#News of the Week

[marta-bee]

There's so much going on in the world just now, I want to do twice-a-week news story roundups. Here you go.

Immigration

DOJ orders investigation of local and state compliance with Trump immigration actions.

Afghan refugees approved for resettlement in US under Biden feel betrayed by Trump orders blocking their travel here.

Advocacy groups ordered to stop distributing aid to recent refugee arrivals. (RP)

Trump officials issue quotas to ICE officers to ramp up arrests (RP)

Trump issues 25% tariff against Columbia after Columbia refuses to accept plane of deportees. (RP)

Racism and DEI:

Trump eliminates help for Black and Latino communities hit hardest by pollution.

Trump orders DOJ to pause all civil rights actions, including investigations into state and local police. (RP)

Trump administration to start firing DEI staffers. He's since announced all federal DEI offices will be closed within the next 30 days.

Foreign Affairs

Sec. State Rubio discusses Taiwanese independence with Chinese counterpart.

Donald Trump addresses world leaders about economic issues at Davos.

Trump foreign aid freeze includes all funds for PEPFAR, a successful program fighting HIV/AIDS internationally. (RP)

Autocracy & Oligarchy

FCC reinstates complaints against ABC, CBS, and NBC for bias in election coverage. Biden FCC chair had rejected the complaint as an attempt to weaponize the FCC.

Trump defends decision to pull security details from first-term security advisors. (RP) Also Anthony Faucci and others.

'I am terrified': Workers describe dark mood inside federal agencies.

Gender & Abortion

Trump pardons anti-abortion activists arrested for blocking access to abortion clinics. (RP)

Trump re-instates Mexico City policy forbidding global aid recipients from talking to recipients about abortion.

JD Vance addresses anti-abortion rally, calls for baby boom. (.... Yeah.) (RP)

Anti-abortion activists emboldened by recent executive orders, presidential actions. (RP) A good discussion of what the anti-abortion side hopes to accomplish under Trump.

Congress's first transgender member, Sarah McBride, faces anti-trans pushback. (RP)

[bopinion]

2025 / 02

Aperçu of the week

"Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that really threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedom."

(Departing US-President Joe Biden in his farewell speech)

Bad News of the Week

The devastating firestorms around Los Angeles are dramatic in two respects. Firstly, the fact that they are happening. The second is how the political public is dealing with it. The images are terrifying, and the tragedy of losing your own home is something you probably can't even imagine. After all, we are not usually talking about the third residences of Hollywood stars, but mostly about the homes of ordinary families. All you can do now is keep your fingers crossed that they are insured - and that the insurance will pay.

I'm just as stunned by the way the Republican-influenced media is assessing the disaster. Namely as man-made. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that they have finally realized that climate change exists and who is responsible for it (namely all of us). No, I'm talking about the ridiculous blame game with which the guilt is placed on a few individuals. The fire chief is to blame because she is a woman and a lesbian. The mayor is to blame because she is a woman and black. The governor is to blame because he is a man, but a Democrat.

But it's so obvious: firstly, science has warned of exactly that if the climate warms by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius - and we had 1.6 degrees (for the first time) in 2024. And secondly, urban development, especially in the Los Angeles area, is fundamentally wrongly designed, so in a way, a basic danger is being negligently accepted. Of course, those who have just lost everything cannot take comfort in this. But it should give everyone pause for thought. Those who are in the process of making a personal decision about where to live. But above all those who have political, administrative or regulatory responsibility.

Good News of the Week

But no, officer: I may be standing at the scene of the crime, hold the weapon in my hand and have announced the murder - but I didn't do it. That's about the level of absurd mendacity of the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland / Alternative for Germany). In the last week, it has made several headlines that you would have expected to find in the black humor column. First there was the “interview” of top candidate Alice Weidel with Elon Musk on X. And then the party conference at the start of the Bundestag election campaign by the end of February. I will pick out two aspects from each of these two media events - quite randomly, there is a lot to choose from. And, of course, I will follow each steep thesis with a fact check.

“Angela Merkel opened the borders for migrants in 2015, since then the crime rate has been going up (abbreviated)”. No, there have been no internal borders for Germany in the Schengen area since 1995. You can't open non-existent borders either. According to official “police crime statistics”, the current crime rate is lower than in 2015, when it was already lower than in the period from 2001 to 2005, for example.

“Hitler was not right-wing, but a communist who called himself a socialist.” Communists were persecuted and murdered thousands of times under National Socialism. Hitler himself declared in 1928 that his National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) was not socialist. This makes sense, because Nazi ideology propagates racial and biologistic thinking, whereas left-wing ideologies such as socialism and communism pursue an ideal of equality.

“The family, consisting of father, mother and children, is the nucleus of society” is the socio-political definition of the traditional family image in the election manifesto adopted on Sunday. This is astonishing, given that Alice Weidel, who was officially elected as the lead candidate on Saturday, is in a same-sex relationship with a woman and is raising two children with her. Weidel presumably also lives in Switzerland with her partner because she comes from Sri Lanka and, according to the AfD, would have to be “remigrated” from Germany.

“Tear down all wind turbines, bring nuclear power plants back online and allow longer operating times for coal-fired power plants”. This is almost more radical than Donald Trump - both (of course) want to leave the Paris climate protection agreement. Because short-term slogans for ill-informed voters are more important to them than the long-term survival of humanity. There's really no need to make any judgment here, because rarely has there been such a far-reaching consensus among scientists as there is on man-made climate change.

Why is this good news? Because of the level of absurd mendacity mentioned at the beginning. Because I am counting on the nonsense articulated by these political criminals becoming so blatant in the coming weeks during the election campaign that even the last potential sympathizer of this mongrel will realize that this kind of theater can have nothing to do with a serious political program. And they then put their cross somewhere else.

By the way: More than 7,000,000 viewers watched the AfD party conference on X, according to the political culture magazine “Cicero”. Just 6,000 watched the Social Democrats' parallel party conference with Chancellor Olaf Scholz - does anyone still doubt that what Elon Musk is doing here is actively influencing the election campaign?

Personal happy moment of the week

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions. After all, there are at least 364 other days after New Year. But this year I have really resolved to tackle a few things. One of them is my personal work-life balance. For example, I will only work every other weekend in 2025. So far so good: First weekend in January worked (even 3 days because of a public holiday), second not. So now only 12 days of work before I can catch my breath again - yeah! Should I be worried that this makes me happy? Naa...

I couldn't care less...

...that Meta is now showing its true colors. For its customers with the abolition of fact-checks - so they can lie and be influenced even more uninhibitedly under the guise of freedom of opinion. For its employees with the reduction of programs for inclusion and diversity - which fits in perfectly with the general rejection of any form of regulation. “Don't be evil!” was Google's motto for years. They wanted to be one of the good guys and also give their customers and users this impression, after all, they should trust the services with pretty much everything personal. The motto was dropped in 2018. And the claim probably too. After all, the big gatekeepers of the digital world are no better than any other profit-oriented company. Is anyone really surprised by this?

It's fine with me...

...that many French rejoiced at the death of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau finds it disgraceful to “dance on a corpse”. I find it more disgraceful what the approved Nazi and Front National founder Le Pen has done to the political discourse. It is primarily thanks to him that positions and vocabulary that used to be taboo are now considered acceptable throughout Europe.

As I write this...

...January 20 is fast approaching - and the orange meteor will hit Washington DC again. Trump will not order a military attack on Greenland on his first day in office. But he may pardon enemies of the constitution who were involved in the attack on the Capitol. Trump will not immediately slash the USA's rudimentary welfare system. But he will probably sign off tax cuts for companies and the rich. Trump will probably not ban wind turbines and solar panels. But he will certainly make it easier to promote fossil fuels and reduce environmental standards.

Europe is wavering between euphoria (Orban and Meloni) and shock (Starmer and Scholz). No one can yet know whether “Project 2025” will actually be implemented to the letter. But in contrast to the very democratic Biden administration, a fundamentally different wind will be blowing over the next four years. Two aspects will be decisive: firstly, whether it will remain an arch-conservative episode or the beginning of lasting socio-political change. Secondly, whether the rest of the “free world” allows itself to be infected - whether it actively adopts the madness or just stares like a rabbit at a snake.

Post Scriptum

In protest against the increasing radicalization of discourse on Twitter, more than 60 German universities and research institutions, including elite institutions, have announced their departure from the social media platform. The official reason: the platform's orientation contradicts the fundamental values of universities, such as openness to the world and academic integrity. The changes at X, such as the amplification of right-wing populist content or, conversely, the restriction of the reach of other content by the algorithm, made further use unacceptable for the participating organizations, according to the initiative, which originated at the University of Düsseldorf. I'll join in right away. Which is relatively easy for me, as my last visit and post (a reference to this blog, by the way) on X was almost two years ago...

[dropsofsciencenews]

Herbarium you Browse… Poison you Find

Drying and preserving plants for scientific or recreational purposes is a practice that has been used for centuries. Even today, botanists and hobbyists create herbariums: collections of dried plant specimens useful for studies and research. Their long preservation is ensured by chemical compounds that prevent mold and insect damage.

In the 19th century, advances in metal fusion led to an abundance of mercury, used to produce a powerful pesticide: mercuric chloride, or corrosive sublimate. This odorless compound, mixed with alcohol or ether, was applied to already dried and pressed plants. However, there was a problem: it was highly toxic, although the health risks were poorly understood at the time.

One peculiarity of corrosive sublimate, well known to museum curators, is that over time it darkens the surrounding paper, leaving gray or black stains. The presence of these stains was often a sign of mercury contamination… or maybe not?

In 2019, a group of researchers analyzed objects from the Exsiccated Specimens Collection of the Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden, one of the largest botanical libraries in the world. Among the analyzed materials, the herbarium 158 Plants Collected in Little Britain Township, 1837 quickly attracted attention for its possible mercury residues, even though its stains were less noticeable than those commonly associated with corrosive sublimate.

To solve the mystery, researchers used a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (XRF), a tool that analyzes the chemical composition of objects. When X-rays hit atoms, they emit energy as photons, with a unique signature that allows for precise identification. Surprisingly, no mercury was found, but instead high concentrations of arsenic trioxide! Also known as white arsenic for its opaque, glass-like appearance, arsenic trioxide was considered an ideal pesticide. In small quantities, it was extremely effective, water-soluble, and capable of preserving the colors of specimens. At the time, arsenic was easily accessible, available in shops, and even purchasable by children.

The discovery makes this herbarium a rare, if not unique, case of arsenic being used in adhesive for preservation. Today, we know that no level of arsenic exposure is safe. Therefore, handling old herbariums requires proper protection—you never know what poison you might leaf through.

See You Soon and Good Science!

source

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Expertise can't help you here.

[wanologic]

sorry danny, sam will never think you’re cool

[whyissupernaturaltrending]

a former US president gets shot at and rather than trend himself he causes supernatural to trend instead because everyone is sharing the news via the destiel meme. unparalleled

[uwudonoodle]

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[minigenos]

[fluffyartbl0g]

one piece saved my life man

[rightnewshindi]

दिल्ली-जयपुर हाईवे बनाने पर खर्च हुए 1896 करोड़, टोल प्लाजा वसूल चुका है 8349 करोड़; आरटीआई

दिल्ली-जयपुर हाईवे बनाने पर खर्च हुए 1896 करोड़, टोल प्लाजा वसूल चुका है 8349 करोड़; आरटीआई #News #DelhiNews #DelhiLifestyle #DelhiVibes #DelhiDiaries #DelhiUpdates #DelhiCulture #DelhiEvents #ExploreDelhi #DelhiBuzz #DelhiNCR #DelhiTraffic #DelhiMoments

Delhi News: इन दिनों सोशल मीडिया पर सड़कों और टोल वसूली के मुद्दे पर बड़ी चर्चा शुरू हो गई है। यह बहस तब शुरू हुई जब यह जानकारी सामने आई कि एक राष्ट्रीय राजमार्ग का निर्माण 1896 करोड़ रुपये में हुआ, जबकि इस पर बने टोल प्लाजा से 8349 करोड़ रुपये वसूले गए। दरअसल, आजतक पर प्रसारित होने वाले लोकप्रिय कार्यक्रम ब्लैक एंड व्हाइट के एक दर्शक ने पत्र भेजकर कुछ जानकारी दी। राजस्थान के जयपुर से पत्र लिखने…

[bopinion]

2024 / 05

Aperçu of the week:

"Remember, democracy never lasts. It soon wastes, exhausts and kills itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide."

(John Adams, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America and its second president from 1797 to 1801)

Bad news of the week:

The war in Gaza threatens to escalate. In response to a drone attack on a US base, the US has bombed pro-Iranian militia positions in Syria and Iraq. More than 85 targets were hit, according to the US military. And Joe Biden made it clear that more military action would follow. It will not be long before Iran retaliates.

The attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels on merchant ships in the Red Sea will not stop either. Nor will Israel's military actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon. So will there be the feared conflagration in the region? That will depend on the Pentagon and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Between these two powers are the oppressed peoples of Syria and Iraq. They are as innocent of escalation as the absolute majority of Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the situation of the civilian population in Gaza continues to deteriorate. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has announced that the Israeli offensive will reach Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip. What the million of internally displaced people thought was a safe zone. And which, as German Foreign Minister Baerbock aptly put it, "cannot disappear into thin air". For Egypt will continue to keep its border closed.

The parallel negotiations for a cease-fire and the release of the hostages, in which Israel and Egypt as well as Qatar - the seat of the political leadership of Hamas - and the USA are involved, have also come to a standstill. According to media reports, there is no compromise in sight. The majority of Western politicians tirelessly remind us that only a two-state solution can permanently ensure the peaceful coexistence of Israel and Palestine. Rarely has a theory been so far from its practical implementation.

Good news of the week:

While hundreds of thousands of citizens continue to take to the streets against the right and for democracy, the party landscape is also arming itself against the shift to the right. The last general debate in the Bundestag was hardly about the actual item on the agenda, the 2024 budget, but about clearly distancing themselves from the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland / Alternative for Germany) - in rare unity among the so-called established parties across the political spectrum.

These parties are also preparing for the right-wing to remain present in parliament - like the Rassemblement National in France, for example. Currently, the aim is to strengthen the protection of the Federal Constitutional Court. The governing traffic light coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals wants to protect the guardians of the constitution more strongly against possible attempts to remove their power.

Following the experiences of the Weimar Republic and National Socialism in the Third Reich, the authors of the Basic Law built various safeguards into the constitution. These include the "eternity clause", which states that the supporting pillars of the constitution (human dignity, democracy, constitutional state, federal state) may not be changed at all.

The Federal Constitutional Court was also created as a new supervisory body. If the powers of this supervisory body were to be curtailed, the fundamental guarantees could be undermined. The examples of Hungary, Poland and Israel show that right-wing populist governments in particular are trying to disempower the constitutional courts. In order to remove their political actions from any control.

In concrete terms, the core tasks of the Constitutional Court - such as deciding on constitutional complaints or mediating between state bodies - cannot be changed by a simple majority, but many organizational issues can. Since, for example, the election of judges is not regulated in the Basic Law (under the protection of the two-thirds majority), but "only" in a simple law, the legislature could also change key parameters in its favor with a simple majority.

No majority government in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany has ever dared to do this. Because all parties have always felt committed to democratic principles. Until now. It has already been shown several times in the USA that the appointment of judges can be misused for partisan political purposes. A blocking minority would also suffice for a complete blockade here. And the increasing likelihood of this is no longer a dystopia. In this respect, it is a good sign that the largest parliamentary group in the Bundestag - the current opposition conservatives - have also shown themselves to be open to strengthening the independence of the Constitutional Court.

Personal happy moment of the week:

I cleaned the windows. Which I rarely do. And I still prefer to do it myself, because nobody can please me anyway. It's not just the result that makes me happy, but also the positive reactions - from my wife and yes: even from neighbors. Let's see if I learn from it this time and do it more often in the future. After all, I like to be praised from time to time.

I couldn't care less...

...that Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early, mild spring on Groundhog Day. His accuracy is statistically just 40%. I can do the same when I flip a coin. My result: Phil is right. Let's see.

It's fine with me...

...that Taylor Swift's otherwise elusive socio-cultural impact could have a positive effect. According to a Newsweek poll, 30% of 18- to 35-year-olds in the US would follow a proposition from Swift in this November's presidential election - that's more than 13 million votes. No wonder the Republicans are already outdoing each other with conspiracy theories of her being a "Democratic secret weapon". After all, the pop star has already shown a tendency towards Joe Biden in the past, but above all against Donald Trump.

As I write this...

...I am already waiting for next weekend. A little anxious, as the two main sporting events will probably pass by me. Firstly, the top match in the German Bundesliga. Between "my" Munich-based FC Bayern, who strangely enough is only in second place at the moment, and Bayer 04 Leverkusen (Bayer who? Exactly!), who are unbeaten at the top so far this season. And it's only on pay TV, for which I would first have to find a suitably equipped sports bar nearby. Secondly, Superbowl LVIII in Las Vegas between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. This will be broadcast on German free TV, but in the middle of the night in our time zone. From Sunday to Monday. I'm just too old for that. And I console myself with the fact that, in my opinion, Usher lacks the format for the halftime show. Which I will of course still watch on YouTube.

Post Scriptum

It's the fourth anniversary of Brexit. At the end of the last decade, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland left the European Union. Former Prime Minister David Cameron had actually wanted to get backing for Europe through a referendum. The shot backfired and the rest is history: "taking back control" did not work out as the Brexiteers around Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage had hoped. Since then, the island kingdom has been in a political and economic crisis. Without gloating, it can be said that liberal cooperation works obviously better than protectionist isolation.

[soaked-doors]

it’s that time of year again

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

[doctorsiren]

OBJECTION! - Ace Attorney, but in Legos that I 3D modeled myself

[nando161mando]