’The Geminid meteor shower has been raining down on us the past few days, and if you want to see it, tonight is the best night.

Read more Brave the cold for a glimpse at this expansive star show. The Geminids appear to come more of less from the Gemini constellation, but they travel far across the sky. You don’t need a telescope to see them, just endurance: the shower is at its best around 2am, your local time.…’

Via Lifehacker

’Astronomer Carl Wirtanen discovered his namesake comet in 1948. He was a skilled object hunter and used photos of the night sky to spot the quickly moving object, at least astronomically speaking.

Comet 46P/Wirtanen’s orbit keeps it pretty near to the sun. Its aphelion, or farthest point from the sun, is about 5.1 astronomical units (AU), which is just a tad bigger than Jupiter’s orbit. Its perihelion, or closest approach to the sun, is about 1 AU, just about the Earth’s distance from the sun. This path takes about 5.4 years to complete, meaning it comes back into view quite frequently compared to other famous comets.

Right now, it is approaching its perihelion. Its closest point to the sun will fall on Dec. 16 – which is why it will be brightest on this day.

Comet 46P/Wirtanen is a particularly active comet – called a hyperactive comet – and tends to be brighter than other comets of a similar size. This makes it a good candidate for viewing. Predictions suggest it will be as bright as a magnitude 3, which is a little brighter than the dimmest star in the Big Dipper, Megrez. However, there are some predictions that keep it beyond naked eye visibility at a brightest magnitude of only 7.6. The dimmest object visible with the naked human eye is magnitude 6, under perfect observing conditions.…’

Via The Conversation

’Just because you disagree with something doesn’t mean that it isn’t true for someone else.…’

Via Big Think

’From seizing control of the internet to declaring martial law, President Trump may legally do all kinds of extraordinary things.…’

Via The Atlantic

A Supercell Storm Chaser Photographs Thundering Formations:

’FOR THE PAST decade, photographer Mitch Dobrowner has spent a few weeks every summer pursuing extreme weather across the midwestern United States with veteran storm chaser Roger Hill, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, has witnessed more tornadoes (more than 650) than anyone in history. During their first outing, in 2009, Dobrowner and Hill spotted a high-precipitation supercell thunderstorm in the Black Hills of South Dakota at noon and followed it all day in Hill’s eight-seater van until giving up the chase at midnight in Valentine, Nebraska.

“It looked like a spaceship,” recalls Hill, who runs Silver Lining Tours, which offers 11 storm-chasing outings each year. “Hail the size of grapefruits, lightning strikes every three or four seconds.”

Dobrowner’s black and white images of that megastorm are some of the most spectacular in his ever-expanding portfolio of extreme weather photography. Although tornadoes get all the attention on TV, Dobrowner is more interested in supercells, massive storm systems that sometimes spawn tornadoes. “I see them as living things,” he says. “Some are gorgeous and beautiful, some are tornadic and violent. And the longer they last the more form they take. Eventually, they mature and die. So I try to take a portrait, almost like with a person.”…’

Via WIRED

’Tibetan monks from all over the world are scheduled to visit India to discuss the issues related to the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. Some, including the Dalai Lama himself, have questioned if the institution should be continued. The final decision will have far reaching effects, since China is unlikely to let the monks have the last word on the matter.…’

Via Big Think

Amanda Marcotte:

’The heat is turning up on Donald Trump this week, as special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is making news every day, giving a strong impression that justice circles ever closer to Trump himself. … As the walls close in around the president this week, there’s been a detectable shift in the way that Trump and his protectors in both the right-wing media and the Republican Party have defended him. The pretense of innocence is slipping away and in its place is rising a new excuse: Donald Trump and his associates are and should be above the law….

This pretense of respect for rule of law is quickly eroding as it becomes likelier that Trump could be in real trouble. While Trump still occasionally throws the word “innocent” around, he’s been increasingly bold about implying that he and his associates simply cannot be held accountable to the same rules as everyone else.…’

Via Salon.com

Michelle Goldberg, NYT opinion columnist:

’One of the chief questions in the Trump-Russia scandal has been whether Vladimir Putin has leverage over the president of the United States, and, if so, what that leverage looks like. The significance of the fabled “pee tape,” after all, is not that it would reveal Donald Trump to be a pervert bent on defiling the place where Barack Obama slept. Rather, the tape matters because, if real, it would show the president to be vulnerable to Russian blackmail.

That’s also why evidence of Trump’s business involvement with Russia would be significant, as Trump himself acknowledged shortly before his inauguration, when he tweeted, “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”

We still don’t know for certain if Russia has used leverage over Trump. But there should no longer be any doubt that Russia has leverage over him.…’

Via New York Times

’People who speak languages missing from Google Translate, Siri, and Wikipedia will face future crises—leaving aid organizations scrambling.…’

Via WIRED

’We all want to do more to reduce our impact on the environment, but working out what steps to take to actually make a difference is a bit of a minefield…’

Via WIRED UK

One of the most surprising and least noticed aspects of Mueller’s approach all along: 

‘…He’s been writing the long-anticipated “Mueller Report” bit by bit, in public, since his very first court filing.

Those waiting for Mueller to issue some massive, 9/11 Commission–style report at the end of the investigation often overlook the sheer volume of detailed information Mueller has pushed into public view already. Nearly every court document he has filed has been what lawyers call a “speaking indictment,” going into deeper detail and at greater length than is strictly needed to make the case for the criminal behavior charged.

Similarly, his “criminal informations,” the indictment-like documents filed as part of guilty pleas, have often included extraneous evidence of additional, formally uncharged criminality.

In former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s plea agreement, Mueller detailed how Flynn served as an unregistered foreign agent for the government of Turkey. Manafort’s criminal information—a document that often is only a few pages, the bare minimum that prosecutors and a defendant will agree upon—this fall stretched to nearly 40 pages, including voluminous details about the so-called Hapsburg group, European politicians enlisted in Manafort’s alleged scheme, information that hadn’t appeared in any of the indictments or charges against Manafort until that point.

With his major court filings, Mueller has already written more than 290 pages of the “Mueller Report.” As Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes has said, if a 9/11 Commission–style body had gathered in the wake of the 2016 election to study Russian interference, its findings would read much like Mueller’s novelistic charges against the Internet Research Agency and the military intelligence agency commonly referred to as the GRU.

Together with the charges against Michael Cohen by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York—which stemmed from findings by the Mueller investigation—the Justice Department has outlined over the course of this year two separate alleged criminal conspiracies that aided the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

But even that’s not the full story.

Mueller’s courtroom strategy—guided surely by Michael Dreeben, one of the nation’s top appellate lawyers—has been all but flawless. His prosecutors have batted away numerous challenges, and he has notched a steady stream of guilty pleas. Earlier this fall, when Manafort became the first and only of those cases to go to trial, Mueller’s team convinced a jury of his guilt in each area of crimes they charged and, according to reporting afterward, came within a single vote of conviction on all 18 charges.

And now, Manafort’s apparent dissembling has given Mueller’s team an excuse to publish everything they know about Manafort’s “crimes and lies,” whether they’ve been publicly discussed yet or not. That could potentially include new information about that mysterious 2016 Trump Tower meeting—prompted by a Russian offer to help the campaign—or details about the apparent Assange connection.

A Manafort sentencing submission, meanwhile, would sidestep the current awkward question of delivering a “Mueller Report” to the acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, that could be suppressed politically or redacted before release.…’

Via WIRED

’Writ presented by Human Rights Watch calls for prosecution over mass civilian casualties in Yemen and murder of Jamal Khashoggi…’

Via The Guardian

’No place is safe from the scourge of superbugs, a new study suggests, not even space. According to the study, samples of bacteria resistant to several antibiotics have been found on the International Space Station (ISS). And while the bacteria may not have made any astronauts sick, the authors say it’s pretty likely that they can…

The new study is actually an update to the researchers’ ongoing work. In January, the same team published research looking into the bacterial genetics of samples swabbed from the surfaces of the ISS in 2015. Within these samples, they found more than 100 bacterial genes known to help make bacteria resistant to antibiotics. And strains belonging to a particular species of bacteria, Enterobacter bugandensis, were resistant to all nine antibiotics tested against them.…’

Via Gizmodo

’Speaking to a parliamentary communications committee, Digital Minister Margot James described the software as “a very cynical, exploitative means… to hoodwink the general public”.

She added: “Some airlines have set an algorithm to identify passengers of the same surname travelling together.

How much money do airlines make from charging for extras? “They’ve had the temerity to split the passengers up, and when the family want to travel together they are charged more.”

It’s an issue that will be looked at by the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, launched by the government this week to identify and address areas where clearer guidelines and regulation are needed in how data is used.

Passengers first started noticing they were being split up from their party if they didn’t pay more for allocated seating in June 2017, with Ryanair most commonly associated with the practice.

However, Europe’s biggest airline never admitted to changing the way seating was allocated, insisting there was no change and saying that those who don’t pay to choose a seat are “randomly” assigned one.…’

Via The Independent

’A group of psychologists at Emory University have proposed a new three-part model to explain schadenfreude. Their proposal, published in New Ideas in Psychology, suggests that the motivation behind the feeling is important and that an element of viewing others as less than human is often at play.

Drawing upon decades of work, the researchers suggest that three different motivations can drive the feeling of schadenfreude; aggression, rivalry, and justice.

Aggression based schadenfreude involves group identity. Often, improving the group you’re in can require the defeat of other groups. This kind of Schadenfreude is the one you might feel when your favorite team’s rival loses a game to somebody else and can’t make the playoffs, even though your team is already long out of the running.

Rivalry based schadenfreude is similar but distinct. This one is tied to individual achievement and jealousies. It occurs when you go out of your way to do better than another person, such as when you make a move in a game that improves your lead over one player in particular, but that doesn’t help you otherwise. Like when you play The Settlers of Catan with somebody and place a settlement right where they wanted to build one, even though there was a better option for you.

The third kind is justice based and revolves around the joy we feel when somebody who we think deserves some comeuppance, say a successful person who we all know robs, cheats, steals, and overcharges for lifesaving drugs who then goes to prison.…’

Via Big Think

Why ‘Changing-Look Quasars’ Appear to Vanish

’Quasars powered by supermassive black holes have been unexpectedly vanishing. Scientists have started to figure out why.…’

Via Quanta Magazine

’Over the past few years, an international team of almost 200 psychologists has been trying to repeat a set of previously published experiments from its field, to see if it can get the same results. Despite its best efforts, the project, called Many Labs 2, has only succeeded in 14 out of 28 cases. Six years ago, that might have been shocking. Now it comes as expected (if still somewhat disturbing) news.

In recent years, it has become painfully clear that psychology is facing a “reproducibility crisis,” in which even famous, long-established phenomena—the stuff of textbooks and ted Talks—might not be real. There’s social priming, where subliminal exposures can influence our behavior. And ego depletion, the idea that we have a limited supply of willpower that can be exhausted. And the facial-feedback hypothesis, which simply says that smiling makes us feel happier.

One by one, researchers have tried to repeat the classic experiments behind these well-known effects—and failed. And whenever psychologists undertake large projects, like Many Labs 2, in which they replicate past experiments en masse, they typically succeed, on average, half of the time.…’

Via The Atlantic

’There’s a verbal tic particular to a certain kind of response to a certain kind of story about the thinness and desperation of American society; about the person who died of preventable illness or the Kickstarter campaign to help another who can’t afford cancer treatment even with “good” insurance; about the plight of the homeless or the lack of resources for the rural poor; about underpaid teachers spending thousands of dollars of their own money for the most basic classroom supplies; about train derailments, the ruination of the New York subway system and the decrepit states of our airports and ports of entry.

“I can’t believe in the richest country in the world. …”

This is the expression of incredulity and dismay that precedes some story about the fundamental impoverishment of American life, the fact that the lived, built geography of existence here is so frequently wanting, that the most basic social amenities are at once grossly overpriced and terribly underwhelming, that normal people (most especially the poor and working class) must navigate labyrinths of bureaucracy for the simplest public services, about our extraordinary social and political paralysis in the face of problems whose solutions seem to any reasonable person self-evident and relatively straightforward.…’

Via Truthdig

’A dead sperm whale that washed up in Indonesia on Monday had more than 13 pounds of plastic waste in its stomach, according to local officials. An autopsy of the whale’s stomach turned up 115 plastic cups, 25 plastic bags, four plastic bottles, two flip-flops, some nylon, and more than 1,000 smaller plastic shards.…’

Via Motherboard

Follow Me Here is 19 years old today. Thank you to all my loyal readers, and here’s to many more years of fun curation and occasional sardonic commentary. Keep reading!

’Speaking to Fox News’s Chris Wallace in an interview that aired on Sunday, President Donald Trump explained that he didn’t manage to make it across the river to Arlington National Cemetery for a Veterans Day commemoration because “I was extremely busy on calls for the country, we did a lot of calling as you know.”

Had a Democratic president pulled this remarkable snub/gaffe combination, conservative media and conservative politicians would have pretended to be sincerely outraged and mainstream media would have pretended to believe them. But thanks to the normal operation of the hack gap, Trump’s unwillingness to inconvenience himself in the slightest in order to commemorate Veterans Day simply becomes the subject of arch commentary rather than faux outrage.

Perhaps the strangest thing about it is that Trump pretended to be busy when his public schedule for the day was empty. And thanks to his Twitter feed, we know perfectly well that he spent the day repeating weird misunderstandings of what a trade deficit is, flinging around absurd conspiracy theories about election fraud, feuding with the president of France, etc.

Yet the strangest thing about life in the United States in 2018 is that every time Trump sits down for an interview like this, he gives new evidence that we should almost certainly be glad he’s too lazy to actually bother doing his job most of the time. After all, he has no real understanding of any of the relevant issues.…’

Via Vox

Temperatures over 100 million degrees:

’In a breakthrough for nuclear fusion research, scientists at China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor have produced temperatures necessary for nuclear fusion on Earth. STEPHEN JOHNSON 15 November, 2018 The EAST reactor was able to heat hydrogen to temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius…

At the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor in Hefei, China, researchers managed to heat hydrogen within the ‘artificial sun’ to a temperature of more than 100 million degrees Celsius, or 212 million degrees Fahrenheit, at which point it becomes plasma. The temperatures inside EAST are actually about seven times hotter than the center of the sun, where the added pressure from gravity allows for fusion to occur.…’

Via Big Think

Secret whale jail discovered by Russian reporters:

’Russian news network discovers 101 black-market whales. Orcas and belugas are seen crammed into tiny pens. Marine parks continue to create a high-price demand for illegal captures.…

This giant group of whales — 11 orcas and 90 belugas — are reportedly believed to have been captured by LLC Oceanarium DV, LLC Afalina, LLC Bely Kit and LLC Sochi Dolphinarium. According to VL, these four firms dominate an illegal export market for marine animals. The four companies appear to be largely unregulated.

These whales are believed to be for sale to one of China’s 60 marine parks and aquariums, with a dozen more venues reportedly under construction. With an individual orca said to be going for about $6 million on the black market, there’s money to be made in supplying all of these attractions, in China and elsewhere. There are thought to be at least 71 orcas currently in captivity — 166 orcas have been captured since 1961, and 129 of them have died since. SeaWorld still has 21 orcas; 48 have previously died at their parks…’

Via Big Think

Time to be afraid for the future:

’…[We] are a nation profoundly divided about what it means to be American. The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer suggested, in Anna Holmes’ documentary The Loving Generation, that the US has long been pledging allegiance to two very different visions of what it means to be an American. On one side, being an “American” involves signing up for a civic faith dedicated to the Constitution, to the rule of law, to the privacy of the voting booth and liberty and justice for all. This is the Americanness of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, of the pulsing urban coastal centers, a vision that’s open to your tired, your poor, your refugees from around the world yearning to be free and ready to work hard. On the other hand are those who believe that “American” means people whose parents were born here, who are white and Christian, who want to bar the doors against the swarthy hordes. And yes, at least some of the latter—like this weekend’s gunman—believe in the more sinister slogan that arbeit macht frei.

The US government has been teetering back and forth between these two visions for generations. And no matter which side occupies the White House, the other wants their country back. One side was happy with George W. Bush’s red meat, red state presidency, invading freedom-hating nations, torturing suspected enemies to show strength, and keeping the country secure with a sprawling (and enduring) “security” apparatus. The other side—the globalists, the diversity-lovers, the cosmopolitans, the blue-coastal urbanites—thought that by electing Barack Obama, they had won back their country. Now, if they didn’t before, these people know that boiling underneath Obama’s presidency was a furious resistance: the Tea Party, the racists, the white nationalists who then elected their Birther-in-Chief.…’

Via Vice

It’s going to get weirder from here.

’“No matter what the kind of natural disaster, whether it’s flooding or wind damage or fire, the biggest burden of the longest duration falls on the already-poor,” David Lodge, director of Cornell University’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, told me.

In addition to the immediate threats to life and limb that come with any severe natural disaster, there may be a temporary period of homelessness or unemployment that can send someone on the brink of poverty over the edge. Without adequate insurance, savings to rebuild, or a reliable social safety net in place, what Lodge has called “the human face of policy-induced suffering” is revealed.

And with the current trajectory of increasing weather disasters, that suffering is likely to grow.…’

Via VICE

’The inner life of plants arouses the passions of even the mildest-mannered naturalists. A debate over plant consciousness and intelligence has raged in scientific circles for well over a century—at least since Charles Darwin observed in 1880 that stressed-out flora can’t rest.

There’s no doubt that plants are extremely complex. Biologists believe that plants communicate with one another, fungi, and animals by releasing chemicals via their roots, branches, and leaves. Plants also send seeds that supply information, working as data packets. They even sustain weak members of their own species by providing nutrients to their peers, which indicates a sense of kinship.

Plants have preferences—their roots move toward water, sensing its acoustic vibes—and defense mechanisms. They also have memories, and can learn from experience. One 2014 experiment, for example, involved dropping potted plants called Mimosa pudicas a short distance. At first, when the plants were dropped, they curled up their leaves defensively. But soon the plants learned that no harm would come to them, and they stopped protecting themselves.

But does any of this qualify as consciousness? The answer to that question seems to depend largely on linguistics, rather than science—how humans choose to define our conceptions of the self and intelligence.…’

Via Quartz

’A group of House Democrats will introduce a bill on Friday to help protect millions of nurses and other health care workers from the high rates of violence they experience on the job.

The new bill, called the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act, would require hospitals, nursing homes, rehab centers, and jails to develop a workplace safety plan to protect their workers from violence they experience at the hands of patients — a surprisingly common phenomenon. The bill would also require employers to record and investigate all complaints of violence, and prohibits retaliation against employees who call 911. A draft of the bill was shared with Vox.…’

Via Vox

’The FBI released a report earlier this year on “pre-attack behaviors” of mass shooters, Quartz reports. … The FBI writes in the report’s conclusion:

What emerges is a complex and troubling picture of individuals who fail to successfully navigate multiple stressors in their lives while concurrently displaying four to five observable, concerning behaviors, engaging in planning and preparation, and frequently communicating threats or leaking indications of an intent to attack.

It takes a community to spot all the red flags, they say. But they include forms of abuse, harassment, bullying, and violence, to name just a few. Among the red flags:

• Threats or confrontations (35 percent of shooters)
• Physical aggression (33 percent) 
• Anger that concerns people around them (33 percent) 
• Intimate partner violence (16 percent of shooters) and stalking (11 percent)
• Suicidal ideation (48 percent) 
• “Concerning” interpersonal behavior (57 percent) 
• Inappropriate firearms use (21 percent)

Via Lifehacker

Obvious caveat: while mass shooters may display this cluster of behaviors, far from everyone displaying this cluster of behaviors becomes a mass shooter. 

’The claim, being taken up by an increasing number of people in QAnon circles, is that the fires are caused by “directed energy weapons”—that is, government-directed lasers bent on destroying homes, property, and lives. And if recent history is any judge, there’s a chance the country’s biggest conspiracy-peddlers, up to and including the one who lives in the White House, will take up the cause.

Directed energy weapons, or DEWs, have an interesting place in conspiratorial circles. DEWs are, to begin with, a real technology, but one still in its infancy: a report produced for Congress describes that term as an umbrella to refer to technologies “that produce concentrated electromagnetic energy and atomic or subatomic particles.” The consensus is that there are a number of logistical issues to work out before that the U.S. government will be able to build a laser system that would actually be workable on a battlefield, but that the Department of Defense and private contractors are eager to leverage laser power towards killing people and/or destroying enemy missiles, aircrafts, or satellites.

If you ask people in the deep end of the conspiracy theory pool, though, DEWs are here already. There’s a small body of people who believe themselves to be “targeted individuals”—stalked, harassed, and attacked by the government or other shadowy groups—and at least some of them believe those attacks are being carried out by DEWs. Now, through a strange confluence of forces, the paranoia over DEWs is making its way into the discussion about natural disasters. What we’re seeing is a convergence of longstanding American fears about government mind control and manipulation of the weather merging with climate change skepticism, as climate science becomes ever-more-politicized.…’

Via Earther

Did you know:

• The consensus view among scientists is that polygraph testing has no scientific basis?
• The FBI considered the creator of the lie detector test to be a phony and a crackpot?
• The man who started the CIA’s polygraph program thought that plants can read human thoughts?
• The foremost polygraph advocate in academia was discredited by a federal judge?
• A prominent past-president of the American Polygraph Association is a phony Ph.D., and this premier polygraph organization doesn’t consider it an ethics problem?
• The longest polygraph school produces newly minted polygraphers in just 14 weeks — less than half the time it takes to graduate from a typical barber college?
• The National Center for Credibility Assessment (the erstwhile DoD Polygraph Institute) suppressed a study suggesting that innocent blacks are more likely to fail the polygraph than innocent whites?
• The researcher who developed the U.S. Government’s polygraph Test for Espionage and Sabotage “thought the whole security screening program should be shut down?”
• The National Academy of Sciences concluded that “[polygraph testing’s] accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies?”
• Spies Ignatz Theodor Griebl, Karel Frantisek Koecher, Jiri Pasovsky, Larry Wu-tai Chin, Aldrich Hazen Ames, Nicolás Sirgado, Ana Belen Montes, and Leandro Aragoncillo all passed the polygraph?
• One of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history passed the polygraph and killed again?
• Al-Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents know full well that the lie detector is bogus?
• You don’t have to be a psychopath, go to spy school, or somehow believe your own lies to fool the polygraph? (We’ll reveal how it’s done.)

Educate yourself. Before playing Russian roulette with yourreputation, learn how to protect yourself against this invalid test. Download AntiPolygraph.org’s free book (4 mb PDF):

The Lie Behind the Lie Detector

(Also available in EPUB and MOBI/Kindle formats)…’

Via AntiPolygraph.org

Can AI fix it?:

’Cities are looking to machine learning to streamline their disaster-response efforts. Will it be too little too late?…’

Via Fast Company

’Poorer people living in formerly industrialized cities in the middle latitudes tend to live on the East side. Here’s what’s probably going on.…’

Via Digg

(Hint: prevailing winds.)

Daily Caller interview transcript shows he has no clue

’In some ways, the friendliest Donald Trump interviews are the most revealing. Given the opportunity to ramble and free-associate without any pushback whatsoever, you can see what channels his mind naturally follows.

His latest interview with the Daily Caller shows a president who’s fundamentally out to sea. The sycophantic interviewers can’t get Trump to answer a policy question of any kind, no matter how much of a softball they lob at him. The only subjects he is actually interested in talking about are his deranged belief in his incredible popularity and how that popularity is not reflected in actual vote totals because he’s the victim of a vast voter fraud conspiracy.

It’s the kind of thing that would be a bit sad if it were just your elderly uncle ranting about his past glories, but Trump mixes it in with authoritarian asides and the fundamental reality that whether he cares to do the actual job or not, he is ultimately the president of the United States.…’

Via Vox

Related:

Donald Trump: incompetent or authoritarian? Both are scary. Reject journalist David Brooks’s false choice:

 

’While promoting an excellent article by Weekly Standard editor Jonathan Last about President Donald Trump’s tendency to be the vaporware president, New York Times columnist David Brooks offers an unfortunate false dichotomy, saying that Americans should fear Trump’s incompetence rather than his authoritarianism.

 

This is a frequent theme among intelligent conservative commentators who find themselves trapped between the bombast of the MAGA-maniacs and the ideological betrayals of the hardcore Never Trumpers. Ross Douthat wrote in January in the New York Times, for example, that “Trump so far is more farce than tragedy.” …

 

There are undoubtedly real examples of autocratic rulers who are also savvy, highly skilled technocrats who excel at devising and implementing public policy.

 

Singapore’s former leader Lee Kwan Yoo is the example one hears most commonly, but the likes of Paul Kagame in Rwanda, Deng Xiaoping in China, and Park Chung-hee in South Korea are also often said to fit the bill.

 

But a much more common situation is for authoritarians to appoint people to positions of authority based on considerations of loyalty and regime stability rather than competence…’

 

Via Vox

’George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at UC Berkeley and the author of the 2004 book Don’t Think of an Elephant, recently published an article laying out the media’s dilemma. Trump’s “big lie” strategy, he argues, is to “exploit journalistic convention by providing rapid-fire news events for reporters to chase.”

According to Lakoff, the president uses lies to divert attention from the “big truths,” or the things he doesn’t want the media to cover. This allows Trump to create the controversies he wants and capitalize on the outrage and confusion they generate, while simultaneously stoking his base and forcing the press into the role of “opposition party.”

I reached out to Lakoff to talk about Trump’s media strategy, but also, more importantly, about solutions. If the president has indeed turned journalistic conventions to his advantage, how can we, the media, respond constructively?…’

Via Vox

’Sen. Jeff Flake, the lame-duck Arizona senator who’s long clashed with President Donald Trump, is once again threatening to use his position to express concerns about executive power and the fate of the Russia investigation.

It’s not an empty threat. But it’s not yet clear to what extent he’ll follow through.

Flake said on Wednesday that he would oppose all judicial nominees coming through the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate floor until Majority Leader Mitch McConnell puts a bill protecting special counsel Robert Mueller up for a vote.…’

Via Vox

Related:

McConnell just said there’s no need for a “protect Mueller” bill. Trump already made that look silly.

Trump rages against Robert Mueller:

 

’In an angry Twitter rant, Trump describes Mueller as “a disgrace to our Nation.”…’

 

Via Vox

Fox backs CNN in lawsuit against Trump Administration:

’On Tuesday, CNN filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for allegedly violating the First and Fifth Amendments when it revoked Jim Acosta’s press badge. Opinions on Acosta may vary among media professionals, though the general consensus seems to be that administrations shouldn’t bar journalists from the White House based on the content of their reporting. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, who had tweeted a doctored video of the heated exchange between Acosta and President Donald Trump, described CNN’s lawsuit as “more grandstanding.” Fox News voiced support on Wednesday for CNN’s effort to restore the press pass of reporter Jim Acosta after it was revoked by the White House.…’

Via Big Think

’Technically, “S1” is a stream of debris from a dwarf galaxy torn apart by the Milky Way’s gravity, passing through space. What S1 is pulling along with it, though, is being described in a far more dramatic way, as “a dark matter hurricane.” Scientists believe this companion stream of dark matter (DM) is hurtling through us right now at a jaw-dropping speed of 500 kilometers a second. Hence the “hurricane” metaphor. Is it time to head down into our quantum storm cellars? Not quite. This is dark matter, after all, material we can’t directly perceive and with which we can’t interact, so no worries. On the other hand, this blast of DM has the potential to afford us our best glimpse yet of the elusive stuff.…’

Via Big Think

Is the appendix a useless organ, an immune system benefactor, a Parkinson’s disease instigator, or all of the above?

’As far back as Darwin, scientists have thought the appendix was a vestigial organ, but opinions have changed in recent years. A new study found that the appendix houses Lewy bodies, abnormal protein deposits that contribute to Parkinson’s disease. Researchers suggest an appendectomy may lower one’s risk of Parkinson’s, while other research suggests the appendix has important roles to play in our immune system.…’

Via Big Think

’Progressive America would be half as big, but twice as populated as its conservative twin.…’

Via Big Think

’Picked up by MacRumors, iOS has started locking owners of iPhones (and to a lesser extent iPads and Apple TVs) out of their devices, disabling their Apple IDs. And Apple has now acknowledged it.

Apple’s new iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR are among the devices affected by the widespread Apple ID lockoutAPPLE Citing multiple reports across Reddit and Twitter, MacRumors says users are being told they can no longer use their devices “for security reasons”. In response, @AppleSupport is recognising the issue and guiding users to the company’s Support Communities page which tells users how to restore access when Apple IDs are locked and disabled.…’

Via Forbes

’With the certainty that the incoming Democratic House majority will go after his tax returns and investigate his actions, and the likelihood of additional indictments by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump has retreated into a cocoon of bitterness and resentment, according to multiple administration sources. Behind the scenes, they say, the president has lashed out at several aides, from junior press assistants to senior officials. “He’s furious,” said one administration official. “Most staffers are trying to avoid him.” The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, painted a picture of a brooding president “trying to decide who to blame” for Republicans’ election losses, even as he publicly and implausibly continues to claim victory.…’

Via Los Angeles Times

Five days of fury: 

’Trump’s splenetic tweets and [testy tone were] described in interviews with 14 senior administration officials, outside Trump confidants and foreign diplomats, many of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“He was frustrated with the trip. And he’s itching to make some changes,” said one senior White House official. “This is a week where things could get really dicey.”

During his 43-hour stay in Paris, Trump brooded over the Florida recounts and sulked over key races being called for Democrats in the midterm elections that he had claimed as a “big victory.” He erupted at his staff over media coverage of his decision to skip a ceremony honoring the military sacrifice of World War I.

The president also was angry and resentful over French President Emmanuel Macron’s public rebuke of rising nationalism, which Trump considered a personal attack. And that was after his difficult meeting with Macron, where officials said little progress was made as Trump again brought up his frustrations over trade and Iran.

“He’s just a bull carrying his own china shop with him when ever he travels the world,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said.…’

Via Washington Post

’Claire Lehmann’s online magazine, Quillette, prides itself on publishing ‘dangerous’ ideas other outlets won’t touch. How far is it willing to go?…’

Via POLITICO Magazine

’When Ted Kaptchuk was asked to give the opening keynote address at the conference in Leiden, he contemplated committing the gravest heresy imaginable: kicking off the inaugural gathering of the Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies by declaring that there was no such thing as the placebo effect. When he broached this provocation in conversation with me not long before the conference, it became clear that his point harked directly back to Franklin: that the topic he and his colleagues studied was created by the scientific establishment, and only in order to exclude it — which means that they are always playing on hostile terrain. Science is “designed to get rid of the husks and find the kernels,” he told me. Much can be lost in the threshing — in particular, Kaptchuk sometimes worries, the rituals embedded in the doctor-patient encounter that he thinks are fundamental to the placebo effect, and that he believes embody an aspect of medicine that has disappeared as scientists and doctors pursue the course laid by Franklin’s commission. “Medical care is a moral act,” he says, in which a suffering person puts his or her fate in the hands of a trusted healer.…’

Via The New York Times

’Could this be the long-awaited solution to economic inequality?…’

Via Big Think

’Political scientist and journalist David Rothkopf says Trump’s days in the White House are numbered. In a blistering Twitter thread, Rothkopf makes the case that any high-quality people Trump had supporting him have either fled or are getting ready to, and now that the House is under control of Democrats, Trump’s inner circle of bottom-of-the-barrel crooks and buffoons won’t be able to protect him from his sordid history of sleazy dealings and self-destructive narcissism.…’

Via Boing Boing

Akim Reinhardt writing in 3 Quarks Daily:

’Donald Trump is not a fascist. He’s far too stupid to be a fascist, or to coherently advocate for any complex national political doctrine, evil or otherwise. He is, however, a would-be tin pot dictator. And his largely failed but still very dangerous attempts to establish himself as a right wing autocrat need to be countered, not just by opposition politicians and the press, but also by responsible citizens.

It has been the case for a while now that the proper reaction to Trump’s presidency is frequent public protest. As responsible citizens, we need to engage in not just one or two massive protests per year, but rather in a steady diet of public protests that sends a strong, clear message to the body politic: We the people reject Donald Trump’s would be totalitarianism. That while his very limited abilities and profound incompetence may prove to be our saving grace, it is not enough to quietly accept his likely ultimate and embarrassing failure as reasonable consolation. Instead we must make certain that the power elite in government, corporations, and the media understand our collective revulsion at and resistance to Trump’s failing autocracy. Here are the reasons why.…’

The public “deserve to know”:

’Long-term studies certainly suggest that a substantial population of people are affected by a burdensome, recurrent form of the disorder. But Rottenberg’s team cite three studies finding that an average of 40 to 50 per cent of people who suffer an episode of depression don’t go on to experience another (for example, this study in Sweden) – but overall these individuals have been little studied. “This omission, and the field’s lack of focus on good outcomes after depression more broadly, virtually guarantees an unduly pessimistic impression of depression’s course”, Rottenberg and co write – and this is an impression they would like to see changed.…’

Via Big Think

’When the world gets its act together, it can actually solve big problems. Case in point: The ozone hole, which if everything goes according to plan could be healed up by the 2060s, according to a new report from the United Nations.…’

Via Gizmodo

’The Mediterranean region, colloquially called the cradle of civilization, may not be able support much of that civilization within the next 50 years. For starters, it’s poised to suffer from the changing climate much worse than many other locales, according to a paper published by an international network of scientists who worked together to synthesize the predictions and risks for the region.

Future warming in the Mediterranean region will likely surpass global rates by 25 percent, with summer temperatures increasing at a pace 40 percent larger than the global mean, the paper notes. Precipitation will decrease but heavy rainfalls will intensify, with possibly destructive outcomes. Heat waves will get more severe. While the 2003 summer European heat wave was deemed as one of the worst on record, responsible for 22,000 to 35,000 human deaths, as well as killing thousands of birds and fish, the future will bring harsher and more frequent spikes. Droughts and heat waves will spark more wildfires. In warmer weather more disease-carrying pests will survive, spreading West Nile virus, Dengue, and chikungunya further north. During the hot summer of 2017, outbreaks of chikungunya happened in France and Italy and recently, dengue fever was reported in Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain.…’

Via JSTOR Daily

’Climate scientists are still scrapping over the details, but the increased ferocity, unpredictability and spread of tropical storms is in line with predictions…’

Via New Scientist

What’s driving America’s mental health crisis:

’Beyond trigger warnings and safe spaces lies an entire population that espouses victimhood in all walks of life.…’

Via Big Think

W. B. Yeats 1865-1939

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

’Perhaps because they are running scared, the Trump family—and Republicans in general—are going all-in on a campaign of overt racism and white supremacist dog whistles to rally MAGA voters across the country as Tuesday’s midterm elections approach.

And in a continual effort to please his racist daddy, Donald Trump Jr. is doing his part to spread the hate. On Saturday, Don Jr. tweeted an attack against independent Maine Sen. Angus King that could have come straight from the white supremacist Iowa Republican congressman Steve King. It had the standard fearmongering of the “other,” in this case, Syrian and “Somalian” refugees; it criticized Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish; and for good measure, it included the dog whistle term “88,” which neo-Nazis use as code for “Heil Hitler.”

And no, it wasn’t a typo.

“Angus King is a Fake Independent who votes with Schumer 88% of the time. Angus wants to repopulate Maine with Syrian and Somalian refugees. Support @SenatorBrakey who fights for secure borders and Better Jobs for Maine. #me #maine,” Don Jr. tweeted.

“Repopulate.” Where have we heard that concept, which is linked to the myth of “white genocide,” before? Oh, that’s right—Steve King.

As BuzzFeed’s Hayes Brown pointed out, that 88% statistic is wrong. King voted in agreement with Schumer 83% of the time in the 115th Congress, according to ProPublica. But Don Jr. knew that.

“Let’s be clear about what happened here — Donald Trump Jr misstated statistics so he could attack Angus King with a neo-Nazi dogwhistle,” ThinkProgress journalist Aaron Rupar tweeted.

Republican Senate candidate Eric Brakey, currently a state senator from Maine, was elated with the message. “Thank you, we support your family!” Brakey tweeted back at Jr.

Less than a week ago, Brakey tweeted out a similar message, claiming the “left” has a “new strategy” of “mass importation of new voters to transform our political culture.”

Tuesday can’t come fast enough.…’

Via Splinter News

’A careful reading of court filings suggests the special counsel hasn’t been quiet. Far from it.…’

Via POLITICO Magazine

’It is not hyperbole to wonder if the outcome of Sunday’s presidential election in Brazil is a planetary game over when it comes to climate change.…’

Via Gizmodo

Humans, as a new paper published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution shows, have been consuming chocolate for a very long time.

’New archaeological evidence suggests humans were cultivating and consuming cacao—the crop from which chocolate is produced—as long as 5,300 years ago, which is 1,500 years earlier than previously thought. What’s more, cacao was initially domesticated in the equatorial regions of South America, and not Central America.…’

Via Gizmodo

Jewish leaders to Trump: until you denounce white supremacy, stay out of Pittsburgh / Boing Boing:

’After this weekend’s anti-Semitic mass-shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, President Donald Trump blamed the victims, implying that if they didn’t want to get murdered, they should have paid for armed guards.

What Trump has notably not said is that the white supremacist movement he has legitimized and fueled with his anti-Muslim, anti-Mexican, anti-disabled, anti-LBGT statements, is connected to anti-Semitic violence — from the “good people” who marched in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style demonization of George Soros.

Trump’s omission is not subtle. People have noticed. Among them is a coalition of Pittsburgh’s Jewish leaders who have published an open letter to the President telling him that he is “not welcome in Pittsburgh until you fully denounce white nationalism,” “not welcome in Pittsburgh until you stop targeting and endangering all minorities,” “not welcome in Pittsburgh until you cease your assault on immigrants and refugees” and “not welcome in Pittsburgh until you commit yourself to compassionate, democratic policies that recognize the dignity of all of us.”…’

Via Boing Boing

Dana Milbank in the Washington Post:

’George Washington, in his 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I., told Jews they would be safe in the new nation.

“The government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” he wrote. “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Though that assurance has been tested, the United States has endured as a safe haven for Jews.

Now President Trump has violated Washington’s compact. He has given sanction to bigotry and assistance to persecution. After the shooting in Pittsburgh, which the Anti-Defamation League believes is the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history, there is no longer safety under the vine and fig tree…

Consider some of the many times Trump gave sanction to bigotry before 11 worshipers were shot dead at the Tree of Life…’

’Physicians are killing themselves at a higher clip than even military veterans, but their careers depend on denying this sad fact…’

Via MEL Magazine

’Brain activity doesn’t tell us what someone is experiencing…’

Via The Verge

’Communes have gotten a reputation for being flaky or cultish. But intentional communities have a long history, and many have been successful.…’

Via JSTOR Daily

’Republicans fought tooth and nail to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in spite of serious allegations of sexual misconduct in his past (which he denies) and questions of his character and truthfulness under oath.

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich just explained why: If Democrats take back control of the House and try to investigate President Donald Trump, they might subpoena Trump’s tax returns, and Gingrich predicts the fight would go all the way to the Supreme Court.

“We’ll see whether or not the Kavanaugh fight was worth it,” Gingrich said in an interview with the Washington Post. With Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the Supreme Court is the most ideologically conservative it has been in a generation.…’

Via Vox

’Roughly 108 billion people have ever been alive on planet Earth. If humanity survives another 50 million years (a reasonable length of time compared to other species’ tenures), then the total number of people who will ever live is about 3 quadrillion, or 3 million billion.

If you care about improving human lives, you should overwhelmingly care about those quadrillions of lives rather than the comparatively small number of people alive today. The 7.6 billion people now living, after all, amount to less than 0.003 percent of the population that will live in the future. It’s reasonable to suggest that those quadrillions of future people have, accordingly, hundreds of thousands of times more moral weight than those of us living here today do.

That’s the basic argument behind Nick Beckstead’s 2013 Rutgers philosophy dissertation, “On the overwhelming importance of shaping the far future.” It’s a glorious mindfuck of a thesis, not least because Beckstead shows very convincingly that this is a conclusion any plausible moral view would reach.…’

Via Vox

More Than a Graveyard Smash:

’We all know the story—some guy was working in a lab, late one night, when he begins to see several movie monsters doing a fancy dance. Sung with a perfect Boris Karloff impression by the one and only Bobby “Boris” Pickett, “The Monster Mash” really did become the hit of the land. Since its debut in 1962, the seriously goofy novelty song has been a perennial hit, scaring its way onto the airwaves and into the hearts of generation after generation. There’s more to the song and its singer than one might expect.…’

Via Tedium

’Spaceflight is exciting, inspirational, unifying—and unfortunately tough on the human body. Now, new research shows that long-duration space missions also affect the human brain by reducing the amount of grey matter and increasing the volume of cerebrospinal fluid.…’

Via Motherboard

Cybersecurity and Russian hacking remain a major concern:

’An investigation into the US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level.…’

Via Vox

’[T]here is … a very specific thing happening in the current American political environment that is driving the elevated level of concern. And that thing is not just a nameless force of “division.”

It’s a deliberate political strategy enacted by the Republican Party, its allies in partisan media, and its donors to foster a political debate that is centered on divisive questions of personal identity rather than on potentially unifying themes of concrete material interests. It’s a strategy whose downside is that it tends to push American society to the breaking point, but whose upside is that it facilitates the enacting of policies that serve the concrete material interests of a wealthy minority rather than those of the majority.

That’s what’s going on, and it’s time to say so.…’

Via Vox

’“There’s a fear of a Benghazi-type situation, that Americans might be targeted.”…’

Via Vox

This montage is a disturbing reminder of what a stupid thug our “president” is.

Via Boing Boing

’In English, there are no words to describe the existential pain of watching the catastrophic impact of climate change on the world around you. How do we explain how we feel when we hear about rising sea levels, burning forests, tornadoes and tsunamis ravaging coastlines, or animals going extinct?

Fortunately, a retired professor has coined a term for this ecological grief: “solastalgia,” or the feeling of being homesick while still at home and the landscape you love changes, often for the worse.

Glenn A. Albrecht, a self-described “farmosopher” for his love of gardening and philosophy, imagines a post-Anthropocene epoch (Anthropocene is the current geological age of negative human impact on the environment) where human beings live in symbiosis with nature for mutual benefit. In his forthcoming book Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World, Albrecht is creating language not only for the emotional consequences of climate doom, but also for a future world in which we regain harmony with the environment.…’

Via Motherboard

’English is a phenomenal language, but there are circumstances where words seem to fail us. Often, other languages have already found a solution to expressing the complicated ideas that can’t be succinctly conveyed in English. If you’ve ever wanted to describe the anguish of a bad haircut, the pleasure of walking in the woods, or the satisfaction of finding your life’s purpose, read on.…’

Via Big Think

’Many readers buy books with every intention of reading them only to let them linger on the shelf. Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb believes surrounding ourselves with unread books enriches our lives as they remind us of all we don’t know. The Japanese call this practice tsundoku, and it may provide lasting benefits.…’

Via Big Think