Alex Yablon writes:

The Fourth Circuit decision is the first to expressly reject a right to bear an AR-15 or other “weapons of war.”

Source: The Trace

‘Donald Trump has been president for all or part of 33 days. He has averaged four falsehoods or misleading statements a day(!) in that time. There hasn’t been a single day of Trump’s presidency in which he has said nothing false or misleading…’

Source: Washington Post via Bessel

Support your local fact-checker!

Like doomsday scenarios? ‘We’re about to kick off the sixth great extinction event. And we’ll follow shortly after.’

Source: Big Think

People took to the streets of Boston again Sunday afternoon — this time in the name of science.

Source: Boston.com

‘We know, by this point, that Trump is funny. Even to us leftists, horrified by his every move, he is hilarious. Someone who is all brash confidence and then outrageously incompetent at everything he does is — from an objective standpoint — comedy gold. Someone who accuses his enemies of the faults he at that very moment is portraying is comedy gold. But, strangely, as the left realized after the election, pointing out Trump was a joke was not helpful. In fact, Trump’s farcical nature didn’t seem to be a liability, rather, to his supporters, it was an asset.

…Trump supporters voted for the con-man, the labyrinth with no center, because the labyrinth with no center is how they feel, how they feel the world works around them. A labyrinth with no center is a perfect description of their mother’s basement with a terminal to an endless array of escapist fantasy worlds…’

Source: Medium

‘I think it’s important not to dismiss the president’s [attacks on
the press] simply as dumb. We ought to assume that it’s darkly brilliant — if not in intention than certainly in effect. The president is responding to a claim of fact not by denying the fact, but by denying the claim that facts are supposed to have on an argument.

He isn’t [saying] that he’s got his facts wrong. He’s saying that, as far as he is concerned, facts, as most people understand the term, don’t matter: That they are indistinguishable from, and interchangeable with, opinion; and that statements of fact needn’t have any purchase against a man who is either sufficiently powerful to ignore them or sufficiently shameless to deny them — or, in his case, both…’

Source: Time.com

‘Although the US government has launched formal inquiries into the UFO phenomenon, little has changed in the last six decades to indicate that ufology will ever be anything more than pseudoscientific. But Bob Davis, a retired neuroscientist and self-described “UFO agnostic,” wants to change that. I caught up with him at the International UFO Congress to find out why he thinks ufology can become a serious scientific discipline…’

Source: Motherboard

‘In 1990, the International Academy of Astronautics published a special issue of their journal , Acta Astronautica, dedicated to the problem of what to do in the event that the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) detected an alien signal. These “post-detection protocols” as outlined in the IAA’s Declaration of Principles in 1989 were inspired by increasingly rapid technological advances in the SETI field that made the likelihood of detecting a signal more likely than at any other point in the search’s 30 year history.

But the one technological development that its collaborators couldn’t have anticipated was the rise of social media, which could seriously complicate the ability of government and private research institutions to control the social consequences resulting from the detection of an extraterrestrial message…’

Source: Motherboard

‘John McCain is increasingly mad as hell about President Trump. And on Friday, he went after Trump — hard.

During a speech at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, the Republican senator from Arizona delivered a pointed and striking point-by-point takedown of Trump’s worldview and brand of nationalism. McCain didn’t mention Trump’s name once, but he didn’t have to.

And even considering the two men’s up-and-down history and the terrible things Trump has said about McCain, it was a striking display from a senior leader of a party when it comes to a president of the same party.

In his speech, McCain suggested the Western world is uniquely imperiled this year — even more so than when Barack Obama was president — and proceeded to question whether it will even survive.

“In recent years, this question would invite accusations of hyperbole and alarmism; not this year,” McCain said. “If ever there were a time to treat this question with a deadly seriousness, it is now.” …’

Source: Washington Post

Senator Susan Collins from Maine is the first Republican to announce that she will vote NO on Scott Pruitt’s nomination to lead the EPA. We only need to get a couple more Senators to join her — but we need your help!

Your pressure is working. Just yesterday the nominee for labor secretary, fast food titan Andy Puzder, withdrew his nomination due to growing opposition.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on Pruitt’s confirmation as EPA head tomorrow. Please take  just a minute to call and email your Senators and urge them to vote NO on Scott Pruitt for EPA! Call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to be connected with the Senate office of your choice. Don’t know who your Senators are? Look them up here.

Source: Center for Food Safety

‘In contemporary English, here refers to the speaker’s location regardless of whether the sentence involves things or people remaining in that place, moving to that place, or leaving that place. We say I have been waiting here for hours or Come here! or Get out of here!

But historically English has used three separate adverbs to convey these three different relations to place. A speaker of the sixteenth century might have said I have been waiting here for hours, but she would have said Come hither! instead of Come here! and Get thee hence! instead of Get out of here!

Likewise, when referring to a location other than where we are, we now use there indiscriminately: Who is there? I will take you there. We sailed from Ireland to Iceland and from there to Greenland. Our sixteenth-century speaker, for her part, might have said Who is there? but I will take you thither or We sailed from Ireland to Iceland and thence to Greenland.

Finally, for asking about places, though English relies now on just where, there were once three separate adverbs. If our twenty-first-century speaker says Where am I? or Where are you going? or Where is that smell coming from? our hypothetical Elizabethan speaker might say Where am I? or Whither goest thou? or Whence cometh that reek?’

Source: 3quarksdaily

We elect our President via the Electoral College. States get a vote for each Representative and each Senator. Representatives are somewhat proportional to population but every state has two Senators. This creates a huge imbalance in the power of your vote.

If you live in Texas that’s 733,226 people per elector. In Wyoming it’s just 195,167. Occasionally this has consequences.

Presidents we could have avoided.

As well as sacrificing one person one vote there are other issues with the Electoral College.

Presidential candidates largely ignore states where the outcome is nearly certain. If you live in a solid Republican or Democrat state then you will be taken for granted.

Originally the Electoral College was supposed to be a safeguard against the electorate making a horrible mistake. You might have good reason to believe that it no longer serves this purpose.

National Popular Vote

We could fix the imbalance with an amendment to the Constitution. This would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-quarters (38) of the States.

Luckily there is another option. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). The plan is quite simple. Each State passes legislation that promises to throw its Electoral College votes behind the popular vote winner. This only comes into force when enough States have enacted the NPVIC to have a majority in the Electoral College (270 votes)

You might be surprised to learn that the National Popular Vote already has 165 Electoral College votes. Adding Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Texas would be enough to switch to a popular vote. They are also all states that are among the least well represented by the current system.

Most Americans support the National Popular Vote (78% of Democrats, 60% of Republicans and 73% of Independents). (Source: Washington Post, 2007)

What can I do?

You can make a difference. Please do at least one of the following:

1. Share this page with your friends on Facebook and Twitter with a personal message asking them to take action.
2. Call your Senators and Representative and ask them to support the National Popular Vote.
3. Call your State representatives and ask them to support the National Popular Vote.
4. Donate to the National Popular Vote (this site has no affiliation with National Popular Vote Inc.)

‘We already know that the Trump administration plans to deregulate markets, wage all-out war on “radical Islamic terrorism,” trash climate science and unleash a fossil-fuel frenzy. It’s a vision that can be counted on to generate a tsunami of crises and shocks: economic shocks, as market bubbles burst; security shocks, as blowback from foreign belligerence comes home; weather shocks, as our climate is further destabilized; and industrial shocks, as oil pipelines spill and rigs collapse, which they tend to do, especially when enjoying light-touch regulation.

All this is dangerous enough. What’s even worse is the way the Trump administration can be counted on to exploit these shocks politically and economically…’

Source: The Intercept

‘Ethically speaking, mental health experts are supposed to refrain from publicly offering diagnoses for politicians. And so, for the most part, doctors and psychiatrists have refrained from joining in on the internet speculation that President Donald Trump has narcissistic personality disorder, dementia, or another condition.

But that changed in Tuesday’s New York Times, in a very public way. A pair of letters — written originally in response to Charles Blow’s scathing op-ed about the president — authored by prominent psychiatric experts faced off on the question of Trump’s mental health.

The first, written by Dr. Lance Dodes and Dr. Joseph Schachter and signed by 33 other experts, asserts that Trump is unfit to lead the country given his mental state. The latter, which was penned by Dr. Allen Frances (who literally wrote the criteria that define narcissistic personality disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV), sharply rebukes Dodes and Schacter’s letter…’

Source: Digg

Dr. Frances makes several arguments. The first is that although Trump has impressive narcissism, he should not be considered to have narcissistic personality disorder because the disorder requires that his personality attributes cause him distress or dysfunction. His second objection to the letter is to reiterate the ethical standards against a clinician making a diagnosis of someone she is not engaged in treating face-to-face.

Here is my response, as a psychiatrist myself. First, the requirement that the patient be distressed is only partly true in modern practice, particularly for the subset of mental conditions known as personality disorders. Rigid personality styles often act to defend the patient against insight into their disorder and any distress caused by their way of doing business in the world. Instead, they cause distress among those around him or her. They cause dysfunction for the afflicted person without distressing her or him.

Secondly, for an ethical relativist, a sufficient emergency such as that we face now allows suspension of some ethical guidelines for the greater good.

Of course, I am far from confident that the opinion of any number of experts that this man is unfit to serve as President will actually influence anything. Frances’ coda that “the antidote to a dystopic Trumpean dark age is political, not psychological” may well be true, but we should all continue to speak our version of truth to power. I am firmly with Dodes and Schachter.

Sean Illing: The president of the United States just tweeted that “Information is being illegally given” to the New York Times and the Washington Post “by the intelligence community.” Are we witnessing a shadow war between President Trump and the intelligence community?

…Glenn Carle: What’s happened is that the organs of government sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States have been trying to do their jobs. Intelligence professionals take their responsibilities seriously. Whatever they do, they do it because they believe it is necessary, because they believe duty demands it. They’re not playing political games… The real issue is what I’ve been saying… in public for many months: We are facing the gravest threat to our institutions and our government since 1861, since the country broke in half. This is a graver crisis than Watergate, which was about corruption, not the usurpation of our laws and our checks and balances. It’s graver than World War II, when Hitler never actually threatened our institutions or occupation of Washington.

Source: Vox

‘Some 188,000 people from counties that mostly supported him were evacuated when authorities said the risk of a sudden and dramatic overspill became too high, but Orange Julius remained silent for days after California governor Jerry Brown requested he declare a federal emergency in the state…’

Source: Boing Boing

‘Though Steve Miller claims that Trump is “a president who has done more in three weeks than most presidents have done in an entire administration,” the reality is that almost everything in his executive orders is either an inflammatory restatement of an existing policy; an unenforceable and meaningless intervention into domains where the administrative branch holds no sway; or (as in the case of the Muslim Ban), is an unconstitutional omnishambles destined to be swiftly undone by the courts…

What Trump has done is created a bunch of presidential news-hits, but not much presidenting…’

Source: Boing Boing

‘Through targeted ads on Facebook, we’re reaching out to users who list federal agencies as their employers, and we are exploring ways to advertise in public spaces near federal buildings in Washington, D.C. If you work in the federal bureaucracy and want to bear witness, anonymously or otherwise, to the way the Trump Administration is asserting its authority, we are here to listen. And if you know someone who works for the government and may have information to share, please direct them to TellOnTrump.com.’

Source: Tell on Trump

‘Immigrants… across the country plan to participate in the “Day Without Immigrants” boycott, a response to President Trump’s pledges to crack down on those in the country illegally, use “extreme vetting” and build a wall along the Mexican border. The social-media-organized protest aims to show the president the effect immigrants have in the country on a daily basis. The boycott calls for immigrants not to attend work, open their businesses, spend money or even send their children to school…’

Source: Washington Post

‘In the past decade, DNA sequencing has gotten really, really cheap, positioning genetics to become the next big consumer health craze. The sales pitch—a roadmap for life encoded in your very own DNA—can be hard to resist. But scientists are skeptical that we’ve decrypted enough about the human genome to turn strings of As, Ts, Cs and Gs into useful personalized lifestyle advice…’

Source: Gizmodo

‘At least 188,000 residents in the areas surrounding the Oroville Dam in Northern California have had to evacuate their homes as workers scramble to prevent a potentially catastrophic breach. Now, reports are surfacing indicating local officials were warned about safety issues with the Oroville Dam 12 years ago, and did little to mitigate them. Besides serving as a scary dose of hindsight, these reports are a grim reminder that experts have been sounding the alarm about our nation’s aging infrastructure for a long time. In most cases, they haven’t gained much traction…’

Source: Gizmodo

‘If you’d like to make your voice heard in politics, protests and call-in campaigns are only part of the story. A new report from the nonpartisan, nonprofit Congressional Management Foundation helps us understand the best ways to get a message through…’

Source: Lifehacker

‘Doctors at the University of Minnesota Medical School, who have been studying the skeletal structures of both Republicans for months, believe that their ability to stand, walk, and even break into a brisk trot when confronted by reporters’ questions is “virtually inexplicable.” …’

Source: Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

‘I think this is a fundamental reason why so many of us have been so unsettled, anxious, and near panic these past few months. It is not so much this president’s agenda. That always changes from administration to administration. It is that when the linchpin of an entire country is literally delusional, clinically deceptive, and responds to any attempt to correct the record with rage and vengeance, everyone is always on edge. …’

Source: Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine

Really quite simple:

‘…[I]n the current authoritarian climate, the [only] way to keep a government from using a border-crossing as a basis for acquiring your sensitive data without a warrant is to make sure that you do not possess, and cannot access, your data at a border…’

Source: Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

‘…Our Intelligence Community is so worried by the unprecedented problems of the Trump administration—not only do senior officials possess troubling ties to the Kremlin, there are nagging questions about basic competence regarding Team Trump—that it is beginning to withhold intelligence from a White House which our spies do not trust.

That the IC has ample grounds for concern is demonstrated by almost daily revelations of major problems inside the White House, a mere three weeks after the inauguration. The president has repeatedly gone out of his way to antagonize our spies, mocking them and demeaning their work, and Trump’s personal national security guru can’t seem to keep his story straight on vital issues.

That’s Mike Flynn, the retired Army three-star general who now heads the National Security Council. Widely disliked in Washington for his brash personality and preference for conspiracy-theorizing over intelligence facts, Flynn was fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency for managerial incompetence and poor judgment—flaws he has brought to the far more powerful and political NSC.

Flynn’s problems with the truth have been laid bare by the growing scandal about his dealings with Moscow. Strange ties to the Kremlin, including Vladimir Putin himself, have dogged Flynn since he left DIA, and concerns about his judgment have risen considerably since it was revealed that after the November 8 election, Flynn repeatedly called the Russian embassy in Washington to discuss the transition. The White House has denied that anything substantive came up in conversations between Flynn and Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador.

That was a lie, as confirmed by an extensively sourced bombshell report in The Washington Post, which makes clear that Flynn grossly misrepresented his numerous conversations with Kislyak—which turn out to have happened before the election too, part of a regular dialogue with the Russian embassy. To call such an arrangement highly unusual in American politics would be very charitable.

In particular, Flynn and Kislyak discussed the possible lifting of the sanctions President Obama placed on Russia and its intelligence services late last year in retaliation for the Kremlin’s meddling in our 2016 election. In public, Flynn repeatedly denied that any talk of sanctions occurred during his conversations with Russia’s ambassador. Worse, he apparently lied in private too, including to Vice President Mike Pence, who when this scandal broke last month publicly denied that Flynn conducted any sanctions talk with Kislyak. Pence and his staff are reported to be very upset with the national security adviser, who played the vice president for a fool. …’

Source: John R. Schindler, Observer

‘A worry for Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers is creating a world devoid of consciousness. He sees the discussion of future superintelligences often presume that eventually AIs will become conscious. But what if that kind of sci-fi possibility that we will create completely artificial humans is not going to come to fruition? Instead, we could be creating a world endowed with artificial intelligence but not actual consciousness…’

Source: Big Think

‘…It’s understandable that someone would find the ocean sunfish repellently dumb. Even the mola mola’s many nicknames—schwimmender kopf (“swimming head”) in German, putol (“cut short”) in the Philippines, and “toppled car fish” in Taiwan—belie its absurd reputation. That last one is an especially accurate burn, because the mola mola grows to roughly the size and shape of a trash-compacted car.

Seriously, these things are huge. The ocean sunfish holds the Guinness world record for heaviest, most fecund bony fish. One of the biggest of these gold star boys weighed 5,071 pounds. The average weight is more like one ton, but it carries that heft along six to 10 feet of flattened flesh, flapping through the water like a smashed Prius. A mola mola raised in Monterey Bay Aquarium had to be airlifted out by helicopter and released into the bay when it gained 800 pounds in 14 months and outgrew its tank.

[I]s the mola mola actually as worthless as many of its haters seem to think? To try and settle the world’s nerdiest flame war, let’s go through the finer points of the ocean sunfish’s singular existence….’

Source: Motherboard

‘Squid and their cephalopod brethren have been the inspiration for many a science fiction creature. Their slippery appendages, huge proportions, and inking abilities can be downright shudder-inducing. (See: Arrival.) But you should probably be more concerned by the cephalopod’s huge brain—which not only helps it solve tricky puzzles, but also lets it converse in its own sign language.

…Certain kinds of squid send messages by manipulating the color of their skin. “Their body patterning is fantastic, fabulous,” says Chuan-Chin Chiao, a neuroscientist at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. They can display bands, or stripes, or turn completely dark or light. And Chiao is trying to crack their code…’

Source: WIRED

‘Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled that he wanted to help avoid the nuclear apocalypse during his first phone call with President Donald Trump, and Trump reportedly fumbled it—all because he had no idea what the most important treaty between America and Russia was.

According to news reports, Putin asked if Trump was willing to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), the Obama-era nuclear weapons pact that requires each nation to cap their deployed warheads at 1,500 apiece… But there was one problem, according to Reuters: Trump didn’t know what New START was…’

Source: Jalopnik

‘For all the recitations of Emma Lazarus — give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses — the story of American openness to immigrants and refugees is more cramped, more Trumpian, than our national myths suggest. In order to understand and undo the Muslim ban (and given the prioritization of religious minorities in those seven countries, a Muslim ban it is) we need to understand why it is in fact in line with our history, even as it feels so un-American.’

Source: Vox

‘The president of the United States has essentially unconstrained authority to use nuclear weapons however he sees fit.

So what would happen if the president, in the judgment of those closest to him, were to … not be in his right mind?

In such a scenario, there is, in fact, something that could quickly and legally be done to avert global catastrophe. The answer lies in Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.

The amendment states that if, for whatever reason, the vice president and a majority of sitting Cabinet secretaries decide that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” they can simply put that down in writing and send it to two people — the speaker of the House and the Senate’s president pro tem.

 Then the vice president would immediately become “Acting President,” and take over all the president’s powers.

Let that sink in — one vice president and any eight Cabinet officers can, theoretically, decide to knock the president out of power at any time.

If the president wants to dispute this move, he can, but then it would be up to Congress to settle the matter with a vote. A two-thirds majority in both houses would be necessary to keep the vice president in charge. If that threshold isn’t reached, the president would regain his powers.

 Section 4 of the 25th Amendment has never been invoked in reality, though it’s a staple of thriller fiction. But there’s been a sudden surge of interest in it in recent months, as reports of Donald Trump’s bizarre behavior behind closed doors have been piling up, and there is increasingly unsubtle speculation in Washington about the health of the president’s mind.’

Source: Vox

Yeah, but…Pence??

‘I was lucky enough to have a conversation with Margaret Atwood today, about the sudden popularity of her dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale. You can hear that story here. But there was one thing that didn’t make it into the finished piece — a moment when I asked Atwood what she thought the next big trend would be in dystopian reading. People have been devouring The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, Brave New World, It Can’t Happen Here and The Plot Against America — so what’s the next book we’ll be reporting on?

Well, it won’t be a book, according to Atwood. “The question to be asked is, if somebody does write such a novel where will it be published?” she says. “I think we might go back to newspaper serials … Because events are evolving so fast it would almost take a serial form to keep up with them.”

One installment a week, Atwood says, and “I would make my narrator somebody from within one of the alt-Twitter handles that are popping up all over — as alternative Department of Justice, alternative Parks Department, alternative Education.” Someone inside the government, who’s risking their job to leak information to the public.

Dear readers, you know I asked Margaret Atwood if she’d be willing to write this for me here at NPR. But she says she’s not the right one for the job. “Number one, I’m too old,” she says. “But number two, it would have to be somebody there, who’s pretty close to events as they unfold. Almost like Samuel Pepys’ diary,” she says, referencing the famous English chronicler. “‘Dear diary, you would never believe what happened today! Dear diary, are they on to me? My milkshake tasted funny.'”

Atwood says a story like that would boost newspaper sales, “employ fiction writers and follow the situation while it’s unfolding — while you’re still allowed to read!”

So, speculative fiction writers, get on it! (Though personally, now I’m always going to wonder if it’s really Margaret Atwood tweeting as @AltUSNatParkService.)’

Source: Petra Mayer, NPR

‘Imagine feeling angry or upset whenever you hear a certain everyday sound. It’s a condition called misophonia, and we know little about its causes. Now there’s evidence that misophonics show distinctive brain activity whenever they hear their trigger sounds, a finding that could help devise coping strategies and treatments.

Olana Tansley-Hancock knows misophonia’s symptoms only too well. From the age of about 7 or 8, she experienced feelings of rage and discomfort whenever she heard the sound of other people eating. By adolescence, she was eating many of her meals alone. As time wore on, many more sounds would trigger her misophonia. Rustling papers and tapping toes on train journeys constantly forced her to change seats and carriages. Clacking keyboards in the office meant she was always making excuses to leave the room.

Finally, she went to a doctor for help. “I got laughed at,” she says.

“People who suffer from misophonia often have to make adjustments to their lives, just to function,” says Miren Edelstein at the University of California, San Diego. “Misophonia seems so odd that it’s difficult to appreciate how disabling it can be,” says her colleague, V. S. Ramachandran.

The condition was first given the name misophonia in 2000, but until 2013, there had only been two case studies published. More recently, clear evidence has emerged that misophonia isn’t a symptom of other conditions, such as obsessive compulsive disorder, nor is it a matter of being oversensitive to other people’s bad manners.

Some studies, including work by Ramachandran and Edelstein, have found that trigger sounds spur a full fight-or-flight response in people with misophonia.’

Source: New Scientist

‘An international team of scientists think they’ve created a stable helium compound, meaning one composed of both helium and sodium atoms together. The discovery would be wild not only because of the way it goes against some of our basic assumptions of chemistry, but would also help scientists better understand the way atoms act in the high-pressure centers of gas giant planets…’

Source: Gizmodo

‘In 2012, researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland famously found a particle that acted like the Higgs boson, an elusive and long-theorized particle that imbues mass to matter. Usha Mallik, a University of Iowa physicist, thinks that they might have caught an “impostor” masquerading as the Higgs, and that it’s possible we still haven’t found the real Higgs boson at all…’

Source: Motherboard

‘President Donald Trump threatened to “destroy” the career of a Texas state senator after a Texas sheriff accused the lawmaker of getting in his way by promoting asset forfeiture reform.
“Want to give his name? We’ll destroy his career,” Trump told Sheriff Harold Eavenson of Rockwall County, Texas. Trump’s comment was met with laughter and Eavenson declined to give the official’s name. …’

Source: Sam Levine, Huffington Post .

Trump staff later explained he was ‘joking.’ Of course, what they meant is that he is the joke. Unfortunately the joke’s on us.  #notmeinfuhrer

‘The most aggressive edge of the resistance marches under the banner of anti-fascism, or “antifa.” While most Americans would likely agree that “fascism is bad,” anti-fascism is a more specific set of politics. The antifa banner features black and red flags, signifying an alliance between anarchists and communists. What unites these two groups (who have been known to kill one another from time to time) is a commitment to confront and defeat fascists and white supremacists by whatever means necessary. It’s a coalition that has existed for as long as fascism has; the Italian Arditi del Popolo (People’s Squads) rose to fight Mussolini in 1921, even when the Socialist and Communist Parties refused to support them. In 1924, anarchist lumberjacks allied with the International Workers of the World waged a “drawn battle” with a Ku Klux Klan recruitment drive in Greenville, Maine. American anti-fascists have been fighting a mostly quiet conflict with domestic Nazis at punk rock venues and small white-nationalist gatherings for decades, but, as fascists have snuck their collective jackboot into the curved door of the Oval Office, the struggle has reached the mainstream…’

Source: Pacific Standard

These records have revealed many cases of abuse and mistreatment of animals, incidents that, if the reports had not been publicly posted, would likely have remained hidden. This action plunges journalists, animal welfare organizations, and the public at large into the dark about animal welfare at facilities across the country. The records document violations of the Animal Welfare Act, the federal law that regulates treatment of animals used for research and exhibition.

 

The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which has maintained the online database, cites privacy concerns as justification for the removal. Critics question that reasoning. The agency has long redacted sensitive information from these records, and commercial facilities do not necessarily have the same right to privacy as private individuals…

Adam Roberts, CEO of Born Free USA, an animal advocacy nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., is “shocked” by the purge. He says the documents shed light on cruelty in “substandard roadside zoos, shameful animal circuses, puppy breeding factories and more.” Often, the animals in these facilities may have visible wounds or cramped conditions or no access to water, according to Roberts. He says “the government’s decision to make it harder to access this information further protects animal exploiters in the shroud of secrecy on which their nefarious activities thrive.”

From now on the documents will be accessible only via official requests made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). FOIA requests can take months to process. That’s far too long, Roberts says. When Born Free receives welfare complaints from concerned citizens, he says the organization has always checked USDA records to see if any complaints had already been made involving the facility or animal in question. Waiting months for a FOIA report for information that previously could be obtained with the click of a button “may mean prolonged suffering for an animal in need,” Roberts says.

Source: National Geographic

‘Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba and the second-richest man in China, visited Australia on Saturday. He had a dire warning for Trump and his hardline, anti-globalization ideas about trade: this could be war.Ma was in Melbourne to celebrate the opening of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s Australia/New Zealand headquarters. Speaking to attendees at the event, Ma said: “Everybody is concerned about trade wars. If trade stops, war starts.” …’

Source: Gizmodo

It appears that the Senate needs one more vote to deny Betsy DeVos the nomination for Secretary of Education. Republican Senator Richard Burr of NC may be on the fence about whether or not to vote for  DeVos — who is unqualified, opposed to public education, and a plagiarist as well. 
Sen. Burr’s number is 202-224-3154. That phone line takes calls at any time and  is set up so that it only takes a moment to leave a message. Supposedly they are tracking the number of calls they get. It may not matter that you are not his constituent. 

‘…With all the pies that Trump has stuck his financial finger into, it might be tough to know which brands to avoid. Here are the big ones. …’

Source: Justin Andress, Destination Tips

‘President Trump’s antagonizing of people around the world has sparked quite the backlash. He’s instituting barely coded religious tests, “yelling” at and hanging up on leaders of democratic countries, and still vowing to build that big, beautiful border wall. (Now partly transparent!) Last week, the Netherlands tried to assuage fears of friction with an “official” welcome video, using President Trump’s own words to promise he’ll be embraced with open arms. As its new saying goes, “America First, the Netherlands Second.”

Turns out that Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, and Germany—where citizens’ trust in the U.S. has eroded to a record low—all want to get in on the Trump trolling, too. Comedy shows in these countries have recently produced their own “second” videos, featuring Trump impersonations that sharply mimic his unique oratory eloquence. Some, like Swiss TV show Deville Late Night’s parody, compare their country directly to the Netherlands in Trumpian fashion: “Look at those mountains, those big flat mountains,” the voice-over goes. “We’re not flat like, for example, the Netherlands. They are so flat. Total disaster.”…’

Source: David Canfield, Slate.

At least go sit, preferably in numbers, by your Muslim brethren being harassed by ignorant racist xenophobes like this:

‘Alexander MacKinnon thought it would be “my word against hers” after he directed racial abuse at Sanaa Shahid on a train out of London—the sneering solicitor said she shouldn’t be in the country, let alone first class. Unfortunately for him, he was overheard…’

Source: Boing Boing

‘A trio of “scientists against a fascist government” set out a program for resisting trumpism with science, delving into the moral duty of scientists to resist the perversion of their work to attain cruel and evil ends.Trumpism includes savage attacks on ideologically inconvenient science — climate science especially — as well as xenophobic attacks on scientists themselves…’

Source: Boing Boing

‘Radiation levels inside a damaged reactor at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant have hit a record high, and are the worst since the plant suffered a triple meltdown nearly six years ago… Radiation levels inside the containment vessel of reactor No. 2 at Fukushima have reached 530 sieverts per hour—a figure described by experts as “unimaginable.” …The radiation level inside the plant now far exceeds the previous high of 73 sieverts per hour, which was recorded soon after the triple meltdown in March 2011…

Needless to say, this plant is not fit for human life. Just one dose of a single sievert is enough to cause radiation sickness and nausea. Exposure to four to five sieverts would kill about half of those exposed to it within a month, while a single dose of 10 sieverts is enough to kill a person within weeks.

These surging radiation levels are complicating plans to dismantle the plant. According to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, medical professionals aren’t prepared to treat patients who have been exposed to the levels of radiation currently experienced at the facility. This is a big problem for Tepco, which plans to remove fuel debris as part of the decommissioning process. The dismantling of Fukushima is scheduled to start in 2021 and could take nearly a half-century.

Officials with Tepco aren’t entirely sure why radiation levels are on such a dramatic upward trend. Either previous readings were insufficient or incorrect, or conditions inside the plant are changing. Problem is, the interior condition of the plant is still a big mystery. The high readings suggest that some of the melted fuel that escaped the pressure vessel is lingering nearby. Should this be confirmed, it would mark the first time that tainted debris has been found in any of the three reactors that suffered core meltdowns. Tepco has been unable to confirm the condition of the melted fuel owing to the extreme and inhospitable conditions inside…’

Source: Gizmodo 

‘…One of the strangest properties of our universe is that it has very low entropy, meaning there is relatively low disorder, or conversely a large amount of order, among all of the particles. Think of it this way: Imagine a bomb full of sand exploding onto an empty surface—that’s the Big Bang. You would expect a pretty uniform heap of sand after the explosion, but instead, our universe immediately arranged into lots of sand castles seemingly for no reason and with no help, and we don’t really know why, Stefan Countryman, a physics Ph.D. student at Columbia University, explained to Gizmodo. The Big Bang could have (and maybe should have) resulted in a high-entropy mass of uniformly distributed, disorganized stuff. Instead, we’ve got star systems, galaxies, and galactic clusters all linked together with dark voids between them. We have order.

Additionally, entropy or disorder can only increase over time—without outside help, the sand castles will erode away. In fact, according to Carroll, our observation of time is dependent on increasing entropy since the universe began. Entropy is a physical property that is completely time dependent, riding the one-way time train into the future.  So: the laws of physics say entropy can only increase, and today’s entropy is still very low. Carroll says that means the early universe had to have had even lower entropy—in other words, it must have been even more organized. That has implications for what things were like before the Big Bang. “There’s a lot of people who think the early universe was simple, smooth and featureless with tiny little ripples and that’s a natural place for universe to start,” said Carroll. “Once you think about entropy… your perspective changes and you realize it’s something you have to explain.” …’

Source: Gizmodo

‘Patients with complete “locked-in syndrome”—conscious, but fully paralyzed and unable to move even their eyes—may soon be able to mentally break out.Using a new, noninvasive device that measures brain waves and blood flow, four locked-in patients were able to communicate by answering yes or no questions, neuroscientists report this week in PLOS Biology. The four patients, all completely paralyzed by Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), answered geography questions, correctly identified family members’ names, and even said they were happy and glad to be alive…’

Source: Ars Technica

‘Erica Chenoweth, co-author of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, says “nonviolent resistance has actually been the quickest, least costly, and safest way to struggle” effectively against dictatorships…’

Source: Boing Boing

‘A flying saucer was spotted on a Google Earth image near the South Pole in Antarctica. You can see it right here. Mysterious Universe claims that “melting ice could have formed a round depression as it sank into the surrounding snow, or wind could have created a small whirlwind effect as it blew into alcoves in the rock wall.” Screw that though. I want to believe…’

Source: Boing Boing

Beginning with:

‘1. Do not obey in advance.Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You’ve already done this, haven’t you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.’

Source: Quartz

‘On Wednesday, Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman in 78 years to be awarded the prestigious Fields Medal, considered the highest honor in mathematics. She was selected for “stunning advances in the theory of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.” …’

Source: Katie Rose Quandt, Mother Jones

‘You know the singularity has arrived when the robots start playing marimbas. Shimon, engineer Guy Hoffman’s robot musician, doesn’t play programmed music — it improvises in ensembles with human players, communicating with a “socially expressive head” and favoring musical ideas that are unlikely to be chosen by humans, so as to lead the performance in genuinely novel directions…’

Source: Futility Closet

‘…There are probably more than enough Republicans who are conflicted about the Republican agenda or committed to the Senate as an institution to stave off calls from President Trump or House conservatives to abolish the filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been clear about his disinterest in limiting obstruction during the 115th Congress, and he would probably struggle to form a majority for filibuster reform if he tried. So for the next 23 months, I expect to see a series of struggles to get the Republican agenda through the Senate, with Democrats blocking a GOP agenda with the tacit support of a few Republicans.’

Source: Vox

‘A comprehensive study looking at more than 500 species of primates finds that most are declining in numbers and nearly two-thirds face extinction…’

Source: Pacific Standard

And (I can’t resist): humans may be joining the list of endangered primates after electing the Orange Menace.

“This was the worst call by far,” the Whiner in Chief told Australian PM Turnbull.

Source: The Washington Post

‘Imbolc, (pronounced “IM-bulk” or “EM-bowlk”), also called Oimealg, (“IM-mol’g), by the Druids, is the festival of the lactating sheep. It is derived from the Gaelic word “oimelc” which means “ewes milk”. Herd animals have either given birth to the first offspring of the year or their wombs are swollen and the milk of life is flowing into their teats and udders. It is the time of Blessing of the seeds and consecration of agricultural tools. It marks the center point of the dark half of the year. It is the festival of the Maiden, for from this day to March 21st, it is her season to prepare for growth and renewal. Brighid’s snake emerges from the womb of the Earth Mother to test the weather, (the origin of Ground Hog Day), and in many places the first Crocus flowers began to spring forth from the frozen earth.

The Maiden is honored, as the Bride, on this Sabbat. Straw Brideo’gas (corn dollies) are created from oat or wheat straw and placed in baskets with white flower bedding. Young girls then carry the Brideo’gas door to door, and gifts are bestowed upon the image from each household. Afterwards at the traditional feast, the older women make special acorn wands for the dollies to hold, and in the morning the ashes in the hearth are examined to see if the magic wands left marks as a good omen. Brighid’s Crosses are fashioned from wheat stalks and exchanged as symbols of protection and prosperity in the coming year. Home hearth fires are put out and re-lit, and a besom is place by the front door to symbolize sweeping out the old and welcoming the new. Candles are lit and placed in each room of the house to honor the re-birth of the Sun.

Another traditional symbol of Imbolc is the plough. In some areas, this is the first day of ploughing in preparation of the first planting of crops. A decorated plough is dragged from door to door, with costumed children following asking for food, drinks, or money. Should they be refused, the household is paid back by having its front garden ploughed up. In other areas, the plough is decorated and then Whiskey, the “water of life” is poured over it. Pieces of cheese and bread are left by the plough and in the newly turned furrows as offerings to the nature spirits. It is considered taboo to cut or pick plants during this time.

Various other names for this Greater Sabbat are Imbolgc Brigantia (Caledonni), Imbolic (Celtic), Disting (Teutonic, Feb 14th), Lupercus (Strega), St. Bridget’s Day (Christian), Candlemas, Candlelaria (Mexican), the Snowdrop Festival. The Festival of Lights, or the Feast of the Virgin. All Virgin and Maiden Goddesses are honored at this time.’

Source: Wiccan, Pagan and Witchcraft Holidays., Imbolc Lore

A former homeschooled far-right evangelical “Christofascist” described the grassroots movement hidden under our noses with a plan in the works for decades to take over American society and government. Something similar could have been written by a right winger talking about the hidden Jewish-banking conspiracy but somehow this has more of a ring of authenticity and, if it has any basis in reality, it is as scary as it gets. My strongest reaction is to feel a certain urgency about relocating outside the US.

The writer says that this plan for a Christofascist takeover had been in preparation since the emergence of evangelical conservatism in the 1970s. Early manifestations included the founding of organizations like Operation Rescue, the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, but perhaps most significantly (and insidiously) the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), whose purpose was to ensure that homeschooling was legal and prevent its regulation “so the children [they] trained would abe able to fly under the radar.” Children homeschooled by extremists of the religious right have been trained to fight what they refer to as the

“Culture Wars. It’s a loose and ambiguous term that basically means anything or anyone that doesn’t align with this very specific view of Christianity must not be allowed to continue…”

Specific agendas include reversal of legislation protecting reproductive rights and preventing discrimination based on race, gender identity and sexual preference. More generally, the aim is to facilitate laws legislating morality;   the  only way to control the legislative process is to prepare to infiltrate the government through the indoctrination of youth. Thus the emphasis on training in effective argument;  they were

‘taught critical thinking skills but given only a narrow view of what was acceptable to argue for. We were, after all, being trained to take over the country for Christ, literally. We knew how to perform logical gymnastics about abortion, Christianity and any evangelical talking point you could throw at us. When we showed up to city council, local political party meetings and tours of the Capitol we asked intelligent questions, were respectful and had a vested interest in how our local political machine ran. We impressed every government official and staff member with our questions, earnesty and demeanor. In short, we were sneaky and polite Trojan horses; we had an agenda. Yes, even as 15-year-olds. It was forcefully handed to us by the adults in our lives who had been preparing for this since before we were born.’

The Tea Party takeover of the Republican Party was the first significant public manifestation of this movement. Now, ‘Trump being elected is also part of the plan, although not Trump specifically; the true goal is Pence.’ Trump’s easy manipulability and ignorance, apathy, and ineptitude about policy allow Pence’s Trojan-horse covert Christofascist piggyback power grab. Trump will do ‘whatever the Right want him to do in order to keep power, allowing Pence to advance his agenda under the radar ‘while filling Congress with ever more evangelical conservative Republicans.’

Pence seems much less threatening than someone abrasive, terrifying and erratic like Trump but he has an insidious, consistent, proven record of working to legalize discrimination and acting against women and marginalized people. His presence in office emboldens the up-and-coming far Right children to further the Christofascist agenda for which they have been trained — “to take back the country for Christ” by outbreeding, outvoting and outactivating.

‘Every class, every event, every pastor or guest speaker reiterated this, choosing to risk the 501c3 status of their church to push their agenda. ‘

And Democrats never even notice the rightwing grassroots organizing where this arises, e.g. the vast network of homeschoolers ‘that HSLDA and others have given [the Republicans] to tap into as a source of free labor,’ for efforts including the Republican Get Out the Vote efforts. Republicans who want to remain in office cannot afford to hamper this effort and thus must maintain marked laxity in overseeing homeschooling. Homeschoolers “are loud, have time and can be activated with one email blast” from Christofascist organizers such as the HSLDA.

‘We are the secret no one knew about and it’s time to come to light. Homeschoolers are a huge reason for the evangelical conservative takeover we’ve seen over the last decade or so…’

Such religious extremists ‘believe it is their Christian duty to save the country from its secular ways in the name of religious freedom’ and believe that their agenda will save the country from destruction ordained by God for our ungodly ways.

‘While it looks like a bunch of backwoods hillbillies playing with guns to anyone outside, they are resilient and in it for the long haul. They want America to succeed, but in their America there isn’t room for anyone unlike them. There’s a reason Trump’s mantra stuck despite his deplorable behaviour. They think America was founded on conservative Protestant ideals because that’s what they’ve been fed, because that’s what aligns with their interpretation of the Bible and they will not go down without a fight…

They will not be won over with sit-downs and respectability politics. This kind of dogma cannot be reasoned with; it must be fought against. Trying to convince them to come to the other side is a waste of time unless they’ve already started on that journey themselves. The ones in power, actively harming our lives, are past this point. We can only fight back.’

Source: Autostraddle (via Barbara)

The left demands Senate Democratss fight Trump on Supreme Court.

‘Several prominent progressive organizations are demanding that the Democratic Party’s senators do whatever they can to block Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court. On Tuesday night, Trump picked Neil Gorsuch, 49, to fill the seat.

“As long as the president is in flagrant disregard for the basic underpinnings of our republic, it is no time to consider a Supreme Court nominee,” said Ben Wikler, the Washington director of MoveOn.org, in an interview. “The next election is a while away, but what Senate Democrats do here and over the next few months will be seared into the memory of every Democratic voter.”

The core of the progressive groups’ argument is that Senate Democrats have dramatically underestimated the scale and depth of their voters’ anger toward Trump’s administration. (Only one Senate Democrat, Oregon’s Jeff Merkley, has announced that he’ll filibuster Trump’s nominee.)

Dozens of Senate Democrats have cast votes for several controversial Trump nominees, including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. That may be well within the norm for the Senate, and it is largely in line with how Senate Republicans treated President Obama’s nominees. But organizers at MoveOn.org and Democracy for America argued that the Democratic Senate caucus needs to match the outrage of the progressive base by using every tool at its disposal to fight Trump — including opposing whomever the president names to the high bench…’

Source: Vox

Textbook shit-eating grin from the Mad King.

Trump quickly changed his mind on drug prices

Expect the same on Obamacare. Source: Vox

A leaked Trump order suggests he’s planning to deport more legal immigrants for using social services

Build a wall around public benefits, and make immigrants’ relatives pay for it. Source: Vox

We’re the lawyers suing “President” Trump: his business dealings violate the Constitution

He receives “emoluments” from foreign officials. Source: Vox

Trump isn’t an evil genius

And that’s not what matters anyway.

‘Whenever a reactionary populist regime takes power and begins doing illiberal things, the same question arises among its critics: How much of this is part of a master plan and how much is just flailing? What is the exact mix of incompetence and ill intent?

That argument is already taking shape around Trump, as he ham-handedly issues executive orders poorly understood by his own bureaucracy and fires members of his administration. It is aptly captured in two recent essays.

The first is by Yonatan Zunger, a Google privacy engineer. It’s called “Trial Balloon for a Coup?” and it reviews the news of the past day or two through the lens of a unifying theory: By putting confidant Steve Bannon on the National Security Council, cutting agencies out of rule-making, and defying a court order, Trump is systematically attempting to reduce any checks on his power. He’s trying to concentrate power in a small counsel of trusted advisers (the “coup”) and avoid legal review.

The second essay is by political scientist Tom Pepinsky, in response. It’s called “Weak and Incompetent Leaders act like Strong Leaders,” and it makes a simple point: The very same actions Zunger interprets as a devious, coordinated plan can also be interpreted as the bumbling, defensive moves of a weak leader who doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing…’

Source: Vox

Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, explained

‘Gorsuch is more outspoken and forthright in his positions than your typical Supreme Court aspirant, providing a lot of fodder for any opponents. A Democratic filibuster motivated by Republicans’ successful obstruction of President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, for this same seat last year is a certainty for any nominee, and if Democrats conclude that Gorsuch’s views on issues like the right to life and religious liberty are outside the mainstream, the filibuster might have a chance of success…’

Source: Vox

‘It won’t surprise you to learn American policing has a racism problem. It may surprise you to know that the FBI has been quietly, systematically investigating the white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement.

Alice Speri writes that there’s just not much anyone in politics is willing to do about it—and an inevitable conservative-led backlash when they try—but the FBI is starting to treat local cops the way it treated hippies: as a problem worth getting its hands dirty over…’

Source: Boing Boing

‘The Arab Spring six years ago first demonstrated social media’s ability to power political dissent. Now it’s reaching a new point of maturation. Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and Bernie Sanders all found ways to use social platforms to organize. In the course of those efforts and others, protesters have built a kind of plug-and-play network that makes it easy to generate widespread civil action with a click or tap. With this infrastructure in place, street protests could become as much a fixture of the new administration as President Trump’s tweets…’

Source: WIRED

#resist

‘So far, Trump has exclusively faced crises of his own creation, and he’s handled them disastrously. Americans of all stripes ought to worry about what’s going to happen when he faces a real one…’

Source: Matthew Yglesias, Vox

‘As Americans turn to George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) to better understand Donald Trump’s election, as we entertain the exciting possibility that we can read our way to some level of sensible public understanding, it’s time to suggest another classic 20th-century work, one that lends even deeper insight into Trump’s unlikely rise to power: Roland Barthes’ Mythologies (1957). Like Orwell, Barthes deals in language. Unlike Orwell, he deals in language to elucidate the subversive (and oppressive) power of myth.

Trump is more than a butcher of language. He is a builder of myths.Myths are not, in Barthes’ analysis, innocent origin stories. They are dangerous cultural distortions. They cleanse language of its history, and liberate words from their past, all in order to make a non-essential (and often ridiculous) connection seem essential. This somewhat mystical (myths are mysterious) transformation works by suggesting that certain fabricated phenomena are all natural (and, thus, all good) while hiding the cynical process of social construction behind their making. We build myths to prevent as many people as we can from asking questions about the hidden distortion that, inevitably, serves someone’s interest at the expense of truth, justice, and enlightened common sense…’

Source: Pacific Standard

‘Nation states cause some of our biggest problems, from civil war to climate inaction. Science suggests there are better ways to run a planet …’

Source: Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist

‘For those of you who haven’t taken in a history book in a while, President Andrew Jackson defied the Supreme Court and removed my ancestors, the Cherokee, from their lands and marched them to Oklahoma. “The Trail of Tears” was the result of a President openly defying the courts.

Just letting you know, there’s precedent for this President. And many of his followers consider themselves modern ‘Jacksonians.’ Best not get your hopes up for a judicial remedy. We are a nation of laws, but apparently the Constitution didn’t spec this division of power very well.

[I think we need to be putting pressure on Repubs in their jurisdictions, convincing them that letting this guy run wild is going to cost them dearly, instead of reacting to every executive order and tweet. He can ignore protests. His Repub pals can’t. Put thumbscrews on the enablers.] …’

Source: Garret Vreeland, dangerousmeta!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?sns=em&v=e3Tvclf3wp8

(thanks to Janet Y.)

‘Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him. It will probably end in calamity—substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have. It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment. The sooner Americans get used to these likelihoods, the better. …’

Source: Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic. Cohen is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative and former adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He minces no words about Trump’s outrages and about how bad it will get, but still maintains his faith that American values will survive the onslaught. A must-read in full. 

‘After reading these books, conservatives are hardly likely to rush out and volunteer to work for the Democratic Party. But they will end up a lot more humble. They’ll also have a far better understanding of why so many of their fellow citizens disagree with them — and on one or two issues, they might even change their minds.’

Source: Cass Sunstein, Bloomberg View

‘Having read these books, you might continue to believe that progressives are more often right than wrong, and that in general, the U.S. would be better off in the hands of Democrats than Republicans. But you’ll have a much better understanding of the counterarguments — and on an issue or two, and maybe more, you’ll probably end up joining those on what you once saw as “the other side.” ‘

Source: Cass Sunstein, Bloomberg View

‘Following Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s limp response to Trump’s “Muslim ban,” Lyft has decided to put its money where its mouth is. The ridesharing rival announced today that it will donate a million dollars to the ACLU to “defend our constitution.” …’

Source: Gizmodo

‘The first week of Trump’s Presidency was marked by an abundance of warnings amidst a flurry of executive orders that seemed designed to deliver on Trump’s campaign promises. The executive orders were often short on specifics and time will tell how many of the proposed policies are going to stick, but as has been the case so far – those hoping that somehow Trump will be tamed by the awesome power and responsibility of the office he now holds, are likely to be disappointed. In fact, the exact opposite is proving true – Trump is doubling down on even his most controversial policies. The wall is getting built, Muslims are getting banned, scientists are gagged.

While this may be pleasing to the most ardent of his supporters, the mood of the rest of the country swings between less optimistic caution and sheer abject depression. More than 3 million marchers filled American streets, the dystopian novel “1984” (written in 1949) becomes a best-selling book, and Nazi supporters are suddenly both more visible and getting punched in the face.

But no one has encapsulated the emotions of these early Trump days more dramatically than a group of scientists, who every year since 1947 determine whether to move the hands of the Doomsday Clock. This is a symbolic clock that is meant to indicate how close we are to nuclear war and global annihilation.  The scientists announced that the Doomsday clock has been moved 30 seconds closer to midnight specifically because of Trump’s election, going from 3 minutes away to 2.5. That’s the nearest the clock has been to midnight in 50+ years. We are talking the peak of the Cold War close. Why did the scientists, who include 15 Nobel laureates, move the clock’s hands?

Short answer – Donald Trump.’

Source: Big Think

The incomparable Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker:

‘…[T]he single most striking thing about his matchlessly strange first week is how primitive, atavistic, and uncomplicatedly brutal Trump’s brand of authoritarianism is turning out to be. We have to go back to “1984” because, in effect, we have to go back to 1948 to get the flavor.

There is nothing subtle about Trump’s behavior. He lies, he repeats the lie, and his listeners either cower in fear, stammer in disbelief, or try to see how they can turn the lie to their own benefit. Every continental wiseguy, from Žižek to Baudrillard, insisted that when they pulled the full totalitarian wool over our eyes next time, we wouldn’t even know it was happening. Not a bit of it. Trump’s lies, and his urge to tell them, are pure Big Brother crude, however oafish their articulation. They are not postmodern traps and temptations; they are primitive schoolyard taunts and threats.

The blind, blatant disregard for truth is offered without even the sugar-façade of sweetness of temper or equableness or entertainment—offered not with a sheen of condescending consensus but in an ancient tone of rage, vanity, and vengeance. Trump is pure raging authoritarian id.

And so, rereading Orwell, one is reminded of what Orwell got right about this kind of brute authoritarianism—and that was essentially that it rests on lies told so often, and so repeatedly, that fighting the lie becomes not simply more dangerous but more exhausting than repeating it. Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power.

When Trump repeats the ridiculous story about the three million illegal voters—a story that no one who knows, that not a single White House “staffer,” not a single Republican congressman actually believes to be true—he does not really care if anyone believes it, even if, at some crazy level, he does, sort of. People aren’t meant to believe it; they’re meant to be intimidated by it. The lie is not a claim about specific facts; the lunacy is a deliberate challenge to the whole larger idea of sanity. Once a lie that big is in circulation, trying to reel the conversation back into the territory of rational argument becomes impossible…’

‘President Trump’s executive order closing the nation’s borders to refugees was put into immediate effect on Friday night. Refugees who were airborne on flights on the way to the United States when the order was signed were stopped and detained at airports.The detentions prompted legal challenges as lawyers representing two Iraqis held at Kennedy Airport filed a writ of habeas corpus early Saturday in the Eastern District of New York seeking to have their clients released. At the same time, they filed a motion for class certification, in an effort to represent all refugees and immigrants who they said were being unlawfully detained at ports of entry…’

…might they be the last?

Source: Randy Furst, StarTribune.com

‘Survivalism, the practice of preparing for a crackup of civilization, tends to evoke a certain picture: the woodsman in the tinfoil hat, the hysteric with the hoard of beans, the religious doomsayer. But in recent years survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley and New York City, among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort. …’

Source: Evan Osnos, The New Yorker

‘President Donald Trump’s new press secretary, Sean Spicer, opened his relationship with the White House press corps over the weekend with a flurry of condemnations for the “deliberately false,” “reckless,” and “shameful and wrong” reporting on the president’s first 24 hours in office. “We’re going to hold the press accountable,” he declared.It was not the first such threat from the Trump team. Earlier this month, Trump himself warned that BuzzFeed News would “suffer the consequences” for having published a dossier of unverified claims, initially compiled by a former British intelligence agent, about the depths of the incoming president’s entanglement with Russia.

On this, as on so many other things, the question is how exactly a Trump presidency would go about translating aggressive rhetoric into policy. The conventional mechanisms for payback by politicians against the press are mild—reducing access, feeding leaks to competing outlets, making unkind remarks. Trump did his own version of this at his pre-inaugural press conference, refusing to take questions from CNN’s Jim Acosta and barking at him about trafficking in “fake news.”

But the Trump Administration has also demonstrated a readiness to apply pressure to its designated opponents in less conventional ways. As a thought experiment, what could Trump do to impose more severe “consequences” on an individual news outlet, or to hold one “accountable”? If the president wanted to punish BuzzFeed, for instance, and drive it to ruin, what tools would he have? …’

Source: Gizmodo

‘Josh Glenn says: Here’s an extremely timely episode of Benjamen Walker’s Radiotopian podcast, Theory of Everything. In it, Benjamen and I discuss the obscure spy novel The Twentieth Day of January, about a KGB plot — uncovered by a British intelligence agent — to get their stooge elected president of the US!’

Source: Boing Boing

‘After September 11, 2001, the US government instituted high-tech monitoring of snail mail sent through the US Postal Service. Basically the front of every letter can be scanned and catalogued with the flip of a switch. In fact, there’s some evidence that the USPS might photograph every piece of mail that makes its way through their systems. But if you’re concerned about someone (the government or otherwise) tampering with the inside of your mail, you might do well to get a roll of this stuff. If it’s good enough for the CIA, it’s probably your best bet…’

Source: Gizmodo

‘Back in December [2015], Donald Trump’s personal doctor declared to the world that Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” While that particular claim is unfalsifiable (although almost certainly incorrect), according to a source with knowledge of Trump’s current prescriptions, that letter isn’t telling the whole story. Most notably: Donald Trump is allegedly still taking speed-like diet pills.

Rumors of Trump’s predilection for stimulants first started really popping up in 1992, when Spy magazine wrote, “Have you ever wondered why Donald Trump has acted so erratically at times, full of manic energy, paranoid, garrulous? Well, he was a patient of Dr. [Joseph] Greenberg’s from 1982 to 1985.” At the time, Dr. Greenberg was notorious for allegedly doling out prescription stimulants to anyone who could pay.

In 1993, Harry Hurt’s unauthorized biography on Trump, Lost Tycoon, corroborated the rumors and went one step further:

The diet drugs, which [Trump] took in pill form, not only curbed his appetite but gave him a feeling of euphoria and unlimited energy. The medical literature warned that some potentially dangerous side effects could result from long-term usage; they included anxiety, insomnia, and delusions of grandeur. According to several Trump Organization insiders, Donald exhibited all these ominous symptoms of diet drug usage, and then some.

The supposed drug Trump took back then was Tenuate Dospan, a drug with speed-like effects that’s not unlike dexedrine.

These rumors say Trump stopped seeing Dr. Greenberg decades ago. But according to our source, the Donald Trump of today is on a diet drug called phentermine—and has been since at least April of 2014…

C. Richard Allen, the director of the Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency, called phentermine “cheap speed” to The New York Times. Side effects of phentermine include:

• Trouble with thinking, speaking, or walking
• Decreased ability to exercise
• False or unusual sense of well-being
• Insomnia
• Nervousness
• Increase in sexual ability, desire, drive, or performance
• Confusion …’

Via Gawker

‘Donald Trump reportedly spent [Inauguration Day] getting “increasingly angry”—all because of some not-so-nice messages on Twitter. According to The New York Times, a series of tweets pointing out that Trump’s inauguration was not as well attended as Obama’s in 2009 caused the President to become increasingly upset, a mood that only lifted with Friday night’s festivities. But the pain, it seems, was back Saturday morning, and Trump was “filled anew with a sense of injury,” according to several Times sources close the President. Even outside of Trump’s inner circle, some of that anger was visible this weekend. On Sunday, for instance, the President used Twitter to complain about demonstrations against him (instead of celebrating his new job), writing, “Why didn’t these people vote?” …’

Source: Gizmodo

‘On Sunday, the White House said it was in the “beginning stages” of talks to relocate the American embassy to Israel from its current home in Tel Aviv to the much more hotly contested Jerusalem. The announcement came just a few hours before Trump was scheduled to hold his first official conversation with embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (above).

To be clear, the embassy move isn’t some small diplomatic snafu by the fresh-faced Trump staffers at the State Department. As Reuters noted Sunday, the international community regards Jerusalem’s diplomatic status as “a matter for peace negotiations,” with Palestinian leaders vowing that “an embassy move would kill any prospect for peace.” …’

Source: Pacific Standard

‘Crowd estimates from Women’s Marches on Saturday are still trickling in, but political scientists say they think we may have just witnessed the largest day of demonstrations in American history. According to data collected by Erica Chenoweth at the University of Denver and Jeremy Pressman at the University of Connecticut, marches held in more than 500 US cities were attended by at least 3.7 million people…’

Source: Vox

‘It keeps pointing out on Twitter how bad attendance was for Trump’s event — and how good it is for the Women’s March on Washington…’

Source: Vox

How long before the Bilious Billionaire tries to prohibit DC Metro from tweeting?

‘Exile and Lightning’

You choose your ancestors our
Ancestor Ralph Ellison wrote.

Source: CNN

‘[Peter S.] Beagle’s achingly tender, sorrowful account of the [Poor People’s Campaign] is a reminder of the enormous political power that disenfranchised people can have when they are unified en masse — and of how wastefully that power can be squandered by an incompetent leadership. It’s a powerful prescriptive for how today’s protest campaigns can plan their work. It’s also an enormously beautiful essay.’

Source:  Vox

‘…Trump likes to think that he is perpetually breaking boundaries and setting records, and he surely did with his inauguration speech. It was the worst in generations, and perhaps the worst of all time.

It wasn’t just mediocre. It was stunningly, disconcertingly, dumbfoundingly bad. And bad in a deeply worrying way.

There was little that was unifying about it; little that was inspirational; little that spoke to the better angels of America, to transcendent American values or freedoms, or higher causes. Nor was there much by way of concrete causes, beyond a call for investments in American infrastructure.

Instead, Trump outlined an all-out nationalist, protectionist, and populist approach that, frankly, is incompatible with a nation that leads the free world….’

Source: Scott Lehigh, Boston Globe

Oh, schadenfreude, you’re killing me.

‘…[I]n typical Trump fashion, the president-elect shot off a tweet in early January saying the inauguration is going to be a great show. What would it have sounded like if all had went according to plan? Below, check out our playlist comprised of all the artists who rejected a bid to participate in the merriment — and imagine what could have been…’

Source: Pacific Standard

Genesis of the New Axis?

‘Last week, Le Pen, one of France’s far-right presidential hopefuls, made an unusual appearance at New York’s Trump Tower. Reports say she didn’t meet with Donald Trump.

What’s verifiable is that Le Pen is now taking trans-Atlantic strides to garner outside support for what at least one member of her own party (and family) has called a world “axis” of emerging populist politicians.

Also certain (at a time of few answers to Pacific Standard’s requests for comment from world politicians) is that Le Pen is making greater overtures to international supporters at a time when her party has been strapped for cash and has had difficulty obtaining loans from French banks…’

Source: Pacific Standard

How to Defend Democracy from Authoritarianism, According to Yale Historian Timothy Snyder

‘After the November election, Snyder wrote a profile of Hitler, a short piece that made no direct comparisons to any contemporary figure. But reading the facts of the historical case alarmed most readers. A few days later, the historian appeared on a Slate podcast to discuss the article, saying that after he submitted it, “I realized there was more…. there are an awful lot of echoes.” Snyder admits that history doesn’t actually repeat itself. But we’re far too quick, he says, to dismiss that idea as a cliché “and not think about history at all. History shows a range of possibilities.” Similar events occur across time under similar kinds of conditions. And it is, of course, possible to learn from the past…’

Source: Open Culture

Source: DesignYouTrust

‘Day Dreamers Limited — the artist collective of Kelly Tunstall, Ferris Plock, and creative studio Form & Fiction — are making an animated series starring Donald Trump’s Hair as the protagonist!’

Source: Boing Boing

‘The Women’s March on Washington, which is expected to bring hundreds of thousands of participants to the capital on Saturday, was intended to demonstrate opposition among progressive women to the policies of President-elect Donald J. Trump.But the loudest criticism of the march has come not from Trump supporters; rather, it has come from participants who argue that women of color have hijacked the event by focusing it on themselves, instead of women more broadly.

March organizers told me they received a surge of complaints after women of color called for more representation on the march’s leadership team.In essence, black and brown women are being labeled divisive for wanting to finally see themselves reflected in the modern feminist agenda.

This criticism echoes one of the most persistent attacks against Democrats, from the left and the right, after the presidential election: that a focus on so-called identity politics was in part to blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss. Proponents of this view argue that Democrats have been sidetracked by trying to accommodate the various needs of a diverse America and thus have failed to promote a unifying narrative.

Critics miss the point. It’s not selfish — nor need it be divisive — for women of color to push to be included, just as it wasn’t inappropriate for minority groups to expect to be courted by Democrats during the campaign. The problem is not that “identity groups” have some undue obsession with their own agendas. It’s that the groups with the most power often fail to have a sense of solidarity across race and class that would allow for a vision of multicultural liberalism that could reinvigorate the Democratic Party…’

‘Certainly, to many of us, it feels like the world is getting dumber. Just-published research from deCODE, a genetics firm in Reykjavik, Iceland, suggests that Idiocracy might have had it about right. Thankfully, though, the dumbening won’t be happening so precipitously, with a drop in the average IQ of only about 0.04 points per decade. The concern is about what this could mean over time…’

Source: Big Think

Certainly, this study should come as no surprise when considered with regard to the US electorate.

On the left, Obama. On the right, Trump.

Source: Boing Boing (Is inspiring schadenfreude the Republicans’ secret weapon against people like me?)

A reflective comprehensive deep dive by Tom Freeman.

Source: Medium