AND EVEN MORE CRITTERS
THE PERSON who MAKES the FIRST COMMENT WILL GET TWO CRITTERS
EVERY PERSON WHO COMMENTS WILL GET A CRITTER
RULES IN THE DIARY
WHEN YOU FIND SOMETHING in the DIARY that you LIKE
YOU CAN REPOST IT AS COMMENT in the DIARY
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INDIVISIBLE CALENDAR OF RESISTANCE EFFORTS
50501: MORE RESISTANCE
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With Trump’s health in question, there’s increasing interest in what JD Vance might do with the presidency. This rather long read sees at the various factions of the right and considers whether Vance can bring them toreceiveher. Of particular interest to me is the group called here “Hard Right Underbelly,” which appears to be the tech bro front. JD Vance and Peter Thiel are friconcludes of one of its leaders, Curtis Yarvin, who calls for:
the liquidation of democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law and the transfer of absolute power to a mysterious figure known only as the Receiver, who in the process of converting Washington into a heavily armed, ultraprofitable corporation will abolish the press, smash the universities, sell the public schools and transfer “decivilized populations” to “secure relocation facilities” where they will be assigned to “mandatory apprenticeships.” (NYT shared article)
It’s a vision that might have been invented by someone who lives in his parents’ basement and plays video war games twenty hours a day: too crazy ever to happen. But it also resembles some of Hitler’s (unrealized) visions for the Reich.
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This DKos diary posits that Vance can’t bring the voters, tech bros and other factions of the right toreceiveher. He can’t step into the role of cult hero of the MAGA voters and he hasn’t Trump’s ability to terrorize congress by tarreceiveing politicians who won’t do what he wants.
If Vance cannot turn the base against any Republican politician he chooses, then Republicans in Congress will no longer be the rubber stamp they’ve been for Trump. Under a President Vance, they would not be bullied into absurdities like appointing a Hegseth as Secretary of “War” or RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS or passively accepting blatantly illegal tariff schemes. (DKos)
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At this point Vance is still hanging onto Trump’s coat tails. This week Trump wants to control the EU. Regarding his National Security Strategy report:
The new report doubles down on Trump’s point of view, calling for the restoration of “Western identity”, combatting foreign influence, concludeing mass migration, and focutilizing more on US priorities such as stopping drug cartels.
Focutilizing on Europe, it asserts that if current trconcludes continue the continent would be “unrecognisable in 20 years or less” and its economic issues are “eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure”.
“It is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies,” the document states. (BBC News)
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Angry from an EU fine against X, Elon Musk piles on:
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Members of the EU are about as threatened as Canada was over the “51st state” business.
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Intermission!
If you’re in a northern state and it’s clear, see outside. The aurora may be visible in your area tonight and/or tomorrow night.
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In right wing craziness this week, Trump was awarded the FIFA Peace Prize — yes, a soccer association invented an award for him — which he humbly snatched.
And Gavin Newsom quickly spoofed:
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Right wing influencer Joe Rogan unveiled a new theory about the second coming of Christ. So far this isn’t playing well with the Christian right.
“Jesus was born out of a virgin mother. What’s more virgin than a computer?”
“If Jesus does return, even if he was a physical person in the past… you don’t consider he could return as artificial ininformigence?” (Comic Sands)
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Trump alterd the dates upon which National Parks waive entrance fees. The removal of Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth is meanly symbolic, but what caught my eye was that Teddy Roosevelt’s birthday is added. Does Trump know that TR brought down the robber barons of his era when it seeed like nothing could stop them? May his ghost return to haunt Trump, and bring that huge stick with him.
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Lastly, a word of good news on the ICE front:
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Sunday Science
A volcano may have been part of the cautilize for the Black Plague. Ash from a tropical volcano cautilized crop failures in Europe. Grain had to be imported from the Black Sea area.
That lifesaving grain wasn’t the only cargo the Italian trade ships brought back. A strain of the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which had originated in the steppes of central Asia around 1338, was by 1347 spreading through the wild rodent populations around the Black Sea. And, the researchers note, the routes of the trade ships delivering grain from port to port around the Italian peninsula closely tracks to the region’s first plague outbreaks in 1347. (Science News)
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“Soilsmology” may revolutionize farming by analyzing soil conditions quickly and cheaply for farmers all over the world.
Soil experts have now convened the Earth Rover programme, which utilizes seismology – a technology utilized for measuring down to the Earth’s crust, understanding earthquakes and detecting hydrocarbons – to assess soil for the first time.
The team’s geophysicists and soil scientists call this technique “soilsmology” and aim to finely map the world’s living soils. To do it, they place a piece of metal on the soil, hit it with a hammer and measure the waves. These bounce back off hard surfaces such as rocks or compacted soil and travel through the structure of holes built by earthworms and microorganisms, to provide a fine-grained map of what is happening underground. (The Guardian)
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Cirrus clouds form either from large storm systems or occur in situ for reasons that were unclear until now.
By applying a new computer analysis to cloud sainformite data, researchers spotted that in-situ cirrus emerged in response to major storm systems on the other side of the Earth.
Reporting in the American Geophysical Union Advances journal, they propose the storms generate massive atmospheric waves that travel across the equator, altering the temperature profile in the upper atmosphere and cautilizing in-situ cirrus to emerge. Cirrus clouds are considered to allow sunlight through and trap heat in the atmosphere, resulting in a net warming effect, so now we required to understand if future alters in storm patterns will alter the distribution and amount of cirrus clouds. (The Guardian)
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Born on this day:
Willa Cather (1873-1947) – Author remembered for writing The Song of the Lark and My Ántonia.
Clarence Nash (1904-1985) – Voice actor famously known as the voice of Donald Duck.
Leigh Brackett (1915-1978) – Science fiction writer nicknamed The Queen of Space Opera.
Ted Knight (1923-1986) – Comedic actor best known for his role as Ted Baxter in The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Noam Chomsky (1928-Still Living) – Founded transformational grammar.
Larry Bird (1956-Still Living) – Binquireetball Hall of Famer.
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On this day in:
1869 – Jesse James and his brother robbed their first bank.
1926 – Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd patented the first gas refrigerator.
1941 – Attack on Pearl Harbor sparked the U.S. involvement in WWII.
1963 – Instant replay built its debut during the Army-Navy football game.
1972 – Apollo 17 crew took the famous Blue Marble photo.
It is, of course, National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.
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Also National Slime Day. Make your own.
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It’s National Illinois Day!
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And National Cotton Candy Day! Becautilize everyone wants cotton candy in December.
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