The demographics of a largely white, young, and destructive group fit more with a movement known as accelerationists than Black Lives Matter.The accelerationists, if you have never heard the term, are an extreme subset of white nationalism whose goal is to bring about chaos and destruction. The basic tenet of accelerationism argues that since Western governments are inherently corrupt, the best (and only) thing supremacists can do is to accelerate the end of society by sowing chaos and aggravating political tensions. "Accelerationist ideas have been cited in mass shooters' manifestos -- explicitly, in the case of the New Zealand killer -- and are frequently referenced in white supremacist web forums and chat rooms," Zack Beauchamp explained.White Supremacists pretending to host a protest to honor Floyd George on Facebook to whip up violence in San Diego were posted on the BLMSD social media warning people not to go and that it was a white supremacist organized rally. People attending demonstrations remarked on the fact that the demographics were wrong, in places like Oakland where the majority of the destruction was perpetrated by young Caucasian men has inspired not just people on social media but reporting in the mainstream media to properly question whether this is a form of infiltration by outside extremist elements.A report by Vice News about right-wing infiltrators in the protests notes "hardcore 'accelerationists' ... are encouraging their neo-Nazi followers to go to the protests and carry out acts of violence against black people."Accelerationists follow the blueprint laid out by neo-Nazi James Mason in The Siege (not the film with Denzel Washington) whose writing inspired Charles Manson's killing spree. Mason, living in obscurity in Denver until he was brought out of retirement by Atomwaffen, a right wing Neo Nazi group. The goal of accelerationism is to burn everything down and to use violence both to target enemies and instigate an overt and extreme response from the government. Their strategy echoes Gustavo Gorriti's writings about the Shining Path terrorist group that the movement's "goal was to provoke blind, excessive reactions from the state... Blows laid on indiscriminately would also provoke among those unjustly or disproportionately affected an intense resentment of the government."Similarly accelerationists hope to "demolish the state apparatus that stands between them and a white-dominated future." And the White Supremacists here could be of a different orientation too - organized to discredit the protestors with no clear or deliberate vision for greater political change in mind.Bellingcat has documented the involvement in the protests of a largely white, and far-right movement called the Boogaloo, whose leaders "expect, even hope, that the warmer weather will bring armed confrontations with law enforcement, and will build momentum towards a new civil war in the United States." "As protests over the death of George Floyd heated up in Minneapolis on May 26th, members of Boogaloo groups across Facebook considered it a call to arms," wrote Bellingcat's Robert Evans.
Electrical engineers created a gallium oxide-based transistor that can handle more than 8,000 volts. The transistor could lead to smaller and more efficient electronic systems that control and convert electric power -- a field of study known as power electronics -- in electric cars, locomotives and airplanes. In turn, this could help improve how far these vehicles can travel.
As part of the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration aimed to use the leverage of billions of dollars paid out through Medicare and Medicaid to these facility operators to get them to be more accountable and, in the process, reduce the costs incurred from unnecessary recurring hospitalizations from avoidable infections.It was long overdue.In December of 2017, the Los Angeles Times published an eye- opening investigative report by Jordan Rau with Kaiser Health News that told us all we would have needed to know about just how vulnerable these facilities would be to COVID-19 in 2020."Basic steps to prevent infections -- such as washing hands, isolating contagious patients and keeping ill nurses and aides from coming to work -- are routinely ignored in the nation's nursing homes, endangering residents and spreading hazardous germs," Rau wrote in 2017. "A Kaiser Health News analysis of four years of federal inspection records shows 74% of nursing homes have been cited for lapses in infection control -- more than for any other type of health violation."And while citations were common, "disciplinary action such as fines is rare: Nationwide, only 1 of 75 homes found deficient in those four years has received a high-level citation that can result in a financial penalty," according to the Kaiser study.Rau quoted Michael Connors of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, a nonprofit in San Francisco, who said the industry was "getting the message that they don't have to do anything" because they are only getting "low-level warnings year after year after year and the facilities have learned to ignore them."But even as Kaiser Health News was shining a national spotlight on the lack of infection control in facilities where an increasing number of Americans will spend their last days, the Trump administration was busy doing all it could to roll back the Obama administration's effort to improve infection control in these places.As the New York Times reported on March 14, the "federal regulator overseeing nursing homes proposed the rule changes last summer, before the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of nursing homes to fast-spreading diseases. The push followed a spate of lobbying and campaign contributions by people in the nursing-home industry, according to public records and interviews."
As part of the larger "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation into Russia's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign and possible involvement by persons in the Trump campaign (see pages 50-59 of Inspector General Horowitz's Report for a detailed account of the basis for "Crossfire Hurricane"), the FBI opened a specific counterintelligence investigation concerning Flynn ("Crossfire Razor") on August 16, 2016. The Flynn investigation was based upon "an articulable factual basis that [he] may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security." That, in turn, was predicated upon an assessment of "reliable" lead information, including that Flynn had been a foreign policy adviser to Trump since February 2016; that he "had ties to various state-affiliated entities of the Russian Federation"; that he traveled to Russia in December 2015; and that he had an active TS/SCI security clearance.There was nothing suspect or unreasonable about opening this counterintelligence investigation of Flynn. And as the DOJ Inspector General later concluded, the FBI's "predication" to open that investigation was more than sufficient to satisfy the modest threshold prescribed by DOJ and FBI policies. [...]The second series of calls between Flynn and Kislyak commenced less than one week later, on December 29, just hours after the United States had imposed sanctions on nine Russian individuals and entities, expelled 35 Russian government officials, and closed two Russian government-owned compounds in the United States, all in response to Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. President-Elect Trump expressed a lack of concern about Russia's election interference. When asked about the sanctions, he responded: "I think we ought to get on with our lives."After discussing the matter with members of the transition team, including Michael Ledeen and K.T. McFarland, Flynn called Kislyak to urge Russia not to escalate the situation in the manner the U.S. expected it to do. Flynn at the very least implied to Kislyak that the Trump Administration would be more conciliatory to Russia, notwithstanding its election interference, and he may even have suggested that Trump might alleviate the sanctions Obama had imposed that very morning. [UPDATE: Flynn implored Kislyak to convey to Moscow that it should "not allow this [Obama] administration to box us in right now." Flynn also said to Kislyak, "Let's keep this at a level that uh is, is even-keeled, okay? ls even-keeled. And then what we can do is, when we come in, we can then have a better conversation about where ... we're gonna go ... regarding our relationship." He also criticized the Obama administration's "position on the Middle East," saying that it "doesn't do anybody any good."] Unlike with respect to the first call (about the UNSC resolution), in this case Russia did as Flynn asked: Vladimir Putin decided not to escalate the conflict, presumably assured that Trump would ease up on the U.S.'s objections to Russia's election interference. [On December 31, Kislyak conveyed the news to Flynn, adding that "We are hoping within two weeks we will be able to start working in [a] more constructive way."]To hear DOJ now tell it, those late-December calls were of no moment, and shouldn't have affected the FBI's decision to close the Flynn investigation. The most alarming and revealing passage in the DOJ motion to dismiss the charge against Flynn is this one--in particular the bolded sentence:With its counterintelligence investigation no longer justifiably predicated, the communications between Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak--the FBI's sole basis for resurrecting the investigation on January 4, 2017--did not warrant either continuing that existing investigation or opening a new criminal investigation. The calls were entirely appropriate on their face. . . . Mr. Flynn, as the incumbent [sic] National Security Advisor and senior member of the transition team, was reaching out to the Russian ambassador in that capacity. In the words of one senior DOJ official [Mary McCord]: "It seemed logical . . . that there may be some communications between an incoming administration and their foreign partners." Such calls are not uncommon when incumbent [sic] public officials preparing for their oncoming duties seek to begin and build relationships with soon-to-be counterparts.This is absurd--akin to Trump's assertions in 2019 that his communications with the Ukraine, urging officials of that nation to announce an investigation of Hunter and Joe Biden, were "pitch perfect." It's shocking the Executive branch would write such a thing in a brief to a court. The Flynn/Kislyak calls were the furthest thing from "appropriate."For one thing, the apparent substance of the call on December 29 was, at a minimum, deeply disturbing. Flynn apparently was signaling to Kislyak that the Trump Administration would be more conciliatory to Russia, notwithstanding its election interference, than the Obama Administration had been--up to and including an implication that Trump might well alleviate the sanctions Obama had imposed that very morning. (Putin presumably wouldn't have done if he didn't have reason to believe the Trump Administration would be more conciliatory with respect to the election interference matter.)The question of why Trump, Flynn, et al., were--and continue to be--so in thrall to Vladimir Putin, or at the very least indifferent to Russia's threat to our electoral system, continues to be perhaps the most consequential question of the Trump Presidency.Even apart from the merits of what Flynn said, however--that is to say, even if you happen to agree with Trump's views on Russian sanctions and/or on the U.N. vote regarding Israeli settlements--it's inappropriate for a member of a presidential transition team to communicate with foreign officials secretly about current U.S. national security or foreign policy matters (i.e., without the knowledge of the State Department or some other process for informing the current Administration), and far worse still to do so in an effort to undermine the national security or foreign policy objectives of the United States as determined by the President then in office.According to the New York Times, the Obama Administration had made a "pointed request" to the Trump transition team to avoid sending conflicting signals to foreign officials before the inauguration and to include State Department personnel when contacting such officials. That's fairly standard-issue stuff, as reflected in the Partnership for Public Service's widely consulted Presidential Transition Guide. It was wrong for Flynn to disregard the administration's request and the longstanding norm--and particularly to do so in the way he did here. Contrary to the two Freudian slips in the DOJ brief, Flynn was not the "incumbent National Security Advisor" at the time--Susan Rice was. DOJ is right that incoming officers commonly communicate during the presidential transition with their future foreign partners so that they can "begin and build relationships with soon-to-be counterparts." Friendly congratulatory calls and innocuous, generic "I look forward to working together" communications are commonplace. It's another thing entirely, however, to signal a subversion of the sitting President's foreign policy objectives--let alone to do so secretly, so that the U.S. government is unaware of what's being said and done. (To be sure, the government in this case eventually discovered what Flynn and Kislyak discussed, but not for several days, during which time the State Department and other agencies were in the dark about what Putin was up to and why.)Moreover, this wasn't just any foreign counterpart or an ordinary transition context--Flynn was speaking to a representative of the nation that had just hacked the American election campaign in an effort to have Trump elected, and doing so mere hours after the President of the United States had responded decisively. As Director of National Intelligence James Clapper saw it, Flynn had "essentially neuter[ed]" the just-imposed sanctions.*Indeed, the wrongfulness of Flynn's actions was so manifest that when word of the conversation with Kislyak became public (see Point 8, below), it infuriated President-Elect Trump, who instructed Reince Priebus to direct Flynn that he had to "kill the story." Flynn then told K.T. McFarland that "I want to kill the story," and asked her to call the Washington Post and deny that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Kislyak. As the Mueller Report recounts, "McFarland made the call as Flynn had requested although she knew she was providing false information, and the Washington Post updated the column to reflect that a 'Trump official' had denied that Flynn and Kislyak discussed sanctions." As noted in Point 7, below, Flynn himself made the same denials to Priebus, Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, and incoming press secretary Sean Spicer. (Flynn also omitted the discussion of sanctions from his written documentation of the December 29 Kislyak call, later acknowledging to Robert Mueller's Office that he did so "because it could be perceived as getting in the way of the Obama Administration's foreign policy." (The quotation is the Mueller Report's characterization of what Flynn told the Mueller investigators.)) [...][UPDATE: The reactions of many Trump/Barr/Flynn defenders to the transcripts of the December 29 call-in effect, that Barr's right that it's a big nothingburger at worst, if not "laudable" (see below)-prompts me to add the following about the heart of the huge disconnect respecting the Flyyn/Kislyak call:We know now that Trump (at best) didn't care about Russia's election interference-he's said so daily for three-plus years. And if that's your baseline understanding-that of course Trump wasn't troubled by the cyber-operations and therefore would naturally have been trying to stymie the effects of Obama's sanctions-then the reaction to the Kislyak call is: "Duh!"But on December 29 2016, the idea that the incoming President of the United States and/or his National Security Advisor would be so nonchalant about Russia's interference-in secret, with the Russian Ambassador!-was virtually unthinkable, shocking, and alarming, easily justifying DOJ's and the FBI's concerns. And then things only got more troubling when the Vice-President-Elect offered a false public account.Or, as David Corn writes, think about when this call was occurring and what the incoming National Security Advisor failed to say to the Russian Ambassador:At no point does Flynn castigate Kislyak for Russia's intervention in the 2016 election. He does not confront the Russian ambassador for Putin's covert operation to subvert American democracy. He does not tell Kislyak that Moscow will have to pay a price for hacking the Democrats and using the stolen information to influence the election for Trump's benefit. Flynn, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, does not warn Kislyak against any further Russian information warfare targeting the United States. As the Obama administration was trying to impose a punishment on Putin for that attack, Flynn, on behalf of the Trump gang, was sending an utterly different message: We don't care about that.Think about this perverse set of interactions: the incoming national security adviser was essentially telling a foreign adversary that the new president wasn't concerned about an attack on the United States and, moreover, indicating that Trump didn't intend to do anything about it. In fact, Flynn was signaling to Putin that once Trump took office, Trump wouldn't be pursuing the matter and, instead, would be reaching out to Russia as a partner. (A few months later, Trump, in the Oval Office, would tell Kislyak that directly.) . . .He was dealing with the Russians as if there had been no attack.]
We still use the word "medieval" as a term of opprobrium: all sorts of things, from Islamist terrorism to faulty plumbing, are described as such when we want to signal a range of negative aspects. Something "medieval" is archaic, life-denying, sub-rational, obstinately ill-informed or incompetent, and so on. And by contrast, "renaissance" is usually a sunnier word. It evokes exuberance and creativity, intellectual freshness. A "renaissance man" (and it usually is a man) is someone endowed with an almost superhuman galaxy of qualities and skills.As many scholars have pointed out, this odd bit of chronological snobbery is largely a 19th-century creation, from the days when the Renaissance was seen as the precursor of the Age of Reason, the moment somewhere around the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century which saw the beginnings of Western civilisation's liberation from dogma and bigotry. It is not news for historians that the story is more complex than this - or that it was also a period (particularly in Italy) of ceaseless and destructive warfare. [...]If we demythologise the Renaissance a little, we may learn to do more justice to what preceded it. Professor Fletcher has a brief discussion of scientific advances in the mid 16th century, especially in anatomy, navigational skills and botany - the latter two spurred on by the fresh stimulus of colonial travel and discovery. But the fact that this treatment is relatively brief and relates to a period rather later than the "high Renaissance" should give us pause if we are inclined to think of this as an epoch of spectacular scientific progress.Many scholars have pointed out that the 15th and early 16th centuries are a rather stagnant period in many areas of natural science compared with some parts of the Middle Ages, when astronomy, mechanics and logic made substantial advances. The great 16th-century exception, Copernicus's treatise of 1543 on the circulation of planets around the sun, was not a dramatic and total rejection of earlier astronomical method based on new scientific evidence, but a refinement designed to clear up the mathematics of charting the heavenly bodies. It was received with interest and some enthusiasm at the time, but was clearly not seen as a radical departure from the principles of Aristotle. Only with slightly later figures like Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) did actual observation of the heavens play a decisive part in the argument.The uncomfortable truth is that the age of the Renaissance contributed very little to innovation in science. This was largely because the revival of classical learning and languages concentrated attention on what was called humanitas - literary and rhetorical accomplishment (hence our designation of some academic subjects as "humanities") - rather than on empirical observation or technical skill in logic and mathematics.Later medieval philosophy had become achingly technical, and the recovery of classical literature offered a welcome relief. The writings of the medievals were mocked for their stylistic awfulness; and the exhilaration and enthusiasm for the Platonic tradition that arose in the later 15th century was, as much as anything, an enthusiasm for a philosophy that more obviously promised moral and spiritual insight, rather than the virtuoso analysis of concepts. So might a 20th-century student have felt on reading Jean-Paul Sartre after an unbroken diet of logical positivism in undergraduate philosophy.For good and ill, the Renaissance as an intellectual phenomenon was not a revolt in the name of "reason" or "liberty" or any such Enlightenment motive. It was an excited recovery of the ideals of formal elegance and proportion in writing and building. It was also the flowering of a sort of New Age fascination with ancient and hidden wisdom. The great strength of Professor Fletcher's book is that it helps us keep the Renaissance in proportion, rather than seeing it as either the decisive foundation for Western modernity (it was in many ways backward-looking, its energy linked to models of revival and recovery rather than advance), or a melodrama of Olympian geniuses and (literally) Machiavellian villains.
His contempt for the Secret Service is symptomatic https://t.co/PsY3h6JCMG
— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) May 30, 2020
So surprising that Darwin times Freud yields nonsense....It's not often that a paper attempts to take down an entire field. Yet, this past January, that's precisely what University of New Hampshire assistant philosophy professor Subrena Smith's paper tried to do. "Is Evolutionary Psychology Possible?" describes a major issue with evolutionary psychology, called the matching problem. [...]Gizmodo: Your paper's main refutation of the field is something called the matching problem. Can you explain what that is?Subrena Smith: Evolutionary psychologists' thought is that, for at least some of our behaviors, they believe that we have--dare I use this term--hard-wired cognitive structures that are operating in all of us contemporary human beings the same way they did for our ancestors on the savannas. The idea is that, in the modern world, we have sort of modern skulls, but the wiring--the cognitive structure of the brain itself--is not being modified, because enough evolutionary time hasn't passed. This goes for evolutionary functions like mate selection, parental care, predator avoidance--that our brains were pretty much in the same state as our ancestors' brains. The sameness in how our brains work is on account of genetic selection for particular modules that are still functional in our environment today. [Editor's note: These "modules" refer to the idea that the brain can be divided up into discrete structures with specific functions.]The matching problem is really the core issue that evolutionary psychologists have to show that they can meet: that there is really a match between our modules and the modules of the prehistoric ancestors; that they're working the same way then as now; and that these modules are working the same way because they are descended from the same functional lineage or causal lineage. But I don't see any way that these charges can be answered. [...]Gizmodo: Can you give some examples of scenarios of the matching problem in action?Smith: Here's the problem. With respect to human beings, we don't have the relevant evidence about how our ancestors behaved to make any substantiative claims. We can only use evidence of our behavior and evidence of the likely kinds of behaviors that they would have exhibited in the past. We know that ancient humans avoided predation, for instance. What exactly they did is something evolutionary psychologists have to show. Did our ancestors avoid predation because they were good at hiding in bushes or because they were running? Evolutionary psychologists would say that the better explanation is that they were running. But the fact that they ran to avoid predation and the fact that we have the disposition to run when we're endangered still does not establish that there's a singular module doing both of those jobs.
The 2008 bailout should have, likewise, paid off debt as a way to get cash to the banks. https://t.co/APUidYxRUC
— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) May 30, 2020
A "basic income guinea pig" -- that's how Tuomas Muraja describes himself in the title of his book about the two years he received €560 ($616) a month from Finland's government. For four years the journalist had been looking for permanent work, attending job center classes and receiving state benefits alongside the odd freelance job, before he found out he had been selected for the country's universal basic income experiment, which began in 2017.Muraja fondly remembers being a guinea pig. "It was a great relief because I got rid of all the bureaucracy," he recalls. "I didn't need to fill in any forms or attend any classes where they teach you how to make a CV and these kinds of things. I could concentrate myself on my work, which is writing books and stories."He certainly did. In those two years he published two books, wrote numerous articles and applied for 80 positions. Others he spoke to for Basic Income Guinea Pig had positive experiences too. One lady set up her own café, knowing she had guaranteed income. A university graduate could take low-paid internships to gain experience without having to worry. [...]Where there was a significant statistical difference, however, was in how happy each of the two groups felt. The people who received €560 a month reported much lower levels of insecurity and stress."The wellbeing was at a higher level than in the control group, and it really was a significant increase in most dimensions of wellbeing," reports Ylikanno.For Tuomas, this should be the point people concentrate on most when examining the study. "The main important thing is that those who received the basic income felt better, mentally. When you are secure and free, you feel better."
Mutti sticks in the boot https://t.co/C0vNhJqe1d
— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) May 30, 2020
About 1.4 million Hong Kongers were born since the 1997 handover. The democracy activists most at risk of reprisals in any crackdown are over-represented among that generation, who'd by virtue of their age be ineligible for BN(O) status. That's where Taiwan, the U.S., Canada and Australia -- the other democracies that have spoken up in support of the rights of Hong Kongers this week -- need to back up their words with actions.President Donald Trump was vague on details of action his administration may take over Hong Kong in a speech Friday -- but as my colleague Eli Lake has argued, America should open its doors to Hong Kongers as a matter of principle. There's little to welcome about the Cold War brewing between Washington and Beijing, but one small virtue of the previous conflict with the Soviet Union was the way America welcomed refugees from Communist countries in a way that would be unthinkable in our current nativist moment. Taiwan, which has justified fears of becoming the next target of Beijing's irredentist nationalism, is in the same geopolitical boat.Canada and Australia have even more to gain. Each has a proportionately larger Hong Kong diaspora than any other English-speaking country, with about one in every 200 residents born in the city, and larger numbers of second- and third-generation migrants. Canada's trade minister, Mary Ng, is Hong-Kong born, as is Gladys Liu, who holds one of the most marginal seats on behalf of Australia's ruling coalition.
Isbell is, by any artistic standard, a genius -- a once-in-a-generation talent, or more. The son of a house painter and grandson of a Pentecostal preacher, he burst onto the scene in 2001, joining Drive-by Truckers, primarily as a guitarist, at the ripe age of 22. Any word about his instrumental skill would be an understatement. Let this suffice: He can play the guitar almost as well as Amanda Shires (his wife and frequent collaborator) can play the fiddle. Hell, if Joseph Stalin could pick a guitar the way Isbell can, I'd pay to see his show. I did see Isbell live in Boston three years back; his technical virtuosity together with a voice perfectly suited to this kind of music make him one of the best performers at work today.That gift comes across just as clearly on record. The sound of Reunions is spectacular. Isbell's own skill, the diverse talents of his band (The 400 Unit, including Shires), and the masterful production of Dave Cobb coalesce into a wonder of an album, sonically speaking. The style is fresh and creative too: a new, lively blend of the blues, folk, and rock influences that have informed Isbell's craft for years. This certainly helps to set Reunions apart from the activist albums that have become the norm of late -- none of which, with the exception of a few decent tracks off of The Unraveling, have been particularly good music. [...]Isbell's gift for not just lyricism but storytelling and character-building is on full display in this album, and it makes for a stark contrast with the genre's other recent offerings. Take, for example, one of the most divisive political topics of the Trump years: the separation of families by various migrant and refugee crises. Drive-by Truckers attempted to tackle the subject in the track "Babies in Cages." It's exactly as subtle and nuanced as the title (which is also its three-word chorus) suggests. It is catharsis aping dialectic and failing in the end to achieve either one.Isbell, meanwhile, addresses the same hot-button material in "Overseas," with dramatically different results. The opening lines are pure Southern Gothic poetry: "This used to be a ghost town, but even the ghosts got out and the sound of the highway died. There's ashes in the swimming pool." What follows is a poignant monologue on the pain of a person torn by rival loves: for a place, a partner, a parent, a child. It is beautiful and heartbreaking, but it is also intensely relatable for the overwhelming majority of us who have never had to see ashes in our swimming pools.It is not so much above politics as it is below them. It casts in a distinctly human light what has elsewhere been reduced to rhetoric, dialectic, and argument. There is a balance, too, that helps with the delivery of controversial subjects driven so forcefully by other artists. "Overseas" is just one track among many -- some with political bents, some without. It sits among songs about growing up in a broken American family, about becoming a father (Mercy Isbell is 4 years old now), about getting sober. Reunions is a set of human stories, not of talking points. And Isbell recognizes that the story of a family fractured by an ocean is a human story not much different from his own. Such an understanding produces a spectacular performance that cannot be reduced to mere politics. It may also inspire politics that cannot be reduced to mere performance.
The 2020 election looks more and more like a contest between luck and precedent. On one side is President Trump's incredible run of good fortune. On the other side is the weight of history. Consider: Every president reelected since Mr. Gallup's first poll in 1935 enjoyed at least one day, and often several, when his approval rating was above 50 percent. That is something President Trump has not experienced.Not since 1940 has a president been reelected with a double-digit unemployment rate. Nor has a president been reelected with an unemployment rate two or more points higher than when he entered office. Unemployment was 15 percent in April 2020, and is expected to rise for at least a while longer. It was 5 percent in January 2017. The recovery will need to have the trajectory of an Elon Musk rocket for unemployment to fall to less than 7 percent by November 3.That is when America will hold its 59th presidential election. In all but five of the previous 58 contests, the same man won both the popular and electoral votes. The fact that two of the exceptions occurred in the past 20 years has distorted our perspective. We begin to consider it not only possible but probable that President Trump could win reelection without winning the popular vote.History suggests that what is possible is also unlikely. Reelection was a prize awarded to just one of the four men before Trump who entered office on the basis of the Electoral College alone. John Quincy Adams lost to Andrew Jackson in the rematch of 1828. Rutherford B. Hayes did not run for a second term in 1880. Benjamin Harrison lost to Grover Cleveland in the rematch of 1892. The exception was George W. Bush, who defeated John Kerry in both the popular and electoral votes in 2004.Bush, like Trump, faced an unexpected crisis in his first term. His decisive and compassionate leadership during the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath was an important factor in his reelection. Voters for whom terrorism was the most important issue backed Bush by a 72-point margin, according to the exit poll, and at that time majorities approved of the war in Iraq (51 percent) and considered it part of the war on terrorism (55 percent). Bush's approval rating in the exit poll was 53 percent.In the May 27 Reuters-Ipsos poll, the public disapproved of President Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, while backing him on the economy and jobs. His job approval was 41 percent. In the May 21 Fox poll, it was 44 percent. Nowhere close to where it has to be to win a second term.
Physicist Richard Feynman had the following advice for those interested in science: "So I hope you can accept Nature as She is--absurd."1 Here Feynman captures in stark terms the most basic insight of modern science: nature is not understandable in terms of ordinary physical concepts and is, therefore, absurd.The unintelligibility of nature has huge consequences when it comes to determining the validity of a scientific theory. On this question, Feynman also had a concise answer: "It is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense."2 So put reasonableness and common sense aside when judging a scientific theory. Put your conceptual models and visualizations away. They might help you formulate a theory, or they might not. They might help to explain a theory, or they might obfuscate it. But they cannot validate it, nor can they give it meaning.Erwin Schrödinger made a similar critique of the simplified models widely used to explain scientific concepts in terms of everyday experience, such as those used to illustrate atomic theory:A completely satisfactory model of this type is not only practically inaccessible, but not even thinkable. Or, to be more precise, we can, of course, think it, but however we think it, it is wrong; not perhaps quite as meaningless as a "triangular circle," but much more so than a "winged lion."3"Do the electrons really exist on these orbits within the atom?" Schrödinger asks rhetorically. His answer: "A decisive No, unless we prefer to say that the putting of the question itself has absolutely no meaning."4Feynman and Schrödinger were concerned about the extremely small scale, but what about the extremely large scale? A single human cell has more than twenty thousand genes. Therefore, assuming one protein per gene, the number of different non-modified proteins exceeds twenty thousand. Add to that the many more different proteins resulting from alternative splicing, single nucleotide polymorphisms, and posttranslational modification. No conceptual model is conceivable for the interactions among all of these genes and proteins, or for even a tiny portion of them, when one considers the complex biochemistry involved in regulation. What is the meaning of the intricate and massive pathway models generated by computer algorithms? Is this even a meaningful question to ask? And the human body contains on average an estimated thirty-seven trillion cells!Yet science has had great success dealing with the unthinkable and inconceivable. Hannah Arendt puts the matter succinctly: "Man can do, and successfully do, what he cannot comprehend and cannot express in everyday human language."5 We have mathematically sophisticated scientific theories and daily operate with advanced engineering systems that are physically incomprehensible and whose principles cannot be communicated in everyday language. In Kantian terms, we are not limited by human categories of understanding.This radical disconnect between scientific theory and everyday human understanding became impossible to ignore in the twentieth century. During that time, grappling with the issue of internal model randomness, as exemplified by quantum theory in physics, brought this problem to the fore.Today, scientists are grappling with the problem of model uncertainty, as seen in areas like climate and medicine. These questions are increasingly challenging the basis of modern scientific knowledge itself, which is defined by a combination of mathematics and observation. Modern scientific knowledge, while rejecting commonsense conceptual models, has always depended upon mathematically expressed theories that could be validated by prediction and observation. But this approach is now under pressure from multiple sides, suggesting a deep crisis of scientific epistemology that has not been fully confronted. At the same time, political leaders find themselves increasingly impotent when faced with scientific issues. As we move further into the twenty-first century, humankind is presented with an existential paradox: man's destiny is irrevocably tied to science, and yet knowledge of nature increasingly lies not only outside ordinary language but also outside the foundational epistemology of science itself.
Rapa Nui is often seen as a cautionary example of societal collapse. In this story, made popular by geographer Jared Diamond's bestselling book Collapse, the Indigenous people of the island, the Rapanui, so destroyed their environment that, by around 1600, their society fell into a downward spiral of warfare, cannibalism, and population decline. These catastrophes, the collapse narrative explains, resulted in the destruction of the social and political structures that were in place during precolonial times, though the people of Rapa Nui survive and persist on the island to the present day.In recent years, researchers working on the island have questioned this long-accepted story. For example, anthropologist Terry Hunt and archaeologist Carl Lipo, who have studied the island's archaeology and cultural history for many years, have suggested an alternative hypothesis that the Rapanui did not succumb to a downward spiral of self-destruction but instead practiced resiliency, cooperation, and perhaps even a degree of environmental stewardship.Now new evidence from Hunt, Lipo, and their colleagues, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, lends credence to their ideas. This evidence suggests that the people of the island continued to thrive, as indicated by the continued construction of the stone platforms, called ahu, on which the iconic statues stand, even after the 1600s."Our research shows that statue platform construction and use did not end prior to European arrival in 1722," says Robert DiNapoli, a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of Oregon, who led the study.This finding, drawing on new statistical methods and excavation work, suggests that the Rapanui were not destitute when the first Europeans arrived. It's therefore possible that it was the newcomers from Europe who contributed to the island's societal collapse in the years to come.
Pence staged a protest of a football game because players kneeled in peaceful protest. https://t.co/yREggQpze6
— Sam Stein (@samstein) May 30, 2020
Today, Japanese are caught between a belief in the importance of Japanese language and culture and the need to exist in a globalized world in which English carries economic privileges and status associations. A plummeting population and an inevitable future influx of foreign workers collide with a proud national identity, structural and cultural obstacles to English learning, and enough economic independence to resist what might otherwise seem an inevitable future: an English-speaking Japan.For years, multinational companies have been mandating English as the common corporate language. "In East Asia, many parents, professionals, and students themselves see English as a prerequisite for attaining the best jobs on the market," said Minh Tran, the executive director of academic affairs at Education First, a Swiss language-education company that offers classes in Japan.Yet the spread of English has left behind a "trail of dead": mangled languages, literatures, and identities. As countries around the world scramble for widespread English, there's a fear of losing their own traditions, cultures, and even names.
They fled to Kenya, where they faced malaria, dysentery and near starvation. The family survived in a refugee camp for 334,000 people, bartering kidney beans for kerosene and batteries for a radio. When she needed entertainment, Omar snuck under the barbed wire to walk to a nearby village, where an enterprising Kenyan charged a few shillings to watch movies on his TV. When six children who were distant relatives lost both their parents, Omar's family looked after them, Ilhan paying special attention to the baby, Umi.Her father discovered that they could apply through the United Nations to go to Norway, Canada or Sweden. But the US was his first choice."Only in America you ultimately become an American," he said. "Everywhere else we will always feel like a guest."Miraculously, a year after their first interview they were allowed to apply for America. Ilhan was upset, partly because the orphans couldn't come with them, but the rest of her book is the astonishing story of a voyage from Nairobi to New York to Minnesota, then barely 20 years later to Congress.The family's first stop was Arlington, Virginia, where the combative Ilhan spent most of her time in detention. But then she decided, she writes, "that my education was the one element of my life I had full control over, and given the long hours of studying in detention", by the time they moved on to Minnesota she "had become a very good student".At her new school, "Africans fought African Americans over who was blacker. Muslim kids and white kids fought over US policy in the Middle East. Latinos against African Americans, Africans against Native Americans."But Ilhan began to display her talents as a community organizer. She joined a group of students determined to "improve racial and cultural relations" by founding Unity in Diversity, "essentially a training program around diverse leadership".Her next stop was North Dakota State University, after a friend told her it was searching for students, offering scholarships and a "very low cost of living". Back in Minneapolis after graduation, she immersed herself in the Democratic Farmer-Labor party, first working to defeat ballot initiatives to require photo IDs for voters and to outlaw gay marriage.She figured out a winning narrative: both were threats to freedom and civil liberties, a message that worked with communities of color and white rural Minnesotans. No anti-marriage equality initiative had ever been beaten until then - the same year Barack Obama was elected president.Omar was elected to the state legislature in 2016, then to the US Congress in 2018, as one of the first two Muslim women in the House. She feared she would be banned from the House floor by an ancient rule barring hats, which would have prevented her wearing her hijab. Nancy Pelosi fixed the rule.
The Hong Kongese should be made the new Cuban refugees, only with us transporting them.Chinese President Xi Jinping is so nervous about the position of the Communist Party that he is risking a new Cold War and imperiling Hong Kong's position as Asia's preeminent financial hub, the last British governor of the territory told Reuters.Chris Patten said Xi's "thuggish" crackdown in Hong Kong could trigger an outflow of capital and people from the city which funnels the bulk of foreign direct investment into mainland China."What does it mean? It means serious question marks not just about Hong Kong's future as a free society but also about Hong Kong's ability to continue as probably the premier international financial hub in Asia," Patten said in an interview."A lot of people will try to leave Hong Kong," Patten said, adding that he feared capital would also flow out of the territory which Britain handed back to China in 1997.
Israel on Saturday was set to reopen four drive-through testing stations across the country as the Health Ministry announced a further sharp increase of 121 new coronavirus infections overnight Friday.With schools appearing to be at the epicenter of the outbreaks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to address the nation on Saturday evening after meeting with officials and ministers on possible closures within the education system. [...]Channel 12 news said Friday that 78 of the cases in the past two days came from a single school, the Gymnasia Rehavia, in Jerusalem, including 64 students and 14 staff.The Kan public broadcaster reported Saturday that the Paula Ben Gurion elementary school in the city will remain closed for two days due to the large number of students who have siblings at the Gymnasia Rehavia.
A week after images of Memorial Day weekend revelers jammed into a Lake of the Ozarks pool party at Backwater Jack's Bar & Grill in Osage Beach made international headlines, the Camden County Health Department announced that a Boone County resident tested positive for the novel coronavirus after visiting the Lake of the Ozarks area over the holiday weekend.The Boone County subject arrived at the lake on Saturday, May 23, and "developed illness" on Sunday, according to a news release obtained by LakeNewsOnline.com, which like the News-Leader is part of the USA TODAY Network.The infected person "was likely incubating illness and possibly infectious at the time of the visit," the health department said.
The Chief wrote for the Originalists.Roberts wrote in a brief opinion that the restriction allowing churches to reopen at 25% of their capacity, with no more than 100 worshipers at a time, "appear consistent" with the First Amendment. Roberts said similar or more severe limits apply to concerts, movies and sporting events "where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time."
Scientists and parents have believed birth order shapes personality since the late 1800s. Psychological giants like Francis Galton, Alfred Adler and, more recently, Frank Sulloway suggested that firstborn children received special treatment and had greater power than their later-born siblings. As a mom of boys born one minute apart, I've often wondered whether the "firstborn effect" applied to twins."The idea that birth order affects personality has profoundly penetrated the parental consciousness," says Brent Roberts, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Parents across the globe say their oldest takes the lead, the middle child plays the role of mediator and the baby grabs attention at every opportunity.But a spate of studies in recent years, including one co-authored by Roberts, has debunked the idea that birth order has any impact on personality. In 2015, a landmark study with more than 20,000 individuals from three different countries showed that where a child falls in the lineup makes no difference in terms of the Big 5 personality traits: extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness and imagination. Similarly, a 2019 study published in Personality and Individual Differences reported no evidence of a link between birth order and personality.In an ironic twist, research suggests twins' personalities may develop, in part, based on who is larger and healthier at birth. As it happens, the firstborn twin usually snags those defining characteristics. [...]Scientists have long viewed twin studies as the gold standard for exploring genetic and environmental influences on self-esteem and personality. But no household offers identical experiences and exposure for a set of twins. "The same family environment doesn't exist, even among twins raised in the same family," says Rodica Damian, assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Houston.