for seafood.)

For its collaboration, McDonald’s makes sure WWF is well compensated; from 2015 to 2022, the company donated $4.5 to $9 million to WWF-US.

WWF is hardly alone. Two of the other largest US environmental organizations — the Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) — also closely collaborate with large meat and dairy companies, ranchers, and trade groups on a range of initiatives. But outside observers, along with some former and current employees at EDF and WWF, argue that those initiatives often do more to improve the companies’ image than the environment.

Last year, Tyson Foods — America’s largest meat processor — began selling beef marketed as “climate-friendly.” The company claims that by getting some of its suppliers to graze their cattle and grow the animals’ feed crops in a more sustainable manner, it’s reduced the carbon footprint of some of its beef by 10 percent.

But Tyson has repeatedly declined to share data with Vox and other news outlets that could prove its claim.

Beef is the worst food for the climate. Got it. Sadly, plant-based meat substitutes are losing market share (see graph p. 36 of Good Food Institute PDF). Personally, I like fake meat and it happens that tonight we're having Beyond Burgers for dinner (sorry for the product plug, but they work for me -- though I know some people prefer Impossible or other brands, and some people don't like any of them).

Using global averages, beef’s carbon footprint per 100 grams of protein is about 7 times that of pork, 9 times that of poultry, 25 times that of tofu and plant-based meat, and more than 60 times that of beans and lentils.

I was interested in the benefits of regenerative farming being very questionable, and any stats should be viewed suspiciously unless/until we have a verifiable measuring standard AND see data over the span of years per given acreage -- because any increase in carbon capture is likely to fall off over time.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear that the world needs negative emissions technologies — approaches that can pull carbon out of the atmosphere, as regenerative agriculture supposedly does — to avoid catastrophic global warming. But the research doesn’t bear out the claims many of regenerative agriculture’s proponents make, as there’s still significant doubt and uncertainty around the potential for farmland to store a lot of carbon.

“The science is clear that, while some mitigation can be achieved by improving meat and dairy production, climate-neutral or zero-emissions meat and dairy is not a possibility in the foreseeable future,” said Hayek, the New York University environmental studies professor, speaking about net-zero claims in animal agriculture broadly, not the WWF report specifically.

EDF and the Nature Conservancy are also founding members of the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance, a coalition of meat, dairy, and agricultural trade groups, many of which lobby aggressively to block environmental policy. But the alliance is a vehicle for their other goal on Capitol Hill: ramping up subsidies for regenerative agriculture and technological solutions. It’s similar to how the fossil fuel industry lobbies to both block climate regulations and subsidize carbon capture.

Money shuts up the World Wildlife Foundation, Sierra Club, and so on.

“If you can’t get the Sierra Club to [support a methane tax], how the fuck are you going to get anyone else in society to do that?”

Some politicians paint calls to stop pollution from factory farms and eat more plant-based meals as anti-farmer, a potent charge given both farming’s close association with America’s national mythos and the disproportionate political power that rural states hold.

If we can’t change ourselves in the environmental community, then how would we expect to change the general population?”

Many environmentalists have come to criticize individual action as ineffectual and naive. The burden to mitigate climate change and pollution falls on politicians and corporations, they argue, not the average person.

I agree with the last bit, but realize that at least a third of the U.S. will remove any politician painted as 'anti-meat'. That is, a politician might try to argue that our tax dollars shouldn't give hand-outs to Tyson or the like, but the attack ads against will say, "He wants you to stop eating meat, so he's working to bankrupt our ranchers."

The idea that environmentalists shouldn’t try to influence how people eat “is a win for industry … It’s their script,” said Jacquet, the University of Miami professor. Environmentalists who repeat this, she added, have “become sock puppets for industry, and they don’t even mean to be.”

Well, the public IS hearing that message from various places despite the fact that it's a message too many people are unwilling to hear. I don't require Environmental groups to be in-your-face about it. Let the data speak for itself.

A 2023 analysis published in the journal One Earth found that, from 2014 to 2020, the US meat industry received about 800 times more government funding than did meat and dairy alternatives.

A lot can be done to tip the scale in the other direction, and in ways unlikely to spur political backlash.

I didn't find the examples they list to be very encouraging, but they do exist. They describe how Denmark is doing some neat stuff.

“It needs to be a political liability to choose false solutions over effective climate policies,” said Jennifer Molidor, a senior food campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity.

That's the hard part! :-) Near the end there are some examples of where stuff is working and suggests a public awareness campaign would help. No more pictures of happy cows on green grass, but instead images of the barren land of holding pens stretching out in all directions. Show people the reality instead of the mythos and ask them to make it an issue with their local politicians.

 

Common Dreams article details the response to a CNBC piece about a PAC partially funded by Musk is collecting specific user data. CNBC states (archive):

[...] users who enter a ZIP code that indicates they live in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, the process is very different.

Rather than be directed to their state’s voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cellphone number and age.


So that person who wanted help registering to vote? In the end, they got no help at all registering. But they did hand over priceless personal data to a political operation.


“What makes America PAC more unique: it is a billionaire-backed super PAC focused on door-to-door canvassing, which it can conduct in coordination with a presidential campaign,” Fischer said. “Thanks to a recent FEC advisory opinion, America PAC may legally coordinate its canvassing activities with the Trump campaign — meaning, among other things, that the Trump campaign may provide America PAC with the literature and scripts to make sure their efforts are consistent.”

The America PAC raised more than $8 million between April 1 and June 30, according to FEC records. It has received donations from veteran investor Doug Leone, cryptocurrency investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and a company run by longtime venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, according to FEC records.

They also quote the NYT in saying Lonsdale is one of Musk's political confidants -- which is interesting because he's at Palantir which was you'd think of as his old buddy Peter Theil's gig. Palantir sells info. More precisely, they know how to intake truthful data and turn it into actionable details. I've no idea how they check for validity, though. Some days it feels like everything on Twitter is a lie and hearing that this 'help you vote' program is also a lie just makes me wonder if anyone is honest over there.

Common Dreams quotes several angry reactions to the CNBC article, such as:

Former Congresswoman Marie Newman (D-Ill.) took aim at Musk, saying, "If you did not believe he was maniacal or evil, before this, well now you know."

They also note that:

Last month, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) publicly thanked Musk for doing "an exceptional job of demonstrating a point that we have made for years—and that is the fact we live in an oligarchic society in which billionaires dominate not only our economic life and the information we consume, but our politics as well."

 

Archive is background info via this BBC post from 2023, but that's just one piece. Yeah, a lot of us have seen the photo, and maybe some of us know it was during the Viet Nam War, during Civil Rights protests in the U.S. and not that long after the assassination of MLK. Maybe you even know that Muhammad Ali lost his belt and was banned from boxing in the U.S. for refusing the draft to Viet Nam:

"Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?"

I did not know the Black Power Salute got all 3 athletes BANNED from the Olympics and pretty much ruined their lives. From NPR post for 50th anniversary:

Both men received hate mail and death threats. There was discussion of stripping them of their medals. Many Americans shunned them for their silent gesture: For years, they struggled to find good jobs. Their marriages suffered under that strain. Their children were bullied at school. Employers shied away from them.

And Smith and Carlos were banned from future participation in any Olympics for life. (They were in their early 20s in Mexico City, and this effectively prevented them from competing in other races in Munich and Montreal.) There were no offers of the complimentary stadium tickets usually offered to medaled athletes.

(Peter Norman suffered many of the same indignities when he returned to Australia. He was ostracized, never allowed on an Australian Olympic team again, despite qualifying in several national trials.[...]

Which gets us to The White Man In That Photo (from 2015 -- long and worthy of a full read):

Norman was a white man from Australia, a country that had strict apartheid laws, almost as strict as South Africa. There was tension and protests in the streets of Australia following heavy restrictions on non-white immigration and discriminatory laws against aboriginal people, some of which consisted of forced adoptions of native children to white families.

The two Americans had asked Norman if he believed in human rights. Norman said he did. They asked him if he believed in God, and he, who had been in the Salvation Army, said he believed strongly in God. “We knew that what we were going to do was far greater than any athletic feat, and he said “I’ll stand with you” – remembers John Carlos – “I expected to see fear in Norman’s eyes, but instead we saw love.”

Smith and Carlos had decided to get up on the stadium wearing the Olympic Project for Human Rights badge, a movement of athletes in support of the battle for equality.

They would receive their medals barefoot, representing the poverty facing people of color. They would wear the famous black gloves, a symbol of the Black Panthers’ cause. But before going up on the podium they realized they only had one pair of black gloves. “Take one each”, Norman suggested. Smith and Carlos took his advice.

But then Norman did something else. “I believe in what you believe. Do you have another one of those for me”? he asked, pointing to the Olympic Project for Human Rights badge on the others’ chests. “That way I can show my support for your cause.” Smith admitted to being astonished, ruminating: “Who is this white Australian guy? He won his silver medal, can’t he just take it and that be enough!”.

So they all go to the podium in solidarity and the U.S. winners give the salute and suffer the aftermath. More from 'white guy':

As John Carlos said, “If we were getting beat up, Peter was facing an entire country and suffering alone.” For years Norman had only one chance to save himself: he was invited to condemn his co-athletes, John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s gesture in exchange for a pardon from the system that ostracized him.

A pardon that would have allowed him to find a stable job through the Australian Olympic Committee and be part of the organization of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Norman never gave in and never condemned the choice of the two Americans.

He was the greatest Australian sprinter in history and the holder of the 200 meter record, yet he wasn’t even invited to the Olympics in Sydney. It was the American Olympic Committee, that once they learned of this news asked him to join their group and invited him to Olympic champion Michael Johnson’s birthday party, for whom Peter Norman was a role model and a hero.

Norman died suddenly from a heart attack in 2006, without his country ever having apologized for their treatment of him. At his funeral Tommie Smith and John Carlos, Norman’s friends since that moment in 1968, were his pallbearers, sending him off as a hero.

Note that the 'white guy' article talks about a commemorative statue built in 2005 of just Smith and Carlos -- no Norman. Norman approved that artistic choice. Transcript from Democracy Now where Carlos himself explains how he called Norman to hear him say so (part 1 and part 2):

JOHN CARLOS: Yeah, “Blimey, John. You’re calling me with these blimey questions here?” And I said to him, I said, “Pete, I have a concern, man. What’s this about you don’t want to have your statue there? What, are you backing away from me? Are you ashamed of us?” And he laughed, and he said, “No, John.” He said—you know, the deep thing is, he said, “Man, I didn’t do what you guys did.” He said, “But I was there in heart and soul to support what you did. I feel it’s only fair that you guys go on and have your statues built there, and I would like to have a blank spot there and have a commemorative plaque stating that I was in that spot. But anyone that comes thereafter from around the world and going to San Jose State that support the movement, what you guys had in ’68, they could stand in my spot and take the picture.”

The U.S. (but not just the U.S.) has a woeful history of treating those who protest Injustice horribly. There's always an excuse for it, too. From the above articles, we can see that the Olympic head allowed the Nazi salute for the ~~Munich~~ Berlin games but expelled Smith and Carlos in 1968 with the rational that the first was a national salute and therefore acceptable whereas 'Black Power' was not.

More recently, Kaepernick kneeling got him in trouble with the NFL but they were fine with Butker's speech that, "denounced abortion rights, Pride Month, COVID-19 lockdowns..." and suggested women should be homemakers instead of using their newly earned college diplomas. Supposedly the 'difference' is that Kaepernick's silent protest was on the NFL's time but Butker spoke on his own time so it was fine ... but they can always find a difference and it is never as valid as simply siding against injustice.

EDIT: I inadvertently typed 'Munich' instead of the correct 'Berlin' games for when the Nazi salute was allowed. Fixed now.

 

Yannick Le Gall, a journalist from France 3, the regional television state channel, who was positioned opposite the steps, said: “We were in front of Lady Gaga’s set, and by the time the music started, the staircase was empty.”

When the singer instead appeared on a giant screen in front of the stands, “spectators booed and regretted having paid €180 to see nothing,” Mr Gall added.

 

I'm hoping Lina Khan keeps up her good work (and that Harris keeps Khan as the FTC head). | archive

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Edward Markey (D-MA) sent a letter [PDF] to the US regulator's boss Lina Khan on Friday after the pair conducted an investigation into General Motors, Honda, and Hyundai.

Honda buried the disclosures about its business relationship with Verisk, which did not appear on the first page, and were not likely to be seen by many consumers.

GM and Hyundai allegedly neglected to mention selling data to Verisk at all.

If GM car owners wanted notifications about things like attempted break-ins and vehicle component health, they needed to sign up for the manufacturer's Smart Driver program, and doing so would quietly opt them into allowing their info to be sold on.

"The lengthy disclosures presented by GM before the opt-in did not disclose to consumers that as part of enrolling in Smart Driver, their driving data would be shared with data brokers and resold to insurance companies," the senators alleged, adding GM "disclosed customer location data to two other companies, which it refused to name."

Hyundai apparently enrolled its drivers into a similar Drive Score program without even asking, if they enabled the internet connection on the vehicle.

 

ghost archive

In North America, dragonfly migrations occur annually in late summer and early fall. Although it’s not clear what species of dragonfly caused a stir among sunbathers this weekend, Virginia “Ginger” Brown, the leading dragonfly expert in the Ocean State, told NBC 10 WJAR in 2021 that witnessing such an abundance of dragonflies along the coast is a miracle.

While about 130 species of dragonflies are known in Rhode Island, Brown told WJAR that the Common Green Darner comprise the bulk of those that migrate on a yearly basis, with others accompanying their flights.

The Common Green Darner is the “best-known migrant dragonfly,” according to the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. The large specimens are found in Rhode Island and are known for being fast travelers and “water-loving” insects striking in appearance, with translucent wings and green coloration, according to InsectionIdentification.org.

 

The Venezuelan opposition dismissed the CNE's announcement as fraudulent and promised to challenge the result.

Over the past 10 years, 7.8 million people have fled Venezuela because of the economic and political crisis into which the country was plunged under the Maduro Administration.

Polls conducted in the run-up to the election suggest that exodus could now increase, with one poll suggesting a third of the population would emigrate.

  • US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was among those expressing his scepticism after the result was announced by the National Electoral Council, a body which is dominated by government loyalists.

  • The UK Foreign Office also expressed concern over the results

  • The Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, also said he found the result "hard to believe".

  • Uruguay's president said of the Maduro government: "They were going to 'win' regardless of the actual results."

In a congratulatory message, President Vladimir Putin told Mr Maduro: "Remember, you are always a welcome guest on Russian soil."

44
Cicada! (beehaw.org)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by memfree@beehaw.org to c/greenspace@beehaw.org
 

Laundry drying on the line got a visitor! For some reason, I can't get a thumbnail so here's pic #2:

 

I'm not saying this doctor's suggestion is the only or best solution, but it is nice to see the issue get noticed. Excerpts from the Op/Ed:

This 30-year-old patient told me that she had struggled with her weight for years. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she had finally lost weight by eating more proteins and vegetables. Her food budget was supplemented by federal food programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program as well as the stimulus money she received during the pandemic.

In recent years, however, as her career grew, so did her income, making her ineligible to qualify for federal assistance programs, such as SNAP. At the same time, the pandemic stimulus money disappeared. As a result of both factors, her supplementary incomes and support for food withered.

While screening for food insecurity is now a routine part of what we do in primary care, fixing the problem is impossible without also addressing the upstream causes. This patient’s food insecurity stemmed from not only the “cliff effect” of losing her supplemental benefits when her earnings pushed her out of a certain income bracket but also from the rising cost of food prices, including high-protein foods such as eggs and beef, given the rise of bird flu. The incidence of viruses able to spread from one species to another (called “viral spillover”) in the face of climate change is predicted to become more and more common in the coming years — all of which place a higher price tag on food.

I know that writing a prescription for weight-loss drugs is far easier for me and my colleagues than trying to address the real cost of rising food prices and food insecurity.

State and federal policy makers must begin by urgently addressing and mitigating the “cliff effect” for those who are making a livable wage.

 

After adding operatic vocals to Gojira's rendition of "Ah! Ça Ira," a song popular during the French Revolution, she went on to sing a portion of Georges Bizet's Carmen.

From NME:

The heavy metallers performed ‘Ah, Ça Ira!’ (which translates to ‘It’ll be fine’), a song that was popular during the French revolution, during a segment titled ‘Liberté’ (in reference to France’s famed motto ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’) that celebrated one of the most famous events in French history, as well as the nation’s emphasis on freedom.

Gojira appeared on the side of a castle surrounded by fire and bursts of red streamers to represent blood, with Viotti later appearing on a moving prop boat. Their performance followed a portion dedicated to Les Miserables and came just after a beheaded Marie Antoinette was shown singing.

Traditional lyrics translated at wikipedia (linked above) Gojira's lyrics translated via redditors:

Oh. It'll be okay, be okay, be okay,
Hang the aristocrats from on high!
Oh. It'll be okay, be okay, be okay,
The aristocrats, we'll hang 'em all.
Despotism will breathe its last,
Liberty will take the day,
Oh. It'll be okay, be okay, be okay,
We don't have any more nobles or priests,
Oh. It'll be okay, be okay, be okay,
Equality will reign everywhere,
The Austrian slave will follow him,
To the Devil will they fly.
Oh. It'll be okay, be okay, be okay,
To the Devil will they fly.

https://metalinjection.net/news/heres-your-first-look-at-gojira-playing-the-paris-olympics-opening-ceremony

 

Khan has been at the forefront of the Biden administration's push to use U.S. antitrust law to boost competition and address high prices and low wages. Khan, who oversaw the FTC's ban on noncompete agreements, has drawn the ire of corporate groups, but won fans including Donald Trump's running mate, JD Vance, for her skepticism towards big business.

Now, big money Democratic donors this week publicly said Khan should not be part of a potential Harris administration.

Prominent Democratic senators have spoken out in support of Khan, including senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Warren said on Friday that Khan should continue her work, calling it "a big reason the economy is growing strong as we saw with yesterday's GDP data."

-- or as Matt Stoller puts it in his 'BIG' (regarding one of the two, Hoffman):

Ok, so it’s pretty stunning for an oligarch like Hoffman, with a net worth of a couple billion dollars, to publicly make such a demand. So why is he doing it? One reason is that there’s a lot of money involved. As the Lever reported, Hoffman is on the board of Microsoft, which is right now being sued and investigated by the FTC. It’s a pretty good gig, if you get to fire the law enforcer investigating your misdeeds.

and thinks it likely that:

he’s going to supply the financing for Harris’ campaign if she does what she’s told.

In other words, democracy really is on the ballot, but not in the way people imagine. An oligarch has explicitly and openly taken over policy because it conflicts with his small faction’s control of American society. And so far, most political leaders are silent.

The only upside here is that Hoffman is being very public, aggressive, and explicit about his demands. And he’s going to corner Harris until she kisses the ring, or refuses to do so. From his perspective, he’s not donating $10 million, he’s making a purchase. Or so he thinks. Now it’s up to Harris to make the choice.

 

Given the shutdown/attack today, which targeted stations far from the capital, this, ah... did not go well.

Excerpts from article:

Security measures in Paris have been turbocharged by a new type of AI, as the city enables controversial algorithms to crawl CCTV footage of transport stations looking for threats.

After training its algorithms on both open source and synthetic data, Wintics’ systems have been adapted to, for example, count the number of people in a crowd or the number of people falling to the floor—alerting operators once the number exceeds a certain threshold.

Houllier argues that his algorithms are a privacy-friendly alternative to controversial facial recognition systems used by past global sporting events, such as the 2022 Qatar World Cup. “Here we are trying to find another way,” he says. To him, letting the algorithms crawl CCTV footage is a way to ensure the event is safe without jeopardizing personal freedoms. “We are not analyzing any personal data. We are just looking at shapes, no face, no license plate recognition, no behavioral analytics.”

Levain is concerned the AI surveillance systems will remain in France long after the athletes leave. To her, these algorithms enable the police and security services to impose surveillance on wider stretches of the city. “This technology will reproduce the stereotypes of the police,” she says. “We know that they discriminate. We know that they always go in the same area. They always go and harass the same people. And this technology, as with every surveillance technology, will help them do that.”

view more: next ›