‘Never mind, we can’t get our act together. Sorry that Trump is ruining the country but we’ll be back next year in time for the midterms…’ (Susan B. Glasser via The New Yorker)
‘…[P]icture the most intense, bleeding-heart liberal you know, the type who has five signs in their front yard, rage-watches the news, and has spent the past ten years worried that Donald Trump will march us straight into fascism. Now imagine all that discontent freed from the burden of uninspiring Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Where does that energy go?…’ (Jay Caspian Kang via The New Yorker)
‘Though the two outbreaks are in the same region (the Équateur Province), it’s not certain yet whether they are truly connected. People in both outbreaks have experienced similar symptoms, which include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, abdominal pain, and headache. Some people have also experienced hemorrhaging (potentially life-threatening blood loss), but tests for Ebola and Marburg virus—well-known causes of hemorrhagic fever—have come up negative in both outbreaks….’ (via Gizmodo)
‘Users online documented how a dictation tool input ‘Tr*mp’ in place of ‘racist’; other words such as ‘rampant’ also trigger what Apple called a ‘bug’…’ (Aaron Tilley via WSJ)
In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was everywhere, riding an “America First” slogan into the mainstream. They felt unstoppable, until people stopped them. (via dansinker.com)
‘Without minimizing the potential for the utter destruction of the rule of law in this country—a genuine possibility!—I want to make two basic points that may be helpful in restoring a little fire to everyone who does not care to live in a fascist state. First: the political faction carrying out the Tr*mp-M*sk agenda right now does not have the support of the majority of the public. Far from it. And second: the fraction of the public that is happy with the agenda currently being enacted is going to get smaller for the foreseeable future….’ (Hamilton Nolan via How Things Work, with a nod to kottke)
‘Donald Tr*mp intends to rule as an autocrat. On this, his statements and past conduct are clear... [H]e will have considerable leeway to follow through on this aim.
If he and his allies approach the task astutely (admittedly a tall order in their case), they can transform the executive branch into an instrument of his will. They can then use key federal agencies, along with deputized state and local law enforcement and thuggish extremists like the Proud Boys, to try and sideline his opponents.
Any laws they break in the process are of little concern. Chief Justice John Roberts and his band of enablers saw to that last summer in Tr*mp v. United States, when they effectively anointed (Republican) presidents elected kings.
Tr*mp’s freedom of action is not absolute, however. His bid to become a dictator will run up against some serious obstacles, including federalism, a vibrant civil society, his own unpopularity, and others we will cover today. These obstacles serve as loci of potential resistance. If democratic Americans, including but not limited to the Democratic Party, exploit them to their full effect, they can thwart the coming lurch toward authoritarianism.
To help identify these various points of leverage, we will draw on the experiences of other countries where aspiring autocrats put democracy at risk. In places like Belarus, Hungary, India, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela, elected strongmen overpowered their opponents and forged authoritarian regimes. In others, like Brazil, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine, oppositions were able to frustrate such efforts, allowing democracy to survive….’ (Neil A. Abrams via The Detox)
‘Inspired by photographs in old reports and on social media, an expedition of botanists trekked into the remote Meliau Range in Sabah in Borneo and confirmed a new and amazing species of pitcher plant. Then, they immediately realised it’s already endangered.
The newly described Nepenthes pongoides has a remarkably large pitcher, the jug-like leaf that evolved to trap and digest insects for nutrients that are limited in the soil. The largest pitcher they found was 45cm tall and could hold at least two litres of liquid!…’
‘There’s no need to overreact to the fact that the president of these United States casually tweeted out on a Saturday morning the statement, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
No — it’s sobering enough that the Chief Magistrate of our Republic would favorably repeat the words of Napoleon Bonaparte (the quote is perhaps apocryphal) on this subject and his excuses for the reality that he deformed his own republic into an empire, with himself as its monarch….’ (Mark Antonio Wright viaNational Review)
‘”Humpback whales can’t swallow a human. Here’s why,” says National Geographic’s title. And here’s the article in a nutshell:
Though a humpback could easily fit a human inside its huge mouth—which can reach around 10 feet—it’s scientifically impossible for the whale to swallow a human once inside, according to Nicola Hodgins of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, a U.K. nonprofit.
A humpback’s throat is roughly the size of a human fist, and can only stretch to about 15 inches in diameter to accommodate a bigger meal.
…it’s scientifically impossible for all but one whale species—the sperm whale—to swallow something as large as a person.
Perhaps the humpback clutched the man in its mouth before releasing him, or perhaps it just dragged him under water before the man popped back up. Either way, it was a terrifying experience on its own, and made for some awesome video, even if we didn’t get to see the inside of a whale’s throat….’
‘A Russian drone strike has damaged the massive protective shield covering Chernobyl’s infamous nuclear reactor, the BBC reports.
The overnight attack caused a fire at the facility that houses the remains of the 1986 nuclear disaster, though radiation levels remain stable both inside and outside the complex….’
‘Professor Christina Pagel of University College London has mapped the actions of the Tr*mp administration’s first few weeks into a Venn diagram (above) with “five broad domains that correspond to features of proto-authoritarian states”:
Undermining Democratic Institutions & Rule of Law; Dismantling federal government
Dismantling Social Protections & Rights; Enrichment & Corruption
Suppressing Dissent & Controlling Information
Attacking Science, Environment, Health, Arts & Education
Aggressive Foreign Policy & Global Destabilization
This diagram is available as a PDF and the information is also contained in this categorized table. Links and commentary from Pagel can be found on Bluesky as well.
Also very helpful is this list of authoritarian actions that the Tr*mp administration has taken, each with a link to the relevant news story. I will be referring back to this list often in the coming weeks…’
‘If you hire a driver, or use a taxi, offer to pay the driver to take you to visit their mother. They will ordinarily jump at the chance. They fulfill their filial duty and you will get easy entry into a local’s home, and a very high chance to taste some home cooking. Mother, driver, and you leave happy. This trick rarely fails…’
‘Staggering sales drops, swastika-daubed EVs, companies culling fleet models, and fan-forum owners selling their cars—Elon Musk’s alt-right antics are seriously impacting his electric car business….’
‘Despite its name, the Department of Government Efficiency is not, so far, primarily interested in efficiency. DOGE and its boss, Elon Musk, have instead focused their activity on the eradication of the federal civil service, along with its culture and values, and its replacement with something different. In other words: regime change….’
‘The legal clashes over President Trump’s blizzard of executive actions are intensifying, with new lawsuits and fresh rulings emerging day and night.
As of Feb. 12, 18 of those rulings have at least temporarily paused some of the president’s initiatives. Already, the administration has asked higher courts to intervene. Some of these cases could reach the Supreme Court in the weeks and months to come.
Jump to a section:
The dozens of lawsuits fall into these categories. Cases with the most recent actions are listed first….’
‘The former prime minister was quizzed on Donald Tr*mp’s plans for the Middle East, at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on Wednesday (12 February). The former Conservative leader said his recent work trip to Mar-a-Lago made him realise what a great place it was. He said: “It’s an absolutely fantastic place if you want to resettle millions of people there.” His comments come after Tr*mp said he would “own” the Gaza Strip, declaring it would be a “real estate development for the future” in an interview with Fox News….’
‘On Wednesday, a team of researchers announced that they got extremely lucky. The team is building a detector on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea that can identify those rare occasions when a neutrino happens to interact with the seawater nearby. And while the detector was only 10 percent of the size it will be on completion, it managed to pick up the most energetic neutrino ever detected….’
‘On Tuesday morning, Google searches for the Gulf of Mexico returned an official “Gulf of America” knowledge panel at the top, complete with a tile showing the updated name on Google Maps. Soon after, Apple Maps and Bing had echoed that change….’
‘Lawrence O’Donnell Flames Tr*mp’s ‘Subservience’ to Elon Musk in Oval Office…’ (via MSN)
Musk brought his 4-year-old to the Oval Office. It wasn’t just a photo op.
‘Throughout Musk’s stop by the Oval Office, X knelt by the Resolute Desk, picked his nose and whispered to the president. In other words, he acted very much like a 4-year old child.
But X’s presence also underscored the outsized presence that the unelected Musk is playing in American politics. The preschooler’s appearance in the Oval Office nods to the double standard faced by women in politics and reinforces the gender roles inherent in Musk’s beliefs about family.
Musk, a father of 12, is an avowed pronatalist, or someone who believes declining population rates are a major concern and has committed to work to remedy this by having as many children as possible. He sees part of his life’s work as repopulating the planet with as many children — and exceptional children at that — as possible….’
‘Mr. Byrd missed out on a brush with history when his original poster for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, featuring a neoclassical image of a nude woman with an urn, was replaced for various logistical reasons by Arnold Skolnick’s — the now famous image of a white bird perched on a guitar neck. Mr. Byrd took it in stride.
“I didn’t think of it as any kind of ‘branding’ for the event,” he said of his poster. “I thought of it as a souvenir of the event.”
Mr. Byrd was impressed by — and to a degree, aligned with — the work of the so-called Big Five psychedelic poster artists of San Francisco: Alton Kelley, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse and Wes Wilson, who were known for using kaleidoscopic patterns, explosions of color and fonts that seemed to bend and ooze like Salvador Dalí clocks.
But, based 3,000 miles from the Haight-Ashbury scene, Mr. Byrd was also influenced by Broadway and advertising, employing standard typefaces and drawing on the Art Nouveau movement of 1890s Europe. His work is “kind of like Art Nouveau on acid,” said Thomas La Padula, an adjunct professor of illustration at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where Mr. Byrd taught in the 1970s..’ (Alex Williams via The New York Times)
‘The newer variant of avian influenza that recently infected dairy cattle in Nevada has a genetic change that’s thought to help the virus copy itself in mammals — including humans — more easily, according to a new technical brief from the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
It’s unclear whether these viruses pose a bigger threat to people, however. The CDC says the risk of H5N1 to the public is still low, although people who work on farms or who have backyard flocks are at higher risk….’ (via CNN)
‘In 2022, I was named the national student poet of the West, one of the nation’s highest honors for youth poets. During my year of service, I performed my work across the country, including at the White House. Yet I couldn’t tell the difference between T.S. Eliot and ChatGPT.
Apparently, I’m not alone in this lapse of discernment. According to a study published in Nature in November, Americans are more likely to appreciate AI-generated poems than poetry from humanity’s most celebrated authors: Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and, of course, Eliot.
In fact, not only did the participants prefer ChatGPT’s poetry, but they also found it “more human than human.” AI-written poetry was 17 percentage points more likely to be judged as having been written by a human than the actual human-authored poetry. It was also rated more favorably in terms of “rhythm and beauty.”…’ (Diane Sun, a sophomore at Harvard University studying philosophy and linguistics, via The Washington Post)
‘According to an OECD study conducted a few years ago, Japanese sleep the shortest among all 33 member countries. And Japan’s own internal statistics showed that roughly 40% of their population gets less than six hours of sleep. This alarming data triggered the government in 2023 to publish guidelines for recommended amounts of sleep, but that clearly wasn’t enough. The government has now announced that it has developed the ZZZN SLEEP APPAREL SYSTEM, a wearable product designed to improve sleep environments and sleep itself.
Working with digital transformation firm NTT DX Partners and creative design agency Konel, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has announced their innovative sleepwear that allows users to “carry sleep” wherever they go.
The new system, which walks a line between healthcare and fashion, incorporates the concept of ”polyphasic sleep,” or segmented sleep in which the day’s sleep is divided into multiple sessions rather than taken all at once. The system provides an optimal sleep environment even outdoors by measuring autonomic nerves and stress levels based on heart rate and heart rate variability obtained by the wearable device….’ (via Spoon & Tamago)
‘The Tr*mp spike in racism, sexism, and hate — it’s the emotional foundation for the entire Make America Great Again movement, that nostalgia for when life in America was simpler and paler. But as soon as we began addressing it — boom! extinction burst…
Extinction burst is actually really simple. It’s when you have a behavior and a reward, and you withdraw the reward in order to change the behavior. When you do that, usually to change an undesirable behavior, the behavior itself increases in frequency and intensity for a short period of time until ultimately the subject changes the behavior and then that behavior goes extinct…
Now, extinction burst at the national level is much slower, but in this case we actually know very clearly what triggered it: it was Obama’s election in 2008. Sarah Palin, the Tea Party Movement, the birther movement, and ultimately MAGA. It is a 10-year tsunami of rage in the face of inevitable extinction.
This is why Republicans are still so angry. They know they know Tr*mp winning can’t stop it, and they know Tr*mp in office can’t stop it — they can feel the inevitable extinction of their own terrible beliefs.
At this point, the only thing that’ll stop it is if we let up. If you stop interfering with that undesirable behavior, it will go back to normal. So no, you’re not crazy; yes, you are doing the right thing; and yes, if you persevere, the extinction burst will end…
[T]he extinction burst concept explains why the reaction seems to be getting more extreme, from QAnon to an increased number of book bans to anti-trans laws to anti-abortion laws to Elon Musk doing Nazi salutes in public to openly expressed racism by many Republican politicians to January 6th to the 2025 Coup. We are seeing behavior that 15-20 years ago would have been almost unthinkable — now it’s daily….’ (Jason Kottke via Kottke)
‘To me, a constitutional crisis will arrive when the third branch — the judiciary — steps in to constrain the president’s powers, and the president openly ignores the court order. That’s the makings of a democratic breakdown.
In fact, it’s one of the more common ways for a democracy to fail: it’s pretty risky, when you think about it, to all be playing a game where the umpire has no inherent power and everything is just premised on the players trusting that the other players will do what the umpire says….’ (Gabe Fleisher via Wake Up to Politics)
‘Regardless of your immigration status, you have guaranteed rights under the Constitution. Learn more here about your rights as an immigrant, and how to express them….’ (ACLU)
Select from different scenarios including law enforcement questions, arrival of police or ICE at your home, being detained near the border, challenging a deportation order, etc.
‘The World War II-era “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” is full of steps that office workers can take to resist leadership….’ (Jason Koebler via 404media)
In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was everywhere, riding an “America First” slogan into the mainstream. They felt unstoppable, until people stopped them. (via dansinker.com)
‘A plan to harness grassroots energy—and to hold Democratic leaders accountable…’ (Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg via The Nation)
