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Words should have meaning; at least they did until Harry Blackmun decided abortion was health care, Anthony Kennedy found homosexuality to be in a “realm of personal liberty,” and John Roberts declared Obamacare was not a tax.
The Supreme Court should take this as an opportunity to reiterate two precedents that backstop the black-letter words of the Constitution and the English language. Taxing people on money they haven’t made is obscene. Opening the door to the government confiscating wealth is a betrayal of the country because that is where this concept leads. //
anon-onh5
9 hours ago
Roberts is a legalist not a justice. We're hosed. //
bk
12 hours ago
Next up: Increasing property values start affecting income taxes, not just property taxes. //
A-Nony-Mouse
3 minutes ago
taxing income at all is "obscene", IMO. The entire 16th Amendment should be repealed. While we are repealing Amendments, repeal the 17th as well and go back to the senators being appointed by the state legislatures.
he closure of Niger’s airspace dramatically widens the area over which most commercial flights between Europe and southern Africa cannot fly. Flights must already take a detour of sorts around Libya and Sudan.
Sudan’s current ban on flights went into effect in late July, but the airspace has been effectively closed since mid-April 2023 when two factions of the country’s military government escalated to armed conflict. Multiple European countries, including Germany, France, and the UK, as well as the US and Canada, prohibit their civil aircraft from operating in Libyan airspace (the Tripoli FIR).
With Niger’s airspace now off limits as well, airlines flying between Europe and southern Africa will need to reroute and add 1000 or more extra kilometers to their flights, increasing the amount of fuel each flight will need and the flight time.
Operations are slow, but the cause is not a lack of supplies; it is the insane use of mines by the Russians. As an aside, when you’re using the volume of mines the Russians are, it shows that they have no plans to counterattack in that area because they’d be caught in their minefields.
The hope for a Third Army-style ramble to the sea is probably past, but I think the measured, careful light infantry advance in the southern area will carry the day.
Reports that there has been a decrease in artillery support around Bakhmut and the willingness to give ground near Kupiansk could be significant. It is a sign that the Ukrainian high command is not trying to fight everywhere and that the resources that could make life easier on the troops in those two areas are needed elsewhere.
ian bremmer
@ianbremmer
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the evolution of global nuclear weapons: 1950-2022:
0:52 / 0:52
4:01 PM · Aug 8, 2023
Simon Ateba
@simonateba
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BREAKING: After years of discrimination and targeting, I just filed my First Amendment Rights lawsuit against @whitehouse and the @PressSec Karine Jean-Pierre. //
Without freedom of the press, there cannot be freedom. Without freedom of the press, there cannot be a free and fair election.
ECOL Video
Glenn Donovan
20 hours ago
Here’s how lame conservatives are. Garrow is a legendary progressive biographer, beyond his MLK work. This book on Obama, Rising Star, was published in 2017. I of course read it as I’ve found the only way to accurately understand a US presidency is by reading the books written after as our media sucks so badly at reporting anything accurately or in depth anymore. I knew all of this in 2017. Why on earth does it take some Leftist rag publishing an interview with the author 6 years later make a big splash? //
instead of what a bankrupt fraud of a person Obama is. How his life is defined by trying to be ‘black enough’ and how inside is a man without a sound moral compass. Fyi, this is why celebrity and wealth are what he focuses on cuz he’s empty and confused deep down inside. Due to his very effed up childhood of course.
Obama is much more white than he ever was or will be black. He hates this about himself. The reason he married Michelle is that she was called ‘white’ by other blacks where she grew up on the South Side of Chicago. The truth of Michelle is that she’s a climber and she and her family did everything they could to remove her from the black community in Chicago, from school to activities etc. They both were struggling with a legit black identity. Lol. //
Garrow is clearly a Progressive hit man and he represents that bizarre corner of Progressive politics where all they do is try to out moralize each other, nothing is ever good enough or pure enough etc. I had more empathy for Obama after reading this book.
Why? Cuz his mother and his father abandoned him. He was raised by a grandma VP of a bank and her dissolute, pothead husband – Obamas maternal Grandpa – who was a horrible influence on him as a teenager. Obama was screwed from birth by most of the member’s of his ‘family’. He emerged into the world lost, seeking an identity. Garrow’s book is deep and incisive about all of this and you get a much more human view of Obama, while of course noting his hack political vibe (he’s just a hack, always has been, it’s nothing new). He just acted white enough for Dems to try running him for POTUS. In a sense, they used him as much as he used the voters to fill up that empty spot inside of him that will always be lost and not good enough and aching for the love of his mother and father. Fame and celebrity and wealth won’t do it and I’m sure Obama has discovered this by now.
The White House just needed to create, with the help of a slavish media, narratives that could help people admit they were wrong and come around to his way of thinking.
Ironically enough, I thought of the “permission structure” remark reading David Samuels’ interview in Tablet with Obama biographer David Garrow, which is shaping up to be perhaps the most discussed piece of journalism of the year. That’s because the entire article is a really effective “permission structure” for a lot of Obama voters and moderates to finally admit he’s an entirely overrated, largely failed president who was far more radical than he ever let on. He’s also obsessed with celebrity and not very loyal to the people who helped him along the way.
In other words, he’s pretty much the guy his critics on the right said he was all along. //
As Garrow observes, “What I could never understand was Obama’s contempt for the idea of American exceptionalism. … Why would the president of the United States feel the need to disabuse his countrymen of the idea that they are special?” //
Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect America ever to stamp out racism (or any other sin for that matter), but King’s call to a virtue-based vision of equality was nonetheless deeply taken to heart by most Americans. Otherwise, the fact it took just 40 years for America to go from assassinating civil rights leaders and turning firehoses on peaceful black protesters to electing a black president is just another “historical accident.” //
Americans thought they were electing a guy who had tacitly, if not explicitly, said he would fulfill Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, a man who, in Garrow’s considered words, “did not buy into identity politics.” Instead, they got a guy invested in defending Louis Farrakhan’s vision of race in America.
Being a president in the mold of King would entail evaluating leadership failures as a matter of the content of your character and judgment. Following Farrakhan would entail blaming… well, it seems hard to believe Obama would embrace antisemitic conspiracies, but certainly there’s ample evidence that Obama and his defenders do dodge accountability by blaming a more socially acceptable villain of shadowy cabals of racists and Republicans.
Why do I loathe men who pretend to be women competing against women? Because I have always hated bullies.
Despite the remarkably small amount of used fuel generated by nuclear power, despite the fact that the penetrating radiation in that fuel is effectively gone in 600 years, after which the fuel would have to be swallowed to be harmful, the nuclear establishment is adamant that long-lived radionuclides are an extremely difficult waste problem, requiring deca-billion dollar investments in deep geologic repositories. And even then they are a lurking, barely contained danger. //
Tc-99 is regularly injected into medical patients as a by-product of Tc-99 imaging Tc-99m is by far the most popular form of internal gamma imaging. Reference \cite{doe-1996} says ``a total of approximately 38,000 diagnostic procedures involving radioactive isotopes are performed each day in the U.S. Most of these procedures use Tc-99m." Tc-99m has a decay half-life of 6 hours and a specific activity of 19.5e17 Bq/g, 300 million times higher than the Tc-99 to which it decays. It emits a 141 keV gamma. Yet it is approved by the FDA for all sorts of diagnostic purposes, including children. The approved dose varies with use; but in many cases it is in excess 1.0e9 Bq or about 52 nanograms of Tc-99m. This would be 65 mGy to the body and 3.45 Gy to the thyroid.
EPA correctly says this is safe because of the short decay half-life and the fact that the biological half-life is about 1 day.\cite{epa-2002} Every atom of Tc-99m that decays produces an atom of Tc-99. The EPA claims Tc-99 is hazardous because of its long decay half-life.\cite{epa-2002} Yet Tc-99 has the same 1 day biological half life as Tc-99m. The dose the patient receives from the supposedly hazardous Tc-99 is about 100 millionth of the dose the patient receives from the Tc-99m. The medical profession for once is correctly unconcerned. //
The repository studies are exercises in monumental hubris. The idea that we can predict what will happen 100 years from now is preposterous. The idea that we can predict what will happen 1000 years from now --- well, there is just no word for it. And then we assume this omniscient species which can foretell the future for millenia, all of a sudden forgets how to measure radiation.
The humble, prudent, common sense approach is;
1) Shield and cool the used fuel adequately. We know how to do this. It is not difficult.
2) Keep the material where you can repair the shielding as necessary.
3) In no more than 600 years, effectively all the penetrating radiation will be gone. The valuable fissile and fertile isotopes can easily be extracted. The remainder will be low level waste that can be landfilled.
Forget about predicting the future for millenia and trying to come up with a system that will last that long.
If a nuclear overnight CAPEX of $2000/kW is possible, as the South Koreans, the Chinese, and the GKG claim, why in the world would you run $4000/kW, let alone anything higher?
The answer is we've seen nuclear CAPEXes of $8000/kW and higher. Vogtle 3/4 is above $10,000/kW. Flamanville 3 is in the same range. This cannot happen in a properly functioning, competitive market. In such a market, there is only one price, the best price. If nuclear cost is as critically important to the planet as Figure 6 claims, we must figure out what turns a $2000/kW plant into a $10,000/kW plant and eliminate it. The GKG publication Why Nuclear Power has been a Flop attempts to do just that. //
Only truly cheap nuclear offers humanity what it must have: both cheap electricity and low CO2 emissions. Expensive nuclear offers humanity the choice of impoverishment or global warming.
The argument against LNT is simple and conclusive. LNT cannot replicate both the increased cancer incidence we clearly see when a large dose is received over a very short period and the lack of detectable increase when the same or much larger doses are acquired over far longer periods.1 Any model that cannot do that must be rejected.
This means we must have a replacement. That replacement harm model must be well defined. Unless you can program your harm model, you do not have a model. No qualitative handwaving about unspecified thresholds and hormesis need apply.2 The replacement must allow one to compute the harm (eg Lost Life Expectancy) associated with a given plume and population distribution. LNT can do that. The replacement must as well.
At the same time, the replacement must recognize our ability to repair radiation damage, and the fact that repair takes time. LNT cannot do this. Einstein once said ``as simple as possible, but no simpler". The Sigmoid No Threshold Model (SNT) is about as simple as you can get and still replicate both the clear harm inflicted by a dose rate spike and the lack of detectable harm from the same dose spread over a long period. //
1 In some cases, LNT is off by more than a factor of 100.
2 Hormesis holds that small, properly timed doses of radiation can be beneficial, in much the same way as vaccines.
Save a web page/selection as an eBook (.epub format) - a Chrome/Firefox/Opera Web Extension
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Free Download Manager for Windows, macOS, Android, and Linux allows you to adjust traffic usage, organize downloads, control file priorities for torrents, efficiently download large files and resume broken downloads.
FDM can boost all your downloads up to 10 times, process media files of various popular formats, drag&drop URLs right from a web browser as well as simultaneously download multiple files! //
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Millard Fillmore White House Library @FillmoreWhite
No, it's flowing faster and shrinking.
"Petermann is generally thinning, retreating, and its flow is accelerating. The acceleration stretches and thins the glacier, which makes it more prone to fractures, or rifts, that can break and form an iceberg."
earthobservatory.nasa.gov https://t.co/3sytzszdeF
Retreat at Petermann Glacier
Decades of retreat are visible from above, but harder-to-see changes below the waterline could also affect this iconic glacier’s future.
Tony Heller @TonyClimate
Greenland's Petermann Glacier has been growing about three meters per day for the past eleven years. This will not be reported by the
@nytimes
@NPR
or
@BBCNews
What are the 9 freedoms of the air?
What are transit rights and traffic rights?
Why are they vital to commercial aviation?
The freedoms of the air are a set of internationally recognized rights or privileges that govern the operations of commercial air services between different countries. The freedoms were laid down in the Chicago Convention of 1944 and are essentially designed to facilitate the movement of people and goods across borders in aircraft.
Of the nine freedoms, the first five are classed as the main ‘freedoms of the air’, and the remaining four are referred to as ‘special freedoms’.
The NTSB has issued its final report on the incident, listing the probable cause as “the Hop-a-Jet flight crew taking off without a takeoff clearance which resulted in a conflict with a JetBlue flight that had been cleared to land on an intersecting runway.” The NTSB says the the aircraft were in closest proximity when the JetBlue flight was in its landing flare about 30 feet above ground level. //
The Hop-a-Jet crew correctly read back the controller’s instructions to Line Up and Wait (LUAW), but instead began their takeoff roll as they entered the runway. The image above is taken from a video recording made by the jump seat occupant on the JetBlue E190.
How to add programs to chrooted shell environment template in Plesk?
The Court recognizes both the vital importance of a free press and the critical role that confidential sources play in the work of investigative journalists like Herridge. But applying the binding case law of this Circuit, the Court concludes that Chen’s need for the requested evidence overcomes Herridge’s qualified First Amendment privilege in this case.
Really now.
Regardless of how one feels about the press, its ability to work freely cannot be hindered by the government in any manner, including the allowance of legal action designed to silence media information sources. It bears mention that in a 2020 ruling in the matter, in the course of denying a Department of Justice request to dismiss the matter the court neither affirmed nor denied that the Privacy Act, under which Chen’ makes her claims, covers said claims.. //
While Herridge has made no public announcement regarding whether she will comply with the order instead of appealing the decision, one hopes she will not. This is important not only to her personally and professionally but to all genuine newsgathering efforts and national security itself. Without immunity from court-ordered harassment of such journalistic efforts, the Washington Post’s joke of the slogan “democracy dies in darkness” becomes chillingly real.