Up From Facebook

  While there is much to celebrate, it's import to acknowledge that Trump still wields the veto robo-pen and that Democrats don't have enough votes alone to override. On the other hand, the got enough of a margin in the senate that Fetterman doesn't matter and they can control judicial nominations once the new senate is seated. Keep an eye out for an Alito or Thomas resignation between now and then. Trump will try to govern through executive orders and emergency orders. While those will be challenged, I suspect his SCOTUS will allow it.

  Politics ain’t beanbag. ~Finley Peter Dunne

Listened to a podcast interview with Tilly Norwood yesterday morning. Tilly is an AI creation, "an awareness project. A piece of art." Tilly is a manufactured illusion meant to approximate a human female. While I could only hear her voice, I certainly found her to carry the semblance of authenticity. Throughout the podcast, I kept thinking of Elizabeth Holmes. With her Steve Jobs black turtleneck, her artificially modulated baritone voice, her wide unblinking eyes and her head-nodding to signal sincerity, Holmes was a self-made piece of art, a human female meant to approximate a manufactured illusion of authenticity. Separating reality from fiction is getting harder and harder. https://www.tillynorwood.com/?fbclid=IwY2xjawVVQA9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBwZG9mAXNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR-7MZlsE6zgeZZ-6Zu6tmwGsu2JVD0vh8eJ8n1dTSEVnum8JRatulFvMqJFIQ_aem_h1sReU-E3C5r14kBcDs57Q

There’s a lot of brouhaha surrounding the candidate Dan J. Sullivan. There are a couple of facts that need to be upfront in any rational discussion: 1. Even if the Democrats recruited Dan J. Sullivan because his name is similar to the incumbent Republican Senator, that’s not illegal. 2. The word “incumbent” appears on the ballot next to Dan S. Sullivan’s name, so there’s no reason to be uncertain which Dan Sullivant is which. 3. Alaska has ranked choice voting. Anyone who is genuinely confused can rank one Sullivan as their first choice and the other as their second choice. If none of the candidates gets more than 50% of the vote, the weakest candidate is eliminated and the second-choice votes on those ballots are redistributed to the remaining candidates. The process continues until someone has a majority. I’ll bet most Republicans know which Sullivan to rank first, so the few who are confused and illiterate but want the incumbent to win can just rank the Sullivans 1 and 2, and if the...

All God’s critters got viruses. Not just animals and plants, but fungi and bacteria. The viruses that infect and kill bacteria are called bacteriophages (or phages, for short).   For decades, the USSR developed and used natural bacteriophages to treat bacterial infections like cholera. Even after the discovery of antibiotics, the Soviet Union continued the clinical use of bacteriophages. Now, a US company has used AI to engineer a bacteriophage to treat infections: “ Rather than searching for a virus that could kill the patient's bacteria, Omnii-1 redesigned part of a virus so it could better recognize and attack the specific bacterial strain causing the infection. The company says the AI-driven process could eventually take just days.” An increasing number of bacterial pathogens have acquired resistance to common antibiotics, and in some cases, to all available antibiotics. So, bacteriophage therapy represents a potential new tool in the bacterial arms race. How effective is it? “...

What we seem to be getting back to is the nineteenth century. Then politics tended to be centered on the fight between liberals (broadly speaking), and illiberals or anti-liberals. That struggle, and the various victories and defeats of each side, defined the history of many nations throughout that era. We thought for a while that we’d moved beyond that. We were wrong.   ~William Kristol

It’s true that the White House squeezes money and well-being from the targets of its campaign even when it doesn’t secure convictions. But when the failures are so consistent and so abject they have the effect of advertising both the President’s abuses of power and his weakness. Successfully abusing your power is a display of dominance which spreads fear. These clumsy and grasping failures more generate anger and contempt. A shrewder would-be autocrat wouldn’t have made himself so deeply unpopular, in such foreseeable ways while he was trying to impose an Orban-style autocracy. Even at this late date one with any foresight or self-control would drop these antics and focus other kinds of wrongdoing. But Trump simply can’t. We don’t diminish the gravity of Trump’s wrongdoing by noting that he is failing in this effort. ~Josh Marshall

Globalization has become tainted in our eyes, as if it necessarily constitutes a zero-sum enterprise. And its mercenary form—which is also its most common form –has indeed inflicted harm. But the global semiconductor supply chain reflects an alternative pathway. It has united its participants in the pursuit of something profoundly difficult that could not have been achieved in the absence of intercontinental solidarity. ~Gideon Lewis-Kraus

RFK Jr’s lack of knowledge about healthcare, vaccines and nutrition has been well-documented. Remarkably, this former heroin addict who cops to snorting cocaine off of a toilet seat continues to self-own his ignorance. “ There's 500 million Arabs in the world and yet they don't produce science," Kennedy said on the campaign trail Monday. "They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature." Egyptian law scholar Mohamed ElBaradei, a diplomat and vice-president of Egypt, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). ElBaradei and the IAEA, which he previously chaired, were awarded for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes. Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni journalist, politician, and human rights activist, was a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first Yemeni and the first Arab ...

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you. ~Christopher Hitchens

Property taxes are a kind of wealth tax. For most Americans, most of their wealth is in their house.   “92-year-old Pennsylvania woman   died in January   after prolonged health issues and a nightmarish six-year battle over property taxes.   “Gloria Gaynor, who was bedridden from illness, accrued $3,500 in unpaid property   taxes   in 2020. By 2025, she was facing eviction from a company that put a lien on her home after buying the unpaid debt from Delaware County   at auction,   ABC7   reported.   “This stressful scenario is one that strikes fear into the hearts of many   retirees,   and has led to a growing movement among the   baby boomer generation ( those aged 62 to 80)   to   eliminate their property taxes.” Property taxes  fund   public schools , fire and police departments, trash collection, public health programs and road maintenance, among other public services. Here in Rhode Island, our prope...

I’ve made relatively modest financial contributions to my former employer, Saint Louis Universities, targeting a couple of worthy endowment funds. Sadly, 40% of those contributions went to the university development office, even though they had no role in my decision to contribute.   Skimming political contributions is even worse: “If your $100 was in response to a fundraising text or email, the single most expensive way to raise money in American politics, $65 is instantly consumed by the cost of asking you for it. Asking this often, and this aggressively, is expensive. It means paying the data brokers who traffic in your personal information, the digital copywriters who draft the inexplicably bizarre messaging, the email and SMS providers who specialize in slipping past spam filters, the compliance lawyers, and, of course, the fundraising consultants. Another $2 goes to strategic consultants for advice on how to spend what’s left, and $14 to administration, travel, and staff. Of ...

When a business becomes critical infrastructure, its relationship with society alters. If  SpaceX  builds a near-monopoly on satellite internet, no matter how objectively good the product is, and its CEO then uses it to conduct foreign policy according to his own politics and against the interests of the United States, the company has violated the public trust.  ~Mike Brock  

There are few things I enjoy more than a sound debunking. A few years ago, I was asked to review a book on “the science of near-death experiences.” The guy who requested the review was the author, who is also the editor of Missouri Medicine. I wrote a review that expressed my deep skepticism in the gentlest terms I could summon, and it was published in Missouri Medicine. My only Amazon product review is of a book published by a colleague in the history department, and I was far less gentle with that embarrassing publication*.     I just finished reading “Morbid: Debunking modern longevity science” by Saul J. Newman. Newman is a skeptic of longevity/aging research as marketed in the popular press and pharma industry. Along the way, he takes on the claims of telomere length as a driver of aging, a field I’ve followed closely and written about. He also takes on popular nostrums like resveratrol and young blood transfusions. He explains the distinction between longevity and aging ...

Here’s   United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby  on inheritance taxes: “ Wealth inequality has become a danger to our society, and we need to address that. We should have a national wealth tax — it won't work by state because people will just move. And I think we should have inheritance taxes that get close to 100% at some level. I would pay them." I’d be fine with that. If you want to avoid the inheritance tax, give the money to your kids *before* you die. Currently, you can gift $19,000 tax-free to each child. If you’re married, each of you can gift $19,000/child/year. If your child is married, you can also gift their spouse $19,000/year. At the very least, inheritances should be taxed as income from the first dollar. Yes, I know that money was already taxed. So was the money I’ve paid sales taxes on. We tax every time money changes hands. Why should inheritances, which the recipients don’t have to work for, be any different?   https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/article/united-...

If you want to shift public opinion, you need to bring the most egregious act to the table. And bit by bit, the mainstream narrative will move toward the next, slightly less egregious thing. It’s worked, because everybody is talking about whether Nidal Hasan’s execution should be livestreamed, but nobody’s talking about why he is being executed in the first place. And in doing so, it has made a future livestreamed execution a much more realistic possibility. ~  Dr Asim Qureshi

In reality, changing the clocks doesn’t create or destroy daylight. It only changes what we call it. If you want more daylight in the winter, you need to move closer to the equator. Changing the clocks twice a year is a nuisance. It’s also unhealthy. “The switch itself does real harm. In the days after we spring forward, heart attacks rise.   One analysis   found a 24 percent jump in heart attacks on the Monday after the change.   Strokes ,   traffic crashes , and   workplace accidents climb , too. Ending the switch is worth doing. The only question is which time we keep.” But locking in Daylight Savings Time isn’t the answer. “. . . morning light and evening light are not interchangeable. Our bodies run on internal clocks that are set by the sun, not the clock on the wall. Morning light is the master signal: It resets our internal clocks each day and tells the brain to trigger a surge of cortisol. Cortisol, a hormone released by the adrenal glands, is the ...

I live in Rhode Island, about a mile from the Massachusetts border. Massachusetts Is a real state, while Rhode Island is more of a toy state.   Massachusetts has a recent history of electing moderate Republican governors—Willard “Mitt” Romney* and Charlie Baker come to mind. So I wasn’t completely surprised when MA GOP gubernatorial candidate Michael Minogue did the reasonable thing and called on his lieutenant governor running mate to end his campaign after Shawn Oliver was arrested and jailed for OUI after he drove into five parked vehicles late Saturday night, flipping his own vehicle. “Minogue said earlier Sunday that beyond calling on Oliver to end his campaign,   he would “formally ask for his resignation” should both he and the New Bedford city councilor be elected Nov. 3.” Both Minogue and Oliver are way behind in the polls. I’m glad Minogue did the right thing. *I hear you snickering, but “Obamacare” was really Romneycare. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/10/18/m...

  From a comment thread over at angrybearblog.com: "Seven different AI LLM’s were asked to determine president’s IQ, based on transcripts from his interviews, responses to questions, and speech patterns. Two declined; the remaining five ranged IQ’s between 80-110. Gemini, who assessed his IQ at 85-95 was asked if AI could be safely guard-railed by someone with his intellect and responded: ‘ start stockpiling canned goods.’"

The US dollar has been the world’s reserve currency for decades. This has meant more favorable lending conditions for America. Now, it looks like China is making a play to displace the dollar. “ Zambia is set to accept the Chinese yuan for some copper exports starting next year, marking a significant move away from US dollar dependency.   “This innovative payment approach could lower transaction costs and minimize currency exchange risks for Zambia’s crucial copper trade with China.   “China’s push to internationalize the yuan is gaining momentum, as seen in recent yuan-based energy and mineral transactions worldwide.”   China is struggling with overproduction of goods that can’t be consumed internally. Until they get their economic house in order, they won’t displace dollar dominance. But Trump is actively eroding internation trust the US good faith and credit.   https://www.facebook.com/businessinsiderssa/posts/zambia-is-set-to-accept-the-chinese-yuan-for-some-copp...