I think they also have an EMP effect that can damage ship/sat electronics.
But, like the internet, a sub is a series of tubes. You have a big horizontal tube that the people and the engine lives in, and you have vertical ones where the things that blow up cities live.
I mean, there are optional smaller horizontal tubes, but I feel like if you’re going to launch a sub into space it really ought to be one of the big ones. Maybe it’s just a Freudian thing.
Not all states support recalls. California kind of goes all in on the democracy thing with the ease of introducing ballot initiatives and recalls and such. It’s mostly fine, but it can also result in pretty stupid plays like this.
Those incidents really disturbed me. I’m glad they’re doing this.
I’m still really worried about where things are heading, to the point that my partner and I are looking at golden visa programs in anticipation of having to leave the US permanently.
I’m curious about rehabilitation. I believe crime comes from access to resources and/or from a lack of emotional education (such as empathy, patience, and sympathy)....
Did you leave Kahn and his followers out on purpose? They basically got transported. Maybe it’s an edge case, but I would consider being exiled to a planet and not being allowed to leave as a kind of incarnation.
I am someone who believes that multilevel selection is a primary driver of evolutionary dynamics and works at levels ranging from the organism to the ecosystem (at various levels of effectiveness). Kropotkin is nice philosophically, although he is read about far more often than he is read. That’s entirely reasonable, because his theories provide a foundation for lines of investigation we still pursue today but are obviously outdated, as are the ideas of everyone whose work predated discoveries like genes.
If you want a more modern view on the evolutionary benefits of cooperation, I would suggest starting with Harvard biology professor EO Wilson, who specialized in ants and ended up concluding that humans were in fact a eusocial species - unique among primates and one of very few on earth. He invented the field (or at least added additional formalization to the study) of sociobiology - the evolution of social behaviors. It’s the same category as ants and bees. For an anthropological and cross-cultural perspective I’d suggest Graeber. For a mathematical and economic perspective, I’d start with Sam Bowles. For the foundations of pro-social behavior in primates, I’d recommend Frans de Waal.
I’d be happy to try to answer any questions on the subject.
Standing in front of a massive state flag on Saturday, Claver Kamau-Imani outlined his utopian vision of a Nation of Texas that he believes is just on the horizon....
The Central Bucks school board has made national headlines for its heated meetings and book banning policy. On Tuesday, voters flipped the board from majority Republican to majority Democrat.
I understand the sentiment, but the reason is that most voters don’t have the bandwidth to even really learn about their federal representatives, much less their local politicians. Having a letter next to your name is probably the least amount of relevant information you can convey. It’s basically one bit in a two party system.
It takes a lot of time and effort to be an informed voter. When ballots arrive, I can spend hours on sites researching the legislation and candidates, and even then most of what you’ll find are press release types of statements with generic phrasing. You end up learning to hear dog whistles and using those, unless the candidate/initiative is big enough that it gets attention in the local press.
At this point, if someone is running as a Republican, I am going to assume that they’re a supporter of the LGBT-phobic, misogynistic agenda embraced by the national party. It is the party of Trump now, and they take a firm stand against everything I agree with. I appreciate the signal, even if it is a single bit of information, just in case I can’t find anything on the candidate.
Honestly, I grew up watching the original series and it was extremely formative. I can’t say that I’d never have become a scientist without it, but it did help shape my concept of myself and the way I relate to the world, and how I’d like the world to be. In fact, when next generation launched, I originally didn’t like it because I was such a fan of TOS.
However, looking at it objectively, I think that TOS holds mostly nostalgia value. I wouldn’t recommend starting there unless you have a thing for campy TV and mid century modern design themes. If you’re interested in seeing what all the fuss is about, I’d start with the second or third season of TNG or one of the later series like DS9. TNG takes about a season or two before the writers and actors start to figure it out.
If you’re really more modern-oriented, you could start with the JJ Abrams movies, which are modern action movies in the ST universe.
The main thing is this: you can start pretty much anywhere. There will be backstories or call backs that might slip past you or inside jokes that you miss, but it’s more important imo to get on board with the franchise by starting with the stuff you find enjoyable, rather than getting turned off by elements that are dated or don’t resonate. Once you have that context, you can move back and forth between all the series and movies and enjoy them more.
Think of it like Discworld. It’s a series of novels written such that you can jump in anywhere and read them forward, backward, or sideways. It’s not like Lord of the Rings where you really can’t just start with the last book because there’s a single story being told in multiple parts.
48 years old, currently have no investments. My net worth is my car and the clothes on my back, and I don’t ever want to be in this situation again....
I’m going to take a slightly different approach, although I generally agree with all of the advice here.
Establish an emergency fund. If you’ve been living paycheck to paycheck and do not have a significant amount of money in accessible savings, you’re taking a risk of not being able to handle something like a car repair or unemployment. Withdrawing funds from tax-advantaged retirement accounts can take time and incur significant financial penalties. The rule of thumb is to figure out what you spend in a month, and plan on an emergency fund that can carry you through 6 months of zero income. Some people do less, some do more, and if you’re really thinking about it you can figure out what expenses you can cut in order to make those savings go further.
Putting money into a matched 401k is a no-brainer, and going with an index fund or retirement date fund is the easiest way to go. However, realistically examine the expected savings by the time you plan to retire. This tells you how much you’ll be able to draw down and for how long. I’m going off of memory here, but I think the consensus safe draw down rate is 4% per year. That means $1M in retirement savings will give you about $40k per year to live on (not including things like social security). Depending on where and how you live, this might be sufficient. You’d have to plan for it though, which is my point.
There are plenty of retirement calculators online to help with this. You enter your age, when you want to retire, the amount you’re saving, and it will tell you what your savings will be when you’re 65 (or whatever) and how long it will last at different draw down rates. Some will let you estimate things like rate of return too. Be realistic.
Realize that the closer you get to retirement, the more conservative your investments should be. To paint with a very broad brush, low risk=low reward, high risk=high reward. The further you are from retirement, the longer you have to recover from a downturn. Look at the retirement date targeted funds - they move over time from a more speculative set of investments to a more reliable one. What I’m saying here is that you’ll read things about being able to plan around a 10% rate of return. That’s the average for a stock based portfolio, and it can swing around quite a bit. Individual stocks have a higher risk than an s&p index fund, and the index fund will have a higher risk than a conservative, income-oriented fund. Remember that when you’re using those retirement planning web sites.
From the Bay Area, $1.5M will get you a two bed one bath or three bed 1.5 bath home built in 1925 or so. You can buy in a lower end neighborhood for a little less or a higher end one for a bit more, but the standard is going to be a craftsman home from 1906 with a driveway if you’re lucky.
I think the graphic also used a 20% down payment and a slightly over 6% mortgage in the calculation.
I just want to retire and move someplace cheap, like NYC or London.
Even in downtown San Jose you’re talking about seven figures for an ancient craftsman with outdated electric and plumbing. Willow Glen, Los Gatos, Cupertino, you’re pushing $2M.
If you’re willing to commute from way up in the east bay, you can do a bit better, you’re right, but if you’re commuting to a South Bay company you’re paying for it in travel time and stress.
And tbh, I was stationed for a bit near Dublin. I can’t swear to what the prices are like now, but man, now that I’m out of that line of work I’d choose to live in East SJ or the peninsula instead.
But those are super reasonable prices, I will happily admit, and if you work in SF the commute might be worth it. We just need much more mass transit.
I don’t know if you’ve seen (or read) Red, White, and Royal Blue, but I just have to relate this dialog (the context is Alex, the son of the US president, starting a romantic relationship with Prince Henry, third in line of succession to the throne):
Henry: “You thought I was a dumb blond, didn’t you?”
“Not exactly, just, boring,” Alex says. “I mean, your dog is named David, which is pretty boring.”
“After Bowie.”
“I—” Alex’s head spins, recalibrating. “Are you serious? What the hell? Why not call him Bowie, then?”
“Bit on the nose, isn’t it?” Henry says. “A man should have some element of mystery.”
I just gave it a skim. It’s a terrible paper. It’s badly written - that intro is far too long and is out of place - and the methodology is terrible.
I’m not even sure that the question they’re answering (“Given N misogynists, how many are incels?”) is what they should be asking (“Given N incels, how many are misogynists?”).
No one has said that being a misogynist means you’re an incel. The hypothesis is that inceldom and misogyny are correlated. I mean, how many papers have been written about the pickup artist culture and its relation to misogyny? The incels are the ones with their noses pressed against the metaphorical window reading about how there’s a male subculture that is openly misogynistic and still has sex, with an inferred causal relationship there (“If you treat women like crap, they will have sex with you”).
I’d give it a closer read if I had to review it, but even their selection criteria (Amazon Turk volunteers) is bad. If anyone made it further than I did I’d be happy to hear that the analysis is okay or something, but I’d reject this paper.
Can someone explain this one to me? They’re Cognizant employees, and Cognizant is a Google contractor. That’s the contention, at least. Google writes Cognizant a check, Cognizant writes them their checks, and so on. I know there’s additional requirements like directing their work or setting their hours that Google denies doing, but leaving that aside and granting their contention is right and Google is a partial employer…
Everyone agrees that the Google appeal process is what’s delaying this. They agree that cognizant would negotiate if Google wasn’t appealing. Why not drop Google from the suit?
I think he’s sorry he did it, but that he’s the exact same person who did it, if you see what I mean.
Like, he’s sorry he stuck with the guy, he’s sorry he went as far as he did, but not because it was morally bankrupt. He’s sorry because he was stupid and is paying the consequences. I don’t think he’s sorry because he realized that being a liar and a grifter is wrong, or that being a tax cheat is wrong, or that making sure rich people get away with anything they do is wrong.
He’s sorry that he committed to going down with the ship because he thought it’d actually just stay afloat, but then got tossed overboard by the captain and rest of the crew anyway.
First, twitter removing a post/banning a user/enforcing a policy is free speech. The government preventing it is anti-free speech. The government cannot tell the New York Times what to publish or not to publish, and it likewise cannot force twitter to do so. I cannot force the Washington Post to publish my op-ed on how bananas should be banned because they’re phallic and make me uncomfortable. Twitter has the right to suspend the UAW account, or delete all of its posts, or whatever it wants to do.
People are upset because Elmo uses his right to suspend and so on as personal vendettas. He’s erratic, unstable, and impulsive. Again, it’s his company and it’s his right. Hell, given that he’s destroyed between 70% and 90% of a $44B company’s value by indulging in his idiotic whims, I wouldn’t expect anything different. A literal dart-throwing chimp would be a better manager. It’s obvious why Jack Dorsey got a guaranteed buyout at $54.20 when he agreed to hold onto his $1B holdings during the transition. He could now technically shut down twitter by removing up to 25% of its remaining valuation. If the Saudis got a similar deal, that’s another $1.5B. So Elmo isn’t just paying $1B per year servicing the debt he took on to stupidly buy a company in an industry he knows less than nothing about, those guaranteed buybacks are like additional loans that can be called in at any time If he did end up tanking the value of the company down into the $4B range, it is closing in on being worth less than $0.
So this is to be expected, just like him fucking with the NYT and anyone else he disagrees with is to be expected. People can still call it out as indicative of who he is.
And you know this is nothing like censoring hate speech or dangerous disinformation. You’re just making a bad faith argument.
Feels like a shower thought, but I seriously want to know if there are any implications, because it seems like identical twins are able to sense, understand, and almost be extensions of each other - finish each other’s sentences/thoughts. Some even claim to be able to sense their twin when they’re separate. Hard to believe,...
My partner is into DS9 and suggested we watch some last night. For some reason episode 1 was not available on Amazon Prime.(?) We watched Past Prologue and A Man Alone. As someone who is only barely familiar with the Star Trek universe, here are my thoughts:...
You’re in for a really good experience. Gene Roddenberry had a very specific vision for Star Trek. The federation was his vision for humankind. He wanted us to be those people - at least, to want to be those people. So the federation became something of a Mary Sue. It’s something I really love about the show - it’s good to have a Lancelot around
DS9 has two things that set it apart from previous (and some subsequent) Treks. First and foremost, there’s a full story arc that travels throughout the series. It does have some more episodic, us, episodes, but it was the first Trek with a storyline that wasn’t about exploring the galaxy. TNG had some multipart episodes and some plot lines that ran across the better part of a season, but the entirety of DS9 takes place against a continuous plot line. The fact that they’re (generally speaking) not Boldly Going anywhere is kind of a metaphor.
It also explores some much darker themes than the other Treks, including colonization, genocide, terrorism, and what we might give up when we believe the ends can justify the means. It’s a side of the federation that Roddenberry wanted to reject, but I think having it throws his vision of what humans can be into even sharper relief.
Like with the other Treks, it takes about a season or so before the writers and actors settle into the characters. I happen to agree with you about Sisko. He’s the most military-like of any Trek captain I’ve ever seen. I’m not going to say anything else because you’re going to love watching everything unfold.
This is a pretty terrible article that takes an important issue (financial insecurity in the US) and manages to say absolutely nothing about it.
Half of Americans describe “financial freedom” as being comfortable, but not necessarily rich, and 49.3% say it refers to meeting financial obligations and having some money left over each month. About 54.2% define it as living debt-free, and 46.2% believe it means never having to worry about money.
Okay, so they don’t define “financial insecurity,” but leave the definition up to the people taking the survey? And the definitions themselves are all over the map and don’t have an objective interpretation. “Meeting financial obligations?” That just says that people want to be able to live within their means, but not how they live.
Even the bit about savings accounts is problematic. A lot of people don’t have savings accounts because most people don’t bank that way any more. In our parent’s generation (and I am speaking as someone who is 50) savings accounts were where middle class and below people kept their money because it was an interest bearing account and things like the stock market and bonds were intentionally well out of reach of the average person. I do have a savings account but I really don’t need one and its balance has absolutely no correlation to how much money I have.
The percentage of people living paycheck to paycheck, the amount of savings (in terms of monthly expenses), or having to defer things like medical treatment or car repairs are all more meaningful metrics, IMO. Even net worth inclusive and exclusive of the primary residence would be meaningful.
The fact that the situation you mention in the spoiler is acknowledged in the show to be problematic from both a professional and personal perspective is dealt with in the show, iirc. It’s something Ted needs to come to grips with, and is in no small part related to his internal troubles. It’s not played for laughs or character development, and to the extent that the therapist wasn’t reported or sanctioned it is unfortunate but realistic.
Voters in Ohio went to the polls to decide whether to approve a measure known as Issue 1 that would raise the bar for constitutional amendments on the ballot. In the ultimate irony, the votes against changing the amendment process exceeded the 60% supermajority that the measure was seeking in the first place
After having this book lying around on my kindle for years, I finally finished it a few months ago. I think it is the only Trek novel I’ve ever read. Although I enjoy the franchise - in some ways more than I enjoy many of the actual shows - I tend to avoid franchise-driven novels in general due to a perception of poor writing.
Stitch is actually pretty well written - at least as well as one of the better episodes. Garak - he of ambiguous loyalties and sexuality - becomes a fully fleshed out character with a backstory and a complicated professional and personal life. Garak was and remains one of my favorite characters in the franchise, and this book lived up to the character and cemented his status. The author, Andrew Robinson, is the actor who played Garak, and I’ve always enjoyed interviews with him where he gives insights into his character. Originally, Garak was going to be more transparently bisexual, but the studio decided not to follow that line because it was considered too controversial for the time. Robinson, however, made sure to play the role in a way that let the viewers in on. that aspect of his character without getting a protest from the studio.
I will be picking up the audiobook so I can do a re-read. The fact that Robinson is the narrator means I’m going to be actively listening and not just playing it in the background.
That’s entirely fair. I unfortunately have less time for personal reading than I used to, so I end up either being much choosier than I was when I was younger, or more often I go back to re-read ones I know I loved. It’s easier to fall asleep to those sometimes.
I will take a look at your suggestions. The last sf books I really enjoyed were the Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. There’s not a lot of hard sf that centers on biology (as opposed to physics), but the author absolutely nailed it. I’m incredibly impressed with the premise and the story, but the science was correct while still being brilliant and innovative. Imagine a civilization of human-level intelligence giant spiders, but whose psychology and society are done as spiders, not humans in spider costumes. On the other hand, I tried Project Hail Mary by Martian author Andrew Weir, and the science was so bad that I made it only about a quarter of the way through before giving up. I don’t need all of my sf to be hard sf, but if you’re going to be writing hard sf you have to get the science at least plausible.
Anyway, I really liked Garak in the show and thought his arc was among the most interesting. This book, however canon-y it’s considered, answered a lot of questions that were raised or hinted at in the show with enough depth and resonance that I wonder how much he was able to draw on character notes and how much was coming out of his head-canon as a follow-on from just grokking the character so well.
With crews as large as Star Trek has, you know they couldn’t get along all the time. According to Star Trek icon Jonathan Frakes, the cast of one of the Star Trek series was particularly bad at one point....
The guest list to a 2017 dinner for $10,000-a-year donors with Justice Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh shows how the rich buy access to the Supreme Court.
Champagne flowed at a 2017 Aspen Institute event, held at a mansion on “Billionaire Mountain,” where $10,000-year donors and their guests rubbed shoulders with some of the nation’s most powerful judges.
The Aspen Institute promises “exclusive access to high-level gatherings” for donors in its Justice Circle, and the 2017 “speakers dinner” featuring Justice Elena Kagan was as exclusive as they get.
Roughly 50 attendees RSVP’d, according to two guest lists obtained by Insider. Corporate execs and lawyers with business before the Supreme Court mingled with some of the country’s most influential jurists. While Kagan was a guest of honor, Brett Kavanaugh, at the time a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, was also present. The following year, President Trump nominated Kavanaugh to join Kagan on the nation’s highest court.
The hospitality provided to the judges wasn’t anywhere near the scale of the decadeslong relationship between Justice Clarence Thomas and the billionaire real-estate developer Harlan Crow. Kagan’s visit to Aspen had a public component, and both she and Kavanaugh documented that the Aspen Institue provided free travel and lodging for the event on their annual disclosure forms.
What the guest lists do show is the economy of access and influence that has sprung up around the Supreme Court. Revelations about Thomas and Crow’s relationship have prompted calls in Congress for the Supreme Court to adopt its first-ever binding code of ethics. Kagan’s appearance as an apparent guest of honor could violate the Code of Conduct for federal judges, which bars judges from being a “speaker, a guest of honor, or featured on the program” of fundraising events. But as a Supreme Court justice, Kagan is not currently bound by those rules.
The Supreme Court bans justices from attending fundraising events, but it defines them to include only events that raise more money than they spend or where there is a specific solicitation for funds, Kathleen Clark, an expert in government ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, said.
“It may not violate those rules as the rules have been narrowly interpreted, but nonetheless, there still is a problem with it,” Clark said. “How can you call this event anything but a reward for having given money to the organization? A bonus awarded to those who have already generously contributed?”
But more than a hypothetical ethics violation, what the guest list reveals is the perfectly legal way in which the power of the nation’s highest court is marketed by third parties as a chance to pay for face-to-face access.
Everybody got something: Kagan and Kavanaugh got a free trip to a luxurious destination, Aspen got money from donors, and those donors got privileged access to Kagan and Kavanaugh — an intimate dinner setting where the two jurists, no longer ensconced by their chambers, clerks, and robes, were more approachable than they would be in any official setting.
The benefits of face time with a justice Kagan’s admirers like to recall the time she turned down a proposed gift of lox and bagels from a group of her high-school friends as evidence of her stringent approach to ethics. But the evening at the Aspen Institute demonstrates a willingness to mingle with VIPs who were only there because they’d shelled out five figures.
Eleven of the 50 names listed as attendees at the dinner were guests of law firms. They included in-house lawyers for the coal giant Peabody Energy and the convenience-store chain Speedway, both guests of the law firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon. Tristan Duncan, the chair of the Aspen Institute’s Justice Circle and a partner at Shook, who was also at the dinner, represented Peabody before the Supreme Court in 2016 and Speedway in 2018.
“Tristan Duncan may be supplying names for 2-3 additional guests,” one of the lists said.
The Aspen Institute, Duncan, Peabody, and Speedway did not respond to requests for comment from Insider.
When contacted by Insider, some attendees said that they didn’t remember much of the event, and that nothing inappropriate had happened. Christina Sullivan, who worked for a company that runs apartment complexes called Gables Residential, said that her interaction with Kagan was limited to a handshake and a greeting.“shak[ing] her hand and say[ing] hello.”
“People are all up in arms — the court, privilege, whatever — but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree,” said Brian O’Connor, a real-estate businessman whose mother, the former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, was being honored at the Aspen event.
But hobnobbing with judges can give lawyers and litigants flashes of insight into their values and personalities with a candor and clarity unavailable to the general public.
Muslim Lakhani, a Washington businessman, told Insider that he chatted with Kagan about judges and “judicial activism” in his native Pakistan. At one point, he said, Kagan seemed to invoke a higher power.
“Once a judgment is made, after that, there’s only one court. That’s up there,” Kagan said, according to Lakhani’s recollection. Kagan, Lakhani continued, “keeps that front and center in her mind, something like ‘I must pass laws that are correct, because I have to answer for the judgments that I give.’”
While Kagan has also spoken about her faith in public settings, it’s hard to imagine a Supreme Court litigator who wouldn’t jump at the chance to have an informal back-and-forth with her away from the cameras, as Lakhani did.
Kagan and Kavanaugh did not immediately respond to requests for comment made with the court’s public-information officer.
The uneasy intersection of friendship and self-interest Hours before the Aspen dinner, Meryl Chertoff introduced Kagan before a public conversation. At that time, Chertoff, a law professor, headed the Aspen Institute’s Justice and Society Program. In 2010, she spoke favorably about Kagan’s nomination to the highest court. As the head of the Aspen Institute’s Justice and Society Program at the time, which was hosting Kagan, she likely would have had a hand in shaping the VIP guest list for the dinner.
Michael Chertoff, a former appeals judge who was the secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, accompanied his wife to that dinner. In 2018, the year after the Aspen dinner, Michael Chertoff’s consulting company, Chertoff Group, started working directly with the Supreme Court. That relationship wasn’t made public until this year. CNN reported that the Chertoff Group billed upward of $1 million, money that ultimately came from taxpayers.
In response to questions from Congress, Michael Chertoff explained that he’d advised the court on security and on a pandemic-response plan. When asked if he maintained “personal relationships” with any justices, Chertoff wrote that he did not have “ongoing or regular social relationships,” though he said there had been “occasional social exchanges,” “mostly at widely attended events.”
It’s unclear whether Michael Chertoff interacted with either justice at the dinner, or whether there is any connection between the event and his later work for the court, which was handled not by Kagan or Kavanaugh, but by Chief Justice John Roberts.
But the presence of so many wealthy and influential people who might want something from the court is itself a problem, Gabe Roth, who runs the advocacy group Fix the Court, said. Roth told Insider that the access economy can create the appearance of conflicts of interests, and said that judges should recuse themselves from cases involving firms or clients who pay large sums of money to meet with them.
“I get that Washington is a chummy town and more resources for Court security is likely warranted,” Roth said in an email. “But by the same token, given the ties between Chertoff and the justices, the notoriously opaque institution should open up its books to reassure the public that Chertoff’s work was above board.”
Access to Supreme Court justices is used to reward donors While ProPublica’s reporting on the undisclosed gifts and financial ties between Thomas and Crow has captured headlines, increasing attention is turning to other ways the rich and powerful gain access to Supreme Court justices.
The Aspen Institute isn’t alone in dangling Supreme Court access to lure deep-pocketed donors. Reporting by The New York Times revealed that Rob Schenck used the Supreme Court Historical Society as a springboard to build relationships with conservative justices.
An Insider analysis of Historical Society donor and event records found that a suite of archconservative activists — including the anti-abortion philanthropist and Domino’s founder Tom Monaghan, the former Trump attorney Jay Sekulow, and the QAnon proponent and election denier Sidney Powell — had used the society as a vehicle to gain face time with the justices.
The Associated Press exposed how officials at University of Colorado Law School pushed for a larger “donor-to-staff ratio” at a 2019 dinner with Kagan, and how Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s taxpayer-funded staff prodded the schools hosting her to buy copies of her book.
All of these events entailed the same kind of exchange. Financial support for a public mission flowed one way, and scheduled private time with Supreme Court justices was dispensed in return.
“Obviously, the justices should have friends,” Roth said. But if they started becoming friendly with a businessperson or lawyer after joining the Supreme Court, he said, that’s more of a red flag.
“To me, it’s almost like: Who are your new friends?” Roth said.
Biologist here. The easiest way to unscramble an egg is to feed it to a chicken.
I think one of the main problems we’re confronting is that about a third of the electorate is fine with the violent overthrow of democracy and its replacement by christian nationalist hegemony, while another third wants to treat it as politics as usual. The latter is where we get things like the media talking about the “debate” over J6.
It’s the normalization of (frankly) fascism that makes people think it’s a legitimate political position rather than an existential threat to the US. Gilead has been brought up so often that it feels trite to say it, but I think it’s accurate. Atwood did not explicitly treat the banality of evil, though. If the radicalism of the far-right that is dominating the republican party was called out more, I think they’d be bleeding voters. They already are, but there are still a lot of people who, if things like the DeSantis laws were properly explained in their effects, would quit the party. Their safety from being the targets of the laws leave them open to only evaluating republican messaging, and even news reporting often holds to the “two sides to the question” framing.
There’s the old joke about the weather person announcing that some people are saying it’s raining and some are saying it’s not raining, and then conducting interviews. People who tend to stay inside are often willing to believe that it’s not raining, rather than sticking their heads outside, and that’s due in no small part to the press pretending both sides are the same.
[What If?] Would a Submarine Work as a Spaceship? ( www.youtube.com )
Gavin Newsom faces another recall threat in California ( www.politico.com )
It’s scarier to refer to immigrants as ‘military-aged males’ than ‘men’ ( www.washingtonpost.com )
Paywall Removed
[Biology] The umbilical cord: is it 'necessary' to sever it, or is it designed to disconnect on its own eventually?
What are the consequences of not severing it? I imagine you’d have the weirdest bellybutton on earth if nothing else....
WA liquor board suspends ‘lewd conduct’ enforcement after LGBTQ+ bar inspections ( www.seattletimes.com )
What does rehabilitation look like in Star Trek? How might we apply some of these ideas to a western prison system?
I’m curious about rehabilitation. I believe crime comes from access to resources and/or from a lack of emotional education (such as empathy, patience, and sympathy)....
Opinion: Why do so many young white men in America find fascism ‘cool’? ( www.latimes.com )
Texas secessionists feel more emboldened than ever ( www.texastribune.org )
Standing in front of a massive state flag on Saturday, Claver Kamau-Imani outlined his utopian vision of a Nation of Texas that he believes is just on the horizon....
How Long It Takes the Largest Companies in America to Make One Employee's Average Annual Salary ( lemmy.world )
Found on imgur imgur.io/gallery/gqItf8e
This school board made news for banning books. Voters flipped it to majority Democrat ( www.npr.org )
The Central Bucks school board has made national headlines for its heated meetings and book banning policy. On Tuesday, voters flipped the board from majority Republican to majority Democrat.
The First 45 Years of Star Trek ( loma.ml )
The First 45 Years of Star Trek (https://loma.ml/photo/1808531861654fe5df533e2819262308-1.jpg)
Can you offer investment advice? I'm debt-free, about to start earning $2k more per month than I need to survive. Please offer any suggestions for optimal investment method(s).
48 years old, currently have no investments. My net worth is my car and the clothes on my back, and I don’t ever want to be in this situation again....
Salary Needed To Buy a Home In The US ( reddthat.com )
Is zero divisible by zero?
Seems like it should and the result should be one. Does mathematics agree with me on that?
Ball catch photos did not go well ( lemmy.world )
Extreme Misogyny in Incels Probably Not Caused by Sexual Frustration ( researchinenglish.com )
Fox News Announces a Newsom and DeSantis Debate in November ( www.nytimes.com )
Full article: imgur.com/a/zQgPuoQ
Google Flat-Out Refuses to Bargain With Workers, Prompting YouTube Music Strike ( www.vice.com )
In an email obtained by Motherboard, Google tells YouTube Music workers it will "not be participating in collective bargaining."
Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis turns on ‘malignant narcissist’ ex-president ( www.theguardian.com )
Ellis, one of 18 Trump associates charged in Georgia election subversion case, says she ‘simply can’t support him’ aga
Automaker CEO Elon Musk Strips UAW Twitter Verification as Union Strikes Against Big Three ( theintercept.com )
Is it possible that monozygotic twins are quantum entangled at conception?
Feels like a shower thought, but I seriously want to know if there are any implications, because it seems like identical twins are able to sense, understand, and almost be extensions of each other - finish each other’s sentences/thoughts. Some even claim to be able to sense their twin when they’re separate. Hard to believe,...
Watched episodes 2&3 of DS9, thoughts
My partner is into DS9 and suggested we watch some last night. For some reason episode 1 was not available on Amazon Prime.(?) We watched Past Prologue and A Man Alone. As someone who is only barely familiar with the Star Trek universe, here are my thoughts:...
Over half of Americans say they're not even close to financial freedom ( scrippsnews.com )
About 36% of U.S. adults say they have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts....
If You Love Ted Lasso ... Don't Miss These Other Great Depictions of Positive Masculinity - The Peabody Awards ( peabodyawards.com )
In Tuesday's special election, Ohioans overwhelmingly vote against requiring a supermajority to change their state constitution ( www.cbsnews.com )
Voters in Ohio went to the polls to decide whether to approve a measure known as Issue 1 that would raise the bar for constitutional amendments on the ballot. In the ultimate irony, the votes against changing the amendment process exceeded the 60% supermajority that the measure was seeking in the first place
'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: A Stitch in Time' Audiobook, Narrated by Andrew J. Robinson, Now Available ( startrek.com )
This article features a message from Andrew J. Robinson, along with an excerpt from the audiobook.
Star Trek legend Jonathan Frakes says TNG cast were “Rude” on set ( www.thedigitalfix.com )
With crews as large as Star Trek has, you know they couldn’t get along all the time. According to Star Trek icon Jonathan Frakes, the cast of one of the Star Trek series was particularly bad at one point....
Buying face time: A secret invite list shows how big donors gain access to Supreme Court justices ( www.businessinsider.com )
The guest list to a 2017 dinner for $10,000-a-year donors with Justice Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh shows how the rich buy access to the Supreme Court.
This is facts. ( lemmy.ml )
This is what the new GOP they are 100% embrace white supremacy and are welcoming fascism into America....