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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

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How to design a tech regulation

TONIGHT (June 20) I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. TOMORROW (June 21) I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On SATURDAY (June 22) I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel (13hPT) and a keynote (18hPT) at the LOCUS AWARDS.

It's not your imagination: tech really is underregulated. There are plenty of avoidable harms that tech visits upon the world, and while some of these harms are mere negligence, others are self-serving, creating shareholder value and widespread public destruction.

Making good tech policy is hard, but not because "tech moves too fast for regulation to keep up with," nor because "lawmakers are clueless about tech." There are plenty of fast-moving areas that lawmakers manage to stay abreast of (think of the rapid, global adoption of masking and social distancing rules in mid-2020). Likewise we generally manage to make good policy in areas that require highly specific technical knowledge (that's why it's noteworthy and awful when, say, people sicken from badly treated tapwater, even though water safety, toxicology and microbiology are highly technical areas outside the background of most elected officials).

That doesn't mean that technical rigor is irrelevant to making good policy. Well-run "expert agencies" include skilled practitioners on their payrolls – think here of large technical staff at the FTC, or the UK Competition and Markets Authority's best-in-the-world Digital Markets Unit:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

The job of government experts isn't just to research the correct answers. Even more important is experts' role in evaluating conflicting claims from interested parties. When administrative agencies make new rules, they have to collect public comments and counter-comments. The best agencies also hold hearings, and the very best go on "listening tours" where they invite the broad public to weigh in (the FTC has done an awful lot of these during Lina Khan's tenure, to its benefit, and it shows):

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events/2022/04/ftc-justice-department-listening-forum-firsthand-effects-mergers-acquisitions-health-care

But when an industry dwindles to a handful of companies, the resulting cartel finds it easy to converge on a single talking point and to maintain strict message discipline. This means that the evidentiary record is starved for disconfirming evidence that would give the agencies contrasting perspectives and context for making good policy.

Tech industry shills have a favorite tactic: whenever there's any proposal that would erode the industry's profits, self-serving experts shout that the rule is technically impossible and deride the proposer as "clueless."

This tactic works so well because the proposers sometimes are clueless. Take Europe's on-again/off-again "chat control" proposal to mandate spyware on every digital device that will screen everything you upload for child sex abuse material (CSAM, better known as "child pornography"). This proposal is profoundly dangerous, as it will weaken end-to-end encryption, the key to all secure and private digital communication:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/18/encryption-is-deeply-threatening-to-power-meredith-whittaker-of-messaging-app-signal

It's also an impossible-to-administer mess that incorrectly assumes that killing working encryption in the two mobile app stores run by the mobile duopoly will actually prevent bad actors from accessing private tools:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/04/oh-for-fucks-sake-not-this-fucking-bullshit-again-cryptography-edition/

When technologists correctly point out the lack of rigor and catastrophic spillover effects from this kind of crackpot proposal, lawmakers stick their fingers in their ears and shout "NERD HARDER!"

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/01/12/nerd-harder-fbi-director-reiterates-faith-based-belief-in-working-crypto-that-he-can-break/

But this is only half the story. The other half is what happens when tech industry shills want to kill good policy proposals, which is the exact same thing that advocates say about bad ones. When lawmakers demand that tech companies respect our privacy rights – for example, by splitting social media or search off from commercial surveillance, the same people shout that this, too, is technologically impossible.

That's a lie, though. Facebook started out as the anti-surveillance alternative to Myspace. We know it's possible to operate Facebook without surveillance, because Facebook used to operate without surveillance:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

Likewise, Brin and Page's original Pagerank paper, which described Google's architecture, insisted that search was incompatible with surveillance advertising, and Google established itself as a non-spying search tool:

http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

Even weirder is what happens when there's a proposal to limit a tech company's power to invoke the government's powers to shut down competitors. Take Ethan Zuckerman's lawsuit to strip Facebook of the legal power to sue people who automate their browsers to uncheck the millions of boxes that Facebook requires you to click by hand in order to unfollow everyone:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/02/kaiju-v-kaiju/#cda-230-c-2-b

Facebook's apologists have lost their minds over this, insisting that no one can possibly understand the potential harms of taking away Facebook's legal right to decide how your browser works. They take the position that only Facebook can understand when it's safe and proportional to use Facebook in ways the company didn't explicitly design for, and that they should be able to ask the government to fine or even imprison people who fail to defer to Facebook's decisions about how its users configure their computers.

This is an incredibly convenient position, since it arrogates to Facebook the right to order the rest of us to use our computers in the ways that are most beneficial to its shareholders. But Facebook's apologists insist that they are not motivated by parochial concerns over the value of their stock portfolios; rather, they have objective, technical concerns, that no one except them is qualified to understand or comment on.

There's a great name for this: "scalesplaining." As in "well, actually the platforms are doing an amazing job, but you can't possibly understand that because you don't work for them." It's weird enough when scalesplaining is used to condemn sensible regulation of the platforms; it's even weirder when it's weaponized to defend a system of regulatory protection for the platforms against would-be competitors.

Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no libertarians in government-protected monopolies. Somehow, scalesplaining can be used to condemn governments as incapable of making any tech regulations and to insist that regulations that protect tech monopolies are just perfect and shouldn't ever be weakened. Truly, it's impossible to get someone to understand something when the value of their employee stock options depends on them not understanding it.

None of this is to say that every tech regulation is a good one. Governments often propose bad tech regulations (like chat control), or ones that are technologically impossible (like Article 17 of the EU's 2019 Digital Single Markets Directive, which requires tech companies to detect and block copyright infringements in their users' uploads).

But the fact that scalesplainers use the same argument to criticize both good and bad regulations makes the waters very muddy indeed. Policymakers are rightfully suspicious when they hear "that's not technically possible" because they hear that both for technically impossible proposals and for proposals that scalesplainers just don't like.

After decades of regulations aimed at making platforms behave better, we're finally moving into a new era, where we just make the platforms less important. That is, rather than simply ordering Facebook to block harassment and other bad conduct by its users, laws like the EU's Digital Markets Act will order Facebook and other VLOPs (Very Large Online Platforms, my favorite EU-ism ever) to operate gateways so that users can move to rival services and still communicate with the people who stay behind.

Think of this like number portability, but for digital platforms. Just as you can switch phone companies and keep your number and hear from all the people you spoke to on your old plan, the DMA will make it possible for you to change online services but still exchange messages and data with all the people you're already in touch with.

I love this idea, because it finally grapples with the question we should have been asking all along: why do people stay on platforms where they face harassment and bullying? The answer is simple: because the people – customers, family members, communities – we connect with on the platform are so important to us that we'll tolerate almost anything to avoid losing contact with them:

https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/

Platforms deliberately rig the game so that we take each other hostage, locking each other into their badly moderated cesspits by using the love we have for one another as a weapon against us. Interoperability – making platforms connect to each other – shatters those locks and frees the hostages:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

But there's another reason to love interoperability (making moderation less important) over rules that require platforms to stamp out bad behavior (making moderation better). Interop rules are much easier to administer than content moderation rules, and when it comes to regulation, administratability is everything.

The DMA isn't the EU's only new rule. They've also passed the Digital Services Act, which is a decidedly mixed bag. Among its provisions are a suite of rules requiring companies to monitor their users for harmful behavior and to intervene to block it. Whether or not you think platforms should do this, there's a much more important question: how can we enforce this rule?

Enforcing a rule requiring platforms to prevent harassment is very "fact intensive." First, we have to agree on a definition of "harassment." Then we have to figure out whether something one user did to another satisfies that definition. Finally, we have to determine whether the platform took reasonable steps to detect and prevent the harassment.

Each step of this is a huge lift, especially that last one, since to a first approximation, everyone who understands a given VLOP's server infrastructure is a partisan, scalesplaining engineer on the VLOP's payroll. By the time we find out whether the company broke the rule, years will have gone by, and millions more users will be in line to get justice for themselves.

So allowing users to leave is a much more practical step than making it so that they've got no reason to want to leave. Figuring out whether a platform will continue to forward your messages to and from the people you left there is a much simpler technical matter than agreeing on what harassment is, whether something is harassment by that definition, and whether the company was negligent in permitting harassment.

But as much as I like the DMA's interop rule, I think it is badly incomplete. Given that the tech industry is so concentrated, it's going to be very hard for us to define standard interop interfaces that don't end up advantaging the tech companies. Standards bodies are extremely easy for big industry players to capture:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

If tech giants refuse to offer access to their gateways to certain rivals because they seem "suspicious," it will be hard to tell whether the companies are just engaged in self-serving smears against a credible rival, or legitimately trying to protect their users from a predator trying to plug into their infrastructure. These fact-intensive questions are the enemy of speedy, responsive, effective policy administration.

But there's more than one way to attain interoperability. Interop doesn't have to come from mandates, interfaces designed and overseen by government agencies. There's a whole other form of interop that's far nimbler than mandates: adversarial interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

"Adversarial interoperability" is a catch-all term for all the guerrilla warfare tactics deployed in service to unilaterally changing a technology: reverse engineering, bots, scraping and so on. These tactics have a long and honorable history, but they have been slowly choked out of existence with a thicket of IP rights, like the IP rights that allow Facebook to shut down browser automation tools, which Ethan Zuckerman is suing to nullify:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Adversarial interop is very flexible. No matter what technological moves a company makes to interfere with interop, there's always a countermove the guerrilla fighter can make – tweak the scraper, decompile the new binary, change the bot's behavior. That's why tech companies use IP rights and courts, not firewall rules, to block adversarial interoperators.

At the same time, adversarial interop is unreliable. The solution that works today can break tomorrow if the company changes its back-end, and it will stay broken until the adversarial interoperator can respond.

But when companies are faced with the prospect of extended asymmetrical war against adversarial interop in the technological trenches, they often surrender. If companies can't sue adversarial interoperators out of existence, they often sue for peace instead. That's because high-tech guerrilla warfare presents unquantifiable risks and resource demands, and, as the scalesplainers never tire of telling us, this can create real operational problems for tech giants.

In other words, if Facebook can't shut down Ethan Zuckerman's browser automation tool in the courts, and if they're sincerely worried that a browser automation tool will uncheck its user interface buttons so quickly that it crashes the server, all it has to do is offer an official "unsubscribe all" button and no one will use Zuckerman's browser automation tool.

We don't have to choose between adversarial interop and interop mandates. The two are better together than they are apart. If companies building and operating DMA-compliant, mandatory gateways know that a failure to make them useful to rivals seeking to help users escape their authority is getting mired in endless hand-to-hand combat with trench-fighting adversarial interoperators, they'll have good reason to cooperate.

And if lawmakers charged with administering the DMA notice that companies are engaging in adversarial interop rather than using the official, reliable gateway they're overseeing, that's a good indicator that the official gateways aren't suitable.

It would be very on-brand for the EU to create the DMA and tell tech companies how they must operate, and for the USA to simply withdraw the state's protection from the Big Tech companies and let smaller companies try their luck at hacking new features into the big companies' servers without the government getting involved.

Indeed, we're seeing some of that today. Oregon just passed the first ever Right to Repair law banning "parts pairing" – basically a way of using IP law to make it illegal to reverse-engineer a device so you can fix it.

https://www.opb.org/article/2024/03/28/oregon-governor-kotek-signs-strong-tech-right-to-repair-bill/

Taken together, the two approaches – mandates and reverse engineering – are stronger than either on their own. Mandates are sturdy and reliable, but slow-moving. Adversarial interop is flexible and nimble, but unreliable. Put 'em together and you get a two-part epoxy, strong and flexible.

Governments can regulate well, with well-funded expert agencies and smart, adminstratable remedies. It's for that reason that the administrative state is under such sustained attack from the GOP and right-wing Dems. The illegitimate Supreme Court is on the verge of gutting expert agencies' power:

https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2024/05/us-supreme-court-may-soon-discard-or-modify-chevron-deference

It's never been more important to craft regulations that go beyond mere good intentions and take account of adminsitratability. The easier we can make our rules to enforce, the less our beleaguered agencies will need to do to protect us from corporate predators.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/20/scalesplaining/#administratability

Image: Noah Wulf (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thunderbirds_at_Attention_Next_to_Thunderbird_1_-_Aviation_Nation_2019.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #cda #ethan zuckerman #platforms #platform decay #enshittification #eu #dma #right to repair #transatlantic #administrability #regulation #big tech #scalesplaining #equilibria #interoperability #adversarial interoperability #comcom

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probablyasocialecologist · 3 months ago

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The agricultural lobby is a sprawling, complex machine with vast financial resources, deep political connections and a sophisticated network of legal and public relations experts. “The farm lobby has been one of the most successful lobbies in Europe in terms of relentlessly getting what they want over a very long time,” says Ariel Brunner, Europe director of non-governmental organisation BirdLife International. Industry groups spend between €9.35mn and €11.54mn a year lobbying Brussels alone, according to a recent report by the Changing Markets Foundation, another NGO. In the US, agricultural trade associations are “enormously powerful”, says Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. “Our farm policy is very much their policy.” The sector’s spending on US lobbying rose from $145mn in 2019 to $177mn last year, more than the total big oil and gas spent, according to an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). In Brazil, where agribusiness accounts for a quarter of GDP, the Instituto Pensar Agropecuária is “the most influential lobbying group”, according to Caio Pompeia, an anthropologist and researcher at the University of São Paulo. “It combines economic strength with clearly defined aims, a well-executed strategy and political intelligence,” he adds. As a result of this reach, big agribusinesses and farmers have successfully secured exemptions from stringent environmental regulations, won significant subsidies and maintained favourable tax breaks.

[...]

Research suggests that big farms and landowners reap far greater benefits from subsidy packages than small-scale growers, even though the latter are often the public face of lobbying efforts. “It’ll almost always be a farmer testifying before Congress or talking to the press, rather than the CEO of JBS,” says Lilliston. But between 1995 and 2023, some 27 per cent of subsidies to farmers in the US went to the richest 1 per cent of recipients, according to NGO the Environmental Working Group. In the EU, 80 per cent of the cash handed out under the CAP goes to just 20 per cent of farms.

22 August 2024

#agriculture #farming #big ag #agribusiness #industrial agriculture

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bitchesgetriches · 13 days ago

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Kinda a weird question, but do you have file taxes of someone who died? Assuming you are the surviving family member of some sort? I’m assuming it’s definitely if your spouse dies, but I never really thought about it.

Short answer: yes. Long answer: it depends.

We ain't tax experts, so we recommend if you're the heir to their estate, you consult with the IRS on how to handle this.

How to File Your Taxes FOR FREE in 2024: Simple Instructions for the Stressed-out Taxpayer

Did we just help you out? Join our Patreon!

#taxes #filing taxes #how to file taxes #taxes for the deceased #IRS

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odinsblog · 8 months ago

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“I think there is a simpler explanation to the tragedy and the barbarism on October the 7th, which is that you cannot indefinitely contain a group of people under military occupation for decades and expect that there won't be violence. There is violence in the Middle East, and the root cause of that violence is an illegal military occupation that is now in what, it's 57th year in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. And this is not just me saying this.

I mean, people like General Shlomo Brom, one of Israel's most famous military strategists, says, the oppressed will rise against the oppressor because it's absurd to hope that Israel can indefinitely contain with its military might millions of Palestinians who claim the right to a free, normal life. That is the statement of Shlomo Brom.

It's not true that the previous Gaza conflicts were all started by Hamas. Some were, but not all of them. Ceasefires have been broken on both sides and that's been well documented by multiple neutral observers and international observers.

But just on the broader point, Israel was never done with Gaza. This myth that they pulled out all the settlers and the occupation ended, first of all, under international law, Gaza is still occupied.

The Israelis control most of the land borders, all of the naval waters, all of the airspace. You tell me a country in the world that would accept that, any kind of country that you would call independent or sovereign. The Israelis even control the population register in Gaza, which means if you're born in Gaza, the Israelis are the ones who register you in control.

All of the information about your birth, life, and death. So this idea that Gaza was free, it was not free. And the boycott, the siege, I mean, it was not defensive.

Again, multiple human rights groups, including Israeli human rights groups like Gisha have said over the years, that the boycott was not defensive, that it was arbitrary, that it was cruel. Items like pasta, coriander, right? These are items that were banned at certain points going into Gaza.

Even now, David Miliband, the former British Foreign Minister, head of the International Rescue Committee, went on CNN this week to point out that dual-use items are being blocked going into Gaza. Entire aid trucks are being turned away because there's a scissors in them. A pair of scissors is inside a truck.

For medical purposes, the entire truck is turned away. For years now, the people in Gaza have been blockaded, besieged. The UN said it would be unlivable years ago.

We're now in 2024. It's certainly unlivable now. So no, I don't believe the Israeli narrative.

And one last thing, let's say everything Israel said was true. That still does not justify the collective punishment of 2.2 million people, half of whom are children, and who are now in the midst of one of the worst famines in living memory, according to the experts.

[…]

I've been very, very, very critical of Hamas. I've been critical of Hamas for decades. I've been critical of Hamas since October the 7th.

I was critical of Hamas on October the 7th. So no, I'm not sparing in my criticism of Hamas, but the missing context here, of course, is that we don't fund Hamas. I'm not responsible for Hamas.

I am responsible for the famine in Gaza. I am responsible for the killing of 30,000 people in Gaza because my taxes paid for it. The United States government is funding one side of this conflict.

The United States does not fund Hamas, last time I checked. So this idea that we are either fund them or protect them with a UN veto or arm Hamas, I don't think we send arms to Hamas, we do to Israel. Therefore, that is the focus of my journalism.

And by the way, yes, the focus of my journalism right now is on criticism of Israel because the rest of the US media has completely failed on this issue, has dropped the ball. I mean, I can go through The New York Times, The Washington Post, and show the exact opposite, pieces that are providing cover and safety for the Israeli narrative, including in absurd headlines where we go out of our way to use the passive voice and never cite that Israel is responsible for bombing a hospital or Israel is responsible for bombing a refugee camp. So I'm trying to do a little bit of correction on my end with this new media organization.

But look, Hamas is a brutal group. What it did on October the 7th was pure terror. They killed innocents, they abducted innocent babies as hostages into the war crime.

But none of that justifies what Israel is doing right now. And nor are we responsible for what Hamas is doing. But we are, in New York and across the country, sadly, we are responsible for the crimes that Israel is carrying out.

And that's the point I'm trying to make.”

—Mehdi Hasan

#politics #palestine #gaza #israel #mehdi hasan #hasbara #false narratives #false equivalencies #feigned neutrality #journalism fail #the media is complicit #october 7 #october 7th #7 october

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mariacallous · 18 days ago

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It's election season in Eastern Europe, and for the Kremlin -- bogged down in Ukraine and desperately in need of allies -- the stakes are higher than ever.

Moldova is holding a presidential election and referendum on October 20 that could help secure the country's future in the EU. Romania has just banned a pro-Kremlin rabble-rouser from running in its November presidential election. And the pro-Kremlin, far-right Revival party in Bulgaria is expected to win a sizable presence in parliament after upcoming elections.

So what is the Kremlin -- and its populist regional allies -- pulling from its playbook to influence the votes?

Don't Be Too Fussy About Who You Work With

Plan A, according to Anton Shekhovtsov, a Ukrainian political scientist and expert on the far right, "was always to cooperate with mainstream forces" and then corrupt them to align with Russian foreign policy interests.

In some countries, Plan A has worked, with the Kremlin maintaining good relations with politicians such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.

"The problem for Moscow," Shekhovtsov said, "is that mainstream forces are less likely than the populists to cooperate with Russia, especially after 2014 (the annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula) and even more so after February 2022 (Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine)."

That has meant increasingly falling back on Plan B. "Russia has tended to align with far-right parties," said Mitchell Orenstein, professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania, "but it will also form alliances with far-left parties and even support centrist parties to some extent."

Acting pragmatically and working with the political fringes can sometimes bear fruit. For years, Revival leader Kostadin Kostadinov operated in extremist circles, once referring to Romany people as "parasites" and venomously castigating migrants. But now his party, which has opposed democratic reforms and advocated for Bulgaria's withdrawal from NATO, is tipped to finish as high as second in the October 27 parliamentary elections.

Be Careful With The Bags Of Cash

Authorities in Moldova -- which has struggled to shake off Kremlin influence and still has more than 1,000 Russian troops stationed in the breakaway region of Transdniester -- recently announced they had uncovered a scheme led by Ilan Shor, a pro-Russian fugitive accused of the country's biggest-ever bank fraud, to buy votes and disseminate false information about the EU, with more than 130,000 Moldovans receiving over $15 million in Russian cash in September alone.

Such schemes, however, are rarely discovered -- and often very hard to prove, with financial support masked by shell companies and offshore accounts. And for the Kremlin, direct financing is a risky tactic. "They are being very, very cautious," Shekhovtsov said, as "we're talking about criminal activity here because there are no taxes [and parties are] taking money from a foreign power."

A Deluge Of Disinformation

For the Kremlin, a cheaper and more efficient way of boosting its allies in Eastern Europe is to flood the market with disinformation.

In addition to Russian state outlets such as RT, "Russia has websites in different European languages that promote messages beneficial to antiestablishment, populist forces," Shekhovtsov said. "This compensates for the populists' lack of media influence in their own countries."

U.S. tech giant Meta said on October 11 that it had deleted a network of accounts aimed at Russian-speaking Moldovans, which spread pro-Russian content and ran pages masquerading as independent news outlets.

Such operations are often part of larger networks, sometimes known as "mushroom sites," which are created in bulk and on the cheap and monetize the spread of disinformation.

Mobilize Through Fear

If you buy into the disinformation, migrants are coming for your jobs, the LGBT community is coming for your children's souls, foreign-funded NGOs are plotting to topple governments, and only Russia can restore peace to fascist Ukraine.

Igor Dodon, Moldova's Moscow-backed former president, has recently warned, without any evidence, of "LGBT quotas" in state institutions if the country's pro-EU President Maia Sandu wins reelection.

And in Bulgaria, Revival is pushing for a Russian-style foreign-agent law, which would target Western NGOs. "You will be next!" party leader Kostadinov told the America for Bulgaria Foundation, the country's largest foreign donor.

In socially conservative societies, with people disillusioned with democracy and reeling from economic hardship, much of it from the COVID-19 pandemic, such emotional narratives often strike a powerful chord.

By scaremongering about threats to traditional lifestyles and sovereignty, Russia is positioning itself -- not for the first time -- as the region's potential savior.

Tailor The Message

A key part of the Kremlin's strategy is localizing its messaging. "Russia looks for any possible commonality between their approach and the parties they're supporting," Orenstein said. "In one country, they might appeal to pan-Slavism; in another, to Orthodox religious connections; and in yet another, to anti-Ukrainian sentiment."

For example, in Bulgaria, pro-Russian parties play on Soviet nostalgia and well-established narratives of Russia as a liberator from Ottoman rule. In Hungary and Slovakia, pro-Kremlin parties exploit fears about migrants and the perception that the EU is undermining national sovereignty.

In Moldova, Irina Vlah, a pro-Moscow ex-governor, has said the country's large number of Romanian passport holders is evidence of a sinister Romanian plot to take over its smaller and poorer neighbor.

What Is The Kremlin's Endgame?

In the long term, the Kremlin's goal is to undermine the EU and NATO and pull countries in Eastern Europe back into Russia's orbit.

In the short term, it's all about Ukraine. For the Kremlin, that means blowing apart the fragile European consensus that Kyiv is deserving of military and economic support.

What the Kremlin cares about most, Orenstein says, is the "foreign policy orientation" of parties it supports in Eastern Europe -- in order to secure their backing on issues such as sanctions or the status of Crimea.

"You have some parties that [when] they began taking Russian support, they actually changed a lot of their foreign policy positions to orient them towards Russia," Orenstein said.

Crucially, though, Russia doesn't necessarily need explicit support to succeed. Sometimes sowing discord and polarizing populations can also chip away at the democracies and civil societies the Kremlin so desperately fears.

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justinspoliticalcorner · 7 months ago

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Andrew Perez and Adam Rawnsley at Rolling Stone:

THE CONSULTING FIRM led by Leonard Leo, the architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, has worked for billionaire Charles Koch’s political advocacy network and a dark-money group that is currently arguing a Supreme Court case designed to preempt a wealth tax, according to documents obtained by Rolling Stone. The firm even worked to promote a book by Donald Trump cronies Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie. Leo has played a central role in shifting the high court and its decisions far to the right. As former President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser, Leo helped select three of the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices. He also leads a dark-money network that boosted their confirmations and helps determine what cases the justices hear and shape their rulings. The Supreme Court connection has paid off for Leo — big time. In 2021, he was gifted control of a $1.6 billion political advocacy slush fund. Over the past decade, Leo’s dark money network has plowed more than $100 million into his for-profit consulting firm, CRC Advisors.

Leo co-chairs the Federalist Society, the conservative lawyers network. He is also the chairman of CRC. Like many consulting firms, CRC does not publicly disclose its clients. However, several of the firm’s clients were named in resumes that applicants submitted to an online jobs bank hosted by the Conservative Partnership Institute, which accidentally left the files exposed online. One CRC employee’s 2024 resume says his clients include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a dark-money group arguing a case before the Supreme Court this term that is designed to slam the door shut on a federal wealth tax. Experts say the case could upend the nation’s tax code. “In the last Congress, legislation to establish a wealth tax was introduced in both the House and the Senate,” CEI wrote in its petition to the Supreme Court, adding that justices should act now to “head off a major constitutional clash down the line.” During oral arguments in December, Justice Samuel Alito presented a hypothetical where “somebody graduates from school and starts up a little business in his garage, and 20 years later, 30 years later, the person is a billionaire,” and asked whether the government “can Congress tax all of that.” According to the CRC employee’s 2024 resume, Leo’s firm has also worked for the Koch network’s political advocacy arm, Americans for Prosperity. AFP’s super PAC spent more than $40 million supporting former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s failed Republican primary campaign against Trump this election cycle. AFP’s charitable arm has supported a case at the Supreme Court this term pushing justices to block the government from influencing content moderation by social media platforms.

Rolling Stone exposes radical right-wing SCOTUS puppetmaster Leonard Leo's consulting firm CRC Advisors, whose clients were leaked online.

#Eli Lilly #Koch Brothers #Leonard Leo #Competitive Enterprise Institute #Wealth Tax #CRC Advisors #Corey Lewandowski #David Bossie #Moore v. United States #Americans For Prosperity #Rumble #Federalist Society #Conservative Partnership Institute

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covid-safer-hotties · 2 months ago

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What Does Competing With COVID Do to an Athlete’s Body? - Published Sept 5, 2024

By Julie Stewart Medically reviewed by Pritish Tosh, MD

Pushing through to win a medal may feel worth it in the moment. But there are real risks.

While the Olympics were touted as the first “normal” Games “after” COVID, we soon realized that wasn’t the case: Throughout the two-and-a-half week competition in July and August, more than 40 athletes tested positive for it—including Noah Lyles, who was wheeled off the track after winning bronze in the 200 meters. And that’s just the athletes we know about: With no strict rules on reporting COVID cases, it’s hard to know how many Olympians actually were affected.

As the Paralympics continues, it’s likely the spread could too, since again, there are no restrictions on competing with COVID. While doing so isn’t against the rules, does that mean it’s safe? We asked experts to break down for us what you need to know about pushing hard while your body is fighting COVID. Here’s what they said.

1. Your endurance might take a hit. Even if you give it your best effort, your performance might not be nearly where you hoped it’d be. That’s because for so many athletic pursuits—swimming, sprinting, rushing down the court, heaving a shot put—you need a solid amount of oxygen to make its way into your body to power your efforts.

“When you're sick, the infection is assumed [to be] everywhere in your body,” Jennifer Abeles, DO, a clinical assistant professor in the department of medicine at the University of Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, tells SELF. And in the case of COVID-19, your lungs are a common site for it; as a result, your respiratory function can decrease.

“Your lungs are in charge of bringing in all your oxygen, so you may be more short of breath,” Dr. Abeles says. “You may not be able to accomplish the same feats with your exercise that you are when you're healthy, because the organs, the lungs, are not working at their ultimate ability.”

It’s hard to say exactly how a current infection affects these capabilities for a pretty obvious reason: There’s not a whole lot of research done on exercising with COVID, well, because most folks don’t feel like exercising when they have COVID, Kristine Erlandson, MD, a professor of medicine-infectious disease at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, tells SELF. But there are a good number of studies that look at it after the fact: One 2022 study of elite soccer players found their VO2 max—a measure of how efficiently their bodies use oxygen during exercise—was reduced from baseline up to two months after infection. And a 2024 study of pro basketball players found they needed to take in more oxygen to do the same steady-state effort as before a mild or asymptomatic COVID infection, suggesting they’d fatigue earlier.

2. Your heart could be affected. Between the physical demands and the thrill of competition, a once-in-a-lifetime athletic event can already be pretty taxing for your heart. Then COVID adds additional stress, especially in people with pre-existing cardiovascular disease—the infection sets off an inflammatory cascade that can damage heart tissue.

In rare cases, the virus can directly infect and inflame your ticker. That’s the “myocarditis” you probably heard folks talk about at the beginning of the pandemic. (But this is super rare, especially in athletes; even in the earlier days of the pandemic, researchers estimated the rate of COVID-related myocarditis to be around 1%, according to a 2022 review and meta-analysis.)

But even if we’re not talking actual damage, the infection can still affect your heart.

“The other concern is there can sometimes be just some irritability of the heart after COVID,” Dr. Erlandson says. “[You] may be more likely to have irregular heart rate or more likely to have a rapid heart rate response with exercise when you're still kind of sick or not feeling well.” And that can play a role in your performance by increasing fatigue and decreasing endurance—and having everything just flat-out feel harder.

We still don’t know how bad the combo of exertion and acute COVID might be for your cardiovascular system, says Dr. Erlandson. Like we said, there’s just not a lot of data to draw from. However, “we are concerned about potential damage to the heart or putting someone at risk of going into a dangerous heart rhythm or causing more pain and causing symptoms to last longer,” she says.

3. You might stress your system at the very time it needs rest. Both COVID and exercise—especially the intense kind—separately can increase inflammation. This double whammy could, in theory, make recovery from the virus more difficult, Hector Bonilla, MD, a clinical associate professor of medicine-infectious disease at Stanford University and codirector of Stanford’s Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome Clinic, tells SELF.

There’s not enough scientific evidence to say for sure whether exercising intensely with COVID can make you feel worse, slow your recovery, or increase your risk of long COVID, which is defined by symptoms that persist for at least three months. But one 2023 review in Frontiers in Physiology does suggest that even mild to moderate exercise during the acute stages of COVID could “aggravate the inflammatory response and further worsen the COVID-19 symptoms.” And based on Dr. Bonilla’s experience treating patients, his advice is “don’t add additional stress to your body.”

While generally healthy people have a lower risk of long COVID, Dr. Bonilla says it’s plausible stressing your system with hard exercise, like a marathon, ultramarathon, or century bike ride, could contribute to long COVID. He has seen some athletes get COVID, recover, and then develop long COVID symptoms a few weeks later when they start working out again.

With all the unknowns still out there with COVID, it’s safer to pull back when you’re sick. There’s just not a lot of solid research out there showing that exercising with COVID is safe—let alone pushing at your max, 100%, win-me-a-medal-please effort.

“I think anytime we’re sick, we have to just give pause,” Dr. Abeles says. This holds even more true if you have a fever. That should be considered a flat-out dealbreaker, she says.

“Anyone with a fever, I would say that would be a done; you should not be exercising,” she says. “You should be giving your body the grace to recover and take the energy and time to fight the infection that it’s dealing with, and not trying to add a stress on it that it just does not need at this time.”

What’s more, depending on what your exercise of choice is and how solitary it may be, you also have to remember that your session might not affect only you: Your “mild” case could become someone else’s nightmare. “You don’t know how others will respond, how they’ll be affected if they get COVID,” says Dr. Abeles. “Some people may not even know it. Some people won’t actually get it. But some people who are exposed to people who have a mild case can get a severe case.”

So hold off until you’re feeling better; then you can start to think about your exercise routine again��little by little.

“We usually recommend that people wait about three days until after their symptoms have resolved before they return to exercise,” says Dr. Erlandson. “Then at that time, it’s gradually increasing until they feel back to their baseline.” You want to tune into your body during your comeback, says Dr. Abeles. Be especially cognizant of any fatigue or pain after your session. That can be a sign of post-exertional malaise, a hallmark of long COVID.

If you’re feeling okay, you can continue progressing. Start by adding frequency, then intensity. This can look like plugging in an additional easy session a week versus turning a jog into a speed workout, for instance. “You don’t want to go out and do a hardcore HIIT workout the day after,” she says.

#covid #mask up #pandemic #covid 19 #wear a mask #coronavirus #sars cov 2 #public health #still coviding #wear a respirator

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fromtenthousandfeet · 3 months ago

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HYBE Financials and Media Play Part 1

Friends! Remember a thousand years ago when I mentioned the HYBE 2nd quarter earnings call and how there would be loads of lies and media play?

Then I disappeared before I could give you examples. Sorry about that.

@isaidnothankyou are you still reading my posts? If so, I must warn you and all the others reading this that I am also a product of a liberal arts college, and to make matters worse, I majored in Studio Art! So, take what I say with a healthy dose of skepticism because I am in no way an expert when in comes to this stuff, but I do enjoy researching it.

Ok. There is so much media play going on today it's enough to make your head spin. Let's start with the quarterly financials, though.

If you run to Google right now and type in HYBE 2Q24, you will get loads of stories about how HYBE generated a record 465 MILLION DOLLARS in revenue in the second quarter of this year. AND! They did it while BTS is serving in the military, meaning the company doesn't need to rely on BTS to be profitable. Isn't that great? Investors must be delighted. The problem, however, is that their net income was down 86%. Net income is what's left over once all operating expenses have been deducted from revenue earned. These expenses include the cost of goods sold (like manufacturing costs), payroll, taxes, interest payments, and any other expenses.

HYBE made approximately $465 million in revenue, but their net earnings were only approximately $12 million. Where on earth did all that money go?

In the first quarter of this year, HYBE's net earnings were only $8 million USD. So, for the first half of 2024, their net earnings were only $20 million dollars.

Each quarter, when the financials are released to the general public and the company conducts an earnings call, they always claim that the reason net earnings are low is because they are investing in new groups, new labels, acquiring new companies, new whatever. Instead of focusing on doing one or two things well, HYBE's strategy seems to be to grow as fast as possible in a number of different directions (See HYBE 2.0 announcement). This can and should be seen as a red flag.

Net earnings, or net income, is known as "the bottom line." The net profit margin gives investors a snapshot of how well a company can turn income into profit. So, is HYBE profitable? To calculate net profit margin, we divide revenue by net income and multiply 100. HYBE's exact second quarter profit margin was 2.28%.

For comparison, Universal Music Group's net profit margin for 2Q24 was 16.54%. Warner Music Group's was 8.98%.

If you were an investor, which music label would you invest in. HYBE?!

It's 2 a.m. I need to go to sleep, but please stay tuned for my next installment.

Here's a little reading for homework to tide you over until my next post:

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beardedmrbean · 2 months ago

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed three bills Tuesday to crack down on the use of artificial intelligence to create false images or videos in political ads ahead of the 2024 election.

A new law, set to take effect immediately, makes it illegal to create and publish deepfakes related to elections 120 days before Election Day and 60 days thereafter. It also allows courts to stop distribution of the materials and impose civil penalties.

“Safeguarding the integrity of elections is essential to democracy, and it’s critical that we ensure AI is not deployed to undermine the public’s trust through disinformation -– especially in today’s fraught political climate,” Newsom said in a statement. “These measures will help to combat the harmful use of deepfakes in political ads and other content, one of several areas in which the state is being proactive to foster transparent and trustworthy AI.”

Large social media platforms are also required to remove the deceptive material under a first-in-the-nation law set to be enacted next year. Newsom also signed a bill requiring political campaigns to publicly disclose if they are running ads with materials altered by AI.

The governor signed the bills to loud applause during a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at an event hosted the major software company during its annual conference in San Francisco.

The new laws reaffirm California’s position as a leader in regulating AI in the U.S., especially in combating election deepfakes. The state was the first in the U.S. to ban manipulated videos and pictures related to elections in 2019. Measures in technology and AI proposed by California lawmakers have been used as blueprints for legislators across the country, industry experts said.

With AI supercharging the threat of election disinformation worldwide, lawmakers across the country have raced to address the issue over concerns the manipulated materials could erode the public’s trust in what they see and hear.

“With fewer than 50 days until the general election, there is an urgent need to protect against misleading, digitally-altered content that can interfere with the election,” Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, author of the law banning election deepfakes, said in a statement. “California is taking a stand against the manipulative use of deepfake technology to deceive voters.”

Newsom’s decision followed his vow in July to crack down on election deepfakes in response to a video posted by X-owner Elon Musk featuring altered images of Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The new California laws come the same day as members of Congress unveiled federal legislation aiming to stop election deepfakes. The bill would give the Federal Election Commission the power to regulate the use of AI in elections in the same way it has regulated other political misrepresentation for decades. The FEC has started to consider such regulations after outlawing AI-generated robocalls aimed to discourage voters in February.

Newsom has touted California as an early adopter as well as regulator of AI, saying the state could soon deploy generative AI tools to address highway congestion and provide tax guidance, even as his administration considers new rules against AI discrimination in hiring practices.

He also signed two other bills Tuesday to protect Hollywood performers from unauthorized AI use without their consent.

#nunyas news #wonder how much this one violates 1A #we'll find out I guess

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 6 months ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 12, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 13, 2024

I write a lot about how the Biden-Harris administration is working to restore the principles of the period between 1933 and 1981, when members of both political parties widely shared the belief that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. And I write about how that so-called liberal consensus broke down as extremists used the Reconstruction-era image of the American cowboy—who, according to myth, wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone—to stand against what they insisted was creeping socialism that stole tax dollars from hardworking white men in order to give handouts to lazy minorities and women.

But five major stories over the past several days made me realize that I’ve never written about how Trump and his loyalists have distorted the cowboy image until it has become a poisonous caricature of the values its recent defenders have claimed to champion.

The cowboy myth originated during the Reconstruction era as a response to the idea that a government that defended Black rights was “socialist” and that the tax dollars required to pay bureaucrats and army officers would break hardworking white men.

This weekend, on Saturday, May 11, Paul Kiel of ProPublica and Russ Buettner of the New York Times teamed up to deliver a deep investigation into what Trump was talking about when he insisted that he must break tradition and refuse to release his tax returns when he ran for office in 2016 and 2020, citing an audit.

The New York Times had already reported that one of the reasons the Internal Revenue Service was auditing Trump’s taxes was that, beginning in 2010, he began to claim a $72.9 million tax refund because of huge losses from his failing casinos.

Kiel and Buettner followed the convoluted web of Trump’s finances to find another issue with his tax history. They concluded that Trump’s Chicago skyscraper, his last major construction project, was “a vast money loser.” He claimed losses as high as $651 million on it in 2008. But then he appears to have moved ownership of the building in 2010 from one entity to a new one—the authors describe it as “like moving coins from one pocket to another”—and used that move to claim another $168 million in losses, thereby double-dipping.

The experts the authors consulted said that if he loses the audit battle, Trump could owe the IRS more than $100 million. University of Baltimore law professor Walter Schwidetzky, who is an expert on partnership taxation, told the authors: “I think he ripped off the tax system.”

The cowboy myth emphasized dominance over the Indigenous Americans and Mexicans allegedly attacking white settlers from the East. On Friday an impressive piece of reporting from Jude Joffe-Block at NPR untangled the origins of a story pushed by Republicans that Democrats were encouraging asylum seekers to vote illegally for President Joe Biden in 2024, revealing that the story was entirely made up.

The story broke on X, formerly Twitter, on April 15, when the investigative arm of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which promises to provide “aggressive oversight” of the Biden administration, posted photos of what it claimed were flyers from inside portable toilets at a migrant camp in Matamoros, Mexico, that said in broken Spanish: “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.” The tweet thread got more than 9 million views and was boosted by Elon Musk, X’s owner.

But the story was fabricated. The flyer used the name of a small organization that helps asylum seekers, along with the name of the woman who runs the organization. She is a U.S. citizen and told Joffe-Block that her organization has “never encouraged people to vote for anyone.” Indeed, it has never come up because everyone knows noncitizens are not eligible to vote. The flyer had outdated phone numbers and addresses, and its Spanish was full of errors. Migrants who are staying at the encampment as they wait for their appointments to enter the U.S. say they have never seen such flyers, and no one has urged them to vote for Biden.

Digging showed that the flyer was “discovered” by the right-wing video site Muckraker, which specializes in “undercover” escapades. The founder of Muckraker, Anthony Rubin, and his brother, Joshua Rubin, had shown up at the organization’s headquarters in Matamoros asking to become volunteers for the organization; they and their conversation were captured on video, and signs point to the conclusion that they planted the flyers.

Nonetheless, Republicans ran with the story. Within 12 hours after the fake flyer appeared on X, Republican representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Dan Bishop (R-NC) brought posters of it to Congress, and Republicans made it a centerpiece of their insistence that Congress must pass a new law against noncitizen voting. Rather than being protected by modern-day cowboys, the woman who ran the organization that helps asylum seekers got death threats.

The cowboy image emphasized the masculinity of the independent men it championed, but the testimony of Stephanie Clifford, the adult film actress also known as Stormy Daniels, in Trump’s criminal trial for falsifying business records to cover up his payments to Clifford to keep her story of their sexual encounter secret before the 2016 election, turns Trump’s aggressive dominance into sad weakness. Covering Clifford’s testimony, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times yesterday wrote that “Trump came across as a loser in her account—a narcissist, cheater, sad Hugh Hefner wannabe, trading his satin pajamas for a dress shirt and trousers (and, later, boxers) as soon as Stormy mocked him.”

In the literature of the cowboy myth, the young champion of the underdog is eventually supposed to settle down and take care of his family, who adore him. But the news of the past week has caricatured that shift, too. On Wednesday, May 8, the Republican Party of Florida announced that it had picked Trump’s youngest son, 18-year-old Barron, as one of the state’s at-large delegates to the Republican National Convention, along with Trump’s other sons, Eric and Donald Jr.; Don Jr.’s fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle; and Trump’s second daughter, Tiffany, and her husband.

On Friday, May 10, Trump’s current wife and Barron’s mother, former first lady Melania Trump, issued a statement saying: “While Barron is honored to have been chosen as a delegate by the Florida Republican Party, he regretfully declines to participate due to prior commitments.” It is hard not to interpret this extraordinary snub from his own wife and son as a chilly response to the past month of testimony about his extramarital escapades while Barron was an infant.

Finally, there was the eye-popping story broken by Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow in the Washington Post on Thursday, revealing that last month, at a private meeting with about two dozen top oil executives at Mar-a-Lago, Trump offered to reverse President Joe Biden’s environmental rules designed to combat climate change and to stop any new ones from being enacted in exchange for a $1 billion donation.

Trump has promised his supporters that he would be an outsider, using his knowledge of business to defend ordinary Americans against those elites who don’t care about them. Now he has been revealed as being willing to sell us out—to sell humanity out—for the bargain basement price of $1 billion (with about 8 billion people in the world, this would make us each worth about 12 and a half cents).

Chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration Richard Painter wrote: “This is called bribery. It’s a felony.” He followed up with “Even a candidate who loses can be prosecuted for bribery. That includes the former guy asking for a billion dollars in campaign cash from oil companies in exchange for rolling back environmental laws.”

The cowboy myth was always a political image, designed to undermine the idea of a government that worked for ordinary Americans. It was powerful after the Civil War but faded into the past in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s as Americans realized that their lives depended on government regulation and a basic social safety net. The American cowboy burst back into prominence with the advent of the Marlboro Man in 1954, the year of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, and the idea of an individual white man who worked hard, wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone, was a sex symbol, and protected his women became a central myth in the rise of politicians determined to overturn the liberal consensus.

Now it seems the myth has come full circle, with the party led by a man whose wife rejects him and whose lovers ridicule him, who makes up stories about dangerous “others,” cheats on his taxes, solicits bribes, and tries to sell out his followers for cash—the very caricature the mythological cowboy was invented to fight.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters from An American #Heather Cox Richardson #history #Brown v Board of Education #myth of the cowboy #Ronald Reagan #fake stories #immigration #TFG taxes #tax fraud

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head-post · 7 days ago

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Trump or Harris? US decides today

Millions of people are rushing to the polls to vote for candidates who offer an opposing vision of America. Harris and Trump need at least 270 electoral votes to win the election.

Millions of Americans head to the polls in the final race for the White House

In one of the closest presidential elections ever, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are vying to become the next US president.

Harris, who became the Democratic candidate after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, is in favour of abortion rights and has promised to lower food and housing prices for working families.

Republican candidate Trump, who has survived two assassination attempts this year, has vowed to shut down the border and proposed trillions in tax cuts.

More than 81 million people have already voted in what polls say will be a historically close election. States such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are expected to be crucial to their victory.

When are the results of the 2024 presidential election expected?

In some presidential races, the winner has been named late in the evening or early the next morning. This time around, because of the intense competition in many states, the media may wait longer before naming a winner.

Minor victories could also lead to recounts. For example, in the key state of Pennsylvania, a statewide recount would be required if there was a half a per cent difference between the votes cast for the winner and the loser. In 2020, the difference was just over 1.1 percentage points.

Litigation is also a possibility. Republicans have already filed more than 100 election lawsuits, including over eligibility and voter roll management.

The 2020 election was held on Tuesday. However, US TV stations did not declare Joe Biden the winner until late morning on Saturday, after the result in Pennsylvania became clearer.

Close Harris-Trump election race in “swing” states

There are 50 states in the US, but because most of them almost always vote for the same party, there are realistically only a few where both candidates have a chance of winning. These are places where elections will be won and lost, and they are known as battleground states, or swing states.

Currently, the lead in the “swing” states is so small that it is impossible to determine who is really ahead by looking at polling averages.

Stakes are high

According to CNN, if Trump wins on Tuesday, he will become only the second president to be defeated and win more than one term in a row. He would complete one of the most stunning political comebacks in history after being convicted of a crime and escaping two attempts on his life this year.

Harris could break a nearly 250-year streak of male commanders-in-chief and become the first female president. That would be a stunning achievement after she united a demoralised Democratic Party in July, when ageism destroyed President Joe Biden’s re-election bid, CNN adds.

Ms. Harris spent Election Day in Pennsylvania, speaking at a recent rally attended by Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey and Ricky Martin.

On the night in Pennsylvania, Harris delivered a final message of unity, telling the crowd:

I pledge to listen to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make. I will listen to experts. I will listen to the people who disagree with me. Because, you see, unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe that people who disagree with me are the enemy.

Trump held his last rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the Republican candidate said he was already ahead by hundreds of thousands of votes.

In the final hours of his campaign, Trump secured the support of scandal podcaster Joe Rogan, who held rallies in North Carolina and Pennsylvania before his last campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Election Day in 2024, when the contenders are separated by a minimal margin, will make history.

“Nostradamus” of US election makes huge prediction

Allan Lichtman, known as the “Nostradamus of the polls,” has correctly predicted the results of nine out of ten presidential elections since 1984. He claims that all of them have been correct except for George W. Bush’s victory in 2000.

The historian claims his prediction of who will win the 2024 presidential race is correct, even though recent polls say otherwise. Lichtman, who admitted he has never before felt “so much hatred” for his views during an election cycle, has a method of predicting outcomes known as “‘The Keys to the White House.” He said he developed the system to “accurately calculate” the results in 1981 with Russian academic Vladimir Keilis-Borok.

Lichtman believes the Democrat will win and become the first female president of the United States. He said in a new YouTube video:

My prediction has not changed. I have frequently made my prediction correctly in defiance of the polls, it’s based on 160 years of precedent.

However, he acknowledged there is still a chance he could be wrong. He said:

The keys are very robust. But it’s always possible that something so cataclysmic and so unprecedented could change the pattern of history.

The academic evaluates 13 factors, including scandals, social unrest, comparative charisma and the state of a country’s economy, and assigns a “true” or “false” score for each category. He also added:

My predictions have stood the test of time, my indicators have always been right.