- Direct [link] to the mp3 file
- Experimental IPFS RSS Feed
- No Agenda 2022 Christmas Special Executive Producers:
- Sir Walkman Duke of Buckeye
- Dame Janice of the Bombing Range
- Associate Executive Producers:
- Sir Facetension, knight of the Retail Space
- Become a member of the 1516 Club, support the show here
- Title Changes
- Sir Goon > Barron Goon of the grid square 14 Sierra
- Sir Mike Gates, Viscount of Colorado> Sir Mike Gates, Count of Colorado
- Duke (never been Knighted)
- Matthew Janiszewski > Duke Matthew, the Unknighted, of Chicago
- Knights & Dames
- Sabine > Dame BienBoost of the Ultraiectum Hill Ridge Forest
- Becky Chinni> Dame Becky of the Great Katy Prairie
- Makayla King> Dame Makayla King
- Matthew Janiszewski > Duke Matthew, the Unknighted, of Chicago
- Steven Judd > Sir Uppen Budder
- Ron Sprouse > Sir Ron of the Nueces [New-A-Sis] River Canyon.
- Brian Roediger > Sir Bing, Knight of the BMWs and Bulldogs
- Shawn Stedman > Sir Facetension, knight of the Retail Space
- Chris Daly > Sir Chris of Cascadia
- Jim Andrianakos > Sir Jimitri Christmas Knight
- End of Show Mixes: Wayne Youthers - Deez Laughs & Marty J - Sir Michaelanthony
- Engineering, Stream Management & Wizardry
- Mark van Dijk - Systems Master
- Ryan Bemrose - Program Director
- Clip Custodian: Neal Jones
- Climate Change
- NASA: Yes, it's freezing cold. No, that doesn't mean climate change is a hoax
- Just because it's cold for a day, a week, or a season, it doesn't mean global warming is over. All months have been warming since recordkeeping began in 1880, including December. The main cause: human activities
- The Eco-Dictatorship Coming Your Way – Watts Up With That?
- Izabella Kaminska, formerly the Editor of the FT’s Alphaville and now the Editor of the Blind Spot, has flagged up an alarming passage in a document published in January 2021 by Deutsche Bank Research entitled ‘What we must do to Rebuild’. Eric Heyman has written the section about the tough choices the EU must face it if’s to meet its goal of achieving ‘climate neutrality’ by 2050 – Net Zero, in other words
- Southwest was shortage, not weather BOTG Joe
- My Enilria.com people are saying most of the Southwest cancels (which are much worse than other airlines this week) are not weather but both pilot shortage and also ground staff. Supposedly 150 Southwest rampers walked out in Denver of dangerous conditions. Southwest denied it in a way that implied it and the way that was worded only denied it was exactly 150 lol.
- The Subsidy Tango of Bill Gates and Joe Manchin - WSJ
- Bill Gates sold West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin on this year’s Democratic climate spending blowout as a way to put unemployed coal workers to work building advanced nuclear reactors. Now we learn, belatedly, that these projects depend on Russia for fuel and will cost taxpayers more than advertised.
- Food Intelligence
- Synthetic Meat Will Change the Ethics of Eating - WSJ
- Upside Foods is one of a host of startups using cutting-edge biological techniques, known collectively as synthetic biology or synbio, in search of more environmentally friendly, less ethically fraught foods and other materials. The customer is “anyone who loves to eat but really cares. They care about animal cruelty, or they care about the future of our planet,” says Anne Gerow, a spokeswoman for Perfect Day, founded in 2014 by two self-described “struggling new vegans.” To make “animal-free dairy” products, Perfect Day genetically tweaks microflora so they excrete whey just like that found in milk.
- Elon / Twitter
- It appears "dunking" is what leftists fucks call it when they are being "abusive" and "hurtful" online.
- Shiva calls out 'Limited Hangout'
- Excellent interview of Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, who proves that everyone involved in releasing The Twitter Files (Elon Musk, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, etc.) and even Tucker Carlson manipulate what news we receive, in what amounts we receive it, etc.
- Dr. Shiva filed a federal lawsuit against the government back in 2020 after he received irrefutable evidence that the Massachusetts government used the Twitter Partners Support Portal to cancel him on Twitter.
- Tucker Carlson and others knew all about this in 2020 and sat on the story.
- VAERS
- Blood clot risk remains elevated nearly a year after COVID-19 | American Heart Association
- People who got COVID-19 had a higher risk of dangerous blood clots for close to a year later, according to a large new study on the aftereffects of a SARS-CoV-2 infection during the period before vaccines became available.
- As seen in previous studies, COVID-19 was linked to a sharply increased risk of blood clot-related issues – including heart attack and stroke – immediately after diagnosis compared to people who never had COVID-19. But the new study found that risk remained higher for some problems up to 49 weeks later.
- Energy & Inflation
- The Subsidy Tango of Bill Gates and Joe Manchin - WSJ
- Bill Gates sold West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin on this year’s Democratic climate spending blowout as a way to put unemployed coal workers to work building advanced nuclear reactors. Now we learn, belatedly, that these projects depend on Russia for fuel and will cost taxpayers more than advertised.
- BLM LGBBTQQIAAPK+ Noodle Boy
- Language expert ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD reveals all about 2022 bizarre new words | Daily Mail Online
- Flockdown
- Confining birds, especially chickens, indoors to prevent the spread of avian flu.
- Rain bomb
- A sudden gust of wind during a thunderstorm that blows down from the sky, bringing with it a large quantity of rain.
- Meatspace
- The physical world, in contrast to cyberspace.
- Sponcon
- Content posted on social media that appears as a typical post but which is actually a paid-for advertisement.
- Kniffiti
- Knitted or sometimes crocheted, items left in public places as decoration.
- Fexting
- The act of fighting with someone by exchanging text messages rather than speaking on the phone or face-to-face.
- Copypasta
- Data that’s been copied and spread online.
- Warm bank
- A heated building used by those who can’t afford to warm their own homes
- Quiet quitting
- Doing no more work than one is contractually obliged to do
- Fluffernutter
- A sandwich of marshmallow spread and peanut butter on white bread
- Thermal tourism
- Travel to a warmer country in the winter to shun the cold weather and higher heating bills of one’s own country.
- Vibe shift
- A significant change in the prevailing culture.
- Lawfare
- Strategic use of legal proceedings to intimidate or hinder an opponent.
- Flurona
- Being infected with flu and Covid-19 at the same time.
- Splooting
- The act of lying flat on the stomach with the legs stretched out, to counter unusually high temperatures.
- Flatforms
- Boardroom appropriate smart trainers.
- Ankling
- A pedalling technique to increase efficiency in which the heel is lowered on the downstroke and lifted on the upstroke.
- Manicule
- A typographic mark depicting a hand with a pointing forefinger.
- Cosy crime
- Light-hearted crime fiction set in a small community, without any explicit violence.
- Sharenting
- The act of sharing news, images or videos of one’s children on social media.
- Nepo baby
- Child of an actor, a model or a musician who achieves success because of their famous parent.
- Shrubbing
- The act of pronouncing a word in another language in a manner influenced by one’s mother tongue.
- Brown noise
- A low, rumbling sound considered an inducement to sleep and relaxation.
- Scream pot
- A clay vessel you can scream into to release anger and frustration.
- Soysage
- A vegetarian sausage made with soy protein.
- Villagise
- To relocate people to designated villages (often compulsorily or forcibly).
- Thriftifarian
- Someone well-off who pretends they have to spend less money in order to appear to be in the same situation as others.
- Luxury detective
- One whose job it is to find rare, expensive handbags, watches and jewellery to sell.
- Frugaller
- One who avoids wasting food or other resources and spends as little money as possible.
- Disco nanny
- One whose job it is to look after a family’s children overnight during a holiday, while the parents go out to parties and clubs.
- Wearapy
- The choosing of clothes to make the wearer feel comforted.
- Milestone anxiety
- A condition that makes someone feel on edge because they haven’t achieved the same landmarks as their peers.
- Jobfishing
- The illegal practice of recruiting people to work for a company that doesn’t exist.
- Skimpflation
- When the price of a product or service stays the same but the quality worsens.
- Hypermiling
- A careful driving technique that minimises the amount of fuel used.
- Tappigraphy
- The study of how someone taps the keys on their mobile phone, thought to provide information on their personality.
- Silvfluencer
- A middle-aged or elderly person paid to promote products on social media.
- Queenager
- A woman of middle age or older who leads a busy life, has fun and dresses stylishly.
- Holistorexia
- Extreme obsession with one’s health and wellness.
- Tattleware
- Software that allows an employer to monitor someone working from home.
- Digidog
- Canine trained by police to use its sense of smell to find digital devices used by criminals.
- Carolean
- The new monarchical era relating to King Charles III.
- STORIES
- Shoplifting Fuels a $94.5 Billion Problem at American Stores - WSJ
- A massive rise in theft is chipping away at an advantage brick-and-mortar retailers have over e-commerce companies: the ability to touch the merchandise.
- Brick-and-mortar retail's indisputable edge over e-commerce is that consumers can get what they want immediately, and can touch and feel the product before buying it. Rising theft'--and stores' measures to prevent it'--could dull that edge.
- The National Retail Federation estimates that shrink'--an industry term for loss in inventory'--amounted to roughly 1.4% of retail revenue in 2021, or roughly $94.5 billion. Most of that shrink is caused by theft. In a CNBC interview earlier this month, Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon said...
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- Brick-and-mortar retail's indisputable edge over e-commerce is that consumers can get what they want immediately, and can touch and feel the product before buying it. Rising theft'--and stores' measures to prevent it'--could dull that edge.
- The National Retail Federation estimates that shrink'--an industry term for loss in inventory'--amounted to roughly 1.4% of retail revenue in 2021, or roughly $94.5 billion. Most of that shrink is caused by theft. In a CNBC interview earlier this month, Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon said that if the retail theft issue is not addressed over time, ''prices will be higher and/or stores will have to close.''
- Although shrink is a perennial problem in retail, it really took off when the pandemic hit. In the five years leading up to 2019, retail shrink grew at a compound annual growth rate of roughly 7%, according to data from the NRF. In 2020, it jumped 47%, and rose another 4% on top of that huge jump in 2021. Some retailers, including Ulta Beauty and Target, have said that shrink has gotten worse again this year. ''When times get tough, shrink goes up,'' Ulta Beauty Chief Financial Officer Scott Settersten said on the company's earnings call on Dec. 1. We've seen that in retail over a long period of time.''
- Retailers surveyed by the NRF said Covid-19 has worsened the risk of crime, partly because labor shortages have made it difficult to fully staff stores. Moreover, supply-chain shortages made certain products more susceptible to theft because they fetched high value in secondary markets, according to Mark Mathews, vice president of research development and industry analysis at NRF. Supply-chain delays during the pandemic also meant more cargo was sitting around, leaving it more vulnerable to theft.
- Shrink can have a substantial impact on already thin retail margins. Target said that the rise in shrink, including theft, reduced its gross profit by more than $400 million in the first three quarters of its fiscal year, compared with a year prior. For the full fiscal year, it estimates that its gross profit will take a $600 million hit. Dollar Tree in its November earnings call said that shrink and inflationary cost pressures shaved 1 percentage point off its operating margin at its namesake stores in its most recent quarter and 1.7 percentage points at its Family Dollar stores, which tend to be located in more urban areas. That is substantial for a company whose consolidated operating margin was 5.5% in the quarter.
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- Drugstores are especially susceptible because they are located and designed for convenience, said Read Hayes, a research scientist for the Loss Prevention Research Council. ''It's a quick in, quick out [layout] with valuable electronics, over-the-counter drugs, cosmetics and beauty care, which are desirable and mobile items,'' he said. Drugstores also tend to have fewer employees.
- Walgreens Boots Alliance's CFO James Kehoe said on an earnings call in January that shrink was expected to hit net income ''in excess of $0.15 a share'' this fiscal year compared with prior expectations. He estimated that shrink amounts to 3.25% of the company's revenue, up from the historical norm of just a little over 2% In its last earnings call, Walgreens said its mitigation efforts have helped improve shrink rates. Rite Aid said in September that its shrink was $5 million larger in its quarter ended Aug. 27 compared with a year earlier.
- Mitigation measures can range from the most basic physical ones'--such as locking up items'--to more technologically sophisticated ones, such as video surveillance with facial recognition. Some measures are designed to make the product less valuable for theft. These include ink tags, which stain clothes when removed, and products that must be activated by the cashier in order to be used. Some cordless power tools will only start functioning if the firmware is activated at the point of sale, for example, according to Mr. Hayes of the Loss Prevention Research Council.
- More subtle measures include placing high-value items further away from the entrance or having employees stand close to those products. Scott Mushkin,
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- equity analyst at R5 Capital, said Walmart's store layout stands out. ''They have a good funnel in, funnel out system without deteriorating the store experience so much that it's a problem,'' he said.
- E-commerce may be an unwitting beneficiary of physical retail's woes. Nothing dampens a physical shopping experience quite like having to summon staff to unlock each item. Or walking into an electronics store to try out different types of headphones, only to find QR codes to scan. Earlier this year, Mr. Mushkin placed a ''sell'' rating on Best Buy stock after visiting more than 35 stores and observing that in many stores, products were locked up or removed from the floor.
- Online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay can be secondary markets of choice for many offenders to quickly convert goods into cash. Some 95% of retailers surveyed by the NRF said they found stolen gift cards sold online. That tension between bricks and clicks came to a head last year, when retailers pushed for legislation to require more disclosure from sellers on online marketplaces.
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- Amazon and eBay opposed an earlier version of that bill, saying that it favors large brick-and-mortar retailers at the expense of small businesses that sell online. Both companies, however, said they support a revised version of the bill'--known as the Inform Consumers Act'--that passed in the House in November. EBay said in a press release in late 2021 that it supported the updated bill because it removes some burdensome requirements, such as collecting sellers' drivers' licenses. It also noted that the timeline for verification was extended to lessen the burden on sellers.
- Retailers will ultimately pay for shrink risk in some form or another'--either on the top line if they want to keep stores completely accessible or on the bottom line if they spend heavily on labor and mitigation measures. Finding the right balance will be key to preserving brick-and-mortar businesses.
- Write to Jinjoo Lee at jinjoo.lee@wsj.com
- Home | Too Many Eggs
- This book started as a notebook for my reference. I had two dozen laying hens '-- laying daily. This was a complete blunder on my part. I over-estimated how many eggs my family would eat, and under-estimated how many eggs those hens could lay. Two dozen hens lay two dozen eggs a day, on average, in their first year of production. Even as they aged, and slowed in their egg laying, they still managed to provide way more eggs than needed for a few fried eggs every morning
- I quickly got to the point where all my neighbors were saying ''no thanks'' to me gifting them even more cartons of eggs, (I had a minimum of nine dozen eggs stacked up in my refrigerator any day of the week). I became determined to find recipes to use a lot more eggs. I needed EGG recipes.
- Into my notebook I would jot down recipe ideas utilizing six or more eggs. (I would shriek with joy when a dozen eggs were called for.) I have cooked every recipe in this book. I discovered some wonderful recipes '' savory recipes, obscure recipes, and some surprising things. The more eggs I cooked, the more ways I cooked them, the more I searched for more recipes. It was a multiple year obsession for me. My fascination reached beyond simply cooking eggs, but into the rich history of recipes, there origins, and categorizing the methods of cooking.
- My obsession became so bad that my husband would intervene if the word ''egg'' came up in any conversation. (''No. Stop. Don't ask her about eggs!'')
- This book is for people who have gotten into the backyard poultry bandwagon. And it is really for people (like me) who find it exciting to sit down and read a good, dense cookbook.
- Airlines cancel 5,700 U.S. flights amid fierce winter storms
- An American Airlines plane is de-iced as high winds whip around 7.5 inches of new snow at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Thursday, December 22, 2022.
- Star Tribune Via Getty Images | Star Tribune | Getty Images
- Airline cancellations topped 5,700 U.S. flights on Friday as massive winter storms snarled airport operations around the United States and frustrated tens of thousands of holiday travelers.
- That followed nearly 2,700 canceled flights on Thursday, while just over 1,000 flights have already been canceled for Saturday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.
- Passenger railroad Amtrak has canceled dozens of trains through Christmas, disrupting holiday travel for thousands.
- Highways in the Midwest faced lengthy delays because of snowy weather or crashes and authorities in parts of Indiana, Michigan, New York and Ohio urged motorists to avoid nonessential travel.
- The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed ground stops or delays for de-icing at a number of U.S. airports because of winter weather.
- Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN the U.S. aviation system "is operating under enormous strain" with two different storms and high winds affecting airports around the country. About 10% of U.S. flights were canceled on Thursday, Buttigieg said.
- Another 10,400 U.S. flights were delayed on Friday - including more than 40% of those operated by American Airlines <AAL.O>, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines - after 11,300 flights were delayed Thursday.
- Southwest canceled 1,238 flights on Friday, 29% of all its scheduled flights, while Alaska Airlines <ALK.N> canceled 507, or 64%, of its flights.
- Seattle-Tacoma International Airport had 357 flights, or 63% of departures, canceled Friday. The FAA lifted a ground stop there due to snow and ice but late Friday delays were still averaging nearly three hours.
- Nearly half of departing flights at Detroit Metro were canceled, along with 70% at Portland, 38% at New York's LaGuardia, 29% at Chicago O'Hare and 27% at Boston.
- Chicago was facing dangerously cold temperatures with wind chills hitting minus 24 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31 Celsius).
- US moving bioweapons research out of Ukraine '' Moscow '-- RT Russia & Former Soviet Union
- Unfinished projects are being relocated to Central Asian and Eastern European countries, according to the Russian military
- Washington has been moving its bioweapons research out of Ukraine, the head of Russia's Nuclear Biological and Chemical Defense Troops has claimed. This comes after the research laboratories' existence was exposed under the Trump presidency.
- ''The Pentagon is actively working to transfer its unfinished research projects to the countries in Central Asia and Eastern Europe,'' Igor Kirillov insisted during a briefing on Saturday.
- The US has also been boosting cooperation with Cambodia, Singapore, Thailand, Kenya and other nations in the Indo-Pacific and Africa, with ''the US Department of Defense being most interested in countries that already possess laboratories with a high level of bioÑontainment,'' he added.
- According to the commander, data on illegal, US-backed laboratories in Ukraine was presented at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons conference, which took place in Geneva between November 28 and December 16.
- It included ''documentary evidence that work with components of biological weapons and studies of pathogens of especially dangerous and economically significant infections had been carried out on the territory of Ukraine with financial, scientific, technical and personnel support of the US,'' he noted.
- Papers obtained by Russia during its military operation in Ukraine reveal that ''military-biological programs'' were run through the Mechnikov Anti-Plague Research Institute in Kiev, the Institute of Veterinary Medicine in Kharkov and the Lviv-based Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene, Kirillov claimed.
- The files also mentioned three Pentagon contractors and seven high-ranking officials of the US Department of Defense, he added.
- The full text of a report by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) on its work in Ukraine, seen by the Russian military, contained data, ''confirming the conduct of exercises and training activities with pathogens of especially dangerous infections'' in Ukraine, Kirillov said. When the Pentagon released this report to the public, 80% of its content had been redacted, he pointed out.
- According to the Russian commander, the head of the American delegation at the conference declined to respond to Russia's accusations of violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) by his country.
- ''Such a stance by the US and its blocking of any initiatives to resume work on the verification mechanism of the CWC once again confirms that Washington has something to hide, and that ensuring transparency in terms of compliance with the convention doesn't play into the hands of the Americans,'' he said.
- However, the report by Russia didn't go unnoticed by other countries and ''made many member-states reflect on the risks posed by cooperation with Washington in the military-biological area,'' Kirillov stressed.
- The Russian military has been gradually releasing materials on the work of the US-backed biolabs in Ukraine since March. Washington has denied Mocsow's bioweapons claims, calling them disinformation and a conspiracy theory used by Russia to justify its military operation.
- Lastpass: Hackers Stole Customer Vault Data in Cloud Storage Breach - Data Vulnerable to Master Password Bruteforce - Sensitive Customer Info Also Taken
- By No Bullshit Bitcoin in News '-- Dec 23, 2022 Customer account information and related metadata including company names, end-user names, billing addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, and IP addresses were also compromised.
- We have determined that once the cloud storage access key and dual storage container decryption keys were obtained, the threat actor copied information from backup that contained basic customer account information and related metadata including company names, end-user names, billing addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, and the IP addresses from which customers were accessing the LastPass service.The threat actor was also able to copy a backup of customer vault data from the encrypted storage container which is stored in a proprietary binary format that contains both unencrypted data, such as website URLs, as well as fully-encrypted sensitive fields such as website usernames and passwords, secure notes, and form-filled data. These encrypted fields remain secured with 256-bit AES encryption and can only be decrypted with a unique encryption key derived from each user's master password using our Zero Knowledge architecture. The master password is never known to LastPass and is not stored or maintained by LastPass.The threat actor may attempt to use brute force to guess your master password and decrypt the copies of vault data they took. Weak master passwords are at risk.The threat actor may also target customers with phishing attacks, credential stuffing, or other brute force attacks against online accounts associated with your LastPass vault. In order to protect yourself against social engineering or phishing attacks, it is important to know that LastPass will never call, email, or text you and ask you to click on a link to verify your personal information. Other than when signing into your vault from a LastPass client, LastPass will never ask you for your master password.Operate under the assumption that all data hosted on LastPass was compromised. Change your passwords. Use self hosted alternatives going forward: bitwarden, keepass, or a paper notebook.
- Russia could cut oil output, won't sell supplies under Western price cap '-- minister - Business & Economy - TASS
- MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has said Russia will prefer to cutting oil production over supplies under a Western price cap, the Asharq News television channel reported.
- "What is the Russian Federation saying? We won't supply oil under contracts that will indicate a price cap that's proposed by Western countries. That's ruled out. That's what the Russian president said - that Russia won't supply oil under deals that will indicate caps," he said.
- "How will that impact the economy, the country's budget, the production volume? Yes, it's possible production volumes will need to be limited somewhere. But we are seeing now that our companies, our oil producing companies are rerouting their supplies from the west to the east, south, other countries. We are looking for new oil customers, and as demand for oil, according to forecasts by agencies, will rise, the situation will to a large extent depend on the performance of global economy. So, the demand for oil will rise. We will look for other markets, other logistics. That may be more expensive," the minister said.
- On December 5, an embargo on maritime Russian oil shipments to the European Union came into force. Moreover, EU states also agreed on a price cap for Russian oil delivered by sea, setting the ceiling at $60 a barrel. A similar decision was announced by the G7 and Australia. The West is also banning its companies from providing transportation, financial and insurance services to tankers carrying oil from Russia at a price above the agreed-on ceiling.
- Russia is readying a decree in response to these measures. Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that Russia intended to create and launch a mechanism by the end of 2022 that would prohibit Russian companies from trading oil with countries complying with the price cap.
- On December 22, the European Union officially approved a dynamic ceiling on gas prices at the level of Ð180 per megawatt-hour (approximately Ð1,850 per 1,000 cubic meters). The restriction will enter into force on February 15, 2023.
- The Eco-Dictatorship Coming Your Way '' Watts Up With That?
- From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
- Izabella Kaminska, formerly the Editor of the FT's Alphaville and now the Editor of the Blind Spot, has flagged up an alarming passage in a document published in January 2021 by Deutsche Bank Research entitled 'What we must do to Rebuild'. Eric Heyman has written the section about the tough choices the EU must face it if's to meet its goal of achieving 'climate neutrality' by 2050 '' Net Zero, in other words '' and says the following:
- The impact of the current climate policy on people's everyday lives is still quite abstract and acceptable for many households. Climate policy comes in the form of higher taxes and fees on energy, which make heating and mobility more expensive. Some countries have set minimum energy efficiency standards for buildings or similar rules in other areas. However, climate policy does not determine our lives. We take key consumption decisions, for example whether we travel at all, how much we travel and which means of transport we use, whether we live in a large house or a small apartment and how we heat our homes, how many electronic devices we have and how intensely we use them or how much meat and exotic fruit we eat. These decisions tend to be made on the basis of our income, not on climate considerations.
- If we really want to achieve climate neutrality, we need to change our behaviour in all these areas of life. This is simply because there are no adequate cost-effective technologies yet to allow us to maintain our living standards in a carbon-neutral way. That means that carbon prices will have to rise considerably in order to nudge people to change their behaviour. Another (or perhaps supplementary) option is to tighten regulatory law considerably. I know that ''eco-dictatorship'' is a nasty word. But we may have to ask ourselves the question whether and to what extent we may be willing to accept some kind of eco-dictatorship (in the form of regulatory law) in order to move towards climate neutrality.
- When he says we have to ''ask ourselves'... whether and to what extent we may be willing to accept some kind of eco-dictatorship'' I don't think he has a Net Zero referendum in mind. Rather, by 'ourselves' he means the EU's ruling class. It has to ask itself whether it's willing to pass laws forcing the EU's population to modify its behaviour to meet the 2050 'climate neutrality' target, regardless of whether it has a democratic mandate to do so or not.
- Read the full article here.
- We really should not be surprised. We have had many warnings of what is in store for us in recent years.
- For instance, just a year ago the German Health Minister told us himself:
- ''I think we need certain restrictions to contain climate change. That means less travel is part of it as well. I cannot even rule out that during the climate crisis, we could end up in a situation where we would have to prohibit certain things
- GERMANY '' German health minister says Climate change travel restrictions and prohibited behaviour will be required.But it's just a conspiracy theory, even if you quote him ð¤pic.twitter.com/2qB0h7eGDY
- '-- Bernie's Tweets (@BernieSpofforth) December 22, 2022 5 12 votes
- report: Google reshuffles to meet ChatGPT threat ' The Register
- In brief Sundar Pichai is apparently all in a pickle over OpenAI's ChatGPT engine, and is gearing up Google to meet the perceived threat.
- According to an internal memo seen by the New York Times, Pichai has "upended the work of numerous groups inside the company to respond to the threat that ChatGPT," and is plucking staff from other divisions to meet the threat to the OpenAI's plans. It's reportedly considered a "Code Red" for the Chocolate Factory.
- At issue is whether Google's core product, search, will be displaced by AI systems that can give more accurate research results, and that's a big if, for the moment at least.
- "No company is invincible; all are vulnerable," said Margaret O'Mara, a professor at the University of Washington. "For companies that have become extraordinarily successful doing one market-defining thing, it is hard to have a second act with something entirely different."
- The report suggests that Google will make a series of AI announcements on May to meet the growing threats to the search giant's business model. We'll see if these are functional products or just Google playing catch up.
- Google has dominated the search market for 20 years, and anything that threatens that highly lucrative business - which makes up around 90 percent of Alphabet's profits - is something Sundar might well have reason to fear.
- ArtStation cracks down on anti-AI art protestsThe ongoing fight between human artists and ArtStation, the Epic Games-owned site that displays the images and, it's claimed, exploits the data for AI purposes, has stepped up a notch.
- Last week many users of the site protested at the use of their uncredited images to train AI generation models for art. The fear is that ArtStation is allowing AI trainers to take legitimate human work and not only create art, but also potentially drive artists out of business. In response artists started posting "AI is theft" banners on their profile pages.
- Now ArtStation has reportedly lowered the boom and is banning such subversive creations. "For site usability, we are moderating posts that violate our Terms of Service," it said on Twitter.
- "We understand concerns about AI and its impact on the industry. We will share more about improvements to give users more control over what they see and how they use ArtStation in the near future."
- In other words, suck it up you creative types. This one is likely to play out for some time.
- US senator shuts the door on AI as he walks outThe outgoing Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) has introduced the Facial Accountability, Clarity, and Efficiency In Technology Act (FACE IT) to Congress calling for much tighter controls on the US federal government using AI-powered facial recognition technology.
- The statute would require the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to set minimum acceptable accuracy standards for facial recognition technology, allow citizens an opt-out from being identified solely by such systems. It also wants to ensure a human authority must give authority for such systems to be used.
- "Facial recognition technology can be used to help protect our communities, but I am concerned about the potential for abuse," Portman, who leaves Congress in January, said.
- "I'm proud to introduce the FACE IT Act because, given the civil liberty implications of the federal government's use of facial recognition technology, we must pass legislation to set rules for the use of this technology. We must make sure federal law enforcement and other agencies have the tools to do their jobs well, but it is vital that we set rules for those tools."
- He also introduced the Stopping Unlawful Negative Machine Impacts through National Evaluation Act, which would "clarify that existing civil rights laws apply to decisions made by AI systems just as if those decisions were made by humans."
- The proposed laws, which seemingly have little chance of making it onto the statute books given the fractious state of Congress, seems mostly about publicity and a possible future lobbying career than an attempt to fix solid policy in place.
- Twitter Files Thread: The Spies Who Loved Twitter
- After weeks of ''Twitter Files'' reports, the FBI issued a statement Wednesday.
- It didn't refute allegations. Instead, it decried ''conspiracy theorists'' publishing ''misinformation,'' whose ''sole aim'' is to ''discredit the agency.''
- 3. They must think us unambitious, if our ''sole aim'' is to discredit the FBI. After all, a whole range of government agencies discredit themselves in the #TwitterFiles. Why stop with one?
- 4. The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government '' from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.
- 5. The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors - from local cops to media to state government.
- 6. Thousands upon thousands of official ''reports'' flowed through the FITF and the FBI's San Francisco field office.
- 7. On June 29th, 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan wrote to pair of Twitter execs asking if he could invite an ''OGA'' to an upcoming NGO-sponsored conference:
- 8. OGA, or ''Other Government Organization,'' is often a euphemism for CIA, and according to multiple former intelligence officials and contractors.
- 9. Chuckles one: ''They use it to seem mysterious to outsiders.''
- 10. ''Other Government Agency (the place where I worked for 27 years),'' says retired CIA officer Ray McGovern.
- 11. It was an open secret at Twitter that one of its executives was ex-CIA, which is why Chan referred to that executive's ''former employer.''
- The first Twitter executive abandons all pretense to stealth and emails that the employee ''used to work for the CIA, so that is Elvis's question.''
- Senior legal executive Stacia Cardille, who had good op-sec by Twitter standards, replies, ''I know'' and ''I thought my silence was understood.''
- Cardille then passes on conference details to recently-hired ex-FBI lawyer Jim Baker.
- ''I invited the FBI and the CIA virtually will attend too,'' Cardille says to Baker, casually adding: ''No need for you to attend.''
- 16 . The government was in constant contact not just with Twitter but with virtually every major tech firm.
- These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others.
- One of the most common forums was a regular meeting of the multi-agency Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), attended by spates of executives, FBI personnel, and '' nearly always '' one or two attendees marked ''OGA.''
- The FITF meeting agendas virtually always included, at or near the beginning, an ''OGA briefing,'' usually about foreign matters (hold that thought).
- Despite its official remit being ''Foreign Influence,'' the FITF and the SF FBI office became conduit for mountains of domestic moderation requests, from state governments, even local police:
- Many requests arrived via Teleporter, a one-way platform in which many communications were timed to vanish:
- Especially as the election approached in 2020, the FITF/FBI overwhelmed Twitter with requests, sending spreadsheets with hundreds of accounts:
- Email after email came from the San Francisco office heading into the election, often adorned with an Excel attachment:
- There were so many government requests, Twitter employees had to improvise a system for prioritizing/triaging them:
- The FBI was clearly tailoring searches to Twitter's policies. FBI requests were almost always phrased as ''possible terms of service violation'' somewhere, even in the subject line:
- Twitter executives noticed the FBI appeared to be assigning personnel to look for Twitter violations.
- ''They have some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations. This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days,'' remarked Cardille.
- Even ex-FBI lawyer Jim Baker agreed: ''Odd that they are searching for violations of our policies.''
- Although so much of this activity was domestic, ''Foreign meddling'' had been the ostensible justification for expanded moderation since platforms like Twitter were dragged to the Hill by the Senate in 2017:
- Yet behind the scenes, Twitter executives struggled against government claims of foreign interference, on their platform and others:
- The #TwitterFiles show execs under constant pressure to validate theories of foreign influence '' and unable to find evidence for key assertions.
- ''Found no links to Russia,'' says one analyst, but suggests he could ''brainstorm'' to ''find a stronger connection.''
- ''Extremely tenuous circumstantial chance of being related,'' says another.
- ''No real matches using the info,'' says former Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth in another case, noting some links were ''clearly Russian,'' but another was a ''house rental in South Carolina?''
- In another case, Roth concludes a series of Venezuelan pro-Maduro accounts are unrelated to Russia's Internet Research Agency, because they're too high-volume:
- The Venezuelans ''were extremely high-volume tweeters'... pretty uncharacteristic of a lot of the other IRA activity,'' Roth says.
- In a key email, news that the State Department is making a wobbly public assertion of Russian influence leads an exec '' the same one with the ''OGA'' past - to make a damning admission:
- ''Due to a lack of technical evidence on our end, I've generally left it be, waiting for more evidence,'' he says. ''Our window on that is closing, given that government partners are becoming more aggressive on attribution.''
- Translation: the ''more aggressive'' ''government partners'' had closed Twitter's ''window'' of independence.
- ''Other Government Agencies'' ended up sharing intelligence through the FBI and FITF not just with Twitter, but with Yahoo!, Twitch, Clouldfare, LinkedIn, even Wikimedia:
- CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou believes these reports found in the #TwitterFiles are written by his former agency.
- ''Looks right on to me,'' Kiriakou says, noting that ''what was cut off above [the ''tearline''] was the originating CIA office and all the copied offices.''
- These reports are far more factually controversial than domestic counterparts.
- One intel report lists accounts tied to ''Ukraine 'neo-Nazi' Propaganda.''' This includes assertions that Joe Biden helped orchestrate a coup in 2014 and ''put his son on the board of Burisma.''
- Another report asserts a list of accounts accusing the ''Biden administration'' of ''corruption'' in vaccine distribution are part of a Russian influence campaign:
- Often intelligence comes in the form of brief reports, followed by long lists of accounts deemed to be pro-Maduro, pro-Cuba, pro-Russia, etc: This batch contained over 1000 accounts sentenced to the digital beyond:
- One report says a site ''documenting purported rights abuses committed by Ukrainians'' is directed by Russian agents:
- Intel about the origin of these accounts might be true. But so might the information in them '' about neo-Nazis, or rights abuses in Donbas, etc.
- This is a difficult speech dilemma. Should the government be allowed to try to prevent Americans (and others) from seeing pro-Maduro or anti-Ukrainian accounts?
- Often intel reports are just long lists of newspapers, tweets or YouTube videos guilty of ''anti-Ukraine narratives'':
- Sometimes - not always -Twitter and YouTube blocked the accounts. But now we know for sure what Roth meant by ''the Bureau (and by extension the IC).''
- The line between ''misinformation'' and ''distorting propaganda'' is thin. Are we comfortable with so many companies receiving so many reports from a ''more aggressive'' government?
- The CIA declined to comment on the nature of its relationship to tech companies like Twitter. Watch @bariweiss , @shellenbergerMD , @lhfang , and this space for more, on issues ranging from Covid-19 to Twitter's relationship to congress, and more.
- The Subsidy Tango of Bill Gates and Joe Manchin - WSJ
- The West Virginia Senator and the billionaire investor score a windfall in the Inflation Reduction Act.
- Bill Gates sold West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin on this year's Democratic climate spending blowout as a way to put unemployed coal workers to work building advanced nuclear reactors. Now we learn, belatedly, that these projects depend on Russia for fuel and will cost taxpayers more than advertised.
- The Energy Department last year awarded up to $2 billion for an advanced nuclear reactor ''demonstration'' project in Wyoming being developed by TerraPower, a company Mr. Gates founded. These advanced reactors have been promoted because...
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- Bill Gates sold West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin on this year's Democratic climate spending blowout as a way to put unemployed coal workers to work building advanced nuclear reactors. Now we learn, belatedly, that these projects depend on Russia for fuel and will cost taxpayers more than advertised.
- The Energy Department last year awarded up to $2 billion for an advanced nuclear reactor ''demonstration'' project in Wyoming being developed by TerraPower, a company Mr. Gates founded. These advanced reactors have been promoted because they take up significantly less space than conventional reactors and could theoretically use reprocessed nuclear fuel.
- TerraPower's reactors will also supposedly be able to ramp up and down to balance intermittent solar and wind power on the grid. But the technology currently requires enormous government subsidies to be commercially viable. Reactors also require many more years to build than renewable and fossil-fuel plants owing to stricter licensing requirements and environmental reviews.
- TerraPower planned to complete the Wyoming generator by 2028 assuming no hang-ups. There always are. So it wasn't surprising when TerraPower disclosed this month that completion will be delayed by at least two years. But the reason was alarming: TerraPower was counting on Russia to supply it with high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel.
- ''In February 2022, Russia's invasion of Ukraine caused the only commercial source of HALEU fuel to no longer be a viable part of the supply chain for TerraPower, as well as for others in our industry,'' CEO Chris Levesque said, adding ''it has become clear that domestic and allied HALEU manufacturing options will not reach commercial capacity in time.''
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- Wyoming GOP Sen. John Barrasso followed with a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm asking why she hadn't moved to ''accelerate the availability of commercially enriched HALEU.'' Perhaps she had more important priorities for the political venture-capital fund Congress has given her.
- Ergo, TerraPower this month lobbied Congress for another $2.1 billion to support development of HALEU fuel. The omnibus provides $1.8 billion for nuclear projects and directs that some be used for HALEU. How much more will taxpayers have to shell out to support Mr. Gates's investments?
- The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) included generous tax credits for advanced nuclear reactors, and the subsidies are sweeter for those built at sites of retiring coal plants such as TerraPower's in Wyoming. No wonder Mr. Gates lobbied for the bill. Bloomberg this summer reported that Mr. Gates pitched Mr. Manchin on the bill by suggesting that coal workers who lose their jobs in the green transition could be employed building reactors like TerraPower's.
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- TerraPower's plant is another demonstration of what happens when government picks winners and losers. These subsidies are costly for taxpayers, and they distort private investment and may cause investors to overlook business risks. Soon after Congress passed the IRA, TerraPower said it had raised $750 million from investors led by Mr. Gates.
- The law's biggest winners may be Messrs. Manchin and Gates. On Thursday, Form Energy, a grid storage startup backed by Mr. Gates, announced a $760 million plant in West Virginia that will receive some $290 million from the state and feds. Its batteries will also qualify for IRA tax credits. ''The good-paying jobs and new economic opportunities this will bring are exactly what I had in mind as I negotiated the Inflation Reduction Act,'' Mr. Manchin boasted.
- And here we thought he traded his vote for permitting reform, which still hasn't passed. Turns out he sold it for corporate welfare for his state. Your tax dollars for Bill Gates at work.
- Synthetic Meat Will Change the Ethics of Eating - WSJ
- Consumers will soon be able to dine on chicken and other animal proteins grown in a factory, upending the way we think about nature and technology
- Acentury ago, ''a chicken in every pot'' was an ambitious political slogan. It has long since become an everyday reality. Americans will consume nearly 100 pounds of chicken per capita this year, according to the National Chicken Council, up from around 67 pounds in 1992, when chicken first surpassed beef.
- Behind chicken abundance is the efficient production that critics call factory farming. Bred for maximum meat in minimum time, confined to crowded sheds, and subjected to assembly line slaughter and disassembly, chickens destined...
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- Acentury ago, ''a chicken in every pot'' was an ambitious political slogan. It has long since become an everyday reality. Americans will consume nearly 100 pounds of chicken per capita this year, according to the National Chicken Council, up from around 67 pounds in 1992, when chicken first surpassed beef.
- Behind chicken abundance is the efficient production that critics call factory farming. Bred for maximum meat in minimum time, confined to crowded sheds, and subjected to assembly line slaughter and disassembly, chickens destined for mass consumption endure short, unhappy lives. Cheap chicken also exacts a human toll. Although automation is improving conditions, chicken processing may be the country's worst job: smelly, noisy, bloody, cold and injury-prone from slippery floors and repetitive motions. Plus the pay is low.
- Most Americans aren't about to give up chicken, but we'd rather not dwell on where it comes from. In the not-too-distant future, however, the trade-off between conscience'--or ick factors'--and appetite may no longer be relevant. Instead of slaughtering animals, we'll get our meat from cells grown in brewery-like vats, with no blood and guts. In November, that science-fiction vision came a crucial step closer to reality when the Food and Drug Administration gave its OK to the slaughter-free chicken from Upside Foods, a San Francisco-based startup originally known as Memphis Meats. The company must still work with the Agriculture Department to establish inspection procedures and win labeling approval. It plans to first offer the meat to high-end restaurants.
- Upside Foods is one of a host of startups using cutting-edge biological techniques, known collectively as synthetic biology or synbio, in search of more environmentally friendly, less ethically fraught foods and other materials. The customer is ''anyone who loves to eat but really cares. They care about animal cruelty, or they care about the future of our planet,'' says Anne Gerow, a spokeswoman for Perfect Day, founded in 2014 by two self-described ''struggling new vegans.'' To make ''animal-free dairy'' products, Perfect Day genetically tweaks microflora so they excrete whey just like that found in milk.
- These vat-grown products are different from the plant-based meat substitutes sold by companies such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. Upside's chicken is chicken; Perfect Day's whey is whey. The cells or proteins are the same, just produced in a different way'--through human ingenuity rather than natural growth. (Impossible Foods uses synthetic biology to produce heme, the molecule that gives beef its distinctive color and taste, but its meat alternatives are mostly made up of soy proteins and vegetable oils.)
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- Synbio executives talk like animal lovers and environmental activists. But synbio is still a form of engineering, a science of the artificial. As such, its ethical appeal represents a significant cultural shift. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, businesses large and small have emerged from the conviction that ''natural'' foods, fibers, cosmetics, and other products are better for people and the planet. It's an attitude that harks back to the 18th- and 19th-century Romantics: The natural is safe and pure, authentic and virtuous. The artificial is tainted and deceptive, a dangerous fake. Gory details aside, the ''factory'' in factory farming makes it sound inherently bad.
- Synthetic biology upends those assumptions, raising environmental and ethical standards by making them easier and more enjoyable to achieve. It could help reverse what the writer Brink Lindsey has dubbed ''the anti-Promethean backlash'' that began in the late 1960s, defined as ''the broad-based cultural turn away from those forms of technological progress that extend and amplify human mastery over the physical world.'' Synthetic biologists are manipulating atoms, not merely bits.
- Anti-Promethean attitudes are still culturally potent, of course, with their own intellectual ecosystem of publications and advocacy groups. ''Cell-cultured meats are imitation foods synthesized from animal cells, not meat or poultry that consumers know,'' pronounces Jaydee Hanson, the policy director for the Center for Food Safety. The activist group is lobbying the U.S. government to require that lab-grown meat carry off-putting labels like ''synthetic protein product made from beef cells.'' A neutral term like ''cultivated meat'' should satisfy most people, however; or the industry could push for the tendentious ''cruelty-free'' favored by cosmetics makers.
- Typical consumers care mostly about taste and price, and early taste results are encouraging. I haven't tried Upside Foods' chicken, but I've sampled Wildtype's sushi salmon, grown in a similar way, which is now awaiting FDA approval. I've also eaten ice cream and flavored cream cheese made with Perfect Day's whey. All tasted good. Reviews of Upside's chicken are positive: ''The most surprising aspect was that there was no surprise'--the chicken tasted just like chicken should, only more so,'' wrote Time's Aryn Baker, noting that supermarket chicken tends to be bland, ''more a texture than a taste,'' because breeders care more about quick growth than flavor.
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- Selling cultivated meat at a competitive price poses a tougher challenge. Wildtype's salmon, which initially cost the equivalent of $400,000 a pound, is down to $20-25 for two pieces of nigiri, or about $250 a pound. That's still pricey'--high-quality salmon can run $150 a usable pound'--but the trend is in the right direction. Knowing the difficulties, Wildtype deliberately picked an expensive product to compete with. Matching chicken prices will be much harder, which is surely a reason that Upside Foods is starting with high-end restaurants whose customers aren't too price-sensitive.
- Barring a new backlash, the long-term trajectory seems certain. Within a generation, vat-grown meat may be not merely common but normal. Within two, it could be morally imperative. Economics and technology can transform ethical expectations and practices. The lower the cost of virtue, the more willing people are to embrace it. Infanticide dwindled in Europe as condoms spread and living standards rose. By offering kinder alternatives that don't sacrifice taste or tradition, synthetic biology enables more ethical living. It reinvigorates the ideals of technological progress in the material world. Bring on the slaughter-free kung pao.
- '--Ms. Postrel is a visiting fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University and the author of ''The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.'' She writes a newsletter on Substack.
- Kari Lake's Claims of Election Misconduct Rejected by Arizona Judge - WSJ
- The GOP gubernatorial nominee alleged incorrect ballot counting caused her to lose
- Updated Dec. 24, 2022 4:57 pm ETAn Arizona judge threw out the remainder of Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's claims of election misconduct, saying she failed to prove the allegations that ballots weren't counted correctly and mishandled in the state's most populous county.
- Every witness brought before the court ''was asked about any personal knowledge of both intentional misconduct and intentional misconduct directed to impact the 2022 General Election. Every single witness before the Court disclaimed any personal knowledge of such misconduct,''...
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- An Arizona judge threw out the remainder of Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake 's claims of election misconduct, saying she failed to prove the allegations that ballots weren't counted correctly and mishandled in the state's most populous county.
- Every witness brought before the court ''was asked about any personal knowledge of both intentional misconduct and intentional misconduct directed to impact the 2022 General Election. Every single witness before the Court disclaimed any personal knowledge of such misconduct,'' Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson wrote in the ruling. Mr. Thompson was appointed to the bench by former GOP Gov. Jan Brewer.
- ''This Judge did not rule in our favor,'' said Ms. Lake on Twitter. ''However, for the sake of restoring faith and honesty in our elections, I will appeal his ruling.''
- ''Today's ruling in Lake v. Hobbs is a win for Arizona voters and American democracy,'' Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said in a statement.
- The dismissal came after a two-day evidentiary hearing held by Judge Thompson on Ms. Lake's claims that various instances of electoral misconduct caused her to lose the governor's race to Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. Ms. Hobbs oversaw the election but didn't count ballots. ''Another win for democracy,'' Ms. Hobbs tweeted about the judge's decision.
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- Ms. Lake had submitted other claims, but those were dismissed previously. Judge Thompson allowed Ms. Lake's legal team to present evidence on two claims, one involving the handling of malfunctioning ballot printers and another that the county didn't maintain a proper chain of custody for mail-in ballots.
- County officials have said that, despite some issues with ballot tabulators on Election Day, all votes were legally cast and counted. Ms. Hobbs, a Democrat, defeated Ms. Lake by less than 1 percentage point, or 17,000 votes.
- Ms. Lake, a former local TV anchor, made election fraud and former President Donald Trump's false claims about his loss in the 2020 election a centerpiece of her campaign and refused to commit to the results of the 2022 election before it happened. Candidates who aligned themselves closely with Mr. Trump lost their bids in most competitive seats in this year's elections. Ms. Lake was the most high-profile candidate who refused to concede this year.
- Legal challenges from the failed Republican candidates for secretary of state and attorney general have also been dismissed in the state. Abraham Hamadeh, an intelligence officer in the Army Reserve, is roughly 500 votes behind Democrat Kris Mayes, a former state corporation commissioner, in the race for attorney general, which is currently in a recount.
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- Ms. Lake's legal team brought in experts, independent investigators, and people who were present on Election Day, including ballot tabulators, a pollster, and a roving attorney who visited polling locations. Their arguments included indications that many of the ballots weren't counted properly and that the chain of custody was potentially disrupted.
- Ms. Lake's attorney, Kurt Olsen, said county officials tried to play down the mistakes that were made in the election throughout the hearing, and said the ''disconnect here is troubling.''
- ''You have independent sources talking about mass chaos, and others saying there were only minor technical difficulties that happen in any election,'' Mr. Olsen said. ''It's not even close, it's like two ships passing in the night.''
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- ''We have put on evidence that the outcome of this election is uncertain,'' Mr. Olsen added.
- Lawyers for Ms. Hobbs and Maricopa County argued that there was no proof that there was intentional fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election.
- ''The court gave Ms. Lake a chance to tell her story, to not just spin yarns but to stitch together a coherent narrative,'' said Abha Khanna, attorney for Ms. Hobbs. ''What we got instead was loose threads and gaping plot holes. We know now that her story is a work of fiction.''
- Write to Erin Mulvaney at erin.mulvaney@wsj.com and Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com
- Corrections & AmplificationsThe last name of Kurt Olsen incorrectly was given as Olson in an earlier version of this article. (Corrected on Dec. 24)
- Blood clot risk remains elevated nearly a year after COVID-19 | American Heart Association
- Published: September 19, 2022
- By Michael Merschel, American Heart Association News
- (SCIEPRO/Science Photo Library via Getty Images)People who got COVID-19 had a higher risk of dangerous blood clots for close to a year later, according to a large new study on the aftereffects of a SARS-CoV-2 infection during the period before vaccines became available.
- As seen in previous studies, COVID-19 was linked to a sharply increased risk of blood clot-related issues '' including heart attack and stroke '' immediately after diagnosis compared to people who never had COVID-19. But the new study found that risk remained higher for some problems up to 49 weeks later.
- At that point, the risk of deep vein thrombosis '' clots that form in large veins '' was nearly double in people who'd had COVID-19 compared to those who had not, according to the study published Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.
- The study used data collected anonymously from 48 million people '' nearly every adult in England and Wales '' in Great Britain's National Health System from January 2020 until the day before COVID-19 vaccines were made available that December.
- The findings reinforce the message that for people who have cardiovascular conditions, "taking established preventative medications and managing your risk factors is even more important now than it was before the pandemic," said Jonathan Sterne, the study's senior author and a professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at England's University of Bristol.
- The study looked at results from 1.4 million diagnoses of COVID-19, which researchers said led to an estimated 10,500 additional cases of clot-related problems.
- Extensive data collection and linkage in effect across Great Britain enabled researchers to crunch the numbers, Sterne said.
- Researchers found that the first week after a COVID-19 diagnosis, the risk of an arterial blood clot '' the kind that could cause a heart attack or ischemic stroke by blocking blood flow to the heart or brain '' was nearly 22 times higher than in someone without COVID-19. That risk dropped sharply, to less than four times higher, in the second week.
- "Between 27 and 49 weeks, there is an approximately 30% increased risk for arterial clots, Sterne said. "But the elevation is greater for longer" for clots in veins, which include deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, when a clot travels to the lungs.
- In the first week after a COVID-19 diagnosis, the risk of such venous problems was 33 times higher. By the third and fourth weeks after diagnosis, the risk was still about eight times higher. And between 27 and 49 weeks later, the risk was still 1.8 times higher than in somebody who had never had COVID-19.
- "I do think that that is a new element to the story '' that the risk is not only around the time of the acute COVID infection," said Dr. Karen Furie, chief of neurology at Rhode Island Hospital and chair of neurology at Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence. The higher risk of clots in veins than in arteries also got her attention. Furie was not involved in the study.
- Elevated risks persisted no matter whether someone was hospitalized for COVID-19, although risks were greater in people who were hospitalized. The study also showed that clot risks were higher in Black and Asian people.
- Overall, however, clots were rare. The overall increase in risk of developing an arterial clot in the 49 weeks after a COVID-19 diagnosis was 0.5%. For a venous clot, the risk was 0.25%. After 1.4 million COVID-19 diagnoses, that corresponds to about 7,200 additional heart attacks or strokes, and 3,500 additional cases of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis or other venous problems.
- Furie said the size of the study made it "extremely powerful." But the authors acknowledged they might have missed some cases of COVID-19 before testing became widely available, or vascular events if people avoided hospitals early in the pandemic.
- Although several variants of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 have emerged since the time of the study, Furie said the information remains relevant. The study confirms "that infection with COVID, and other viruses for that matter, do have an inflammatory effect that can stimulate thrombotic events," she said.
- Given that risks can be elevated for close to a year, Furie said people should be screened and monitored for any evidence of risk factors that could be mitigated by preventive therapies, such as blood-thinning medications.
- Treatment protocols that were emerging at the time of the study have evolved in that direction, she said, but the new findings suggest problems might need to be managed more aggressively. "I think that this puts a new perspective on that period of subsequent risk."
- Sterne said the findings are likely to apply broadly outside England and Wales. A follow-up study is looking at the period from June 2021 onward, when the delta and omicron variants of the coronavirus became dominant and when many people had been vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends people stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccination for their age group to protect against serious illness, hospitalization and death.
- For now, Sterne said, the study shows that if someone had COVID-19, "then they should be talking with their physicians about managing their cardiovascular risk, which is likely to be increased for some level of time."
- Editor's note: Because of the rapidly evolving events surrounding the coronavirus, the facts and advice presented in this story may have changed since publication. Visit Heart.org for the latest coverage, and check with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials for the most recent guidance.
- If you have questions or comments about this American Heart Association News story, please email [email protected] .
- This Week with George Stephanopoulos Executive Producer Dax Tejera Dies
- Some very, very sad news to report on Christmas Eve. Dax Tejera, the executive producer of ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulos, has died from a heart attack.
- He was only a few weeks shy of his 38th birthday.
- Tejera was named executive producer of This Week in February 2020 at the tender age of 35, just weeks before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. With Tejera leading the way, the newscast quickly climbed to No. 1 among Adults 25-54.
- Tejera joined ABC News as a senior producer in the Washington Bureau in 2017 producing remote-anchored broadcasts from across the country and specials from the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore and Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki. Prior to overseeing This Week as its executive producer, Tejera managed newsmaker interviews and covered major breaking news, including the ongoing pandemic, the 2020 presidential election and the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
- In addition, Tejera worked on numerous broadcast and streaming special events for ABC News. In September 2021 he co-executive produced Coraz"n de Am(C)rica '' Celebrating Hispanic Culture, a primetime special for ABC that honored the contributions and achievements of the more than 60 million people who claim Latino and Hispanic heritage in the US.. He also served as the ep for primetime streaming election specials leading up to the 2018 midterms and launched shows designed to expand ABC News' streaming programming, including The Briefing Room, an instant analysis of notable moments in the White House press briefing room.
- Prior to joining ABC News, Tejera was the ep of America with Jorge Ramos, and in collaboration with HBO produced a documentary film, Hate Rising, focusing on the rise of white nationalists and the alt-right.
- He was previously a producer at MSNBC, helping launch Jansing & Co. and the now-defunct Now with Alex Wagner. He started his career with NBC News, working as an assignment editor and researcher.
- We interviewed Tejera last November about This Week, which had made the unlikely climb to No. 1 among the Sunday shows when it came to Adults 25-54. He was incredibly proud of and passionate about the program, the direction of ABC News and the Sunday show genre overall, despite its detractors.
- Here's a link to that interview.
- Tejera leaves behind a wife and two young kids.
- Here's a note from ABC News president Kim Godwin to network staff.
- It's with a heavy heart and great sadness that we share that our friend and colleague, Dax Tejera passed away suddenly of a heart attack last night.
- As EP of ''This Week with George Stephanopoulos'' Dax's energy, passion and love for that show, ABC News, and you, shined every Sunday morning. That same love was extended to his precious girls.
- Our thoughts are with his wife, Veronica, the couple's two young daughters, and the entire Tejera family.
- If you need immediate support, please call our 24/7EAP support line.
- We will share more details in the coming days.
- On this Christmas Eve, hug your loved ones a little tighter. And please lean on each another.
- Language expert ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD reveals all about 2022 bizarre new words | Daily Mail Online
- Have you fallen foul of 'skimpflation', or contracted 'flurona' '' perhaps during the recent 'flockdown'? Or was this the year you discovered the joy of 'fexting', or a taste for 'soysage'?
- If this all sounds like gibberish, language expert ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD reveals some of the new words and phrases that emerged in 2022.
- Nepo baby Child of an actor, a model or a musician who achieves success because of their famous parent (right: Model Kate Moss with her daughter Lila)
- Fluffernutter: A sandwich of marshmallow spread and peanut butter on white bread
- Confining birds, especially chickens, indoors to prevent the spread of avian flu.
- A sudden gust of wind during a thunderstorm that blows down from the sky, bringing with it a large quantity of rain.
- The physical world, in contrast to cyberspace.
- Content posted on social media that appears as a typical post but which is actually a paid-for advertisement.
- Knitted or sometimes crocheted, items left in public places as decoration.
- The act of fighting with someone by exchanging text messages rather than speaking on the phone or face-to-face.
- Data that's been copied and spread online.
- A heated building used by those who can't afford to warm their own homes
- Doing no more work than one is contractually obliged to do
- A sandwich of marshmallow spread and peanut butter on white bread
- Travel to a warmer country in the winter to shun the cold weather and higher heating bills of one's own country.
- A significant change in the prevailing culture.
- Strategic use of legal proceedings to intimidate or hinder an opponent.
- Being infected with flu and Covid-19 at the same time.
- The act of lying flat on the stomach with the legs stretched out, to counter unusually high temperatures.
- Boardroom appropriate smart trainers.
- A pedalling technique to increase efficiency in which the heel is lowered on the downstroke and lifted on the upstroke.
- A typographic mark depicting a hand with a pointing forefinger.
- Light-hearted crime fiction set in a small community, without any explicit violence.
- The act of sharing news, images or videos of one's children on social media.
- Child of an actor, a model or a musician who achieves success because of their famous parent.
- The act of pronouncing a word in another language in a manner influenced by one's mother tongue.
- A low, rumbling sound considered an inducement to sleep and relaxation.
- A clay vessel you can scream into to release anger and frustration.
- A vegetarian sausage made with soy protein.
- To relocate people to designated villages (often compulsorily or forcibly).
- Someone well-off who pretends they have to spend less money in order to appear to be in the same situation as others.
- One whose job it is to find rare, expensive handbags, watches and jewellery to sell.
- One who avoids wasting food or other resources and spends as little money as possible.
- One whose job it is to look after a family's children overnight during a holiday, while the parents go out to parties and clubs.
- The choosing of clothes to make the wearer feel comforted.
- A condition that makes someone feel on edge because they haven't achieved the same landmarks as their peers.
- The illegal practice of recruiting people to work for a company that doesn't exist.
- When the price of a product or service stays the same but the quality worsens.
- A careful driving technique that minimises the amount of fuel used.
- The study of how someone taps the keys on their mobile phone, thought to provide information on their personality.
- A middle-aged or elderly person paid to promote products on social media.
- A woman of middle age or older who leads a busy life, has fun and dresses stylishly.
- Extreme obsession with one's health and wellness.
- Software that allows an employer to monitor someone working from home.
- Canine trained by police to use its sense of smell to find digital devices used by criminals.
- The new monarchical era relating to King Charles III.
- Twitter Files Thread: The Spies Who Loved Twitter
- After weeks of ''Twitter Files'' reports, the FBI issued a statement Wednesday.
- It didn't refute allegations. Instead, it decried ''conspiracy theorists'' publishing ''misinformation,'' whose ''sole aim'' is to ''discredit the agency.''
- 3. They must think us unambitious, if our ''sole aim'' is to discredit the FBI. After all, a whole range of government agencies discredit themselves in the #TwitterFiles. Why stop with one?
- 4. The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government '' from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.
- 5. The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors - from local cops to media to state government.
- 6. Thousands upon thousands of official ''reports'' flowed through the FITF and the FBI's San Francisco field office.
- 7. On June 29th, 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan wrote to pair of Twitter execs asking if he could invite an ''OGA'' to an upcoming NGO-sponsored conference:
- 8. OGA, or ''Other Government Organization,'' is often a euphemism for CIA, and according to multiple former intelligence officials and contractors.
- 9. Chuckles one: ''They use it to seem mysterious to outsiders.''
- 10. ''Other Government Agency (the place where I worked for 27 years),'' says retired CIA officer Ray McGovern.
- 11. It was an open secret at Twitter that one of its executives was ex-CIA, which is why Chan referred to that executive's ''former employer.''
- The first Twitter executive abandons all pretense to stealth and emails that the employee ''used to work for the CIA, so that is Elvis's question.''
- Senior legal executive Stacia Cardille, who had good op-sec by Twitter standards, replies, ''I know'' and ''I thought my silence was understood.''
- Cardille then passes on conference details to recently-hired ex-FBI lawyer Jim Baker.
- ''I invited the FBI and the CIA virtually will attend too,'' Cardille says to Baker, casually adding: ''No need for you to attend.''
- 16 . The government was in constant contact not just with Twitter but with virtually every major tech firm.
- These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others.
- One of the most common forums was a regular meeting of the multi-agency Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), attended by spates of executives, FBI personnel, and '' nearly always '' one or two attendees marked ''OGA.''
- The FITF meeting agendas virtually always included, at or near the beginning, an ''OGA briefing,'' usually about foreign matters (hold that thought).
- Despite its official remit being ''Foreign Influence,'' the FITF and the SF FBI office became conduit for mountains of domestic moderation requests, from state governments, even local police:
- Many requests arrived via Teleporter, a one-way platform in which many communications were timed to vanish:
- Especially as the election approached in 2020, the FITF/FBI overwhelmed Twitter with requests, sending spreadsheets with hundreds of accounts:
- Email after email came from the San Francisco office heading into the election, often adorned with an Excel attachment:
- There were so many government requests, Twitter employees had to improvise a system for prioritizing/triaging them:
- The FBI was clearly tailoring searches to Twitter's policies. FBI requests were almost always phrased as ''possible terms of service violation'' somewhere, even in the subject line:
- Twitter executives noticed the FBI appeared to be assigning personnel to look for Twitter violations.
- ''They have some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations. This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days,'' remarked Cardille.
- Even ex-FBI lawyer Jim Baker agreed: ''Odd that they are searching for violations of our policies.''
- Although so much of this activity was domestic, ''Foreign meddling'' had been the ostensible justification for expanded moderation since platforms like Twitter were dragged to the Hill by the Senate in 2017:
- Yet behind the scenes, Twitter executives struggled against government claims of foreign interference, on their platform and others:
- The #TwitterFiles show execs under constant pressure to validate theories of foreign influence '' and unable to find evidence for key assertions.
- ''Found no links to Russia,'' says one analyst, but suggests he could ''brainstorm'' to ''find a stronger connection.''
- ''Extremely tenuous circumstantial chance of being related,'' says another.
- ''No real matches using the info,'' says former Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth in another case, noting some links were ''clearly Russian,'' but another was a ''house rental in South Carolina?''
- In another case, Roth concludes a series of Venezuelan pro-Maduro accounts are unrelated to Russia's Internet Research Agency, because they're too high-volume:
- The Venezuelans ''were extremely high-volume tweeters'... pretty uncharacteristic of a lot of the other IRA activity,'' Roth says.
- In a key email, news that the State Department is making a wobbly public assertion of Russian influence leads an exec '' the same one with the ''OGA'' past - to make a damning admission:
- ''Due to a lack of technical evidence on our end, I've generally left it be, waiting for more evidence,'' he says. ''Our window on that is closing, given that government partners are becoming more aggressive on attribution.''
- Translation: the ''more aggressive'' ''government partners'' had closed Twitter's ''window'' of independence.
- ''Other Government Agencies'' ended up sharing intelligence through the FBI and FITF not just with Twitter, but with Yahoo!, Twitch, Clouldfare, LinkedIn, even Wikimedia:
- CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou believes these reports found in the #TwitterFiles are written by his former agency.
- ''Looks right on to me,'' Kiriakou says, noting that ''what was cut off above [the ''tearline''] was the originating CIA office and all the copied offices.''
- These reports are far more factually controversial than domestic counterparts.
- One intel report lists accounts tied to ''Ukraine 'neo-Nazi' Propaganda.''' This includes assertions that Joe Biden helped orchestrate a coup in 2014 and ''put his son on the board of Burisma.''
- Another report asserts a list of accounts accusing the ''Biden administration'' of ''corruption'' in vaccine distribution are part of a Russian influence campaign:
- Often intelligence comes in the form of brief reports, followed by long lists of accounts deemed to be pro-Maduro, pro-Cuba, pro-Russia, etc: This batch contained over 1000 accounts sentenced to the digital beyond:
- One report says a site ''documenting purported rights abuses committed by Ukrainians'' is directed by Russian agents:
- Intel about the origin of these accounts might be true. But so might the information in them '' about neo-Nazis, or rights abuses in Donbas, etc.
- This is a difficult speech dilemma. Should the government be allowed to try to prevent Americans (and others) from seeing pro-Maduro or anti-Ukrainian accounts?
- Often intel reports are just long lists of newspapers, tweets or YouTube videos guilty of ''anti-Ukraine narratives'':
- Sometimes - not always -Twitter and YouTube blocked the accounts. But now we know for sure what Roth meant by ''the Bureau (and by extension the IC).''
- The line between ''misinformation'' and ''distorting propaganda'' is thin. Are we comfortable with so many companies receiving so many reports from a ''more aggressive'' government?
- The CIA declined to comment on the nature of its relationship to tech companies like Twitter. Watch @bariweiss , @shellenbergerMD , @lhfang , and this space for more, on issues ranging from Covid-19 to Twitter's relationship to congress, and more.
- 9 mighty names of God and how their meanings are relevant for us today '' Jacob's Ladder Blog
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- God is not revealed to us in the Bible as being called just God. He is referred to by other names, each which reveal a certain aspect of His character.
- In the Old Testament, names held significance as they did not only fulfill the purpose of identity, they explained characteristics and even occupations.
- Therefore, God reveals not only who He is by His many names, but also who He is to us as we learn more about the different aspects of His nature.
- Though most of these names may have been revealed to God's people in the Old Testament, the meaning behind them denotes God's power, love, and mercy that is just as relevant for us today as it was for believers of the ancient world.
- ''Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever''
- Here are 9 of the most well-known names of God and what they mean.
- Meaning: ''The Lord'', ''God''
- ''These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.''
- Yahweh is found in the Hebrew Bible and holds particular significance in Jewish tradition as a covenant name of God, the holiest of names, and it is held in the highest esteem. In fact, it is considered to be too holy to be even spoken aloud (Exodus 20:7 NRSV). It is derived from the Hebrew word ''I am''.
- With that in mind, Yahweh first appears in Genesis 2:4. However, God first revealed His covenant name to humans, Moses specifically, in Exodus 3:14-15, when Moses was commanded to tell the Israelites the name of the One who had sent him to lead God's people out of Egypt. On recognizing the ultimate power and authority behind the name Yahweh, the Israelites would know immediately that Moses had the blessings and strength of God behind him.
- The spelling of Yahweh is modern, as it includes vowels to aid with its pronunciation. Yahweh is actually the transliteration of the Hebrew word YHWH, which is known as the Tetragrammaton, meaning 4 letters.
- The word Adonai (Lord) is sometimes used as a substitute for YHWH. As a consequence, early English translations of the Bible have amalgamated the two words into Jehovah, which is in common usage even today.
- Meaning: ''Lord God'', ''Master''
- ''Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel.''
- Adonai comes from the plural form of adon (Lord). Hence, Adonai is a reference to the Trinity, as well as a reference to God. When the singular form adon is used, it is usually referring to humans in a position of power, such as King David (2 Samuel 3:21) or the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 2:19).
- As a remnant of their tradition of esteemed reverence for the covenant name Yahweh, modern Jewish believers will substitute the word Adonai when reading the scriptures aloud. For that reason, most English versions of the Bible might translate YHWH as ''Lord''.
- Meaning: Father God / God the Creator
- ''In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,''
- Elohim reflects the sovereignty and absolute power of God. He is the God who created heaven and earth, He is the Almighty and ruler of all. His omnipotent decree is declared in the first verse of the Bible and occurs a total of 2000 times in the scriptures.
- The name Elohim is a glorification of the awesome power of God that is displayed through nature. He is mightier than any other gods or false idols that govern the world today, such as consumerism and self-advancement. He is the one true God under which every star, animal, rock, and human must bow to.
- So, the next time you watch a sunset or even see a beautiful flower in full bloom, remember the One who created all things.
- ''He said, ''Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.'''
- The name Abba was vocalized by both Jesus and Paul in Aramaic in the New Testament, which reflected their deep and personal relationships with God. It is actually mentioned only three times in the Bible '' by Paul in Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6 as well as by Jesus in Mark 14:36 in the garden of Gethsemane on the eve of His crucifixion.
- However, despite its minimal representation in the scriptures, the name Abba is widely acknowledged as being one of the most intimate names for God.
- Through this name, we can see how God cares for us as a father cares for a small child. It is a name that we can call upon when we are in need of assurance, comfort, and protection, knowing in childlike faith that our Father will hear us and look after us.
- Meaning: ''The Lord will provide''
- '''So Abraham called that place ''The Lord will provide''; as it is said to this day, ''On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.'''
- The name Jehovah Jireh is only found once in the Bible '' in the Book of Genesis. It is used by Abraham to name the place on Mount Moriah where God provided him with a ram to sacrifice as a replacement for his son, Isaac.
- This is a beautiful name for God because it reflects His faithfulness and how He keeps His promise that all things will work out for His good (Romans 8:28).
- God knows exactly what is going on in our lives '' the good and the bad. As in Abraham's case, He will never fail us nor forsake us when we are in need (Hebrews 13:5-6). His help comes with perfect timing.
- Meaning: ''The God who heals''
- ''He heals the brokenhearted, '¯'¯'¯'¯and binds up their wounds.''
- The name Jehovah Rapha is a particular favorite of mine and one which l call upon when l need God's hand of healing over my life.
- It is a name that not only reveals the power of God to heal, repair, and rejuvenate the areas of our lives that are not working in His perfect timing, calling upon the name Jehovah Rapha gives incredible comfort in the knowledge that it is God's intent to make us whole.
- Therefore, if you are waiting on healing, call upon the name of Jehovah Rapha ''The God who heals'' in your quiet time with the Lord, today.
- Meaning: ''The Lord is my banner''
- ''And Moses built an altar and called it, The Lord is my banner.''
- There are numerous instances where God spread His hand of protection over His people and kept them safe from their enemies:
- In Exodus 14:26-29 when God caused the parted waters of the Red Sea to return and drown the armies of Pharoah, however, the Israelites crossed over safely on a dry river bed. In Judges 7:16-23 God kept Gideon and his 300 men safe, who were armed only with trumpets and torches inside empty pitchers, as they attacked the Midianite camp numbering 135,000 men. In 1 Samuel 17:37 God protects David, a shepherd boy, from the prowess of the giant Goliath of Gath, who is a seasoned warrior and the fear of the entire Israelite army. Jehovah Nissi is a name that proclaims God's declaration and promise to always protect His children and to deliver them from their foes.
- In 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, it states that our adversities do not come in the form of flesh and blood but are spiritual.
- That means, the issues that rise against us today, such as financial lack, health, and relationship issues all have spiritual roots that can be addressed by calling out to God in prayer and declaring Him as our protector and deliverer '' Jehovah Nissi.
- Meaning: ''The Lord is peace''
- ''Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord, and called it, The Lord is peace. ''
- Gideon, a Judge from the Old Testament, learned a lot about being in the peace of God as he led a military campaign of 300 hundred faith-filled Israelites against a Midianite army of 135,000 soldiers with no military experience.
- The name Jehovah Shalom appears only once in the Bible in Judges 6:24. And yet, this characteristic of God is both powerful and essential to our daily existence.
- Where the world is urging us to hurry, as we set our routine to the rhythm of alarm clocks, deadlines, and 40+ hour work weeks, it is important to know that God is not only peace, He has already given us this peace through Jesus Christ.
- ''Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.''
- ''For you shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.''
- It's incomprehensible for us to think that God could get jealous, right? But He does! He is the One who breathed life into us and who promises to never fail us, nor forsake us, neither loosen His hold on us (Hebrews13:5-6).
- Whereas we see jealousy as a negative characteristic, God's jealousy for us is based purely on His encompassing love for us. He sees the broken world in which we live in and knows that there are forces at work to distract us and lead us away from His love and protection.
- For that reason, God sent His only son to pay the bond price for our sins in order that we may be reunited with Him and be in eternal fellowship with Him.
- Considering all that God has done for you in your life up until this point, isn't it understandable that He gets jealous? Doesn't He deserve our praise and adoration?
- I have listed 9 names of God, however, there are many more. For example:
- El Roi ''The God who sees me'' El Shaddai ''God Almighty'' El Elyon ''My Redeemer lives'' If you are interested in learning about more names that God is known by, l believe the links that l have provided at the end of this article will help you.
- God's propensity to love us is addressed by many names. He really is everything we need '' His many names prove that.
- Whatever you are going through in your life today, l recommend that you call upon the name of the Lord in supplication: Jehovah Rapha if you are waiting on healing, Jehovah Shalom if you are desperately needing peace over a situation.
- Though the names that God is known by may be different, they all explain one thing: God is always powerful, always unchanging, and always good. His presence is an unwavering banner in a world that is constantly bowing down to ephemeral trends, transient movements, and shifting expectations. For greater is He that is in us, that He that is in the world (1 John 4:4).
- God and His name '' all of His names '' and what they stand for, are as relevant for us today than ever before. And thank goodness for that, for what would we be without Him?
- The Sunday School Network has published this article on their website. Also, check out their vast array of biblical-based teaching resources designed to help children to get to know Jesus.
- 1. Blue Letter Bible, ''The Names of God in the Old Testament''
- 2. God TV, ''Do you know these 14 Hebrew names of God?''
- 3. iBelieve.com, ''10 powerful names of God (And what they mean for us today)
- 4. Bible Study Tools, ''The Wonderful Implications of God being Our Abba Father''
- 5. Active Christianity, ''Why God has to be a jealous God''
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- Whether, when and how the war in Ukraine will end | The Hill
- Ukrainian State Emergency Service firefighters work to extinguish a fire at the building which was destroyed by a Russian attack in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. Russian forces launched at least 60 missiles across Ukraine on Friday, officials said, reporting explosions in at least four cities, including Kyiv. At least two people were killed by a strike on a residential building in central Ukraine, where a hunt was on for survivors. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
- Whether, when and how the war in Ukraine will end are crucial and unanswerable questions. For some, the war is going well for Ukraine. Russian forces have been severely mauled. Regrouping and responding to battlefield setbacks may exceed Moscow's capacity. Ultimately, if this continues, Russia will have to negotiate or compromise to end the war.
- But others, including Ukraine's senior military leadership, take a more cautionary view. Some in the Pentagon who do not wish attribution characterize the war as ''Big Russia versus Little Russia,'' meaning that Ukraine is unlikely to prevail over a larger and more powerful Russia if the fighting continues for the long term. Who proves correct is only a guess as of now.
- A starting point is to assess the strategies of the key participants and then analyze the possible outcomes to determine what might be done to expedite ending the war on favorable terms for Ukraine.
- The U.S. strategy, accepted de facto by NATO and the European Union, is to supply Ukraine with military and non-military aid sufficient for defense and survival but not necessarily enough to drive Russia from all or much of the territories it controls in Crimea and Donbas or to provoke an escalation by Moscow. While the possible transfer of a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine is a strong political signal, the tactical impact may be minimal. And if the Biden administration has an exit strategy, it is keeping it close hold.
- Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, seem to have been given the authority to dictate terms for ending the war. But at some stage the U.S. will act in its own interests, possibly as the Trump administration did in negotiating withdrawal from Afghanistan with the Taliban and not the Afghan government. And while the U.S. and NATO are in firm agreement in supporting Ukraine, will that cohesion persist if the war continues indefinitely?
- Russia's strategy is for the long haul and ''to win,'' meaning persevere by not losing. Russian President Vladimir Putin expects longterm success to come from a combination of the brutal bombing campaign to destroy Ukraine's power, water and food infrastructure to force capitulation or surrender; a harsh winter that will reinforce these effects in Ukraine and further disrupt NATO solidarity; and a new general who seems more competent than his predecessors (that was not a high bar) to revise and revitalize Russian strategy and design a new offensive. And Putin seems willing to persist.
- Ukraine's strategy is to reclaim virtually all territory occupied by Russia and is prepared to pay seemingly any price to achieve that aim. However, as winter sets in and the costs of nearly a year of war grow heavier, it is unclear how long this bravado can last if conditions deteriorate and both military and civilian supplies are exhausted. And if Russian General Sergey Surovikin proves competent, can Moscow turn the tide on the battlefield or at least force a deadlock?
- Thus, from this analysis, four outcomes seem plausible. The first is that Ukraine will prevail in forcing or compelling Russia to accept its terms for ending the war. The second is that Russia will prevail and Ukraine will negotiate. The third is deadlock and either a frozen conflict similar to Korea or ongoing military operations that cannot break the stalemate.
- Finally, deadlock could force negotiations or a ceasefire as neither side can win or achieve its aims because the costs of continuing the war are too great to sustain by the combatants and the U.S. and NATO. Objectively, the last two outcomes are the more likely. If that is correct, is there any way of expediting some form of settlement?
- Roadmap to get back on track to end HIV starts at the community levelOn holiday shopping's final day, beware of an inflation hangoverFor the allies, two courses of action are needed now. The first is to accelerate sending more precision strike and air defense weapons to Ukraine, raising the costs to Russia and countering a possible Russian offensive. The second is to guarantee long-term support in the form of a Taiwan Relations Act-like arrangement so that Ukraine can defend itself for the future and some sort of Marshall Plan-type reconstruction.
- While war crimes and Russian reparations should be covered, pragmatically, both could be deal-breakers in ending the war. That said, events over the next three to four months could be decisive in answering whether, when and how this war will end provided the allies accept these two recommendations. If not, prepare for a long war.
- Harlan Ullman is senior adviser at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of ''shock and awe.'' His latest book is ''The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large.'' Follow him on Twitter @harlankullman.
- Elon Musk's unpredictable Twitter habits have Tesla investors worried - The Washington Post
- Musk's intense focus on his social media company purchase has devolved into the culture wars. Meanwhile, Tesla is tanking.
- December 24, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EST
- Elon Musk has built his reputation on having a Midas touch with the companies he runs '-- something many investors and experts thought he would bring to Twitter. (Emily Wright, The Washington Post illustration)Elon Musk was speechless.
- The Twitter CEO was on a live audio chat Tuesday night with software engineers when one user started quizzing him about the internal workings of the company's systems. Musk, who hours earlier said he would keep control of Twitter's software systems even though he plans to relinquish the CEO role, said the company's code needed a complete rewrite. One of the participants asked what he meant '-- pushing for him to explain it from top to bottom.
- ''Amazing, wow,'' Musk said after hesitations and pauses. ''You're a jackass. '... What a moron.''
- The incident highlights the new reality facing Musk, who also runs Tesla and SpaceX: a crisis of confidence in his once-unquestioned brilliance.
- That crisis accelerated as Tesla stock prices plunged nearly 20 percent this week to $123 per share on Friday, largely due to concerns about Musk. Also this week, roughly 58 percent of 17 million Twitter accounts that responded to an unscientific poll from Musk said he should step down as Twitter CEO, after helping create, then reverse new policies that proved controversial last weekend.
- ''Historically he's been a pendulum between genius and reckless,'' said Gene Munster, managing partner at Loup Ventures. ''He's on reckless right now. He's way over recklessness.''
- He added, ''It leaves people to view him '... as slightly less of a genius.''
- The key moments that define Musk's leadership of Twitter
- Musk has built his reputation on having a Midas touch with the companies he runs '-- something many investors and experts thought he would bring to Twitter when he purchased it for $44 billion in October, paying nearly twice as much as it was worth by some analyst estimates. He is known for sleeping on the factory floor at Tesla, demanding long hours and quick turnarounds from his workers. He is seen as an engineering genius, propelling promises of cars that can drive themselves and rockets that can take humans to Mars.
- But that image is unraveling. Some Twitter employees who worked with Musk are doubtful his management style will allow him to turn the company around. And some investors in Tesla, by far the biggest source of his wealth, have begun to see him as a liability. Musk's distraction has prompted questions about leadership of SpaceX as well, though it is much less reliant on his active involvement. Meanwhile, Neuralink and Boring Co., two companies he founded, continue to lag on promises.
- Musk's net worth '-- largely fueled by his stake in Tesla, which has fallen by more than half this year '-- has plunged this year from roughly $270 billion to below $140 billion on Friday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That fall has relieved him of the title of the world's richest man and called into question his ability to keep up with his billions of dollars in loans.
- Musk is repeatedly described as a man obsessed with Twitter in all the wrong ways, who is failing both at protecting his new investment and his previous ones, according to interviews with a half-dozen former Twitter employees and people in Musk's orbit, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution or because they were not authorized to speak publicly about company matters.
- Musk this week said Twitter is in a financial hole and facing a cash crunch '-- even as it slashed more than half of the workforce and closed offices.
- ''We have an emergency fire drill on our hands,'' Musk said on Twitter Spaces. ''Aspirationally, I'm not naturally capricious.''
- From Jared Kushner to Salt Bae: Here's who Elon Musk was spotted with at the World Cup
- Musk has always been unpredictable and freewheeling with his public persona, but with Twitter, his actions have directly affected the business, turning off some of the company's users and pushing away advertisers, said Jo-Ellen Pozner, a management professor at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business.
- ''It really feels destabilizing for the whole Twitter community,'' she said, adding that the reputation of a CEO does affect businesses and their stock prices '-- and could even prompt consumers to choose another vehicle.
- Musk and Twitter '-- which has disbanded most of its public relations team '-- did not respond to requests for comment.
- Holed up in a 10th-floor conference room
- Musk, who is South African and migrated to North America as a teenager, first forged his image as a tech wizard by founding the company that became PayPal. He funneled much of his around $165 million in gains from the sale of PayPal into two ventures: Tesla and SpaceX. SpaceX went on to become the most successful private spaceflight company in history, pioneering reusable rockets and launching astronauts to the International Space Station.
- Tesla, meanwhile, brought electric vehicles to the mainstream with sleek, fast and competitively priced sedans and SUVs that shattered the frumpy image of eco-conscious cars. His closest allies have held out faith even as he has missed major deadlines for selling new vehicle models and rolling out self-driving technology.
- Musk has been focused almost solely on Twitter since he bought it, planning to reinvent the company as an engineering-driven operation. He immediately ousted Twitter's previous executives and embarked on a campaign of harsh layoffs that cut the company in half. Many of Musk's supporters, who had followed his rise at Tesla, gave him the benefit of the doubt that he had a plan to transform Twitter.
- But he immediately spooked advertisers by engaging in a baseless accusation and dialed back Twitter's content moderation, prompting calls from civil rights groups for advertisers to suspend their marketing on the site. And he had to pull back his first major product launch '-- Twitter Blue Verified '-- after a day when a swarm of impersonators wreaked havoc.
- A fake tweet sparked panic at Eli Lilly and may have cost Twitter millions
- Musk appears to be struggling to grasp Twitter's business, the people said, and he demands a stance from his employees that stifles discussion of problems. ''He doesn't see from the zoom-out view at all,'' one of the people close to Musk and his team said, describing him as ''uncovering and solving and programming all night.''
- He has been holed up in a 10th-floor conference area with a staging room for visitors '-- where they often remain for more than an hour before being called in. They are instructed not to speak until Musk does. And when they do finally meet with him, he's sometimes watching YouTube videos.
- Many staffers have quickly learned they can't rely on the erratic and unpredictable Musk, even as he makes assurances about the various facets of the company they have raised as concerns.
- The driving team behind Project Eraser '-- which carries out functions such as deleting the user data of those who ask, part of compliance with federal requirements '-- has been gutted. Musk has brought in a new roster of leaders, many who are loyalists.
- When one executive met with Musk and voiced concerns about the Federal Trade Commission's consent decree, Musk assured that person there was nothing to worry about. He said Tesla had plenty of experience on privacy matters, and pointed to his deep knowledge and awareness of the constraints Twitter was under.
- Minutes after the meeting concluded, a subordinate of Musk emailed: Would the executive be willing to send over a copy of the consent decree they had just discussed?
- Instead of focusing on plans to make the site a competitor to YouTube with video and rolling out other new features that will earn revenue, he instead got sucked into the culture wars, the people said.
- That took the form of the Twitter Files, an examination by some journalists of many of the company's actions before Musk's arrival, such as the blocking of a New York Post story that dug into the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop and the ban on former president Donald Trump.
- Musk chose Bari Weiss, a former New York Times columnist, as one of the writers invited inside the company to go through documents.
- ''Please give Bari full access to everything at Twitter,'' Musk wrote to a subordinate in a Signal message viewed by The Washington Post. ''No limits at all.''
- Journalists who won't delete tweets remain locked out of Twitter
- That was concerning to many inside Twitter '-- particularly those familiar with the 2011 FTC settlement after hacks of high-profile accounts, including that of then-President Barack Obama. Staffers responsible for her onboarding pushed back and refused to grant Weiss the full access Musk had requested, believing it would violate the settlement.
- One former employee described that step as ''super unprecedented'' and ''highly inappropriate,'' saying Twitter would never have granted that level of access to an outside party who might suddenly be able to read direct messages, for example.
- The pushback, however, was not taken as seriously at senior levels.
- Days later, Musk announced deputy general counsel Jim Baker had been ''exited'' from the company, as the CEO cited what he called his ''possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue.'' Former employees said it would have been normal for an attorney to review documents for release.
- That same day, Alan Rosa, Twitter's chief information security officer in charge of access matters, was fired from the company as well. Employees that week found Weiss's name searchable in Slack, the company's internal messaging service. But her access was overseen by a chaperone, new Twitter Trust and Safety chief Ella Irwin.
- Irwin's name appeared in a watermark on the Twitter Files. When Twitter suspended more than half a dozen journalists last week over alleged violations of its rules on doxing '-- the sharing of private information '-- the suspensions were labeled in internal systems ''direction of Ella.''
- Musk had also publicized an old message from his previous Trust and Safety head and took aim at Twitter executives, unleashing a swarm of criticism on employees '-- sometimes while they were still working for Twitter.
- ''These guys did amazing damage,'' one former employee said of Musk's circle at Twitter, which included employees of his other companies and friends who lacked expertise on Twitter. ''They are basically bullying their way to getting 'super god' access to these things. All they're doing is they're witch hunting for Elon, so they can find people talking [about him] so they can fire them.''
- Musk is running the newly private company largely on his instincts '-- mirroring the workflows of his other major technology company: Tesla. The electric car company, the world's most valuable automaker, has eschewed market research in its dominance of the electric vehicle space, seeding the automotive industry with a raw and authentic expressions of Musk's id. Tesla's stainless steel Cybertruck pickup, which shocked automotive analysts with its angular sci-fi looks, has served as a key example of that ethos.
- At Tesla, employees often find out about deadlines and major product changes through tweeted edicts. But they have also grown used to the CEO's shoot-from-the-hip attitude, his reliance on his gut instincts rather than the research and development arms typical of multibillion-dollar corporations.
- But Tesla's stock price has plummeted '-- which Musk frequently attributes to economic trends.
- ''As bank savings account interest rates, which are guaranteed, start to approach stock market returns, which are *not* guaranteed, people will increasingly move their money out of stocks into cash, thus causing stocks to drop,'' he said in a tweet Tuesday.
- But analysts have pointed to problems more specific to Tesla and concern with Musk's time at Twitter, suggesting in essence that the sheen has worn off a company whose value was not rooted in its fundamentals.
- ''I felt for a while he was given a pass,'' said Karl Brauer, executive analyst at the website iSeeCars. '''Oh, it's Elon. He's Midas: If he's touching it, it's going to be successful.' Now a certain number of people have stopped giving him a pass on things that probably should have been looked at a little more critically or acknowledged as potential downside.''
- The crisis in confidence in his leadership accelerated when Musk began making changes to Twitter to address his personal problems and concerns.
- Last week, he reneged on a previous commitment to keep an account on Twitter that published the location of his private jet, which he held up as an example of his free speech principles. After abruptly suspending @ElonJet, Twitter suspended journalists who tweeted about it, drawing ire from both sides of the political spectrum.
- He launched a poll, which directed Musk to allow them back on the site.
- ''The people have spoken,'' he tweeted that Friday.
- Elon Musk's private jet is tracked with public data. Is it doxing?
- Musk jetted around the globe to Qatar for the World Cup final on Sunday, where he was spotted alongside former President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Qatari leaders.
- That day, Twitter announced a new policy: It was banning the promotion of outside social media sites on its platform, including Facebook, Instagram and Trump-backed Truth Social. Users would no longer be able to promote outside links to those sites and others including Mastodon, Tribel, Post and Nostr. Twitter said cross-posting of content would be allowed, but it would no longer permit ''free promotion.''
- The criticism was swift, and even loyalists expressed concern. Musk apologized.
- ''Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes,'' he tweeted. ''My apologies. Won't happen again.''
- Then Musk launched a new poll. ''Should I step down as head of Twitter?'' he wrote in a tweet. ''I will abide by the results of this poll.''
- By Monday morning, the result was clear that Musk should step down. He went silent on the platform for much of the day '-- one of his longer stretches as a prolific tweeter to his more than 120 million followers. He responded to a few tweets later in the day calling the results into question.
- On Tuesday, he said he would resign '-- with caveats.
- ''I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!'' he wrote in a tweet. ''After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.''
- Gerrit De Vynck and Cat Zakrzewski contributed to this report.
- What's In (and Not In) the $1.7 Trillion Spending Bill - The New York Times
- A big boost for the military, more aid for Ukraine, a preference for the lobster industry over whales and an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act are among the provisions in the 4,155-page bill lawmakers expect to pass this week.
- As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
- The spending package would fund the government through September. Credit... Kenny Holston/The New York Times WASHINGTON '-- Billions of dollars in emergency aid to war-torn Ukraine and communities ravaged by natural disasters. A bipartisan proposal to overhaul the archaic law at the heart of former President Donald J. Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election. And a divisive oceanic policy that will change federal protections for whales in an effort to protect the lobster industry in Maine.
- In compiling the roughly $1.7 trillion catchall spending package that will keep the government open through September, lawmakers inserted several new funding and legislative proposals to ensure their priorities and policies become law before the end of the year.
- It includes funding that will guarantee the enactment of policies first authorized in bipartisan legislation approved earlier in this Congress, including money for innovation hubs established in the semiconductor manufacturing law and projects in the infrastructure law. The package also includes a round of earmarks, rebranded as community project funding, that allow lawmakers to redirect funds to specific projects in their states and districts.
- Here is a look at some of the provisions that would go into effect if enacted.
- Military spending is the big winner.The Defense Department would see an extraordinary surge in spending when adding its regular 2023 fiscal year budget together with additional funds being allocated to help respond to the war in Ukraine.
- All together, half of the $1.7 trillion in funding included in the package goes to defense, or a total of $858 billion. It comes after lawmakers bucked a request from President Biden and approved a substantial increase in the annual defense policy bill passed this month.
- The 2023 budget just for the Defense Department would total $797.6 billion in discretionary spending '-- a 10 percent increase over last year's budget '-- representing an extra $69.3 billion in funds for the Pentagon, which is $36.1 billion above the president's budget request.
- Sprinkled throughout the spending bill are hundreds of high-ticket add-ons that Congress wants to make to the president's original Defense Department budget, such as an additional $17.2 billion for procurement that the Pentagon can largely distribute to military contractors to buy new ships, airplanes, missile systems and other equipment. The overall Pentagon procurement budget with these additional funds would be $162 billion.
- One of the biggest chunks of that extra money is for shipbuilding '-- an extra $4 billion that brings the Navy's overall shipbuilding budget to $31.96 billion. That will allow it to buy 11 new ships, including three guided missile destroyers and two attack submarines.
- But that is just the start. There is $8.5 billion to buy 61 F-35 fighter jets made by Lockheed Martin and another $2.5 billion to buy 15 of Boeing's new aerial refueling planes known as KC-46 tankers.
- There is also an extra $27.9 billion to help cover Defense Department costs associated with the war in Ukraine, as part of an emergency aid package to the country. That includes an extra $11.88 billion to replenish U.S. stocks of equipment sent to Ukraine '-- money that again will largely be used to purchase products from military contractors. That supplemental appropriation also includes $9 billion to assist Ukraine with training, equipment and weapons, as well as an extra $6.98 billion to cover U.S. military operations in Europe.
- '-- Eric Lipton and John Ismay
- Making it easier (for some) to save for retirement.The package also includes a collection of new rules aimed at helping Americans save for retirement. The bill would require employers to automatically enroll eligible employees in their 401(k) and 403(b) plans, setting aside at least 3 percent, but no more than 10 percent, of their paychecks. Contributions would be increased by one percentage point each year thereafter, until it reaches at least 10 percent (but not more than 15 percent). But this applies only to new employer-provided plans that are started in 2025 and later '-- existing plans are exempt.
- Another provision would help lower- and middle-income earners saving for retirement by making changes to an existing tax credit, called the saver's credit, now available only to those who owe taxes. In its new form, it would amount to a matching contribution, from the federal government, deposited into taxpayers' retirement accounts.
- People struggling with student debt would also receive a new perk: Employees making student debt payments would qualify for employer matching contributions in their workplace retirement plan, even if they were not making plan contributions of their own.
- What to Know About Congress's Lame-Duck Session
- Card 1 of 5A productive stretch. Lawmakers are using the period between Election Day and the end of the two-year congressional term '-- known as a lame-duck session '-- to try to approve a rush of major legislation. Here's a look at what the departing Congress is doing in its final weeks:
- Same-sex marriage bill. With bipartisan support in the House and the Senate, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, a watershed bill that enshrines the marriage rights of same-sex couples in federal law and reflects a broad shift in public opinion on the issue.
- Defense bill. Defying President Biden's objections, lawmakers approved an $858 billion military policy bill that would rescind the Pentagon's mandate that troops receive the coronavirus vaccine. The legislation also increases the Pentagon's budget by $45 billion over Mr. Biden's request.
- Workers ages 60 to 63 would also be permitted to set aside extra money for retirement. And, starting next year, retirees would be permitted to delay taking minimum withdrawals from their retirement accounts until age 73, before increasing to age 75 in 2033.
- Image Voters cast ballots on Election Day in Sacramento, Calif. Credit... Jim Wilson/The New York Times Overhauling the Electoral Count Act.The legislation includes an overhaul of the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act that was a year in the making after supporters of Mr. Trump sought to exploit ambiguities in the law to disrupt the traditionally ceremonial counting of the presidential electoral ballots on Jan. 6, 2021.
- Under the measure drafted by a bipartisan coalition led by Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, the role of the vice president is defined as strictly ceremonial after Mr. Trump sought unsuccessfully to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes won by Mr. Biden. The measure also raises the threshold for lodging an objection to a state's electoral votes from a single member of the House and the Senate to 20 percent of both chambers.
- The bill is a rare one that was sponsored by both Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader.
- ''Our bipartisan group worked tirelessly to draft this legislation that fixes the flaws of the archaic and ambiguous Electoral Count Act of 1887 and establishes clear guidelines for our system of certifying and counting electoral votes for president and vice president,'' Ms. Collins and Mr. Manchin said in a joint statement on Tuesday after the legislation was added to the year-end spending bill.
- Increasing funding for the police.The bill includes more than $770 million for federal law enforcement grants issued to local governments, an increase of more than $96 million. Another $324 million can be used to hire 1,800 law enforcement officers across the nation.
- Mr. Biden has argued that investing in police departments is crucial to reforming them. As a result, Congress also increased funding for Justice Department grants focused on community policing and de-escalation strategies to $231 million, a 15 percent jump.
- The spending package did not include legislation that would have ended longstanding racial disparities in federal prison sentences for drug possession, which the House passed overwhelmingly last year. That could fuel criticism from criminal justice advocates, who have increasingly accused Mr. Biden of neglecting promises to reform the police and criminal justice systems.
- Image The bill includes a divisive oceanic policy that will change federal protections for whales in an effort to protect the lobster industry in Maine. Credit... Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press The lobster industry wins over whales.One nonspending provision in the bill, inserted by a bipartisan group of Maine lawmakers, would block stricter federal rules aimed at preventing North Atlantic right whales from getting entangled in the fishing lines used to catch lobsters.
- In a statement, the Maine delegation, including Ms. Collins, the delegation's lone Republican, wrote that the provision protects lobster fishers who have invested in ''countless precautionary measures'' to protect right whales, including removing more than 30,000 miles of line from the water and switching to ''weaker'' ropes.
- However, environmentalists contend that blocking the more aggressive rules would almost certainly push the whales, which are one of the world's most endangered marine species, to extinction.
- Currently, scientists estimate that fewer than 340 North Atlantic right whales still live, and fewer than 100 of them are breeding females. In order for the right whale population to avoid extinction, the average number of whales killed by human-related activity needs to be fewer than one whale per year, according to a study from the National Marine Fisheries Service.
- When whales get entangled, the ropes can get tightly wrapped around different body parts, including their mouths, preventing them from feeding or reaching the surface to breathe, said Amy Knowlton, a senior scientist who studies right whales at the New England Aquarium.
- A district judge ordered the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in September to complete a new rule after a coalition of environmental groups challenged the initial regulation for not meeting requirements under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The Maine delegation's provision would block the stricter new rule and keep the old one in place for six years.
- A ban on TikTok on government devices.TikTok will be banned from all federal government devices under the spending bill, a move intended to assuage heightened privacy and national security concerns about the app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
- U.S. officials have argued that TikTok, which has an estimated 100 million users in the United States, can share sensitive data about the location, personal habits and interests of Americans with the Chinese government.
- International climate finance loses out.The bill includes just $1 billion to help poor countries develop renewable energy and build resilience to the impacts of climate change, roughly the same amount Congress granted last year.
- It is a steep cut from the more than $3 billion that Democrats and the White House initially sought, with significant implications.
- Mr. Biden has pledged that the United States will deliver $11.4 billion annually by 2024 to help developing nations tackle climate change. At this pace, analysts said it was hard to see how he could keep his promise. Moreover, at a recent U.N. summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, the United States committed to a new fund to help poor countries that are experiencing irreversible losses from climate change.
- The ability for the White House to secure more international dollars for climate change is only likely to get harder as Republicans, who oppose such funding, prepare to take control of the House in January. Saloni Sharma, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said in a statement that meeting Mr. Biden's $11.4 billion goal ''is a top priority'' for the president, and key to the success of the administration's overall climate change agenda.
- Two federal buildings will be renamed for Pelosi and Shelby.Also tucked away in the bill were two provisions to rename federal buildings to honor Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, and Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama. Ms. Pelosi is stepping down as speaker as control of the House shifts to Republicans, and Mr. Shelby is retiring after more than 30 years in the Senate.
- One federal building in San Francisco will be renamed the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in recognition of the first female House speaker. It is the latest distinction for Ms. Pelosi, the most recent being the unveiling of her portrait in the speaker's lobby. Congress also renamed a caucus room in the Cannon building on the Capitol grounds this year to the Speaker Pelosi Caucus Room. The room has been the location of the Jan. 6 hearings.
- The measure also set aside $2 million to start a grant for a higher education institution to create a program to encourage foreign service participation among undergraduate students called the Nancy Pelosi Fellowship Program.
- The federal spending plan also renamed the facilities of an F.B.I. office in Redstone Arsenal, Ala., to the Richard Shelby Center for Innovation and Advanced Training in honor of the state's longest-serving senator.
- Millions could lose access to Medicaid.The legislation includes a number of proposals that could greatly affect Medicaid eligibility, maintaining pandemic-era policies that protected children, mothers and low-income Americans. But the bill's passage could mean that millions of people who have been enrolled because of pandemic policies may lose access to the program next spring.
- Under current law, states are required to keep all Medicaid beneficiaries enrolled as the public health emergency continues, most likely until the spring or summer. Lawmakers are proposing that states be allowed to remove some program recipients beginning April 1, regardless of when the emergency declaration is lifted.
- The move could save the program money, but could mean that millions of Americans with incomes higher than the federal limit for the program will no longer be guaranteed coverage. States will be required to report to the federal government changes they make in Medicaid enrollment.
- The bill has profound implications for children, roughly half of whom are enrolled in Medicaid or the federal Children's Health Insurance Program. It requires the programs to keep children enrolled for at least a year, regardless of any changes to the family's income.
- '-- Noah Weiland and Margot Sanger-Katz
- Image The spending bill makes major structural changes to the nation's health apparatus. Credit... Eduardo Munoz/Reuters Pandemic preparation, but no independent commission.The bill allocates $950 million, an increase of $205 million, for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to develop drugs and therapeutics to combat pandemics, and gives $965 million, an increase of $120 million, to the Strategic National Stockpile, the nation's medical reserve, which was woefully unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic.
- The spending measure also became a vehicle for adoption of a big chunk of a broad bipartisan pandemic prevention bill that passed the Senate health committee 20 to 2 in March. By including the PREVENT Act, the spending bill makes major structural changes to the nation's health apparatus. It creates an Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy inside the White House, and makes the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention a Senate-confirmed position '-- a provision that some fear will further politicize the nation's public health agency.
- But the centerpiece of the health committee's measure '-- a proposal to create an independent commission, based on the 9/11 Commission, to investigate the pandemic's origins and the Trump and Biden administrations' response '-- was stripped out of the final budget legislation. An official familiar with the bill told The New York Times last week that the Biden White House did not support a commission.
- Spreading around disaster relief funds.The bill includes about $40 billion for disaster relief, a response to the mix of hurricanes, wildfires, floods and other assorted calamities that have struck most of the United States this year.
- The money is spread across more than a dozen agencies, a testament to the wide range of damages incurred by those disasters. The Agriculture Department would receive $3.7 billion to help farmers with crop and other losses. The National Park Service would get $1.5 billion for construction expenses related to wildfires, hurricanes and other disasters. The Transportation Department would see $214 million for public transit systems affected by disasters.
- A big funding increase for labor relations.The bill would provide a roughly 9 percent budget increase, or an additional $25 million, for the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections and prosecutes labor law violations, such as firing workers for trying to form a union.
- The funding increase would be the first for the agency since the 2014 fiscal year, though it is still about $20 million below the amount requested by the president and the agency.
- Last month, leaders of the labor board wrote congressional appropriators to warn that their funding situation was dire and would most likely lead to furloughs, and that they had already imposed a hiring freeze. Data provided by the agency shows that its field staff, which oversees union elections and handles unfair labor practice charges, has dropped by half, to about 700 full-time equivalents, over the past two decades even as its workload has increased.
- According to the letter to Congress, the number of unfair labor practice charges per field worker has increased about 40 percent since 2014, the last time the agency's budget increased. The letter said the agency effectively stood to lose millions of dollars from its budget because of inflation had it remained flat in nominal terms for another year.
- First principle - Wikipedia
- Basic proposition or assumption
- In philosophy and science, a first principle is a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption.
- First principles in philosophy are from First Cause[1] attitudes and taught by Aristotelians, and nuanced versions of first principles are referred to as postulates by Kantians.[2]
- In mathematics, first principles are referred to as axioms or postulates. In physics and other sciences, theoretical work is said to be from first principles, or ab initio, if it starts directly at the level of established science and does not make assumptions such as empirical model and parameter fitting. "First principles thinking" consists of deriving things to their fundamental proven axioms in the given arena, before reasoning up by asking which ones are relevant to the question at hand, then cross referencing conclusions based on chosen axioms and making sure conclusions do not violate any fundamental laws. Physicists include counterintuitive concepts with reiteration.
- In formal logic [ edit ] In a formal logical system, that is, a set of propositions that are consistent with one another, it is possible that some of the statements can be deduced from other statements. For example, in the syllogism, "All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; Socrates is mortal" the last claim can be deduced from the first two.
- A first principle is an axiom that cannot be deduced from any other within that system. The classic example is that of Euclid's Elements; its hundreds of geometric propositions can be deduced from a set of definitions, postulates, and common notions: all three types constitute first principles.
- Philosophy [ edit ] In philosophy "first principles" are from First Cause[3] attitudes commonly referred to as a priori terms and arguments, which are contrasted to a posteriori terms, reasoning or arguments, in that the former is simply assumed and exist prior to the reasoning process and the latter are deduced or inferred after the initial reasoning process. First principles are generally treated in the realm of philosophy known as epistemology, but are an important factor in any metaphysical speculation.
- In philosophy "first principles" are often somewhat synonymous with a priori, datum and axiomatic reasoning.
- Aristotle [ edit ] Terence Irwin writes:
- When Aristotle explains in general terms what he tries to do in his philosophical works, he says he is looking for "first principles" (or "origins"; archai):
- In every systematic inquiry (methodos) where there are first principles, or causes, or elements, knowledge and science result from acquiring knowledge of these; for we think we know something just in case we acquire knowledge of the primary causes, the primary first principles, all the way to the elements. It is clear, then, that in the science of nature as elsewhere, we should try first to determine questions about the first principles. The naturally proper direction of our road is from things better known and clearer to us, to things that are clearer and better known by nature; for the things that are known to us are not the same as the things known unconditionally (hapl´s). Hence it is necessary for us to progress, following this procedure, from the things that are less clear by nature, but clearer to us, towards things that are clearer and better known by nature. (Phys. 184a10''21)
- The connection between knowledge and first principles is not axiomatic as expressed in Aristotle's account of a first principle (in one sense) as "the first basis from which a thing is known" (Met. 1013a14''15). The search for first principles is not peculiar to philosophy; philosophy shares this aim with biological, meteorological, and historical inquiries, among others. But Aristotle's references to first principles in this opening passage of the Physics and at the start of other philosophical inquiries imply that it is a primary task of philosophy.[4]
- Descartes [ edit ] Profoundly influenced by Euclid, Descartes was a rationalist who invented the foundationalist system of philosophy. He used the method of doubt, now called Cartesian doubt, to systematically doubt everything he could possibly doubt until he was left with what he saw as purely indubitable truths. Using these self-evident propositions as his axioms, or foundations, he went on to deduce his entire body of knowledge from them. The foundations are also called a priori truths. His most famous proposition is "Je pense, donc je suis" (I think, therefore I am, or Cogito ergo sum), which he indicated in his Discourse on the Method was "the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search."
- Descartes describes the concept of a first principle in the following excerpt from the preface to the Principles of Philosophy (1644):
- I should have desired, in the first place, to explain in it what philosophy is, by commencing with the most common matters, as, for example, that the word philosophy signifies the study of wisdom, and that by wisdom is to be understood not merely prudence in the management of affairs, but a perfect knowledge of all that man can know, as well for the conduct of his life as for the preservation of his health and the discovery of all the arts, and that knowledge to subserve these ends must necessarily be deduced from first causes; so that in order to study the acquisition of it (which is properly called [284] philosophizing), we must commence with the investigation of those first causes which are called Principles. Now, these principles must possess two conditions: in the first place, they must be so clear and evident that the human mind, when it attentively considers them, cannot doubt their truth; in the second place, the knowledge of other things must be so dependent on them as that though the principles themselves may indeed be known apart from what depends on them, the latter cannot nevertheless be known apart from the former. It will accordingly be necessary thereafter to endeavor so to deduce from those principles the knowledge of the things that depend on them, as that there may be nothing in the whole series of deductions which is not perfectly manifest.[5]
- In physics [ edit ] In physics, a calculation is said to be from first principles, or ab initio, if it starts directly at the level of established laws of physics and does not make assumptions such as empirical model and fitting parameters.
- For example, calculation of electronic structure using Schr¶dinger's equation within a set of approximations that do not include fitting the model to experimental data is an ab initio approach.
- See also [ edit ] AbstractionBrute factLaw of thoughtPresentClean room implementationPrimitive notionReferences [ edit ] Further reading [ edit ] Orestes J. Gonzalez, Actus Essendi and the Habit of the First Principle in Thomas Aquinas (New York: Einsiedler Press, 2019) .
- Here's who helped Elon Musk buy Twitter - The Washington Post
- Elon Musk's $44 billion Twitter takeover has so far been marked by turmoil.
- After slashing half the company's 7,500 member staff, he's driven away advertisers and created a bigger financial hole for the company. So far, his ideas for bringing in additional money '-- paying for verification and additional features '-- have failed to make much of a dent. An unscientific poll he launched recently told him to step down as CEO.
- On a Twitter audio chat recently, Musk cited the company's precarious financial position as a driver of his aggressive job cuts and drastic actions, adding ''we have an emergency fire drill on our hands.''
- That's making at least some of his investors in the deal antsy, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Last week, at least a couple of the original investors received letters from a Musk associate soliciting additional investments, according to two people familiar with the matter, although it was unclear if that would proceed.
- Here's who initially invested in the deal, and what we know about why:
- Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al SaudReturn to menuThe Saudi prince agreed in May to convert his shares of Twitter, worth nearly $2 billion, into a stake in the company when Musk took it private. A month earlier, he had publicly sparred with Musk about the company's worth, but later tweeted that Musk would be an ''excellent leader for Twitter.''
- The prince has previously placed winning bets on Apple, Amazon and eBay. But his latest Silicon Valley investment has drawn skepticism in Washington. President Biden and some members of Congress have called on officials to examine the role of Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Twitter deal.
- The Qatar Investment AuthorityReturn to menuKnown for its investments in companies including Barclays, Credit Suisse and Volkswagen, the $450 billion fund has an expansive footprint across the globe, and counts itself among Musk's investors, putting up $375 million toward the deal. The fund is fueled by Qatar's liquefied natural gas exports and helps power the gulf nation's diplomatic and political projects.
- Musk was spotted with Mansoor Bin Ebrahim Al-Mahmoud, CEO of Qatar Investment Authority earlier this month at the World Cup finale.
- Return to menuOne of the most famous venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, this firm has invested in Airbnb, Lyft and Coinbase. Co-founder Marc Andreessen was one of the people who privately messaged Musk about the Twitter deal, according to court filings. ''If you are considering equity partners, my growth fund is in for $250 [million] with no additional work required,'' Andreessen wrote. His firm would go on to give even $400 million. He has cheered on Musk in recent weeks on Twitter, particularly during the release of the ''Twitter Files,'' a string of releases on behavior inside the company before the takeover.
- The other co-founder, Ben Horowitz, said in several tweets that the venture capital firm believes in ''Elon's brilliance'' to make Twitter ''what it was meant to be.'' Horowitz went on to say that Twitter suffers from a range of issues, including censorship. He said that Musk was ''perhaps the only person in the world'' who could build the public square people hoped for, echoing the praise that conservatives have directed toward Musk, who they see as a champion of free speech.
- Return to menuAnother storied investment firm in the tech world, Sequoia Capital, has backed DoorDash, Zoom and 23andMe. A partner at the firm, Roelof Botha, has known Musk for decades, and was hired by him to work on what would become PayPal. Sequoia has also invested in Musk's other ventures, SpaceX and the Boring Company. ''Elon has succeeded in many different industries,'' Botha said during an interview at a Wall Street Journal conference in October. ''He's an incredible first-principles thinker.''
- What they get: Some of the biggest players in Silicon Valley are now tied to Twitter's future. They will expect a major return on their investments, and their influence ensures that they can throw their weight around. How Musk decides to run the company, who he hires and promotes, and what features and products he emphasizes will reveal the role these investors will play in the new, private Twitter. But as their messages and public comments suggest, they're also trying to get into Musk's good graces.
- Return to menuThe co-founder and chairman of the software company Oracle, Larry Ellison is known for his lavish spending. The tech titan, whom Musk counts as a friend, purchased the Hawaiian island of Lanai, in 2012. Earlier this year he texted Musk, ''Elon, '... I do think we need another Twitter.'' Ellison would go on to pledge $1 billion to Musk's purchase.
- The billionaire has cultivated ties with Donald Trump, hosting the president in 2020 at his estate in California's Coachella Valley and giving millions to Republican candidates and committees, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. After Musk said in October that he would not reinstate banned accounts until there was a clear process in place for doing so, he restored Trump's account after a 52 percent majority of users in a Twitter poll he ran voted in favor of the decision.
- Return to menuOne of the co-founders and former chief executive of the company, Jack Dorsey rolled over his investment in Twitter to Musk's new private enterprise, doubling down on his faith in the tech mogul, to the tune of $1 billion.
- Dorsey, who runs the tech conglomerate Block, was one of several key characters who encouraged Musk to pursue Twitter, according to private text messages made public through court documents. In the messages, Dorsey told Musk that he had previously tried to get him to join the board but was blocked, and later referred to the board as ''terrible.''
- After Musk oversaw dramatic firings and layoffs at his new company, Dorsey apologized on Twitter for growing his former company too quickly.
- What they get: From political persuasion to regained glory, the wealthy elite in Silicon Valley have myriad reasons to ally themselves with Musk '-- and may have some asks of him too. A host of Musk's associates now function as a small council of lieutenants, helping to bring Musk's vision of a ''hardcore'' Twitter 2.0 to fruition. Jason Calacanis, a longtime Musk associate who helped fundraise and cheerlead during the turbulent run-up to the deal, has played an important role in the company's transition. And once Musk shifts his focus from Twitter, there's also the role of CEO up for grabs.
- Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, BarclaysReturn to menuA collection of several banks '-- including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Barclays '-- have lent Musk more than a quarter of the funding, or $13 billion. After a boom of dealmaking in 2021, coming off the uncertainty of the pandemic, Musk's buyout presented an enticing opportunity.
- This intimidating debt load and Musk's optimistic revenue projections present daunting math for the company. Musk's platform would need to charge $44 a month to recoup the advertising value generated by the top segment of U.S. power users if it relied only on subscriptions, according to an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post.
- What they get: While these banks won't hold the same type of sway over Twitter, they are a powerful weight on the billionaire, who will owe roughly $1 billion in interest a year. Musk has also at times last year put more than half of his Tesla shares down as collateral on loans, according to financial filings, worth tens of billions of dollars. But Tesla has slumped roughly 65 percent this year, highlighting both the risks facing tech companies in a downtrodden market and the danger of loading a slow-growth company like Twitter with too much debt. The banks helping to finance his Twitter deal would play a huge role if the company ever goes under.
- Editing by Laura Stevens and Karly Domb Sadof. Copy editing by Angela Mecca.
- Michael Bloomberg Reportedly Plotting to Buy Dow Jones or The Washington Post - 23.12.2022, Sputnik International
- https://sputniknews.com/20221223/michael-bloomberg-reportedly-plotting-to-buy-dow-jones-or-the-washington-post---1105748359.html
- Michael Bloomberg Reportedly Plotting to Buy Dow Jones or The Washington Post
- Michael Bloomberg Reportedly Plotting to Buy Dow Jones or The Washington Post
- According to US media reports, the transaction will create an "unparalleled business news behemoth." 23.12.2022, Sputnik International
- /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content
- /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content
- https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/06/0a/1083112684_0:177:3011:1871_1920x0_80_0_0_0cd2058b928c9958b1f068aef5b652ad.jpg
- Media mogul and billionaire Michael Bloomberg is considering the acquisition of a stake in Dow Jones '' the publisher of the Wall Street Journal '' US media reported, citing undisclosed sources. Another reported option on the table is buying out the Washington Post. Bloomberg purportedly sees Dow Jones as a ''perfect fit'' to expand his media empire and create an "unparalleled business news behemoth," according to US media.Dow Jones controls financial media outlets The Wall Street Journal, Barron's and Market Watch. It is also part of Rupert Murdoch`s News Corp, which he plans to merge with Fox Corporation. Bloomberg is reportedly skeptical about this idea, as per sources cited in the report. It is understood that Bloomberg hasn`t yet contacted Murdoch, but has hired investment bankers to evaluate the asset.The acquisition of Dow Jones will facilitate selling more subscriptions to the Bloomberg terminal. Subscriptions to the terminal constitute the vast majority of Bloomberg's revenue. This terminal, which gives direct access to stock prices and exclusive financial news, is highly valued by traders. Bloomberg is reportedly on good terms with Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, who bought the outlet in 2013 for $250 million, nonetheless, experts believe that Bezos won`t sell his asset to Bloomberg. Washington Post spokesman earlier said that the newspaper is "not for sale".
- https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/06/0a/1083112684_140:0:2871:2048_1920x0_80_0_0_8b4a79e4e632e6738170f965fde378e7.jpgSputnik International
- merger, corporate merger, bloomberg, rupert murdoch, jeff bezos
- merger, corporate merger, bloomberg, rupert murdoch, jeff bezos
- 18:00 GMT 23.12.2022 (Updated: 11:58 GMT 24.12.2022 )According to US media reports, the transaction will create an "unparalleled business news behemoth."
- Media mogul and billionaire Michael Bloomberg is considering the acquisition of a stake in Dow Jones '' the publisher of the Wall Street Journal '' US media reported, citing undisclosed sources. Another reported option on the table is buying out the Washington Post.
- Bloomberg purportedly sees Dow Jones as a ''perfect fit'' to expand his media empire and create an "unparalleled business news behemoth," according to US media.
- Dow Jones controls financial media outlets The Wall Street Journal, Barron's and Market Watch. It is also part of Rupert Murdoch`s News Corp, which he plans to merge with Fox Corporation. Bloomberg is reportedly skeptical about this idea, as per sources cited in the report. It is understood that Bloomberg hasn`t yet contacted Murdoch, but has hired investment bankers to evaluate the asset.
- The acquisition of Dow Jones will facilitate selling more subscriptions to the Bloomberg terminal. Subscriptions to the terminal constitute the vast majority of Bloomberg's revenue. This terminal, which gives direct access to stock prices and exclusive financial news, is highly valued by traders.
- Bloomberg is reportedly on good terms with Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, who bought the outlet in 2013 for $250 million, nonetheless, experts believe that Bezos won`t sell his asset to Bloomberg. Washington Post spokesman earlier said that the newspaper is "not for sale".
- Twitter Files: FBI's Infiltration of Big Tech is Step on Path to Totalitarian State, Journo Warns - 24.12.2022, Sputnik International
- https://sputniknews.com/20221224/twitter-files-fbis-infiltration-of-big-tech-is-step-on-path-to-totalitarian-state-journo-warns-1105753460.html
- Twitter Files: FBI's Infiltration of Big Tech is Step on Path to Totalitarian State, Journo Warns
- Twitter Files: FBI's Infiltration of Big Tech is Step on Path to Totalitarian State, Journo Warns
- American author Michael Shellenberger released the seventh tranche of the explosive "Twitter Files" earlier this week to shed light on the FBI's censorship and... 24.12.2022, Sputnik International
- /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content
- /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content
- https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/07/17/1083444602_0:106:2048:1258_1920x0_80_0_0_46ea6e722f2abb68f6bba033ec880593.jpg
- The recently released sixth and seventh batches of the Twitter Files shed light on the FBI's instructions to censor specific tweets and accounts for "violating" the company's terms of service.The internal documents also lifted the veil of secrecy on how the bureau launched an apparent damage control operation prior to the publication of the New York Post's bombshell concerning Hunter Biden's laptop. On top of that, an email by Twitter's former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker revealed that the platform collected a staggering $3 million from the bureau at least on one occassion.The Twitter Files exposure apparently hit the FBI's raw nerve as the bureau issued an official statement claiming that "the men and women of the FBI" were doing their job, while "conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency."While commenting on the bureau's statement, one prominent legal expert remarked that it is not clear "what is more chilling: the menacing role played by the FBI in Twitter's censorship program or its mendacious response to the disclosure of that role."How It All BeganMake no mistake, this started long ago, noted Goodman: in fact, the groundwork was laid after September 11, 2001, with the passage of the Patriot Act.Goodman has drawn attention to the fact that prior to the advent of NSLs, investigators needed to get a warrant from a judge and had to have probable cause supported by some kind of evidence before they could lawfully investigate a person or their property, including electronic accounts, like email or Twitter.However, with the Patriot Act, the FBI could simply write up an NSL under the suspicion that an individual was a national security threat and launch a probe into them, according to the journalist. "No warrant or evidence was required," Goodman added. Moreover, the bureau could also reject the requests of those asking for proof on the basis that the evidence would risk revealing sources and methods and was also a national security threat, according to the journalist."These newfound powers were quickly and consistently abused," Goodman continued. "Former FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni was admonished by both the House and the Senate for gross abuses of NSLs and other unconstitutional acts."However, it appears that the US Congress' attempts to rein in the bureau have not borne any fruit and the FBI has only grown more brazen in the years since.Hunter's and Hillary's Emails & APT28Meanwhile, the story of FBI's attempts to shield Hunter Biden evokes strong memories of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hack amid the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. The disclosure of Hunter's bombshell emails was downplayed and smeared as a "hack" and "disinformation" by "Russian APT28" just as the 2016 DNC email leak was.According to Shellenberger, the bureau took Hunter Biden's "laptop from hell" from Mac Isaac, a Delaware repair shop owner, on December 9, 2019. By August 2020, Isaac still had not heard back from the FBI, even though he had found alleged evidence of criminal activity on the device. So Isaac contacted lawyer Rudy Giuliani, "who was under FBI surveillance at the time," and provided him with a copy of the laptop's hard disk. In early October, Guiliani gave the disk to the New York Post.On October 13, 2020, a day before the Post planned to release its bombshell, "FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan sent ten documents to Twitter's then-Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth through Teleporter, a one-way communications channel from the FBI to Twitter," Shellinberger revealed citing internal Twitter documents. On October 14, 2020, the bombshell article saw the light of day but soon was banned and suppressed by major Silicon Valley giants, including Twitter.But that is not all. According to Yoel Roth's testimony, during all of 2020, the FBI warned him about the forthcoming Russian "hack and leak" operation "involving Hunter Biden" prior to the 2020 election. The bureau particularly referred to APT28, claiming that it's a group of Russian hackers linked to Moscow's intelligence services. In one of his recent interviews, Roth said that when Hunter's emails finally emerged "it set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack-and-leap campaign alarm bells."The "laptop from hell" posed a challenge to Hunter's father, the Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, as the bombshell suggested that the latter not only knew but also participated in his son's murky financial schemes.Similarly, the 2016 DNC leak threatened the Clinton campaign, demonstrating, in particular, that the party's primaries were rigged in favor of Hillary. It was Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann who requested cyber security firm CrowdStrike's help in investigating the alleged DNC hack.CrowdStrike "detected" and "attributed" the alleged breach of DNC servers to Russia during the 2016 election cycle. The company claimed that the perpetrators were "two Russian espionage groups": Cozy Bear (APT29) and Fancy Bear (APT28), suggesting with a "low" to "medium"-level of confidence that they may be affiliated with Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and Main Intelligence Department (GRU), respectively. Moscow denied the claim as absurd.For its part, the FBI relied on CrowdStrike's conclusions, although the bureau has never physically examined the DNC servers and has only been provided with their "digital copies" instead.According to Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of former US intelligence officers working within the CIA, the FBI and the NSA, there had been no hack: it was an inside job. Moreover, CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry admitted under oath in 2017 that the company does not have "concrete evidence" that the alleged "Russian hackers" exfiltrated any data from the servers.The story of the DNC "hack" played a big role in smearing Russia and linking Donald Trump to Moscow. The Dems claimed that Moscow "hacked" the emails to help Trump win the 2016 elections. In summer 2016, the FBI launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane on the pretext of alleged "collusion" between Trump and the Kremlin. However, Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigation found no evidence to back the allegations, which were rubbished by Moscow from the very start as nonsensical.It is not clear if the US public understands the legal games the FBI can play, according to the journalist."The FBI's infiltration of Twitter is the tippy top of tip of the upper edge of the tip of the iceberg," Goodman remarked. "We need to understand just how many private companies and non-profit organizations are secretly working with or for the incredibly dangerous and subversive US 'Intelligence' community. This hidden-in-plain-sight network of government agencies, non-profit organizations, and private industry is what is spoken of as the 'Deep State'."Operation Mockingbird and Church CommitteeThe FBI's attempts to control and infiltrate the work of social media giants resembles nothing so much as the US intelligence Operation Mockingbird which was first mentioned by CIA Director William Colby during his briefing to the Justice Department on December 31, 1974.Later, the issue was touched upon by Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein in Rolling Stone in 1977. Bernstein revealed how numerous journalists, including Pulitzer-prize winners, wrote fake stories and disseminated propaganda at the CIA's behest during the Cold War. The scale of the CIA's huge international media network was described by one CIA official as ranging from Radio Free Europe to a third'string guy in Quito who could get something in the local paper. According to the US mainstream press, the program has never been officially discontinued."It is essentially an extension of Operation Mockingbird," Goodman said about the US intelligence community's collusion with Big Tech. "The revelations of the Church Committee showed us the CIA's intention. There is no reason to believe they would change. We see these 'retired' intelligence people on the news all the time. It should be obvious to anyone looking at the evidence if the FBI or any law enforcement or intelligence agency is doing anything other than tracking dangerous criminals on Twitter, they should not be doing it."The Church Committee was a US Senate select committee that investigated abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and IRS in 1975.Presently, it's not a matter of the FBI getting away with what it has done (they already have), this is "an inflection point like none other in American history," according to the journalist.
- https://sputniknews.com/20221102/disinformation-crusaders-how-big-tech-became-us-blobs-executioner-of-free-speech-1102998030.html
- https://sputniknews.com/20221220/twitter-files-7-fbi-influenced-twitter-executives-to-discredit-suppress-hunter-biden-laptop-story-1105623761.html
- https://sputniknews.com/20200324/nothing-burger-how-crowdstrikes-meteoric-rise-was-triggered-by-fake-russia-hacked-dnc-story-1078691063.html
- https://sputniknews.com/20210805/from-mockingbird-to-birdwatch-big-tech--big-media-uniting-against-independent-press-scholars-warn-1083535783.html
- https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/07/17/1083444602_116:0:1933:1363_1920x0_80_0_0_50e0bc32b17dbd6aa00ee63de4b5b133.jpgSputnik International
- twitter files, elon musk, fbi, hunter biden, laptop from hell, censorship, operation mockingbird, church committee, totalitarian, autocracy, cia, nsa, patriot act
- twitter files, elon musk, fbi, hunter biden, laptop from hell, censorship, operation mockingbird, church committee, totalitarian, autocracy, cia, nsa, patriot act
- American author Michael Shellenberger released the seventh tranche of the explosive "Twitter Files" earlier this week to shed light on the FBI's censorship and meddling with the platform. New Twitter owner Elon Musk made internal Twitter files available for several US investigative journalists in December.
- The recently released sixth and seventh batches of the Twitter Files shed light on the FBI's instructions to censor specific tweets and accounts for "violating" the company's terms of service.
- The internal documents also lifted the veil of secrecy on how the bureau launched an apparent damage control operation prior to the publication of the New York Post's bombshell concerning Hunter Biden's laptop.
- On top of that, an email by Twitter's former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker revealed that the platform collected a staggering $3 million from the bureau at least on one occassion.
- "My opinion - based on the evidence available - is the FBI did this because the FBI is fundamentally corrupt," Jason Goodman, a US investigative journalist and founder of Crowdsource the Truth, told Sputnik. "Failure to investigate Hunter Biden based on the evidence on the laptop is bad enough. Evidence being revealed now by Twitter's new management suggests the FBI actively worked to protect Hunter Biden from public scrutiny and hide their own lack of enforcement action. Broad knowledge of the evidence on Hunter Biden's laptop would certainly have led to public outcry at least for further investigation. We have never witnessed such a brazen criminal act by a US government agency so nakedly exposed. For the past two years, any individual who even debates these facts online loses access to the major social media platforms."
- The Twitter Files exposure apparently hit the FBI's raw nerve as the bureau issued an official statement claiming that "the men and women of the FBI" were doing their job, while "conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency."
- While commenting on the bureau's statement, one prominent legal expert remarked that it is not clear "what is more chilling: the menacing role played by the FBI in Twitter's censorship program or its mendacious response to the disclosure of that role."
- Make no mistake, this started long ago, noted Goodman: in fact, the groundwork was laid after September 11, 2001, with the passage of the Patriot Act.
- "Prior to that, Americans were protected from undue search and seizure by the fourth amendment of the constitution," the journalist explained. "In the newfound 'war on terror' the Patriot Act was sold to the American public as increased security. But it introduced several unconstitutional new laws and new law enforcement tools that removed our constitutional protection. One such tool was the National Security Letter (NSL)."
- Goodman has drawn attention to the fact that prior to the advent of NSLs, investigators needed to get a warrant from a judge and had to have probable cause supported by some kind of evidence before they could lawfully investigate a person or their property, including electronic accounts, like email or Twitter.
- However, with the Patriot Act, the FBI could simply write up an NSL under the suspicion that an individual was a national security threat and launch a probe into them, according to the journalist. "No warrant or evidence was required," Goodman added. Moreover, the bureau could also reject the requests of those asking for proof on the basis that the evidence would risk revealing sources and methods and was also a national security threat, according to the journalist.
- "These newfound powers were quickly and consistently abused," Goodman continued. "Former FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni was admonished by both the House and the Senate for gross abuses of NSLs and other unconstitutional acts."
- However, it appears that the US Congress' attempts to rein in the bureau have not borne any fruit and the FBI has only grown more brazen in the years since.
- "By alleging that the FBI was engaged in a counterintelligence investigation, they no longer had to adhere to the same rules or obey the constitutional protections that existed previously," said Goodman. "This is exactly how the FBI began their shambolic investigation into the so-called Russian collusion with Trump."
- Hunter's and Hillary's Emails & APT28
- Meanwhile, the story of FBI's attempts to shield Hunter Biden evokes strong memories of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hack amid the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. The disclosure of Hunter's bombshell emails was downplayed and smeared as a "hack" and "disinformation" by "Russian APT28" just as the 2016 DNC email leak was.
- According to Shellenberger, the bureau took Hunter Biden's "laptop from hell" from Mac Isaac, a Delaware repair shop owner, on December 9, 2019. By August 2020, Isaac still had not heard back from the FBI, even though he had found alleged evidence of criminal activity on the device. So Isaac contacted lawyer Rudy Giuliani, "who was under FBI surveillance at the time," and provided him with a copy of the laptop's hard disk. In early October, Guiliani gave the disk to the New York Post.
- On October 13, 2020, a day before the Post planned to release its bombshell, "FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan sent ten documents to Twitter's then-Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth through Teleporter, a one-way communications channel from the FBI to Twitter," Shellinberger revealed citing internal Twitter documents. On October 14, 2020, the bombshell article saw the light of day but soon was banned and suppressed by major Silicon Valley giants, including Twitter.
- But that is not all. According to Yoel Roth's testimony, during all of 2020, the FBI warned him about the forthcoming Russian "hack and leak" operation "involving Hunter Biden" prior to the 2020 election. The bureau particularly referred to APT28, claiming that it's a group of Russian hackers linked to Moscow's intelligence services. In one of his recent interviews, Roth said that when Hunter's emails finally emerged "it set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack-and-leap campaign alarm bells."
- The "laptop from hell" posed a challenge to Hunter's father, the Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, as the bombshell suggested that the latter not only knew but also participated in his son's murky financial schemes.
- the 2016 DNC leak threatened the Clinton campaign, demonstrating, in particular, that the party's primaries were rigged in favor of Hillary. It was Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann who requested cyber security firm CrowdStrike's help in investigating the alleged DNC hack.
- "detected" and "attributed" the alleged breach of DNC servers to Russia during the 2016 election cycle. The company claimed that the perpetrators were "two Russian espionage groups": Cozy Bear (APT29) and Fancy Bear (APT28), suggesting with a "low" to "medium"-level of confidence that they may be affiliated with Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and Main Intelligence Department (GRU), respectively. Moscow denied the claim as absurd.
- For its part, the FBI relied on CrowdStrike's conclusions, although the bureau has never physically examined the DNC servers and has only been provided with their "digital copies" instead.
- According to Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of former US intelligence officers working within the CIA, the FBI and the NSA, there had been no hack: it was an inside job. Moreover, CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry admitted under oath in 2017 that the company does not have "concrete evidence" that the alleged "Russian hackers" exfiltrated any data from the servers.
- The story of the DNC "hack" played a big role in smearing Russia and linking Donald Trump to Moscow. The Dems claimed that Moscow "hacked" the emails to help Trump win the 2016 elections. In summer 2016, the FBI launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane on the pretext of alleged "collusion" between Trump and the Kremlin. However, Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigation found no evidence to back the allegations, which were rubbished by Moscow from the very start as nonsensical.
- "The true origin of the Russiagate hoax has not yet been revealed but it is becoming increasingly clear that top executives in the FBI have been involved in an ongoing coverup for a very long time," said Goodman. "APT28 is likely a concoction of Dmitri Alperovitch's Crowdstrike, which itself is an obvious FBI cutout. Crowdstrike co-founder Shawn Henry left the FBI to create the company, then shortly thereafter received $150 million from Google. Sounds fair enough but think about that for a moment. Google cannot easily hand $150 million to the FBI, but they can invest whatever they want in a startup tech company."
- It is not clear if the US public understands the legal games the FBI can play, according to the journalist.
- "The FBI's infiltration of Twitter is the tippy top of tip of the upper edge of the tip of the iceberg," Goodman remarked. "We need to understand just how many private companies and non-profit organizations are secretly working with or for the incredibly dangerous and subversive US 'Intelligence' community. This hidden-in-plain-sight network of government agencies, non-profit organizations, and private industry is what is spoken of as the 'Deep State'."
- Operation Mockingbird and Church Committee
- The FBI's attempts to control and infiltrate the work of social media giants resembles nothing so much as
- the US intelligence Operation Mockingbird which was first mentioned by CIA Director William Colby during his briefing to the Justice Department on December 31, 1974.
- Later, the issue was touched upon by Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein in Rolling Stone in 1977. Bernstein revealed how numerous journalists, including Pulitzer-prize winners, wrote fake stories and disseminated propaganda at the CIA's behest during the Cold War. The scale of the CIA's huge international media network was described by one CIA official as ranging from Radio Free Europe to a third'string guy in Quito who could get something in the local paper. According to the US mainstream press, the program has never been officially discontinued.
- "It is essentially an extension of Operation Mockingbird," Goodman said about the US intelligence community's collusion with Big Tech. "The revelations of the Church Committee showed us the CIA's intention. There is no reason to believe they would change. We see these 'retired' intelligence people on the news all the time. It should be obvious to anyone looking at the evidence if the FBI or any law enforcement or intelligence agency is doing anything other than tracking dangerous criminals on Twitter, they should not be doing it."
- The Church Committee was a US Senate select committee that investigated abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and IRS in 1975.
- Presently, it's not a matter of the FBI getting away with what it has done (they already have), this is "an inflection point like none other in American history," according to the journalist.
- "We are in a dangerous moment," Goodman warned. "The United States has become a neofascist technocratic autocracy. The new Congress must take bold steps to shut this down immediately and begin the journey back to the constitutional republic that was established in 1776 or it will only get worse ('...) Another thing the Patriot Act created that most people are not aware of is the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force. It is an interagency intelligence-sharing operation overseen by the FBI. Critics say it eliminates the compartmentalization that is in place to prevent the types of abuses that are commonplace today. Without oversight, who knows what these interagency operations are capable of."
- How NYU's Emergency Room Favors the Rich - The New York Times
- In New York University's busy Manhattan emergency department, Room 20 is special.
- Steps away from the hospital's ambulance bay, the room is outfitted with equipment to perform critical procedures or isolate those with highly infectious diseases.
- Doctors say Room 20 is usually reserved for two types of patients: Those whose lives are on the line. And those who are V.I.P.s.
- In September 2021, doctors were alerted that Kenneth G. Langone, whose donations to the university's hospital system had led it to be renamed in his honor, was en route. The octogenarian had stomach pain, and Room 20 was kept empty for him, medical workers said. Upon his arrival, Mr. Langone was whisked into the room, treated for a bacterial infection and sent home.
- The next spring, Senator Chuck Schumer accompanied his wife, who had a fever and was short of breath, to the emergency room. As sicker patients were treated in the hallway, the couple were ushered into Room 20, where they received expedited Covid-19 tests, according to workers who witnessed the scene. The tests came back negative.
- NYU Langone denies putting V.I.P.s first, but 33 medical workers told The New York Times that they had seen such patients receive preferential treatment in Room 20, one of the largest private spaces in the department. One doctor was surprised to find an orthopedic specialist in the room awaiting a senior hospital executive's mother with hip pain. Another described an older hospital trustee who was taken to Room 20 when he was short of breath after exercising.
- The privileged treatment is part of a broader pattern, a Times investigation found. For years, NYU's emergency room in Manhattan has secretly given priority to donors, trustees, politicians, celebrities, and their friends and family, according to 45 medical workers, internal hospital records and other confidential documents reviewed by The Times.
- On hospital computers, electronic medical charts sometimes specify whether patients have donated to the hospital or how they are connected to executives, according to screenshots taken by frustrated doctors in recent years and shared with The Times.
- ''Major trustee, please prioritize,'' said one from July 2020.
- Dozens of doctors said they felt pressure to put V.I.P.s first. Many witnessed such patients jumping ahead of sicker people for CT scans and M.R.I.s. Some said medical specialists, often in short supply, were diverted from other cases to attend to mild complaints from high-priority patients.
- Many hospitals offer exclusive concierge services to the rich. But emergency rooms are built around the premise of medical triage: that the sickest patients, regardless of their ability to pay, are treated first. Everyone else has to wait.
- At NYU Langone, one of the country's pre-eminent medical institutions, some doctors said that process had been upended.
- ''As emergency department doctors, we have two important skills: triage and resuscitation,'' said Dr. Kimbia Arno, who worked in the emergency room in 2020 and 2021. ''This system is in direct defiance of what we do and what we were trained to do.''
- ''The stress on providers is harmful,'' said Dr. Anand Swaminathan, a physician in the emergency room from 2009 to 2018. ''It's the fact that I am getting multiple calls, from multiple people, asking me to drop everything to treat a V.I.P.''
- Eleven doctors told The Times that they had resigned from the emergency department in part because they objected to favoring V.I.P.s.
- Some residents '-- doctors in their first years of practice '-- complained to the national organization that accredits medical training programs. The frustrations included NYU's ''special treatment'' of trustees, donors and their families, according to documents reviewed by The Times. The group's subsequent investigation confirmed that some doctors ''felt pressured to see V.I.P. patients first'' and that they ''experience a sense of fear and intimidation and retaliation for not expediting V.I.P. patient care.''
- The Internal Revenue Service requires nonprofit hospitals like NYU, which avoids $250 million a year in taxes, to benefit their communities. A primary way to meet the requirement is to run an emergency room that is open to everyone.
- But at NYU, poor people sometimes struggle to be seen. For example, ambulance workers said nurses in the emergency room routinely discouraged them from dropping off homeless or intoxicated patients. Instead, they were often shuttled to nearby Bellevue, a strained public hospital that primarily treats the poor.
- A Times series this year has found that many nonprofit hospitals have strayed from their charitable roots to maximize profits. Giant hospital systems illegally sent exorbitant bills to Medicaid patients. They used hospitals in poor neighborhoods to qualify for steep drug discounts, funneling the proceeds into wealthier neighborhoods. Others cut staff to dangerously low levels.
- Image NYU Langone denies that its emergency room favors V.I.P.s, but dozens of doctors said they felt pressured to put such patients first. Credit... Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times NYU's chief of hospital operations, Dr. Fritz Fran§ois, denied that the hospital favored donors, trustees and other prominent patients. He said that patients received treatment based on how sick they were, regardless of their wealth or status, and that the emergency room treated many low-income and homeless patients.
- ''We do not have a V.I.P. program,'' Dr. Fran§ois wrote in a letter to The Times. ''We do not have V.I.P. patients. We do not have V.I.P. floors. We do not have V.I.P. rooms. We do not have V.I.P. clinical teams. We do not offer V.I.P. care.''
- Lisa Greiner, a spokeswoman for NYU Langone, confirmed that Mr. Langone had been treated in Room 20, which she said was ''absolutely appropriate'' based on his symptoms. She said the room served a variety of purposes, including privacy. She said no patient, including Mr. Langone, ''has ever been treated in an isolated room at the expense of any other patient's care.''
- Mr. Langone said, ''As a matter of personal integrity I have never asked for any special treatment at the hospital, and they have never offered.''
- Angelo Roefaro, a spokesman for Mr. Schumer, said the protocol for the senator's security detail was ''to have the senator stay, whenever possible, in a secure location.''
- Andrew C. Phillips, a lawyer for NYU, said some of the doctors who had spoken to The Times were motivated to disparage the hospital. Dr. Arno, for example, had been in a fellowship program and was passed over for a permanent job, he said. Mr. Phillips also said Dr. Swaminathan had never voiced concerns to hospital leaders about V.I.P.s.
- Dr. Fran§ois acknowledged that NYU's electronic medical records sometimes included notations describing patients as ''friends and family.'' But he said these labels were available for all hospital employees '-- even the cousins of security guards and housekeepers '-- and enabled employees to pay courtesy visits to such patients.
- ''Our friends and family do not receive different or better medical care,'' Dr. Fran§ois wrote. He added, ''Our friends and family don't skip the triage process, don't jump any lines, don't get placed in any special rooms or floors and don't get fed any differently.''
- Dozens of doctors and other emergency room staff said that, when it came to many V.I.P.s, that was simply not true.
- An E.R.'s Transformation Image Kenneth G. Langone, a Home Depot founder, helped NYU's hospital system raise billions of dollars. Credit... Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images In 2007, the New York University Medical Center was in grave financial trouble.
- Were it not for royalties from an arthritis drug developed by one of its researchers, the hospital would have lost $150 million that year. The patent's expiration was looming.
- A lifeline came from Mr. Langone, the founder of Home Depot and chairman of the hospital's board of trustees. He and his wife donated $100 million in 2008, matching a contribution they had made eight years earlier. The medical center was renamed NYU Langone.
- Mr. Langone became known not just for his own philanthropy '-- he donated another $100 million in 2019 '-- but also his ability to persuade other wealthy New Yorkers to donate. Over the ensuing years, he helped the hospital raise $3 billion.
- In 2012, the run-down emergency room, on the East River in Midtown Manhattan, was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. It reopened two years later with more space and a new name, the Ronald O. Perelman Center for Emergency Services, named for the billionaire who financed its construction.
- The emergency department's longtime chair, an outspoken champion of serving the needy, stepped down in 2015. Around then, several doctors said, they began receiving requests from administrators to give priority to V.I.P.s.
- ''Suddenly, we started getting these phone calls that X person is coming in, they are X relation to board member, and we were given the strong sense that you had to push them to the front of the line,'' said Dr. Swaminathan, who worked in the emergency room at the time.
- NYU was not the only prestigious nonprofit hospital system finding ways to cater to donors and other wealthy patients.
- In San Francisco, the UCSF Medical Center rewarded donors with faster access to top cardiologists. Stanford Medical Center gave wealthy patients red blankets to distinguish them from everyone else. (Spokeswomen for those medical centers said they no longer provided such perks.)
- Today, top New York hospitals like Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell offer luxury accommodations and personal concierge services to patients who can afford them.
- And emergency room workers at several elite academic medical centers said in interviews that, as at NYU, administrators sometimes requested expedited treatment for well-connected patients.
- ''The hospitals are acting as businesses,'' said Dr. Renee Hsia, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who researches emergency room care. ''They can often garner much more revenue from these patients that are huge donors.''
- 'Drop Everything' Image Hospital workers were alerted before V.I.P.s arrived at NYU's emergency room. Credit... Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times The V.I.P. experience in NYU's Manhattan emergency room starts before the patient arrives.
- Trustees can use a dedicated phone number '-- the Trustee Access Line '-- to alert the hospital they are coming. Administrators then call, text and send messages notifying doctors that a high-priority patient is en route, according to 30 doctors. Doctors said that even when those messages did not explicitly seek priority treatment, that was how they were interpreted.
- ''Just a heads up that a VIP/trustee is coming to the ED per notification from the Dean's office and to keep an eye out for her,'' one doctor wrote in an electronic chat in August 2021, referring to the emergency department. The Times reviewed a screenshot of the exchange.
- Ms. Greiner, the NYU spokeswoman, said the trustee line ''does not entitle any member to better or prioritized care.'' She said that the V.I.P. reference in the 2021 message was ''colloquial and does not correspond with any special protocol at our hospital,'' and that the sender did not ''ask for or expect special care, line cutting or anything of the sort.''
- Doctors said they were sometimes required to carry a hospital-issued iPhone that, among other things, was logged into an email chain that alerted them to incoming V.I.P.s.
- ''It didn't matter how busy it was,'' said Dr. Uch(C) Blackstock, who worked in the emergency room from 2010 to 2019. ''A V.I.P. was coming, and we had to drop everything.'' She left NYU partly because of frustration with the preferential treatment, she said.
- Ms. Greiner said that Dr. Blackstock had never complained to the hospital about improper prioritization of patients and that Dr. Blackstock had herself alerted colleagues on a few occasions when her family or friends were in the emergency room. In response, Dr. Blackstock said there was a distinction between what she had done and what she and others perceived as institutional pressure to swiftly treat V.I.P.s.
- Some patients' electronic medical charts included reminders about their V.I.P. status, according to screenshots captured by emergency room doctors and shared with The Times.
- Image Credit... The New York Times ''NYUMC BOARD OF TRUSTEE AND IMMEDIATE FAMILY,'' read one note.
- Another: ''She is a donor and a prospect for a planned gift.''
- A third: ''Escort Needed'' and ''Daughter of Trustee.'' (Some V.I.P.s were assigned employees to stand by to transport them around the hospital, according to 13 medical workers. Ms. Greiner denied that.)
- Image Credit... The New York Times Two members of NYU Langone's board of trustees said in interviews that they had received swift, excellent care at the emergency room. They believed everyone got such treatment.
- ''I didn't have to wait around for long hours for someone to come talk to me as happens in other emergency rooms,'' said Bernard Schwartz, who said he had donated more than $30 million to NYU Langone. ''I think that's for all patients.''
- Mr. Schwartz said he did not think his medical record identified him as a trustee. But he presumed that doctors knew who he was.
- ''I would be upset if that were not true,'' he said.
- Delayed ResuscitationsNYU's emergency room often has more than 100 patients at once but only 40 curtained beds, leaving many patients to be treated in the hallways.
- None of the doctors The Times interviewed had ever seen that happen with a V.I.P.
- One Thursday night in April 2018, workers in the emergency room got an alert that Mr. Langone would be arriving in about 20 minutes. They had to figure out where to put other patients to ensure that he could have a private room, according to two medical workers with direct knowledge of what happened. When he arrived with a two-centimeter cut on his thumb, doctors quickly stitched him up.
- Ms. Greiner said no other patients were awaiting care during Mr. Langone's visit. The two workers told The Times that the emergency room had been as busy as usual.
- Image Dr. Michelle Romeo, who worked in the emergency room until 2021, recalled a famous actor's jumping to the front of the line for a CT scan. Credit... Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times Emergency room workers said these arrangements for V.I.P.s sometimes delayed critical care for sicker patients.
- In late 2019, doctors were racing to rescue a patient in cardiac arrest. One pushed the gurney toward one of the private rooms meant for life-or-death emergencies. Another sat atop the unconscious patient, performing chest compressions. When they arrived at the room, they could not enter '-- a V.I.P. occupied it. The patient survived, but two workers who witnessed the episode said the delay could have been deadly.
- Ms. Greiner said, ''Without the patient's information, we cannot investigate this claim other than to say that at NYU Langone, there is one standard of care for all patients.''
- The Times identified many similar examples.
- For example, a relative of someone on the hospital's leadership team went into the emergency room with chest pain and was promptly taken to a private room, even as a man experiencing a life-threatening emergency '-- a blockage of blood to one of his limbs '-- was put in the hallway, according to the accreditation group's investigation.
- Another time, at the instruction of a hospital administrator, a V.I.P. patient with asymptomatic Covid was seen by pulmonology and infectious-disease specialists who had to be pulled away from sicker patients, according to two medical workers with direct knowledge of the case.
- Ms. Greiner said that The Times had not provided enough information for her to be able to respond definitively, but that the asymptomatic patient might have had an underlying illness.
- Dr. Michelle Romeo, who was a resident in the emergency room from 2017 until 2021, recalled when a famous actor with a headache and low-grade fever jumped to the front of the line for a CT scan, cutting off a nursing home resident who had possible sepsis and had been waiting for three hours.
- The actor requested a spinal tap, which Dr. Romeo believed was unnecessary. A supervisor instructed her to do it anyway, she said.
- Both tests showed nothing wrong with the patient.
- Mr. Phillips, the lawyer for NYU, said Dr. Romeo had an incentive to criticize the hospital because she had not been offered a full-time position after her residency. Dr. Romeo said she believed she had not been offered the job because she had been outspoken about issues including the treatment of V.I.P.s.
- A Public ShamingOver the years, doctors in NYU's emergency room came to believe there could be career-threatening consequences if well-connected patients were dissatisfied with their treatment.
- In October 2019, Dr. Joe Bennett was at the end of what's known as a shift-change huddle, updating his colleagues on the patients he was handing off, when a frustrated V.I.P. approached him. The V.I.P. demanded that a family member immediately receive a CT scan, according to a doctor who witnessed the encounter and two others who were briefed on the matter.
- Dr. Bennett explained that a sicker patient was the priority but that the family member would come next.
- Soon after, Dr. Bennett was put on probation for what NYU said was a lack of professionalism, according to the three doctors. For months, the hospital required him to attend weekly meetings and write essays reflecting on how to provide professional treatment.
- Image Doctors viewed the ouster of Dr. Kristin Carmody as punishment for her not catering to a V.I.P. Credit... Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times About a year later, in December 2020, Dr. Kristin Carmody, who oversaw the education of medical residents in the emergency department, was forced to resign after a patient complained about having not received the level of attention or treatment that she expected. Dr. Carmody later said in a wrongful-termination lawsuit that the patient had been designated as a V.I.P.
- Ms. Greiner said that the patient's medical record had not included a friends-and-family label and that Dr. Carmody had been pushed out because she falsely noted on a medical record that she had personally examined the patient. (Dr. Carmody denies that.)
- But inside the emergency department, her ouster was widely regarded as punishment for not sufficiently catering to a V.I.P. patient.
- At a heated staff meeting that month, a senior doctor said Dr. Carmody's forced departure appeared to be the result of a complaint from ''a V.I.P. person that was connected to higher-ups,'' according to a recording of the meeting. The doctor added, ''The clear message is anybody can be taken down.''
- Around that time, top NYU officials commissioned an internal review of the culture of the emergency department, whose employees were burned out from the pandemic and unhappy with their pay.
- The investigation documented concerns with V.I.P. care, according to a presentation that Dr. Robert Femia, the chairman of the emergency department, delivered to doctors.
- Many doctors and nurses ''dislike the current 'V.I.P.' process because they perceive it as disrupting ordinary work flows'' in which staff triage patients based on their medical needs, one slide said. ''They do not recognize that the true issue is that every patient is a 'V.I.P.' patient.''
- 'An NYU Dump'In the summer of 2021, a few months after Dr. Femia's presentation, an ambulance dropped off a disheveled homeless patient at NYU's emergency room. He had pain in both legs and was having trouble walking.
- A worker checked the man's vital signs. He was offered Tylenol and discharged, according to an email that a senior nurse later sent to more than 200 colleagues detailing what had happened.
- About an hour later, the man was back. This time, he was seen in the waiting room by a social worker, who noted that it was hard for the man to lift his legs from his wheelchair. No one undressed the patient to examine his legs. He was discharged again.
- It was not until later that day that the hospital admitted him. The man was diagnosed with acute kidney failure and rhabdomyolysis, a potentially fatal muscular condition.
- Ms. Greiner said the case had been handled appropriately. But medical staff noted that NYU included it in an internal review process in which doctors try to learn from mistakes.
- Doctors and nurses described a pattern in which homeless patients '-- surefire money losers for hospitals '-- sometimes received cursory care, even as privately insured patients with similar symptoms were admitted for urgent treatment.
- For poor or homeless patients, ''there is pressure to see them in the hallway or in the waiting room,'' said Dr. Jeremy Branzetti, who ran NYU's emergency-medicine residency program until last year. ''I have never seen a V.I.P. patient in the hallway.'' Mr. Phillips, the lawyer for NYU, said Dr. Branzetti had received a poor performance review and his contract was not renewed.
- Image Anthony Almojera, a New York City paramedic, said NYU nurses reprimanded ambulance crews for trying to drop off homeless patients. Credit... Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times Some homeless people struggle to get into NYU's emergency room in the first place.
- Anthony Almojera, the vice president of a union that represents emergency services officers, said nurses at NYU reprimanded ambulance crews when they tried to drop off patients who appeared homeless or intoxicated.
- ''I had instances where the nurse's first question wasn't 'What is wrong with the patient?' but 'How come this patient is being brought here?''' Mr. Almojera said.
- Another ambulance worker, who requested anonymity because he still works with NYU, said that when he tried to drop off a drunken patient in October, a nurse demanded to know his badge number.
- The pressure from nurses works: Paramedics who work on public ambulances said that instead of taking drunk or homeless patients to NYU, they routinely dropped them off at Bellevue, which is staffed in part by NYU residents.
- NYU's own fleet of ambulances, which handle some 911 calls, also take their unwanted patients to Bellevue, according to four nurses there.
- ''There isn't a day that goes by that we don't get an NYU dump,'' said Kim Behrens, who has spent more than a decade as a nurse at Bellevue.
- ''We treat undomiciled persons every day and give every effort to do so with dignity, respect and compassion,'' Ms. Greiner said. She also pointed to data showing that NYU treats thousands of Medicaid-eligible patients.
- Accreditation in Jeopardy Image Many doctors came to view NYU's favored treatment of V.I.P.s as unethical and dangerous. Credit... Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times By 2021, doctors had lost patience with the administration's elevation of V.I.P.s, which they saw as unethical and dangerous to other patients. Some quit. Others complained to hospital administrators.
- Then the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, which oversees medical training programs nationwide, received an anonymous complaint. One of the four allegations was that the V.I.P. system ''teaches residents patient bias,'' according to a letter the council sent to NYU in November 2021.
- The accreditation council interviewed more than 50 doctors, who confirmed that V.I.P.s were regularly given priority. Citing Dr. Carmody's ouster, they described being afraid of professional consequences if they did not give preferential treatment to well-connected patients.
- The council said that climate of fear violated the group's educational standards for medical residents. And the organization said it was unclear if NYU had taken steps to ensure that the V.I.P. process would not harm patients.
- In August, the council put NYU's emergency department on probation, jeopardizing the accreditation of its residency program. It was a rare move: Last year, of 12,740 residency programs, just 25 were placed on probation.
- NYU has two years to address the council's concerns. Losing the accreditation could cost the hospital millions of dollars a year in federal funds and doom the residency program, which the hospital relies on to keep its emergency room running.
- Ms. Greiner accused the accreditation council of recycling ''false'' allegations about V.I.P. patients getting special treatment. The council said it stood by its findings.
- Susan C. Beachy and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
- Charles III Evicts Prince Andrew From Royal Residence Over Ongoing Rape Trial, Report Says - 24.12.2022, Sputnik International
- https://sputniknews.com/20221224/charles-iii-evicts-prince-andrew-from-royal-residence-over-ongoing-rape-trial-report-says-1105759863.html
- Charles III Evicts Prince Andrew From Royal Residence Over Ongoing Rape Trial, Report Says
- Charles III Evicts Prince Andrew From Royal Residence Over Ongoing Rape Trial, Report Says
- MOSCOW (Sputnik) - UK King Charles III has evicted Prince Andrew from Buckingham Palace because of an ongoing lawsuit against him for sexual assault involving... 24.12.2022, Sputnik International
- /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content
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- "Any presence at the Palace is officially over. The King has made it clear. He isn't a working royal. He's on his own," a source was quoted by the newspaper as saying. Instead, Charles III and his brother will attend a Christmas reception in Sandringham House on Sunday where Prince Andrew's ex-spouse Sarah Ferguson will also take part for the first time in 30 years, the tabloid said. Prince Andrew was a Counselor of State to Queen Elizabeth II, however he stepped back from public duties in November 2019 "for the foreseeable future" and starting January 2022 he was stripped of military affiliations and Royal patronages. Prince Andrew was sued by 38-year-old Virginia Giuffre, a US-Australian rights activist and trafficking victims' advocate, for allegedly raping her and subjecting her to sexual abuse when she was 17. He settled out of court a civil sex abuse case in February 2022.
- https://sputniknews.com/20221003/sins-of-the-father-king-charles-iii-may-strip-prince-andrews-daughters-of-royal-titles---expert-1101463232.html
- https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e6/06/16/1096559877_0:0:2731:2048_1920x0_80_0_0_1eb17c6a5a729885ea89e53d3aaa5c4f.jpgSputnik International
- united kingdom, uk royal family, prince charles, prince andrew, king charles iii, sex scandal
- united kingdom, uk royal family, prince charles, prince andrew, king charles iii, sex scandal
- MOSCOW (Sputnik) - UK King Charles III has evicted Prince Andrew from Buckingham Palace because of an ongoing lawsuit against him for sexual assault involving the statutory rape of a minor, a British newspaper reported, citing sources.
- "Any presence at the Palace is officially over. The King has made it clear. He isn't a working royal. He's on his own," a source was quoted by the newspaper as saying. Instead, Charles III and his brother will attend a Christmas reception in Sandringham House on Sunday where Prince Andrew's ex-spouse Sarah Ferguson will also take part for the first time in 30 years, the tabloid said.
- Prince Andrew was a Counselor of State to Queen Elizabeth II, however
- he stepped back from public duties in November 2019 "for the foreseeable future" and starting January 2022 he was stripped of military affiliations and Royal patronages.
- Prince Andrew was sued by 38-year-old Virginia Giuffre, a US-Australian rights activist and trafficking victims' advocate, for allegedly raping her and subjecting her to sexual abuse when she was 17. He settled out of court a civil sex abuse case in February 2022.
- IRS Halts Controversial New Rule Requiring Reporting of $600 Payments
- The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on Friday announced it would delay a rule that would have required tens of millions of Americans who received payments of at least $600 to report their earnings, following widespread confusion and angst about the new requirements.
- Under the 2021 American Rescue Plan, anyone who earned $600 via platforms like PayPal, Etsy, Venmo, Airbnb, eBay, and others, would receive a 1099-K tax form from those services. Previously, those payment apps were required to send users the tax form if their gross income exceeded $20,000 or if they had 200 separate transactions in a calendar year.
- But acting IRS Commissioner Doug O'Donnell told news outlets Friday that the rule triggered confusion and would be delayed by another year. The Epoch Times has contacted the Treasury Department for comment.
- ''The additional time will help reduce confusion during the coming 2023 tax filing season and provide more time for taxpayers to prepare and understand the new reporting requirements,'' O'Donnell told the Wall Street Journal.
- ''The I.R.S. and Treasury heard a number of concerns regarding the timeline of implementation of these changes under the American Rescue Plan,'' O'Donnel told the New York Times. ''To help smooth the transition and ensure clarity for taxpayers, tax professionals and industry, the IRS will delay implementation of the 1099-K changes.''
- The rule does not change what income is taxable, just what payment information the IRS will receive. Gig workers and sellers who use online platforms are required under the law to report and track their income.
- Several weeks ago, the IRS issued a warning that taxpayers may need to have their financial documents ready ahead of the filing season, and some independent analysts said early filers should postpone submitting their tax returns if they anticipate getting a 1099-K form.
- ''A little extra caution could save people additional time and effort related to filing an amended tax return,'' the IRS said. ''Now, a transaction exceeding $600 can require the third party platform to issue a 1099-K. Money received through third party payment networks from friends and relatives as personal gifts or reimbursements for personal expenses is not taxable.''
- Concerns and ConfusionBefore O'Donnell's statement, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress proposed raising the $600 reporting threshold or delaying the rule from being instated in 2023. In recent weeks, several Republican senators, including Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), signaled they would be willing to raise the threshold, while Democrats sent letters to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen about how the IRS would handle processing the wave of 1099-K forms.
- In a statement earlier this month, Scott accused the Treasury Department of launching ''an outrageous violation of Americans' privacy'' and added the reporting rule is ''stuff we see in communist China.'' Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the head of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Yellen urging the IRS to improve its communication about the pending rule change.
- The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Washington on Feb. 19, 2014. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)''There has been significant confusion about this provision, and the IRS needs to provide greater clarity to taxpayers as soon as possible,'' Wyden said in the letter.
- Yellen, meanwhile, has said the rule change was needed to deal with a significant, multi-trillion-dollar tax gap over the next decade. The secretary has expressed concern about what she has described as a shortfall in what the IRS has been able to collect from taxpayers.
- Some groups representing PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, and other payment services have warned that gig workers who haven't reported some of their income on their tax returns would receive a shock when they get their 1099-K forms on those previously untaxed earnings. One lawyer recently estimated that as many as 50 million Americans would be impacted.
- ''If Congress doesn't act, we'll see a tsunami of 1099s going out to people who will be confused,'' Arshi Siddiqui, the attorney, told the New York Times on Dec. 21.
- There has been confusion about whether the tax change would impact payments for gifts, payments for rent, or selling old items on eBay or similar services. Companies including PayPal, CashApp, and Venmo said that the rule change won't affect gifts.
- ''This doesn't include things like paying your family or friends back using PayPal or Venmo for dinner, gifts, shared trips,'' PayPal says on its website.
- On CashApp's website, it says that ''if you have a personal Cash App account, you will not receive a Form 1099-K from Cash App, and Cash App will not report any of your personal transactions to the IRS.''
- Jack Phillips is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times based in New York. He covers breaking news.
- Royalty free music and 'free to download' music - Free Music Archive
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- PM Announces First Round of Evolutions Speakers - Podcast Business Journal
- Podcast Movement's Evolutions will take place March 7th through 10th in Las Vegas. On Wednesday the organization annonced their first round of speakers. Here they are'...
- Amy Wilson Margaret Ables of Adalyst Media presents Sell Ads, Build a Network and Make a Living as an Independent Podcaster
- Angie Griffith of 4 Things For Your Podcast presents Land Your Dream Guest with a One Sheet That SELLS! and The Truth About Podcasting for Influencers
- Cameron Hendrix and John Goforth of Magellan AI present Podcast Advertising: 2022 Year-In-Review and 2023 Preview
- Danielle Desir Corbett of The Thought Card & WOC Podcasters presents How To Stand Out To Potential Sponsors & Secure More Lucrative Brand Deals
- Deirdre Tshien of Capsho presents The 3 Tactics High-Income Podcasters Attribute To Their Success (And How You Can Easily Do Them Too!) and The Podcast ROI Killer: Why repurposing content is a waste of time and what to do to promote on social media instead
- Fatima Zaidi of Quill Inc. presents How can brands stand out in a crowded podcast marketplace? and How to Align Your Brand With Your Branded Podcast
- Jeffrey Schechter of Showrunner Industries Inc presents Hollywood's Storytelling Secrets for Podcasters
- Jennifer Longworth of Bourbon Barrel Podcasting presents Ten Tips for Starting Your Podcast and Effective Cover Art on a Budget
- John Gauntt of The Augmented City LLC presents Building Immersive Story Worlds with Podcasts
- Judi Fox of Judi Fox Consulting presents How to Leverage LinkedIn to Boost your Podcast
- Michelle Jackson of Money on the Mountain Media presents How to Design a Podcast Eco-System that Attracts Collaborations that Pay
- Mike Wiston of mowMedia presents Real talk on Growing Your Podcast Audience '' what actually works (and doesn't work)
- Moritz Kaminski of Alby Inc. presents How micropayments can drive podcast monetization and listener engagement
- Nana aba Duncan of Media Girlfriends presents But, Is It Journalism?: How podcasting is spurring the next evolution in journalism w/ Media Girlfriends
- Rachael King and Shirley Wang of Pod People present From A '' Z: Podcast Discoverability Strategies and Will She, Won't She. Immersive Storytellers Talk Female-Forward Fiction
- Scout Sobel of Scouts Agency presents The Power of Podcast Guests: Leveraging Interviews to Grow Your Brand
- Seth Silvers of Story On Media presents It's Time To Rethink (and maybe kill) Your Interview Show
- Sierra Reed of Urban One presents The Art of Relationships for Black Creators
- Stephen Robles of Riverside.fm presents How to Streamline Your Production Workflow
- Taylor Camille of Well+Good presents YOU Are The Sauce
- Tiffany Rubenstein of ADOPTER Media presents Don't F@*! This Up '' How To Onboard Podcast Ads For Success
- Lightning Paywalls Versus Value4Value - Bitcoin Magazine - Bitcoin News, Articles and Expert Insights
- This is an opinion editorial by Will Schoellkopf, author of ''The Bitcoin Dog'' and host of the Bitcoin podcast ''It's So Early!''
- When it comes to paywalls versus #value4value, is it really all or nothing?
- Author's note: My aim is not to attack anyone personally. I will use specific people's quotes for my examples, but my intent is to respectfully challenge ideas, not attack people. Healthy debate of ideas in good faith helps Bitcoin, so I hope they understand.
- In Gigi's article, ''The Freedom of Value,'' he breaks down what's broken with the monetization of information, ''The problem with the internet is that information wants to be free.''
- As a content creator, in my case a writer, this problem with the internet hits home. It's a lot of work to write good content, and I don't work for free. I look to be compensated for my proof-of-work. As the Joker says, ''If you're good at something, never do it for free.''
- Gigi breaks down the problem of just trying to sell information (like a written book/article) behind a paywall into two distinct reasons, the ''MTX problem'' (Mental Transaction problem) and the ''DRM paradox'' (Digital Rights Management paradox).
- I acknowledge the ''DRM paradox'' has no solution: ''content will only stay locked behind paywalls if it sucks. If it's good, it will be set free.''
- Additionally, Gigi explains: ''The MTX problem, with MTX being short for 'mental transaction,' refers to the problem of irreducible mental transaction costs inherent to every transaction. Every time you hit a paywall, you have to make a conscious decision: 'Do I want to pay for that?'''
- Since Gigi ''believe[s] that the MTX problem is a bigger deal than the DRM paradox,'' that will be the focus of this article. Gigi acknowledges the traditional solution to spare the consumer of the headache of mental transactions is the subscription model, but then so many different subscriptions are needed for exclusive content that it becomes impractical again.
- With an open mind, willing to see not just black and white but entertain shades of gray, please consider how lightning microtransactions, deployed the right way, can work towards solving the mental transaction problem. As Nick Szabo states:
- ''A micropayments system assumes a solution to the mental accounting problem. If somebody could actually solve this problem '... the savings would be enormous even in existing business ... not to mention all the new possibilities possible by lower transaction costs.''
- To begin, why do people enjoy just outright buying a book? Nick Szabo answers this concisely: ''A flat fee constitutes an embedded, implicit insurance contract.''
- When I offer my ebook at a flat price, the reader is safe. They know they own it and can read it at their leisure. However, this flat price creates a barrier to entry. It becomes all-or-nothing if they want to read the ebook. But if I break this barrier into pieces, and make each chapter a mini paywall pay-per-click lightning transaction, then the reader only pays for what they enjoy!
- Enter: the pay-as-you-enjoy model. If the reader enjoys the chapter, they can pay-per-click to read the next one, and the next one. If they're done reading before having reached the end, they'll have spared themselves from having to pay to read the whole book. It wasn't all-or-nothing!
- Through pay-as-you-enjoy, the reader loses the insurance that I won't increase the cost per chapter as they continue to read through the book over time, but hold onto that thought for a bit.
- Nick Szabo points out the flaws of the pay-per-click monetization model: ''There has been floating for a while the idea of 'pay per click,' a micropayment for every click on the Web to pay its owner for content. However, since there has been no chance to browse the content, there is no way to directly ascertain whether it meets tacit preferences: there is no accurate customer observable explicit preference. Browsing a preview or book cover is still inaccurate, and entails increasing mental costs the more accurate it is.''
- Again, I'm building towards a solution to the mental transaction problem. ''Attribute observation costs'' are still present, and that's ok. There's no attribute observation cost in Value4Value because the reader can keep reading without paying anything at all. No cost per click. Even still, Value4Value confronts the same final problem that pay-as-you-enjoy tackles head-on. As Nick Szabo concludes:
- ''Assuming, for the moment, perfect information on the product at hand, and no uncertainty as to future cash flows, a third and more basic source of customer cognitive cost remains, namely the cost of making decisions with a large, but nevertheless very incomplete, set of alternatives.''
- Even if the reader already knew everything about the content, and knew for sure their budget, how can they know for certain they should spend their money on this instead of something else?
- In practice, consumers just make decisions because they have to. The mental transaction problem persists because they're either deciding whether to give value back once they've finished reading, or they're freed of this because they've already spent the money to read the work in the first place.
- Value4Value is just delaying the mental transaction problem until after the reader has finished reading. As Adam Curry explains, ''The Ask is the most important piece of the puzzle. The #1 reason why people do not give to charities and the like is because they weren't asked, and the same is true for the Value4Value model.''
- Since part of the Value4Value loop is ''The Ask,'' it hasn't fixed the ''costly decision making'' piece of the Mental Transaction Problem. Versus pay-as-you-enjoy, my readers can finish reading and feel good that they've paid a price I felt was fair, rather than wrestle internally on who to support.
- In fact, with lightning, I think we've come close to solving the intelligent agent problem Nick Szabo describes:
- ''There seems here to be a fundamental cognitive bottleneck. One proposed solution to this has been "intelligent agents". But since these agents are programmed remotely, not by the consumer, it is difficult for the consumer to determine whether the agent is acting the consumers' best interests, or in the best interests of the counterparty -- perhaps, necessarily, at least as difficult as reading the corresponding full statement of charges. Furthermore, the user interface to enable consumers to simply express their sophisticated preferences to an agent is lacking, and may represent another fundamental cognitive bottleneck.''
- Nick describes an ''intelligent agent'' as someone the consumer delegates to make purchases on their behalf - sparing them the headache - but then they still have to explain to the agent what they enjoy. As part of pay-as-you-enjoy, once the consumer sets up their budget (their ''flat fee'' insurance mentioned above), they are free to engage in pay-per-click reading without worry about overspending! This agent which deducts sats per click is not programmed remotely, but by the consumer. Moreover, the consumer sees the author's monetary policy up front when they set their budget. They know the price per chapter, but also how much to spend to get one month of free access - an incentive to give the author what they see as the full value for their work! The pay-as-you-enjoy user interface is slick. The consumer sets their budget and then it's pay-per-click!
- Nick Szabo summarizes the MTX problem as the following:
- ''We have seen how customer mental transaction costs can derive from at least three sources: uncertain cash flows, incomplete and costly observation of product attributes, and incomplete and costly decision making. These costs will increasingly dominate the technological costs of payment systems, setting a limit on the granularity of bundling and pricing. Prices don't come for free.''
- In the table above, they are tied. However, when it comes to written content like books, I think pay-as-you-enjoy has the edge.
- As Adam Curry points out, only ~4% of people give value back. For him and his established podcast audience, he thinks that's ok. He says, ''Somehow, however, it all works out in the end.''
- This ''Somehow'' is misleading. He emphasizes the need for the ''Feedback Loop.'' ''Gone are the days of static broadcasting.
- AskAcknowledgeRepeat''Books are not living, breathing documents. They're static. If acknowledgment and the feedback loop are needed to monetize 4% of your readers, that's a lot of pressure for new authors without a large following or way to give acknowledgment back.
- I'll spare my readers the costly decision making at the end of the work. I'll let them pay-as-you-enjoy! And I'll implement a donate button and a boost button as well so they can give extra value back if they particularly like a scene!
- You can try out lightning enabled pay-as-you-enjoy at BitcoinDogBook.com, powered by Mash! In a followup article, I present a technical architecture breakdown of how content creators can implement the same model!
- This is a guest post by Will Schoellkopf. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
- Jo£o Bordalo ' on Twitter: "Want to play chess with a friend anywhere in the world? Presenting Chesstr, a virtual chessboard powered by Nostr. Just create a random url and share it with your friend. https://t.co/36mC1tYT1x" / Twitter
- Jo£o Bordalo ' : Want to play chess with a friend anywhere in the world?Presenting Chesstr, a virtual chessboard powered by Nostr.'... https://t.co/MMpfGeqhbH
- Thu Dec 22 13:09:42 +0000 2022
- Helge Loy : @bordalix awesome. how long time did did it take you to build?
- Fri Dec 23 07:52:40 +0000 2022
- Ro' Gouda ' : @bordalix Very nice @bordalix !And thanks for sharing. I am a bit disappointed some reactions are negative/defensi'... https://t.co/lNkPp80lIg
- Fri Dec 23 05:32:21 +0000 2022
- Jess : @bordalix Are you using a private relay or did you just pick a random one?
- Fri Dec 23 03:38:42 +0000 2022
- LESTER LONG : @bordalix @TheGuySwann Let's do this @jackmallers
- Fri Dec 23 00:51:19 +0000 2022
- Will Code For Food : @bordalix https://t.co/yrSbExBBpt works to..
- Thu Dec 22 23:46:51 +0000 2022
- Marcos Gonzlez : @bordalix Whooooa! Nice :DD
- Thu Dec 22 21:08:57 +0000 2022
- BitcoinBarry : @bordalix So what's the benefit to playing chess over nostr? I need the punchline that'll make me "get it"
- Thu Dec 22 17:46:46 +0000 2022
- oner:ko : @bordalix @fiatjaf i dont know how to play i gotta learn first then ya im in but i wont be good cos just starting
- Thu Dec 22 16:53:53 +0000 2022
- KP : @bordalix Very nice. Integrating '¸next for wagers will be cool next step!
- Thu Dec 22 15:31:31 +0000 2022
- Cameri' : @bordalix Wen Poker over Nostr?
- Thu Dec 22 15:27:49 +0000 2022
- Ben Aoufa : @bordalix @hampus_s This exists already https://t.co/uOuFTlRrFT
- Thu Dec 22 15:08:48 +0000 2022
- absolutely talentless nobody ' : @bordalix censorship resistant chess https://t.co/EdPgighqre
- Thu Dec 22 15:00:02 +0000 2022
- Shawn Yeager'¸ : @bordalix Yes!
- Thu Dec 22 14:56:16 +0000 2022
- Regulator wined and dined by SBF and FTX out at the SEC | Washington Examiner
- December 22, 2022 01:15 PM
- A regulatory official who had previously dined with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and his lobbyists has stepped down from his role at the Securities and Exchanges Commission.
- SEC General Counsel Dan Berkovitz announced that he is departing his role at the agency effective Jan. 31, the agency said. Berkovitz was an ally of FTX within the financial regulatory agency and had meetings with SBF and other crypto lobbyists.
- FTX FOUNDER SAM BANKMAN-FRIED LANDS IN US FOR FIRST COURT APPEARANCE
- Principal Deputy General Counsel Megan Barbero will take over for Berkovitz upon his departure.
- "After thirty-four years of public service, it is time for me to pursue new and different challenges and opportunities," Berkovitz said.
- It comes after the Washington Examiner revealed Berkovitz cozy relationship with SBF and FTX thanks to emails obtained by the watchdog Protect the Public's Trust. ''If ever there were a scene to conjure up a vision of a D.C. rigged toward corrupt insiders at the expense of the little guy, it would be difficult to top this one," Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public's Trust, told the Washington Examiner. "Not long before its collapse and a raft of fraud charges, SBF and his gang were wooing one of their would-be regulators no doubt to try to manipulate the regulations to their advantage."
- Bankman-Fried, FTX General Counsel Ryne Miller, and then-FTX President Brett Harrison met with Berkovitz at a luxury restaurant in Oct. 2021 amid discussions by the SEC and CFTC to determine the best methods for regulating cryptocurrency. While it is unknown what was discussed, the presence of Berkovitz at the dinner illustrates Bankman-Fried's efforts to schmooze lawmakers and regulators in D.C. and promote his view of crypto regulation.
- SBF even presented FTX as the "natural choice" to be "umpires" of the crypto industry to Berkowitz in emails.
- CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
- He also donated more than $40 million to Democratic campaigns and has said he also donated to GOP efforts.
- The former crypto billionaire appeared in court for the first time on Thursday, facing an eight-count indictment from federal prosecutors in New York. SBF also faces charges from the SEC and CFTC after the collapse of FTX, alleging that the firm mishandled funds and engaged in deceptive conduct in its dealings with the partner organization Alameda Research.
- The Funeral Business Is Booming (And Not Because Of COVID) | ZeroHedge
- Authored by Alex Berenson via 'Unreported Truths' Substack,
- How bad is the rise in mortality?
- So bad funeral companies are starting to worry.
- Today Service Corporation International, the largest for-profit funeral operator in North America, had its quarterly earnings call. SCI had another great quarter, you'll be pleased to hear! So far in 2022 the company has made almost $500 million in profits - and its stock is up over 15% since last week's earnings report.
- (Death is your best investment!)
- SCI's management seems fairly open with investors. For many years, much of the company's growth came from buying family-run funeral homes as their operators, umm, died out. The underlying funeral business is slow growth and very predictable.
- As Thomas L. Ryan, Service Corporation's chairman and chief executive, told investors Wednesday morning:
- If you go back in this industry and particularly with SCI, year-to-year you would see the numbers of deaths -- probably in one year you may be down 1% or 2%, in the next year you're up 1% or 2% which you could predict was pretty good accuracy over a year and over a big footprint like ours what was probably going to happen'... 2020 comes along, Covid, game-changer, right. We're having to do at one point of time 20 percent more funerals which is unheard of in a year versus, let's say, a year or two before.
- So Service Corporation expected that once Covid passed, its business would go back to normal'...
- What we would have expected is, why wouldn't we go back towards, let's say, a 2019 level, maybe you get a percent or so growth of 2019, I would expect that. So that would be a reasonable level that we think would stabilize. And that's kind of what we anticipated...
- Only that's not what has happened.
- What we're telling you is, the third quarter of this year, we did 15% more calls than we did in the third quarter of 2019. That is not what anybody would have anticipated and that has just a very de minimis amount of Covid deaths [emphasis added] in it.
- Covid is gone. But people keep dying. Why?
- Unsurprisingly, Ryan did not mention mRNA vaccines anywhere. Why would he? Doing so would only make for headaches he and Service Corporation do not need.
- But, earlier in the call, he did point to ''more cancer deaths'' and more broadly a decline in overall health:
- We believe these excess services are more permanent in nature into a combination of aging demographics, higher risk, less healthy lifestyle developed during the pandemic.
- Ryan also suggested delayed medical care might be an issue.
- These explanations are'... strained, at best. Aging demographics are hardly new, and the lockdowns that drove a ''less healthy lifestyle'' ended as early as mid-2020 in most red states and by early 2021 almost everywhere. Opioids and overdoses generally remain a horrendous crisis, but deaths appear to have peaked in early 2022 and fallen slightly since. And for all the discussion of delays in medical care, hospitals and doctors offices have functioned essentially normally for at least 18 months.
- In any case, the United States is hardly alone in seeing a large and so far unexplained spike in deaths in 2022.
- Countries from Germany to Australia to Taiwan are seeing similar trends.
- They all have something in common. No points for guessing what.
- In any case, Service Corporation is expecting business to stay good for years to come.
- ''These trends are hard to reverse quickly,'' Ryan said.
- ''I hope three, four, five years from now will subside a bit. But I don't think it's any time soon.''
- [ZH: It is not just funeral services companies. Market participants were somewhat stunned when Lincoln Financial announced results last week and shares collapsed over 30% after a shocking, and unexpected, $2.6 billion Q3 loss.
- ''A Catastrophe (and Not the Natural Kind),'' Wells Fargo Securities analysts said in a note to clients Wednesday night, following the after-market release of earnings by the Pennsylvania life-insurance and annuities company.
- Lincoln National group insurance death payouts for working age in USA 18-64 yr olds. 2019 is pre covid and is the baseline, 2020 covid hits no vaccine 9% increase, 2021 covid still here but now add the vaccine a 163% increase. FYI pic.twitter.com/Wb4B4GXjPs
- '-- Michael Evanson (@MichaelEvanson1) November 3, 2022So, we wonder, is that the post-vaxx-new-normal-world-order trade: Short Life Insurers, Long Funeral Service Providers?]
- Canadian gov't releases children's coloring book about assisted suicide - LifeSite
- Wed Dec 21, 2022 - 1:15 pm EST
- ( LifeSiteNews ) '-- Around the world, Canada is increasingly becoming known for one thing: the coldblooded brutality of our euthanasia regime. From impoverished people opting for suicide because they can't find a home and the disabled asking for lethal injections due to lack of support to veterans being actively offered MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) when they request services, Canada's stories have made front pages across the globe.
- In response, Justin Trudeau's Liberal government has put a (temporary) delay on expanding assisted suicide to those with mental illness, and has begun lying about some of these stories to blunt the damage, with the Veteran Minister of Affairs claiming that veterans had not been offered MAiD despite the fact that this fact is a matter of public record.
- That, like, just happened. There were Commons witnesses and everything. All Canadian governments inevitably reach the ''we'll just start lying'' stage, but this is starting to get ostentatious. https://t.co/et8Ck66vKY
- '-- Tristin Hopper (@TristinHopper) December 20, 2022
- READ: Trudeau gov't to 'delay' mental illness expansion of assisted suicide law after pushback
- But it gets more ghoulish still. Health Canada and Veterans Affairs are two of the federal government partners in the release of a new coloring and activity book for children '' on assisted suicide in Canada.
- Health Canada (@GovCanHealth) and Veterans Affairs(! @VeteransENG_CA) are the two Federal Government partners in the release of a new colouring & activity book on #MAiD suicide for Canadian children.
- All options remain on the table. pic.twitter.com/WO33UmsB5T
- '-- Canada Unity ð¸ (@can_unity) December 18, 2022
- The target audience is children aged between 6 and 12. The booklet is titled ''Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Activity Book'' and the cover reads: ''Welcome! These activities will help you think about Medical Assistance in Dying by someone in your life.'' The intent of the book is to normalize suicide for children and to justify the killing of parents, grandparents, and loved ones by Canada's euthanasia regime to those left behind. Here, for example, is how the book describes MAiD:
- The word 'medical' means the science of medicine, and 'assistance' means help. So MAiD means that medicine is used to help someone with their death. A doctor or nurse practitioner (a nurse with special training) uses medicines to stop the person's body from working. When their body stops working, the person dies. This is done in a way that does not hurt the person. The medicines help them feel comfortable and peaceful. A person has to ask for MAiD and then go through a bunch of steps before it can happen. The steps are described below in this book.
- For those 18 years old or older, the book says, MAiD can be requested if they have ''a serious illness, disease, or disability that hurts their body or mind so much that it feels too hard to keep on living.'' On page two already, they are justifying suicide for those with mental illness or disabilities. On page five, the booklet reiterates that some people with disabilities will opt for suicide because they cannot make their disabilities go away. The message here is crystal clear. Throughout the booklet, the word ''disability'' is paired with ''illness'' when talking about MAiD (''disability'' is used in that context 12 times.) According to this children's resource, if you have a disability, you may be justified in feeling that your life is not worth living.
- READ: How many more mutilated victims of transgender ideology will choose assisted suicide?
- On page four, they describe how someone is killed via lethal injection this way:
- The first medicine makes the person feel very relaxed and fall asleep. They may yawn or snore or mumble. The second medicine causes a 'coma.' A coma looks like sleep but is much deeper than regular sleep. The person will not wake up or be bothered by noise or touch. The third medicine makes the person's lungs stop breathing and then their heart stops beating. Because of the coma, the person does not notice this happening and it does not hurt. When their heart and lungs stop working, their body dies. It will not start working again. This often happens in just a few minutes, but sometimes (rarely) it can take hours.
- The booklet then gives a list of multiple choice questions for children, asking if they want to be in the room when their loved one is killed by lethal injection, or if they'd like to read or color with crayons to ''pass the time'' as their relative is dying, or if they'd like to video call the person to tell them goodbye rather than be present, or see the person's body after the poison has done its work and he or she has died. Children are also asked if they'd like to kiss their loved one goodbye or say a prayer.
- READ: Assisted suicide is on the rise in Canada, killing the most vulnerable in the name of 'mercy'
- In a booklet filled with lies, perhaps the most egregious one is included near the end: ''MAiD is a personal choice. That means that no one can decide for another person. Each person has to decide for themselves.'' If this ''MAiD activity book'' makes anything crystal clear, it is that each person is, in fact, deciding on behalf of children, relatives, and loved ones.
- Our pandemic of assisted suicide is exposing the fundamental falsity of radical individualism. Canada's Trudeau government has decided that the desperate, disabled, and ill can kill themselves. For the children who are left behind, it has a coloring book with multiple choice questions.
- Pro-life hospice society president warns delay in Canadian euthanasia bill may not signal victory
- Baby boomers are at risk of mass suicide under Canada's euthanasia regime
- Widow's generous gift to suicidal young man shows how we can fight euthanasia with our hearts
- Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B'nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.
- He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.
- Jonathon's first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.
- Defend pro-life and pro-family journalism today!
- Now is your chance to join the LifeSiteNews family and defend what your loved ones will cherish forever. Support LifeSiteNews now and take a stand with our cutting-edge pro-life news.
- 'Parents can look at their foetus in real time': are artificial wombs the future? | Pregnancy | The Guardian
- T he lamb is sleeping. It lies on its side, eyes shut, ears folded back and twitching. It swallows, wriggles and shuffles its gangly legs. Its crooked half-smile makes it look content, as if dreaming about gambolling in a grassy field. But this lamb is too tiny to venture out. Its eyes cannot open. It is hairless; its skin gathers in pink rolls at its neck. It hasn't been born yet, but here it is, at 111 days' gestation, totally separate from its mother, alive and kicking in a research lab in Philadelphia. It is submerged in fluid, floating inside a transparent plastic bag, its umbilical cord connected to a nexus of bright blood-filled tubes. This is a foetus growing inside an artificial womb. In another four weeks, the bag will be unzipped and the lamb will be born.
- When I first see images of the Philadelphia lambs on my laptop, I think of the foetus fields in The Matrix, where motherless babies are farmed in pods on an industrial scale. But this is not a substitute for full gestation. The lambs didn't grow in the bags from conception; they were taken from their mothers' wombs by caesarean section, then submerged in the Biobag, at a gestational age equivalent to 23-24 weeks in humans. This isn't a replacement for pregnancy yet, but it is certainly the beginning.
- The team who made these artificial wombs say they are driven only by the desire to save the most vulnerable humans on Earth. Emily Partridge, Marcus Davey and Alan Flake are neonatologists, developmental physiologists and surgeons who work with extremely premature babies at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). After three years of tweaking, their latest prototype is designed to give babies born too soon a greater chance of survival than ever before.
- From left: Alan Flake, Emily Partridge, and Marcus Davey, creators of the Biobag. Photograph: Children's Hospital of PhiladelphiaThe Biobag was born into public consciousness in April 2017, when the CHOP team published their research in the journal Nature Communications. They had found a way to gestate sheep foetuses outside maternal bodies; foetuses that would eventually become lambs no different from those that had grown in ewes' wombs. (Sheep are the go-to animals in obstetric research because they have a long gestation period and the foetuses are around the same size as ours.)
- Their invention consists of a replacement placenta: an oxygenator plugged into the lamb's umbilical cord, which also removes carbon dioxide and delivers nutrients. Blood is pumped entirely by the beating of the foetus's heart, just as it would be in the womb. The bag acts like an amniotic sac filled with warm, sterile, lab-made fluid that the lamb breathes and swallows, just as a human foetus would.
- CHOP's communications department released a very slick short film, Recreating The Womb, to coincide with the paper's release. There is not a foetus in sight. Instead there are neat diagrams of lambs in Biobag systems, slightly awkward footage of Partridge, Flake and Davey pretending to do lambless lamb research in a pristine lab and heartbreaking clips of impossibly small super-premature babies. Then there are carefully edited interviews with the team. ''In the future, we envision the system will be in the neonatal intensive care unit and will look pretty much like a traditional incubator,'' Davey says. The Biobags would be kept in a darkened environment to mimic the human womb, but the babies would be visible as never before: ''Parents can actually look at their foetus in real time,'' Flake adds.
- Normal human pregnancy is 40 weeks; any baby born before 37 weeks is considered premature. The 23-24-week period is the border of viability, after which modern medicine currently has a hope of keeping babies alive, and doctors will attempt to resuscitate a newborn. To the NHS, a baby born dead at 24 weeks is classed as a stillbirth, whereas a dead baby born at 23 weeks and six days is a miscarriage. It is a brutal boundary.
- A lamb cannulated at 107 days' gestation, on day four in a Biobag. Photograph: nature.com/Children's Hospital of PhiladelphiaIn countries with good hospitals, there is a 24% chance of keeping a baby born at 23 weeks alive. But 87% of those who make it will experience major complications, such as lung disease, bowel problems, brain damage and blindness. While more extremely premature babies are surviving in wealthier countries, the number growing up with chronic conditions has also increased dramatically. Preterm birth is the greatest cause of death and disability among children under five in the developed world.
- Incubators deal with some of the functions a premature newborn needs help with, but they don't allow for the process of gestation to continue; the Biobag does, treating the baby as a foetus who has not yet been born. Women at risk of going into very early labour could have their babies transferred into an artificial womb. It sounds extreme, but if it could mean a healthy future instead of illness and disability, who could deny it to them?
- The CHOP researchers want their device to be seen as ethically unremarkable. ''Our goal is not to extend the limits of viability, but to offer the potential for improved outcomes for those infants already being routinely resuscitated,'' their paper says. Extending the current limits of a foetus's viability would create an ethical minefield. The legal abortion limit in the UK was brought down from 28 to 24 weeks in 1990 because advances in neonatal care meant foetuses born then were more likely to live. If artificial wombs help ever smaller babies survive, that could have profound implications for women. But women are not mentioned in CHOP's work.
- The application to patent the Biobag, filed in 2014, is revealing. There's no coyness about extending the limits of human viability here: it explicitly says possible ''subjects'' include ''pre-viable foetuses (eg 20''24 weeks)''.
- I am not allowed to go to Philadelphia to see the team's work. I so nearly was: Flake told me I was welcome, and we fixed a date. But then I was suddenly unwelcome. They want to be able to put human babies inside the Biobag within a couple of years, and the prospect of my visit had made the legal department twitchy. ''There is a lot of caution to do anything that could jeopardise FDA approval,'' a press officer told me.
- ''T his is not a new field,'' says Matt Kemp, wearily. He runs the perinatal lab at the Women & Infants Research Foundation (WIRF) in Western Australia, and his team's artificial womb, Ex-Vivo Uterine Environment or EVE therapy, reported its first great successes in a paper published a few months after CHOP's. The Biobag stole EVE's thunder, and though Kemp makes little reference to it, he does sound somewhat narked.
- ''The Karolinska Institute in Sweden published a paper in 1958 showing the use of this sort of platform with pre-viable human foetuses,'' he says. ''Groups in Canada in the early 60s experimented with sheep using this system. As early as 1963, the Japanese did seminal work in the field... Anyone who tells you they have done this for the first time is being disingenuous.'' He doesn't name names.
- In the incubator there is a lamb, its chest rising and falling, submerged in yellowish fluid in a transparent bagThere is no patent application for EVE (''It's not patentable,'' Kemp says, exasperated, ''this has all been in the public domain since 1958''), so he is happy to answer questions '' unless they are about the reason he decided to name his artificial womb after the first woman and the mother of mankind. He doesn't want to get drawn into discussions about the symbolism of his work: ''It was just a convenient way of describing it, I guess.''
- Kemp has been developing EVE since 2013, with researchers at Tohoku University hospital in Sendai, Japan. No official images have been released, but I found a YouTube video uploaded to the WIRF channel. It looked as if it wasn't supposed to be online (and has since been removed): it was clearly filmed on a phone and had had only 56 views in a year. After CHOP's carefully sanitised images, this 44-second clip made my jaw drop.
- It begins with beeping monitors in a neonatal intensive care unit; a healthy heartbeat thumping in red on a black screen. The camera pans to an incubator beside it and instead of a baby there is a lamb, its chest rising and falling, lying in yellowish fluid in a transparent bag from which protrudes a mass of tubes, like veins filled with blood. This is what an artificial womb really looks like.
- 'Incubators deal with some of the functions a premature newborn needs help with, but they don't allow for the process of gestation to continue.' Photograph: Liz McBurney/The GuardianThe big difference between the work of WIRF and CHOP is the age of the lambs. The youngest foetus put into the Biobag was 106 days; EVE's was 95. Kemp is cautious about translating this into human terms, but it's between 21 and 23 weeks. No one else has ever reported working with foetuses this young. And while CHOP grew their lambs for several weeks, often to term, and let some live, Kemp's team kept them in the artificial womb for a week, then killed all of them to analyse their organs. He says they could easily have kept them alive for longer: ''These are stable, healthy animals.''
- Even in a week, the lambs change dramatically, putting on weight and flexing and swallowing. ''I've never been pregnant,'' Kemp says, ''but my wife says a foetus does those movements. It kicks, has a wee wiggle and goes back to sleep.''
- But clinical trials involving human babies are a long way off. ''Anyone who tells you they are going to be doing this in two years either has a wealth of data that is not in the public domain or is being a bit sensationalist.''
- Is he talking about anyone in particular?
- I lost a baby at 20 weeks. If a fake womb might save a sick foetus, could it also save a healthy 20-week-old?''I am not,'' he says firmly. ''All the experiments to date have been done on foetuses that come from healthy pregnancies. That's simply not the case for a 21- or 22-week human foetus. These are not going to be healthy babies. Getting this into clinical use is going to be incredibly difficult. To create an argument an ethical committee will buy, you've got to have an odds-on chance of delivering an outcome far better than the technology currently in use,'' he says. ''What is the likely first demographic? A very sick 21-week foetus.''
- This floors me. I lost a baby at 20 weeks '' a son, who would have been my second child. There was nothing wrong with him. He was perfect. I got appendicitis when I was nearly 19 weeks pregnant. I spent a week in hospital while obstetricians and gynaecologists scanned and poked, trying to work out why I was ill. And then I went into labour. It happens: if you are pregnant, a serious infection can cause your cervix to open. In between contractions, the obstetrician told me if I had been 24 weeks pregnant, everything would have been different. Even though my son was a proper baby, who was wrapped up and given to me to hold, he died while I was giving birth to him. A miscarriage, not a stillbirth.
- This happened three years ago. Since then, I've had my appendix out, and had a daughter. But, like anyone who has lost a baby, I will always be haunted by what could have been done differently. If an artificial womb might save the life of a very sick 21-week-old foetus, could it also save a 20-week-old who was perfectly healthy, but unlucky enough to be inside a woman who was ill?
- I swallow hard. ''If the first time you put a human foetus in your system,'' I say, ''it will be one not viable otherwise, questions will come up about pushing the boundaries of viability. Can't you imagine parents of even more premature babies wanting their child to have any chance an artificial womb might offer?''
- ''This is a really easy question,'' he says. ''This is a human '' or a foetus, or a baby '' that's sick. If you had a three-year-old that was unwell and somebody was developing a new therapy, would you have any qualms about that?''
- ''So there you go. From our perspective, this is no different.''
- In other words, so long as they have a chance to save a baby's life, they will try to do it. But there are limits.
- ''We don't think we are shifting the border of viability further and further: if you can't get a catheter in and the heart is not sufficiently developed to drive blood through the system, it's not going to work. So any concerns about harvesting eggs and putting them into these artificial devices are completely abrogated by that. It's just not practically possible.''
- Dr Anna Smajdor, a bioethicist at Oslo university who believes that pregnancy is barbaric. Photograph: courtesy of Anna SmajdorAs we get better at extending the lives of embryos outside the womb, and keeping ever more premature babies alive, there will come a time when those two points meet. The obstacles will be legal and ethical, not technological. IVF was once science fiction, then an ethical conundrum, then the cutting edge of assisted reproduction. Now it's a normal part of making families. Once bags and tubes can replace a womb, pregnancy and birth will be fundamentally redefined. If gestation no longer has to take place inside a woman's body, it will no longer be female. And the meaning of motherhood will also be changed, for ever.
- ''Pregnancy is barbaric,'' Dr Anna Smajdor declares. ''If there were any disease that caused the same problems, we would regard it as very serious.'' I am sitting in her office at the University of Oslo, opposite a calendar featuring photographs of her cats. She is a bioethicist and associate professor of practical philosophy, but has the air of a mischievous teenager.
- ''The number of women who suffer tears and incontinence, and things that damage them for the rest of their lives is really high, yet it's not adequately recognised,'' she continues. ''This is all tied up with the strong value we attach not just to motherhood, but to giving birth.''
- I've been eager to meet Smajdor since I read her groundbreaking academic papers on artificial wombs. She argues that ectogenesis '' reproduction outside the human body '' would allow reproductive labour to be redistributed fairly in society, so there is a moral imperative for more research.
- ''There's an unquestioned assumption that women will have babies, and a failure to notice how bizarre it is that we have to produce new human beings out of our own bodies. And how dangerous that is.''
- To demonstrate her point, she tells me about a colleague having a wisdom tooth out. Smajdor suggested they film it, as a beautiful experience to savour: ''Here it comes! And look, here's the stitching! Wow '' you did that without any painkillers!''
- The comparison is completely perverse, but I can see her point. Our attitude to birth is very strange. There is blood, pain and stitching even if it all goes well, and we are meant to ignore it. Maternal mortality and stillbirth rates are going down globally, but Smajdor says that isn't necessarily all good news. ''The more medicine advances, the more women get scathed. I see a trajectory towards knowing so much about the foetus, and what's good or bad for it, that women become almost ectogenetic gestators themselves, their whole function about maximising what's good for the baby.''
- Pregnancy is remarkable, but I have never felt more like a thing, being acted on by doctorsI have definitely felt like an ectogenetic gestator. I have had to lie back while a 20cm needle was plunged into my belly so doctors could extract my son's DNA because something on a scan made them think he might have Down's syndrome. (He didn't, but then I got appendicitis.) I have had to stop myself from gagging while forcing down a cloying glucose concoction because a late scan of my daughter showed I might have gestational diabetes. (I didn't.) I have had to lie with my legs clamped apart while a surgeon stitched up my cervix because a scan showed I was at risk of going into another early labour. Being pregnant is a remarkable experience, and I loved carrying my first child, but I have never felt more like a thing, being acted upon purely because my very dedicated doctors knew too much about what might be going on inside me.
- Smajdor was ''not very surprised'' when she saw CHOP's lambs. ''Those people were clever in their '' '' she chooses the word carefully '' ''marketing. And, of course, being unwilling to talk about ectogenesis is part of the PR approach.'' Instead of pouring resources into saving premature babies, she says we should be growing them in artificial wombs from the start, ''because it's a trauma for the foetus, being removed from the uterus, even if it then goes into a Biobag and survives''.
- Smajdor uses provocative ideas to raise difficult questions. It works: she has made me think about how messed up our notions of what ''normal'' childbirth, pregnancy and motherhood are.
- If perfect ectogenesis could ever exist, there is a long list of women who would want to use it: women with epilepsy, bipolar disorder or cancer, for whom pregnancy would mean risking either their own or their foetuses' lives by stopping or starting medication; women who have had their wombs removed for medical reasons. Ectogenesis will also help women in circumstances much less likely to attract public sympathy: social surrogacy clients and older women, whose male equivalents have babies without a thought. You could conceive an embryo while you're young and grow it in a bag after you retire.
- But perhaps the people most likely to be emancipated by this technology are those not born female: single men, gay men and trans women desperate for their own biological children. I ask Smajdor about the benefits of ectogenesis for them.
- ''I don't support anyone's right to have a child. I support people's right not to have their body interfered with.'' Then she leaves the world of philosophical logic for a moment. ''Assuming we could get perfect ectogenesis, it seems like a thing we should do, in a fully just society. The problem is that our societies are not fully just. In a society that believes natural reproduction is the most amazing part of a woman's life, ectogenesis is going to be very problematic, and more likely to be used in ways that are detrimental to women.''
- ''When we talk about rescuing very premature babies, there's a risk of a desire to rescue babies because their mother is not fit to carry the foetus,'' Smajdor says. Across the world, inappropriate behaviour during pregnancy is increasingly viewed as child abuse. Since the 50s, dozens of US states have prosecuted women for using drugs while pregnant. If you can save a baby from the dangers of premature birth, would you not be prepared to save it from a reckless mother?
- It's easy to imagine a future where the kind of ''help'' already offered by employers in Silicon Valley and beyond, enabling staff to freeze their eggs so they can focus on their careers, might include the option to grow their babies in an artificial womb. Using a real womb, inside the body, could ultimately become a sign of poverty, of chaotic lives, of unplanned pregnancy, or of being a borderline-dangerous ''freebirther'', choosing to have a baby without any medical input.
- The greatest existential threat faced by unborn babies today doesn't come from women ''unfit'' to be pregnant, but from unwilling mothers. Once a woman's body is no longer the incubator, abortion can be both pro-choice and pro-life. In the ectogenetic future, foetuses aborted by mothers who didn't want them to exist could be ''rescued'' and adopted. In that world, some women might seek out backstreet abortions that would end their babies' lives, rather than legal ones that would allow them to live. It's a horrifying thought. But it could happen if the foetus's right to life trumps that of a woman to refuse to become a mother.
- Artificial wombs will be an incredibly powerful new technology. How that power will manifest itself depends on who is demanding, making, controlling and paying for the technology. Once IVF became mainstream, research into treating fertility problems such as blocked fallopian tubes all but stopped. Why bother, if the problem can be circumvented by assisted reproduction? The same could happen with research that makes it easier and safer for women to have babies without being sliced, probed and torn. What's the point, if the solution is already there?
- Women gain so much more than we lose by bearing children: the creative power of being a mother, the right to choose whether to become a parent at all. Can the freedom to have babies without being pregnant be worth sacrificing any of this?
- Full ectogenesis will not exist for decades, but artificial wombs are coming. We need to ensure that, when they do arrive, it's in a society that values women for more than just their reproductive capacity, and that they are put to use for the benefit of people who can't be pregnant for biological rather than social reasons. We do still have time. But the race to innovate means maybe not enough.
- ''This certainly is a project that would have sounded more like science fiction,'' Emily Partridge says at the end of the CHOP video. ''But over three years of doggedly pursuing it, it has become very real.''
- Who buys most vegan and vegetarian products? Not vegans and vegetarians.
- Vegans and vegetarians are not the biggest consumers of vegan and vegetarian products. According to Nielsen1, 6% of Americans follow a strictly vegetarian diet and 3% follow a strictly vegan lifestyle; yet in 2017, 19.5% of food and beverage retail dollars came from plant-based products. This is because more consumers in general are looking to reduce their meat consumption-39% in 2017, to be exact, based on a recent Nielsen Homescan survey1. Growing health and environmental consciousness among consumers has driven interest in plant-based products and encouraged innovation within the category. Innovation has, in turn, made plant-based foods and lifestyles more accessible, allowing for a smoother transition that brings even more consumers into the category.
- ''Innovative technologies, both internal and external, have enabled us to maintain the quality of vegetarian/vegan flavor and evolve the texture of our food to align with consumer taste preferences,'' explains Melissa Cash, senior director, brand marketing, Kellogg Company, which owns MorningStar Farms, a leading vegetarian and vegan food brand. ''We have really ramped up our offerings over the years to include more flavorful options like the Vegan BBQ Chik'n Nuggets or the Meat Lovers and Veggie Lovers vegan burgers that deliver delicious plant protein in every bite.''
- For example, while traditional vegan and vegetarian fare such as tofu, brown rice, and granola have gone down in sales-minus 1.3% in the year ending April 7, 2018, according to Nielsen-sales in other options have seen double-digit growth1. Namely, sales of plant-based meat alternatives, cheese alternatives, and yogurt have grown 30%, 45%, and 31%, respectively1.
- It's notable that plant-based foods mimicking animal-based products are experiencing such growth. Such products allow vegans and vegetarians to enjoy some of their favorite foods ethically while also making plant-based foods accessible and palatable to non-vegans or vegetarians dipping their toes into plant-based waters. Products names like ''Meat Lovers Vegan Burger'' really demonstrate just how diverse the plant-based food consumer can be.
- ''A recent study by NPD group found that 86% of the 43 million U.S. consumers who regularly use plant-based alternatives don't identify as vegan or vegetarian,'' Cash tells Nutritional Outlook. ''MorningStar Farms continues to deliver on what people want by rolling out more flavorful choices.''
- In fact, the large percentage of consumers who don't identify exclusively as vegan or vegetarian but who are purchasing plant-based alternatives is an important reason why plant-based food innovation continues. According to Innova Market Insights, the forecasted value of global meat substitutes alone is expected to reach $4.2 billion in 20222.
- Plant-based milk alternatives have played an important part in normalizing alternatives to dairy and other animal products to a broader audience seeking alternatives due to intolerance to lactose or other health reasons not related to the typical ethical concerns of vegans and vegetarians. Almond milk alone has experienced a combined three-year annual growth rate of 8.2%, says Nielsen1. While plant-based milk products are growing, there are still many customers who buy both dairy and non-dairy. In a white paper titled ''The Shifting Global Dairy Market: Ushering in a New Era of Dairy Products,'' Cargill (Wayzata, MN) reported results from a survey on the dairy-buying habits of consumers and emphasized that while overall dairy milk consumption fell by 22% between 2000 and 2016, dairy milk sales still remain significant, with 90% of American households reporting dairy consumption.
- ''Dairy consumption overall remains strong in the United States, with two-thirds of respondents calling real dairy a regular part of their diet, while absolute dairy avoidance is comparatively low at just more than one in ten shoppers,'' states the white paper. What is more significant, says Cargill, is that nearly half of respondents, 42%, reported consuming both dairy and dairy alternatives. Whether it's with dairy or meat alternatives, manufacturers are no longer just targeting vegans or vegetarians.
- The realization by manufacturers that they are making plant-based products for a wider audience may very well make them more gung-ho about pursuing this category, and expanding options will ultimately benefit vegans and vegetarians in the long term. According to Ingredient Communications (London), which commissioned an online survey of 1,000 consumers (half from the U.S. and half from the U.K.), nearly half of vegans (46%) and a quarter of vegetarians (23%) are dissatisfied with the choice of food products available to them. This same survey found that 42% of meat eaters intended to reduce their meat consumption or stop eating it altogether. Of all the respondents, vegans and vegetarians combined made up only 8% of the 1,000 respondents. There is a greater incentive for manufacturers to capture that 42% than that 8%. This will eventually result in more plant-based food choices, which will be important as more of those consumers ultimately remove animals from their diet entirely.
- References:Nielsen. ''Plant-based food options are sprouting growth for retailers.'' www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2018/plant-based-food-options-are-sprouting-growth-for-retailers.print.html. Accessed October 17, 2018.PR Newswire. ''62% increase in plant-based product claims, says Innova Market Insights.'' https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/62-increase-in-plant-based-product-claims-says-innova-market-insights-300677563.html. Accessed October 17, 2018.
- EXCLUSIVE: TikTok Spied On Forbes Journalists
- ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists' physical location using their IP addresses, as first reported by Forbes in October.An internal investigation by ByteDance, the parent company of video-sharing platform TikTok, found that employees tracked multiple journalists covering the company, improperly gaining access to their IP addresses and user data in an attempt to identify whether they had been in the same locales as ByteDance employees.
- According to materials reviewed by Forbes, ByteDance tracked multiple Forbes journalists as part of this covert surveillance campaign, which was designed to unearth the source of leaks inside the company following a drumbeat of stories exposing the company's ongoing links to China. As a result of the investigation into the surveillance tactics, ByteDance fired Chris Lepitak, its chief internal auditor who led the team responsible for them. The China-based executive Song Ye, who Lepitak reported to and who reports directly to ByteDance CEO Rubo Liang, resigned.
- ''I was deeply disappointed when I was notified of the situation'... and I'm sure you feel the same,'' Liang wrote in an internal email shared with Forbes. ''The public trust that we have spent huge efforts building is going to be significantly undermined by the misconduct of a few individuals. '... I believe this situation will serve as a lesson to us all.''
- ''It is standard practice for companies to have an internal audit group authorized to investigate code of conduct violations,'' TikTok General Counsel Erich Andersen wrote in a second internal email shared with Forbes. ''However, in this case individuals misused their authority to obtain access to TikTok user data.''
- Forbes first reported the surveillance tactics, which were overseen by a China-based team at ByteDance, in October. Asked for comment on that story, ByteDance and TikTok did not deny the surveillance, but took to Twitter after the story was published to say that ''TikTok has never been used to 'target' any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists,'' and that ''TikTok could not monitor U.S. users in the way the article suggested.'' In the internal email, Liang acknowledged that TikTok had been used in exactly this way, as Forbes had reported.
- ''This is a direct assault on the idea of a free press and its critical role in a functioning democracy.''
- The investigation, internally known as Project Raven, began this summer after BuzzFeed News published a story revealing that China-based ByteDance employees had repeatedly accessed U.S. user data, based on more than 80 hours of audio recordings of internal TikTok meetings. According to internal ByteDance documents reviewed by Forbes, Project Raven involved the company's Chief Security and Privacy Office, was known to TikTok's Head of Global Legal Compliance, and was approved by ByteDance employees in China. It tracked Emily Baker-White, Katharine Schwab and Richard Nieva, three Forbes journalists that formerly worked at BuzzFeed News.
- ''This is a direct assault on the idea of a free press and its critical role in a functioning democracy,'' says Randall Lane, the chief content officer of Forbes. ''We await a direct response from ByteDance, as this raises fundamental questions about what they are doing with the information they compile from TikTok users.''
- After this story was published, TikTok spokesperson Hilary McQuaide said, "The misconduct of certain individuals, who are no longer employed at ByteDance, was an egregious misuse of their authority to obtain access to user data. This misbehavior is unacceptable, and not in line with our efforts across TikTok to earn the trust of our users."
- MORE FROM FORBES TikTok's China Problem By Emily Baker-White ''This new development reinforces serious concerns that the social media platform has permitted TikTok engineers and executives in the People's Republic of China to repeatedly access private data of U.S. users despite repeated claims to lawmakers and users that this data was protected,'' Senator Mark Warner told Forbes. ''The DoJ has also been promising for over a year that they are looking into ways to protect U.S. user data from Bytedance and the CCP '-- it's time to come forward with that solution or Congress could soon be forced to step in.''
- According to an internal email sent Thursday by Andersen, ByteDance found that several of its employees obtained the data of ''a former BuzzFeed reporter and a Financial Times reporter,'' as well as a ''small number of people connected to the reporters'' through their TikTok accounts. The audit was conducted by the law firm Covington & Burling, which has represented TikTok in litigation against the U.S. government. Covington did not respond to a comment request.
- In addition to the firing of TikTok's Chief Internal Auditor, Chris Lepitak, who was suspended after Forbes' initial report about the surveillance scheme in October, ByteDance fired two additional TikTok employees in the United States and China as a result of the findings. Lepitak did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ''None of the individuals found to have directly participated in or overseen the misguided plan remain employed at ByteDance,'' Andersen wrote in the internal email.
- ''This new development reinforces serious concerns that the social media platform has permitted TikTok engineers and executives in the People's Republic of China to repeatedly access private data of U.S. users despite repeated claims to lawmakers and users that this data was protected.''
- The team that oversaw the surveillance campaign was ByteDance's Internal Audit and Risk Control department, a Beijing-based unit primarily responsible for conducting investigations into potential misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees.
- TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew wrote in his own email to employees, ''We take data security incredibly seriously,'' adding that the company's Project Texas, which would limit China-based access to U.S. user data (and which was first reported by Baker-White at BuzzFeed News) was a ''testament to that commitment.''
- In 2021, TikTok became the most visited website in the world, but the app's ownership by Chinese tech giant ByteDance has raised serious concerns about the company's access to the personal information of millions of U.S. citizens, as well as its capacity to manipulate and influence user content. The company is currently negotiating a national security contract with the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS), which will govern the way the Chinese-owned social media app handles Americans' personal user data. The company has also sought to assuage concerns about ties to China by working to move some U.S. user information stateside to be stored at a data center managed by Oracle as part of Project Texas.
- ''In this case individuals misused their authority to obtain access to TikTok user data.''
- Forbes reported in October that the same China-based ByteDance internal audit and investigations team that oversaw the surveillance campaign against journalists also investigated TikTok global security chief Roland Cloutier, a U.S. Air Force veteran, who was tasked with overseeing efforts to limit Chinese employees' access to American user data. Cloutier stepped down in July 2022. At least five senior employees who led departments at TikTok recently left the company over revelations that they could not meaningfully influence decision-making, Forbes also found.
- TikTok and ByteDance declined to comment on specific employee investigations or on the departures.
- In August, Forbes additionally found LinkedIn profiles for three hundred ByteDance employees that showed they previously worked for Chinese state media publications. Twenty-three of the profiles appeared to have been created by ByteDance directors. At the time, ByteDance spokesperson Jennifer Banks said the company makes ''hiring decisions based purely on an individual's professional capability to do the job. For our China-market businesses, that includes people who have previously worked in government or state media positions in China. Outside of China, employees also bring experience in government, public policy, and media organizations from dozens of markets."
- ByteDance is not the first tech giant to use an app to monitor specific users. In 2017, the New York Times reported that Uber had identified various local politicians and regulators and served them a separate, misleading version of the Uber app to avoid regulatory penalties. At the time, Uber acknowledged that it had run the program, called ''greyball,'' but said it was used to deny ride requests to ''opponents who collude with officials on secret 'stings' meant to entrap drivers,'' among other groups.
- Both Uber and Facebook also reportedly tracked the location of journalists reporting on their apps. A 2015 investigation by the Electronic Privacy Information Center found that Uber had monitored the location of journalists covering the company. Uber did not specifically respond to this claim. The 2021 book An Ugly Truth alleges that Facebook did the same thing, in an effort to identify the journalists' sources. Facebook did not respond directly to the assertions in the book, but a spokesperson told the San Jose Mercury News in 2018 that, like other companies, Facebook ''routinely use[s] business records in workplace investigations.''
- But an important factor distinguishes ByteDance's collection of private users' information from those cases: TikTok told lawmakers in June that access to certain U.S. user data '-- likely including location '-- will be ''limited only to authorized personnel, pursuant to protocols being developed with the U.S. Government.''
- Brendan Carr, an FCC commissioner who called on Apple and Google to ban TikTok following the June BuzzFeed News report, said: ''At the precise moment when TikTok is trying to convince U.S. officials that it can be trusted'--when it has every incentive to ensure the security of user data'--its Beijing-based parent company abused its systems to obtain data on reporters that are covering TikTok? This should be the final nail in the coffin for the idea that U.S. officials can trust TikTok.''
- MORE FROM FORBES MORE FROM FORBES TikTok Parent ByteDance Planned To Use TikTok To Monitor The Physical Location Of Specific American Citizens By Emily Baker-White MORE FROM FORBES A China-Based ByteDance Team Investigated TikTok's Global Security Chief, Who Oversaw U.S. Data Concerns By Emily Baker-White MORE FROM FORBES TikTok Is Bleeding U.S. Execs Because China Is Still Calling The Shots, Ex-Employees Say By Emily Baker-White MORE FROM FORBES LinkedIn Profiles Indicate 300 Current TikTok And ByteDance Employees Used To Work For Chinese State Media-And Some Still Do By Emily Baker-White
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- VIDEO - Federal Officials Drop Hundreds of Migrants at Transit Centers Around San Diego County '' NBC 7 San Diego
- "As many as 250 migrants" were dropped off Friday at a trio of transit hubs around San Diego County, according to a county official.
- The migrants were brought to the El Cajon Transit Station; the Rancho Del Oro Transit Station, in Oceanside; and the Iris Avenue Transit Center, in the city of San Diego, officials told NBC 7. At this point, it's unclear where the migrants were being held prior to their release.
- Chief Justice John Roberts placed a temporary hold on a lower court ruling that would end a Trump-era immigration policy implemented during the pandemic to allow asylum-seekers to be quickly turned away at the border.
- The move comes in the wake of thousands of asylum seekers crossing daily into El Paso, Texas, drawing the attention of immigration activists and opponents along the U.S. border.
- The influx coincides closely with the scheduled date for the expiration of the federal government's Title 42 program, a pandemic-era regulation implemented to allow the U.S. to expel asylum seekers trying to enter the United States.
- On Monday, however, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the end of Title 42, which would have ended on Wednesday otherwise.
- One local critic of Friday's local developments was San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, whose office released a statement Friday afternoon that said, in part, "The federal government is failing its obligation to protect the people of San Diego County. This system is broken and puts our region at risk. If the federal government wants to process asylum seekers, they must provide adequate resources to manage people entering our region. Our system is already overburdened, and this is before Title 42 is potentially lifted."
- Desmond cites as concerns the fact that San Diego's ongoing homeless crisis has already overloaded the social safety net, as well as hospitals and law enforcement resources that are already, in his words, "at or beyond capacity."
- MEDIA STATEMENT: My office has been notified that nearly 200 asylum seekers will be dropped off the streets of San Diego County, including transit centers in the City of San Diego, Oceanside, and El Cajon. The Federal Government is failing in its obligation to protect the people. pic.twitter.com/BCIju1IW2K
- '-- Supervisor Jim Desmond (@jim_desmond) December 23, 2022El Cajon's city manager, Graham Mitchell, confirmed that federal officials planned on dropping off 86 migrants in the East County city on Friday.
- "There's nothing to comment on," Mitchell told NBC 7 on Friday afternoon. ''This is not in our control.''
- About 50 families from all over, mostly from Latin America, were dropped off at the transit center in El Cajon.
- Mark Sackett, an NBC 7 photojournalist who went to the transit center in El Cajon, reported that some of those who were dropped off had families to connect with, while others did not. He also said that many who were there did not speak English and were unsure about what to do.
- Many of them shared with NBC 7 that they were awaiting a court date in their asylum case and were dropped off to reunite with friends or family.
- But to people in the area, the procedural event came as a surprise. Lemon Grove Councilwoman Liana Lebaron was leaving her job at Mossy Nissan when she noticed the group being dropped off.
- ''Hearing mothers talk about how they are here because they want their kids to have a better life breaks my heart," said Lebaron.
- Meanwhile, Sackett said, Border Patrol agents could be seen helping some of the migrants make phone calls, while others came up to him to ask for help.
- Later in the day, an Oceanside official, Jennifer Atenza, said that CBP had dropped off migrants in that North County City.
- "The city of Oceanside and the Oceanside Police Department were made aware of approximately 69 individuals would be dropped off at Oceanside's Rancho Del Oro Transit Center sometime this afternoon," Atenza stated. "CBP indicated that these individuals are prescreened, and should have destinations they are supposed to be going to."
- NBC 7 contacted the department of Customs and Border Protection regarding Friday's news in San Diego County, who also said that anybody released by CBP has been screened for concerns about both public safety and national security.
- "CBP releases noncitizens to service providing nongovernmental organizations and other sites in border communities in coordination with state and local partners," reads a statement attributed to CBP representative Gerrelaine Alcordo. "CBP works diligently to ensure that releases are conducted in a safe manner and that all noncitizens released from custody are provided essential support upon release and may access transportation to continue to their destinations.
- Alcordo also said that anybody released by CBP has "strict reporting requirements" in place as part of the immigration process.
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- VIDEO - Federal Officials Drop Hundreds of Migrants at Transit Centers Around San Diego County '' NBC 7 San Diego
- "As many as 250 migrants" were dropped off Friday at a trio of transit hubs around San Diego County, according to a county official.
- The migrants were brought to the El Cajon Transit Station; the Rancho Del Oro Transit Station, in Oceanside; and the Iris Avenue Transit Center, in the city of San Diego, officials told NBC 7. At this point, it's unclear where the migrants were being held prior to their release.
- Chief Justice John Roberts placed a temporary hold on a lower court ruling that would end a Trump-era immigration policy implemented during the pandemic to allow asylum-seekers to be quickly turned away at the border.
- The move comes in the wake of thousands of asylum seekers crossing daily into El Paso, Texas, drawing the attention of immigration activists and opponents along the U.S. border.
- The influx coincides closely with the scheduled date for the expiration of the federal government's Title 42 program, a pandemic-era regulation implemented to allow the U.S. to expel asylum seekers trying to enter the United States.
- On Monday, however, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the end of Title 42, which would have ended on Wednesday otherwise.
- One local critic of Friday's local developments was San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, whose office released a statement Friday afternoon that said, in part, "The federal government is failing its obligation to protect the people of San Diego County. This system is broken and puts our region at risk. If the federal government wants to process asylum seekers, they must provide adequate resources to manage people entering our region. Our system is already overburdened, and this is before Title 42 is potentially lifted."
- Desmond cites as concerns the fact that San Diego's ongoing homeless crisis has already overloaded the social safety net, as well as hospitals and law enforcement resources that are already, in his words, "at or beyond capacity."
- MEDIA STATEMENT: My office has been notified that nearly 200 asylum seekers will be dropped off the streets of San Diego County, including transit centers in the City of San Diego, Oceanside, and El Cajon. The Federal Government is failing in its obligation to protect the people. pic.twitter.com/BCIju1IW2K
- '-- Supervisor Jim Desmond (@jim_desmond) December 23, 2022El Cajon's city manager, Graham Mitchell, confirmed that federal officials planned on dropping off 86 migrants in the East County city on Friday.
- "There's nothing to comment on," Mitchell told NBC 7 on Friday afternoon. ''This is not in our control.''
- About 50 families from all over, mostly from Latin America, were dropped off at the transit center in El Cajon.
- Mark Sackett, an NBC 7 photojournalist who went to the transit center in El Cajon, reported that some of those who were dropped off had families to connect with, while others did not. He also said that many who were there did not speak English and were unsure about what to do.
- Many of them shared with NBC 7 that they were awaiting a court date in their asylum case and were dropped off to reunite with friends or family.
- But to people in the area, the procedural event came as a surprise. Lemon Grove Councilwoman Liana Lebaron was leaving her job at Mossy Nissan when she noticed the group being dropped off.
- ''Hearing mothers talk about how they are here because they want their kids to have a better life breaks my heart," said Lebaron.
- Meanwhile, Sackett said, Border Patrol agents could be seen helping some of the migrants make phone calls, while others came up to him to ask for help.
- Later in the day, an Oceanside official, Jennifer Atenza, said that CBP had dropped off migrants in that North County City.
- "The city of Oceanside and the Oceanside Police Department were made aware of approximately 69 individuals would be dropped off at Oceanside's Rancho Del Oro Transit Center sometime this afternoon," Atenza stated. "CBP indicated that these individuals are prescreened, and should have destinations they are supposed to be going to."
- NBC 7 contacted the department of Customs and Border Protection regarding Friday's news in San Diego County, who also said that anybody released by CBP has been screened for concerns about both public safety and national security.
- "CBP releases noncitizens to service providing nongovernmental organizations and other sites in border communities in coordination with state and local partners," reads a statement attributed to CBP representative Gerrelaine Alcordo. "CBP works diligently to ensure that releases are conducted in a safe manner and that all noncitizens released from custody are provided essential support upon release and may access transportation to continue to their destinations.
- Alcordo also said that anybody released by CBP has "strict reporting requirements" in place as part of the immigration process.
- VIDEO - Climate change makes for colder winter weather days | 9news.com
- It may sound counterintuitive, but climate change may have something to do with an increasing amount of extreme cold events in the U.S.
- DENVER '-- The difference between weather and climate was on display in Denver Thursday as the city experienced its coldest day in 59 years with an average temperature of -15 degrees.
- And it comes in a time when global warming takes many of the weather headlines.
- There is a connection between weather and climate, but a single storm can't be blamed on climate change and its occurrence can't refute it either.
- Here's what the research is showing about the connection.
- Scientists have proven that human activity is causing the entire atmosphere to warm, but they have also discovered that the arctic is warming at a much faster pace than it is in the United States.
- That can cause more chaotic weather patterns leading to more extreme polar vortex outbreaks in the future.
- The polar jet stream controls the weather patterns in the U.S. When the arctic is extremely cold, that jet stream moves fast and remains in a tighter circle. Reducing the chances of the most extreme polar air from escaping to the south.
- But since the arctic is not as cold as it used to be, the smaller temperature gradient is causing the polar jet to slow and become wavier, increasing the chances of arctic outbreaks in the States.
- The result is more extreme single days cold events while overall seasonal temperatures increase. There is data that supports this.
- There have now been three extreme polar vortex outbreaks in three consecutive years. Beside this week, there was one in February 2021 which crippled much of the nation's power grid in Texas. And another in September of 2020 which brought the earliest freeze in history to Denver, Colorado.
- And yet, the average fall and winter temperatures on the Front Range have been on a steady rise over the last 60 years.
- S UGGESTED VIDEOS: Latest from 9NEWS
- VIDEO - (2) Marv38 on Twitter: "Moderna CEO can't explain why his company owns a US patent of a SARS-CoV2 gene sequence, filed in 2016. https://t.co/Zxf8Ui337A" / Twitter
- Marv38 : Moderna CEO can't explain why his company owns a US patent of a SARS-CoV2 gene sequence, filed in 2016. https://t.co/Zxf8Ui337A
- Sat Dec 17 19:43:44 +0000 2022
- Pale Horse : @Marv382 @MartinRides They can definitely explain. In a criminal court.
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- Jo E TV : @Marv382 It was the plan
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- Sat Dec 24 14:32:09 +0000 2022
- Rod Burne : @Marv382 @cocoaudie Moderno was using this to start the vaccine early way before the actual pandemic started. Might'... https://t.co/6n2YcBlAl1
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- Dem Media Brainwsh Lie for Power like Russia Media : @Marv382 Sounds like wuhan lab used moderns tech to create covid virus. Crazy
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- VIDEO - JUST IN: Chip Roy Completely Explodes At Democrats On House Floor Over Omnibus - YouTube
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- VIDEO - 3 dead in Paris after shooting at Kurdish centre in suspected 'racist attack' by 69-year-old recently released on bail -- Society's Child -- Sott.net
- A 69-year-old gunman opened fire at a Kurdish cultural centre and a hairdressing salon in Paris on Friday, killing three people and injuring three others, witnesses and prosecutors said.
- The shots shortly before midday (1100 GMT) caused panic in rue d'Enghien in the trendy 10th district of the capital, a bustling area of shops and restaurants that is home to a large Kurdish population.
- Witnesses told AFP that the gunman, described by police as white, a French national and previously charged with racist violence, initially targeted the Kurdish cultural centre before entering a hairdressing salon where he was arrested.
- Of the three wounded people, one is in intensive care and two are being treated for serious injuries, officials said.
- The Kurdish community centre, called Centre Ahmet Kaya, is used by
- a charity that organises concerts and exhibitions, and helps the Kurdish diaspora in the Paris region.
- Within hours of the attack, Kurdish protesters clashed with police, who used teargas in an attempt to disperse them as they tried to break through a police cordon deployed to protect Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin who had arrived at the scene.
- Demonstrators threw objects at police while voicing fury over an attack they saw as deliberate and which French security services had done too little to prevent.
- Several cars parked in the area as well as police vehicles had their windows smashed as protesters threw bricks.
- The gunman, named as William M. in the French media, had already been linked to two previous attempted murders in 2016 and 2021.
- The retired train driver was initially convicted over the first case in the multicultural Seine-Saint-Denis suburb of Paris,
- but freed on appeal, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told reporters without giving further details.
- In the second case, he was charged with racist violence after allegedly attacking migrants in tents in the Bercy area of the city in December 2021, Beccuau added.
- At least two migrants suffered injuries from a sword used in the assault, a police source told AFP at the time.
- "The Kurds in France have been the target of an odious attack in the heart of Paris," French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter.
- Authorities are likely to face questions in the coming days over why the gunman had been recently released on bail given his criminal record.
- He suffered facial injuries on Friday and had been taken to hospital for treatment.
- 'Odious attack'Darmanin told reporters at the scene that while the attacker "was clearly targeting foreigners", it was "not certain" that the man was aiming to kill "Kurds in particular".
- "We yet don't know his exact motives," he said.
- The minister has repeatedly warned about the danger of violent far-right groups in France.
- Last month, 13 people from far-right political circles were ordered to stand trial for allegedly plotting to attack Macron.
- The Kurdish Democratic Council of France (CDK-F), which uses the cultural centre as its headquarters, said in a statement it considered the shooting to be a "terror attack".
- Some members of the Kurdish centre could be seen weeping and hugging each other for comfort after the attack.
- "It's starting again. You aren't protecting us. We're being killed!" one of them cried to nearby police.
- Often described as the world's largest people without a state, the Kurds are a Muslim ethnic group spread across Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran.
- The Kurdish Democratic Council of France and Kurds at the scene underlined that the shooting coincided with the 10th anniversary of the murder of three female Kurdish militants in Paris.
- A Turkish man was charged with the assassinations on January 9, 2013, but he died in custody before being tried.
- The victims' families have long pointed the finger at Turkey for masterminding the deaths of the three women, who were shot in the head and neck, and at France for failing to investigate properly.
- "The Kurdish Democratic Council of France condemns in the strongest possible terms this vile terrorist attack which occurred following multiples threats from Turkey, an ally of Daesh," it said, using an alternative name for the Islamic State terror group.
- Turkey launches regular military operations against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- a designated terrorist group by the European Union and the United States -- as well as Kurdish groups it accuses of being allies.
- The PKK has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984.
- VIDEO - Russia reacts to Zelenskyy's USA visit | DW News - YouTube
- VIDEO - (188) Kremlin says US fighting 'indirect war' against Russia - YouTube
- VIDEO - (188) Deadly attack in central Paris: shooter was 'clearly targeting foreigners', minister said - YouTube
- VIDEO - (13) Greg Price on Twitter: "Pelosi ends her final speech as Speaker of the House by wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah and a "Happy Shwanza" https://t.co/LtcMeA8KIT" / Twitter
- Greg Price : Pelosi ends her final speech as Speaker of the House by wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah and a "H'... https://t.co/2htjxe6m6n
- Fri Dec 23 18:18:29 +0000 2022
- Petestavey1 : @greg_price11 https://t.co/V0DdQwapxm
- Fri Dec 23 22:21:38 +0000 2022
- Jenn. : @greg_price11 @bonchieredstate She delivered 6 trillion dollars to Biden. Very effective for her party. Wish we had'... https://t.co/om9JaKp86D
- Fri Dec 23 22:21:02 +0000 2022
- ð...Poelock Joeð... : @greg_price11 Eternal damnation awaits
- Fri Dec 23 22:20:49 +0000 2022
- DiCrews : @greg_price11 @redsteeze How appropriate, slurring to the end.
- Fri Dec 23 22:20:46 +0000 2022
- Unvaxxed/PuppetZelensky : @greg_price11 Is anyone expecting more ? ðð¤ð¤ð¤
- Fri Dec 23 22:20:17 +0000 2022
- SouthernYankeeðºð¸ð : @greg_price11 @redsteeze That's Kwanzaa in Smirnoff land.
- Fri Dec 23 22:19:50 +0000 2022
- Curly Says : @greg_price11 Lol. https://t.co/rpR3uGSkJ6
- Fri Dec 23 22:15:34 +0000 2022
- HenryPorter : @greg_price11 @redsteeze That's when the Schwann's man shows up with vodka.
- Fri Dec 23 22:15:21 +0000 2022
- Fri Dec 23 22:14:45 +0000 2022
- Christopher Newman : @greg_price11 Happy dick lol Du dummer alter Narr, h¶r auf, den Leuten Happy Dick zu sagen
- Fri Dec 23 22:14:39 +0000 2022
- Rick Trussell : @greg_price11 @redsteeze She forgot the Booty Call for Paul ,,,,,,
- Fri Dec 23 22:14:37 +0000 2022
- NRWO : @greg_price11 She just needs some D since her husbands sex slave escaped. https://t.co/Q3Vz2uCkuO
- Fri Dec 23 22:14:20 +0000 2022
- Ross : @greg_price11 @redsteeze #Kwanzaa
- Fri Dec 23 22:14:02 +0000 2022
- Mark Rooney : @greg_price11 @redsteeze Dreaming of a happy Schwanza. https://t.co/xl6IUreyr9
- Fri Dec 23 22:13:51 +0000 2022
- lloyd rule : @greg_price11 sober up nanzi
- Fri Dec 23 22:13:47 +0000 2022
- SMack : @greg_price11 @redsteeze Paul's been celebrating that for quite awhile now
- Fri Dec 23 22:13:26 +0000 2022
- Fred Simon : @greg_price11 @matthewmyersY33 Just leave!
- Fri Dec 23 22:12:37 +0000 2022
- Ron Sandack : @greg_price11 @redsteeze ð¤£ð¤£ð¤£
- Fri Dec 23 22:12:22 +0000 2022
- Yitzok Yerachmiel : @greg_price11 @redsteeze maybe she meant "shwarma" - a nice sandwich.
- Fri Dec 23 22:12:00 +0000 2022
- Katelyn : @greg_price11 Vodka flowing early already
- Fri Dec 23 22:11:08 +0000 2022
- Drew Anon : @greg_price11 I am all about Schwanza
- Fri Dec 23 22:10:51 +0000 2022
- CoryM : @greg_price11 @redsteeze Her dentures were probably coming out.
- Fri Dec 23 22:10:46 +0000 2022
- Joseph Woods : @greg_price11 Bye felishia
- Fri Dec 23 22:10:30 +0000 2022
- Joshua Roberts : @greg_price11 @NickDiPaolo Merry Christmas
- Fri Dec 23 22:09:27 +0000 2022
- Beorn : @greg_price11 https://t.co/hqhmNFXptn
- Fri Dec 23 22:09:07 +0000 2022
- Trex : @greg_price11 drunk again or dentures fall out?
- Fri Dec 23 22:08:58 +0000 2022
- Dennis Isolde : @greg_price11 Please let this be her last act. Please leave now
- Fri Dec 23 22:08:02 +0000 2022
- Smart Cookie : @greg_price11 Chuck and Nancy doing their Schwanza thing. https://t.co/cWQkCOyBfP
- Fri Dec 23 22:07:22 +0000 2022
- VIDEO - Florida Dominatrix Group Demands Taxpayer Money For Dungeon From Local City Council '' NBC 6 South Florida
- To one dominatrix, some South Florida lawmakers have been misbehaving lately.
- A dominatrix trio headed by their latex leader, only known as ''Miss Cave," showed up to a city commission meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Tuesday, and demanded the creation of a dungeon so local ''Doms'' and ''Subs'' can let loose their kinky selves.
- The odd request happened as the city's commissioners were reviewing a nearly $1 million contract for a waste processing plant with Waste Management.
- ''I find it interesting that you would spend almost $1 million dollars to hide your secrets down the drain,'' Miss Cave in front of the local lawmakers while wearing a full latex suit with only her mouth visible.
- ''I propose that you use a quarter of that million to support doms and subs in Broward County. Build a dungeon created for us, by us, the taxpayers and voting citizens,'' she demanded.
- According to the Cambridge Dictionary, in BDSM culture, a "dom" means dominant, and "sub" is submissive.
- Miss Cave then concluded her speech and welcomed all the commissioners to the dungeon for some "spanking."
- VIDEO - (187) Tucker Carlson: This is absurd - YouTube
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