THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

Billy Laster, the director of the National Archives' White House Liaison Division, wrote that among the particular documents Trump has sought to block are 30 pages of "daily presidential diaries, schedules, appointment information showing visitors to the White House, activity logs, call logs, and switchboard shift-change checklists showing calls to the President and Vice President, all specifically for or encompassing January 6, 2021; 13 pages of "drafts of speeches, remarks, and correspondence concerning the events of January 6, 2021; and "three handwritten notes concerning the events of January 6 from (former White House chief of staff Mark) Meadows' files."

Trump also tried to exert executive privilege over pages from former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany's binders of talking points and statements "principally relating to allegations of voter fraud, election security, and other topics concerning the 2020 election."

Other documents included a handwritten note from Meadows' files "listing potential or scheduled briefings and telephone calls concerning the January 6 certification and other election issues" and "a draft Executive Order on the topic of election integrity."

Laster's declaration notes that the National Archives' search began with paper documents because it took until August for digital records from the Trump White House to be transferred to the agency. The National Archives, he wrote, has identified "several hundred thousand potentially responsive records" of emails from the Trump White House out of about 100 million sent or received during his administration, and was working to determine whether they pertained to the House request.

NATIONALISM ISN'T WORKING:

China's economy showed signs of further weakness in October as power shortages and surging commodity prices weighed on manufacturing, while strict Covid controls put a brake on holiday spending.

The official manufacturing purchasing managers' index fell to 49.2, the National Bureau of Statistics said Sunday, the second month it was below the key 50-mark that signals a contraction in production. The non-manufacturing gauge, which measures activity in the construction and services sectors, dropped to 52.4, well below the consensus forecast.

YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

The most powerful electric vehicle fast-charge station went into use on Friday, RÚV reports. It only takes five minutes for the station to charge a vehicle for 100 kilometres [62 mi].

IT'S A PURITAN NATION::

LOA: On July 3, 1776, the day after twelve of the thirteen colonies voted for independence, Adams wrote to Abigail: "Yesterday the greatest Question was decided, which ever was decided in America, and a greater perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men." But Adams's grand vision, enthusiasm, and expectations for the country sour somewhat over the years. Can we trace the path and cause of that change in his writings?

Wood: Certainly. Adams never had an optimistic view of human nature, and his experience in the Congress and abroad only deepened his suspicion that his fellow Americans might not have the character to sustain a republican government. As early as 1776, he expressed his doubts about America's capacity for virtue. "I have seen all along my Life, Such Selfishness, and Littleness even in New England, that I sometimes tremble to think that, altho We are engaged in the best Cause that ever employed the Human Heart, yet the Prospect of success is doubtfull not for Want of Power or of Wisdom, but of Virtue." By the time he came to write his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States in 1787 he had as dark a view of the American character as that of any critic in our history.

LOA: Adams spent the great bulk of those intervening years abroad. Except for a short three-month visit home in 1779, he was occupied with diplomatic missions in Europe for most of the war years and all of the Confederation period. What effect did this long absence from the American scene have on the evolution of his political thought?

Wood: I think he developed a much deeper suspicion of France and the other European powers than he had earlier. He lost much if not all of the utopian thinking about international politics and diplomacy expressed in his Model Treaty of 1776 and became much more cynical about the world. "America," he said in 1781, "is treated unfairly and ungenerously by Europe." But what could one expect? "When Nations are corrupted, and grown generally vicious when they are intoxicated with Wealth or Power, and by this means delivered over to the Government of the baser Passion of their Nature, it is very natural that they should act an irrational part."

Adams's perception of Europe, and especially France, was clearly different than Jefferson's. For Jefferson, the luxury and sophistication of Europe only made American simplicity and virtue appear dearer. For Adams, by contrast, Europe represented what America was fast becoming--a society consumed by luxury and vice and fundamentally riven by a struggle between rich and poor, gentlemen and commoners. His experience with the French philosophes only convinced him further of the need for a bicameral legislature representing the two principal social orders and, equally important, an independent executive.

Perhaps more significant than his experience in Europe, though, was Adams's experience in his own country, and his extensive reading on the history of the English constitution. In 1779, he had an opportunity to try out his ideas by framing the Massachusetts constitution.

LOA: Speaking of which, Adams's 1779 "Report of a Constitution or Form of Government for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts" is the oldest working government charter in the world. What about this document explains its enduring effectiveness?

Wood: The Massachusetts constitution was written much later than the other revolutionary state constitutions, and thus it avoids some of the earlier mistakes. The executive is stronger, with a limited veto; the senate is more formidable; and the judiciary is independent. It resembles the federal Constitution of 1787 more closely than any of the other revolutionary state constitutions. It was also drawn up by a special convention, and it provided for popular ratification--practices that were followed by the drafters of the federal Constitution of 1787 and subsequent state constitution-makers.

DOMESTIC TERRORISTS:

Hillary MacKenzie knew the first board meeting of the new school year would be contentious. When students in Orange County, North Carolina, returned to in-person school after nearly a year of remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic, the school board was still trying to figure out the best practices to keep them safe.

Going into that first meeting, MacKenzie, who chairs the Orange County School Board, worried some parents would be angry about mask mandates and other policies the board had implemented to help protect the community from COVID. But when she spotted two men in Proud Boys apparel in the crowd, she realized something more insidious was at play.

"One wore a stocking over his face, which completely obscured his entire face for the whole meeting," MacKenzie recently told a local radio station. "The other one told our board during public comment that someone should tie rocks around our necks and we should throw ourselves in a river."

A "knife and a spear" were also confiscated from people at a school board meeting, MacKenzie told the American Independent Foundation in a phone interview.

"That was the first time it felt threatening," she said.

Since that first meeting on September 13, MacKenzie and her school board colleagues have experienced what she describes as a full-on harassment campaign. What started as a contingent of concerned, vocal parents has since devolved, with members of the violent white supremacist extremist group the Proud Boys showing up to board meetings in growing numbers.

"I didn't know that I was going to have to get a home security system because of serving on the local school board," MacKenzie said. "It's just a sad statement to the environment that we're working in right now."

The situation in Orange County is not unique. In recent months, instances of violence and harassment from extremist groups have spiked. Proud Boys members have teamed up with anti-maskers to protest school board meetings across the country, harassing board members over COVID safety protocols.

School officials are quitting or retiring early in droves in response to the vitriol, threats, intimidation, and harassment they are experiencing at their jobs.

JUST BAD GOVERNANCE:

It's been more than eight months since a glacial chill--the magnitude of which nobody quite anticipated--crept across Texas, forcing power plants offline, freezing natural gas wells and wreaking havoc on every part of the state's energy system. Millions were plunged into darkness for days. Hundreds of people died. Damages topped $20 billion. And Texas's leaders vowed to do everything within their power to prevent such a crisis from happening again.

But they didn't do everything. And now, as temperatures are forecast to start dropping again in America's second-most populous state, Texas is still at risk of another crippling energy crisis the next time it faces perilously cold temperatures.

TOO OLD BEFORE THEY EVER GOT RICH:

There are reports that China is once again bringing in coal from Australia, which would a humiliating climbdown after it banned Australian imports following Canberra's call last year for an independent enquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

Glasgow was always going to be tough for Xi. China is the world's biggest polluter, responsible for 27 per cent of global emissions of greenhouse gases. It is opening new coal-fired power stations and increasing emissions at an annual rate that is greater than the savings of the rest of the world put together. Last year, coal plants with a combined capacity of 37.75 gigawatts were retired globally, more than half in the United States and European Union, according to an analysis by Global Energy Monitor, which studies fossil fuel trends. During that time, China opened 38.4 gigawatts of new plants - that's three times more new coal fired capacity than the rest of the world combined. It is currently building new coal plants at more than 60 locations across the country

China has pledged that its greenhouse gas emissions will reach their highest point before 2030 and the country will reach carbon neutrality before 2060. It announced some cosmetic changes to that programme in the run-up to COP26, light on detail and heavy with caveats, leaving little doubt that Beijing is now prioritising its economy.

In the run-up to COP26, Xi said China would no longer finance coal-powered plants internationally. This was presented as a concession and eagerly embraced as such by the West, desperate for signs of Beijing's cooperation. It was no such thing. Construction had already dried up because of the soaring price of coal and the fall in price of renewables, as well as concern over debt among the recipients of Beijing's largesse.

China certainly talks the talk on clean energy and sustainability. It does generate more energy from solar power than any other country, and is seeking to corner the global market in many green technologies, but it remains addicted to coal. Fossil fuels still account for 85 per cent of energy used, and coal represents 57 per cent of that. It consumes as much coal as the rest of the world combined, and has given few details of how it intends to kick the habit - rendering its pledges meaningless.

Taken in isolation, China's energy crunch would be challenge enough for the Communist party, but it comes at a time of multiple and growing problems. The bursting of the country's property bubble continues apace. Evergrande, the world most indebted property company, teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, kept in a state of suspended animation by a Communist party terrified of the consequences of a crash. And the contagion is spreading, with other property companies unable to pay their debts. It is not just that property and property-related goods and service are a driver of growth, representing 28 per cent of the economy, it is that Evergrande is in many ways the Chinese economy in microcosm - a scary combination of eye-watering debt, lack of transparency and diminishing returns on wasteful investment.

Even if the Party manages to muddle through, bailing out and shuffling distressed assets on to state-owned banks and other pliable entities, the country could face years of relative economic stagnation.

It also comes at a time when the Party has taken aim at some of the country's most dynamic companies, from Alibaba, the king of e-commerce, to private tutoring platforms. There are multiple reasons for this, but it essentially boils downs to the Party asserting greater control, particularly over data, and a further centralisation of power around Xi. Whether this is conducive to creating the sort of domestic-driven innovation economy China aspires to have must be doubtful - especially when it is increasingly cut off from the Western IP that is has so easily been able to steal, copy or otherwise acquire in the past.

HEARD ENOUGH:

Khan, a native of Pakistan who grew up in Maryland, is no innocent: He long ago pleaded guilty to being a member of al Qaeda, and his activities included aiding the deadly 2003 bombing of a Marriott Hotel in Indonesia and a failed assassination attempt on then-Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf.  

PARDON THEM TOO:

Facing several lawsuits filed on behalf of migrant parents and children who were separated at the southern border during the Trump administration, the Biden administration is in discussions to offer families close to $450,000 per person in compensation, several people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. 

THE CARLSON BRAND:

A man who spent five months with Cantwell in the same unit in a medium-security prison in Marion, Illinois, said Cantwell was inspired and emboldened by the polarizing messages emanating from Fox News -- specifically Tucker Carlson. In a filing in the Charlottesville lawsuit, Cantwell specifically cites Carlson as someone with whom he shares many views.

Jarrett William Smith told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview that a group of white supremacists had banded together behind bars. They learned about what was happening outside the prison walls and the political messaging of the day from the far-right outlet.

After "the whites," as Smith called the group, finished their legal work for the day, the group would regularly go to a television room in the prison to watch Carlson's evening program.

Cantwell, Smith said, felt emboldened by the TV host's diatribes, and thought they echoed those he promoted and that helped fuel the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville in 2017. Those messages included ones about the "Great Replacement Theory," a white supremacist delusion based on the bogus assumption that Democrats and liberal progressives are working to replace white people of European descent with non-European immigrants.

Cantwell's affinity for Carlson is evident in a September 2019 filing in the Charlottesville case. In that document, Cantwell complains that the case "is motivated by a desire to silence not only me and my associates, but anyone who might dare to agree with us even on peripheral issues. This is evidenced by the President of the United States, and the 2nd most popular show in cable news (Tucker Carlson) being branded as 'White Nationalists' on account of sharing a small number of our views on the pressing issues of our time."

NO SENSE OF WHERE YOU ARE:

Two nights later, having collected his clothes out of Reno's back room, DiMaggio boarded a jet; he slept crossways on three seats, then came down the steps as the sun began to rise in Miami. He claimed his luggage and golf clubs, put them into the trunk of a waiting automobile, and less than an hour later he was being driven into Fort Lauderdale, past palm-lined streets, toward the Yankee Clipper Hotel.

"All my life it seems I've been on the road traveling," he said, squinting through the windshield into the sun. "I never get a sense of being in any one place."

Arriving at the Yankee Clipper Hotel, DiMaggio checked into the largest suite. People rushed through the lobby to shake hands with him, to ask for his autograph, to say, "Joe, you look great." And early the next morning, and for the next thirty mornings, DiMaggio arrived punctually at the baseball park and wore his uniform with the famous No. 5, and the tourists seated in the sunny grandstands clapped when he first appeared on the field each time, and then they watched with nostalgia as he picked up a bat and played "pepper" with the younger Yankees, some of whom were not even born when, twenty-five years ago this summer, he hit in fifty-six straight games and became the most celebrated man in America.

But the younger spectators in the Fort Lauderdale park, and the sportswriters, too, were more interested in Mantle and Maris, and nearly every day there were news dispatches reporting how Mantle and Maris felt, what they did, what they said, even though they said and did very little except walk around the field frowning when photographers asked for another picture and when sportswriters asked how they felt.

After seven days of this, the big day arrived--Mantle and Maris would swing a bat--and a dozen sportswriters were gathered around the big batting cage that was situated beyond the left-field fence; it was completely enclosed in wire, meaning that no baseball could travel more than thirty or forty feet before being trapped in rope; still Mantle and Maris would be swinging, and this, in spring, makes news.

Mantle stepped in first. He wore black gloves to help prevent blisters. He hit right-handed against the pitching of a coach named Vern Benson, and soon Mantle was swinging hard, smashing line drives against the nets, going ahhh ahhh as he followed through with his mouth open.

Then Mantle, not wanting to overdo it on his first day, dropped his bat in the dirt and walked out of the batting cage. Roger Maris stepped in. He picked up Mantle's bat.

"This damn thing must be thirty-eight ounces," Maris said. He threw the bat down into the dirt, left the cage, and walked toward the dugout on the other side of the field to get a lighter bat.

DiMaggio stood among the sportswriters behind the cage, then turned when Vern Benson, inside the cage, yelled, "Joe, wanna hit some?"

"No chance," DiMaggio said.

"Com'on Joe," Benson said.

The reporters waited silently. Then DiMaggio walked slowly into the cage and picked up Mantle's bat. He took his position at the plate but obviously it was not the classic DiMaggio stance; he was holding the bat about two inches from the knob, his feet were not so far apart, and, when DiMaggio took a cut at Benson's first pitch, fouling it, there was none of that ferocious follow through, the blurred bat did not come whipping all the way around, the No. 5 was not stretched full across his broad back.

DiMaggio fouled Benson's second pitch, then he connected solidly with the third, the fourth, the fifth. He was just meeting the ball easily, however, not smashing it, and Benson called out, "I didn't know you were a choke hitter, Joe."

"I am now," DiMaggio said, getting ready for another pitch.

He hit three more squarely enough, and then he swung again and there was a hollow sound.

"Ohhh," DiMaggio yelled, dropping his bat, his fingers stung. "I was waiting for that one." He left the batting cage rubbing his hands together. The reporters watched him. Nobody said anything. Then DiMaggio said to one of them, not in anger nor in sadness, but merely as a simply stated fact, "There was a time when you couldn't get me out of there."

ABSURD? IT SOUNDS LIKE HAVANA SYNDROME OR FIBROMYALGA:

In 1518, several individuals started to dance through the streets of the city of Strasbourg (which is now located in France). This was no parade: They'd contracted a strange and seemingly contagious compulsion to do so, and within weeks, swarms of residents were whirling through town. The dance dragged on, and soon, dancers started to drop dead. One account approximated that as many as 15 people died daily during the dance's peak, according to an article published in The Lancet. 

Though this story sounds absurd today, the witnesses to these occurrences were already well acquainted with this dangerous dance. Indeed, several similar "dancing manias" and "dancing plagues" transpired in continental Europe throughout the medieval period, ensuring that these events were well within the era's realm of possibility.  

WHO WOULD JESUS HATE?:

In August, the American Conservative published a fascinating profile of Vance. With great nuance and insight, it described the escalating American culture wars, and the sense that many Americans felt that they were fighting for their beliefs and their very way of life. But the last paragraph contained these ominous words, especially coming from a Christian politician: "I think our people hate the right people," Vance said. 

With those words, I believe Vance reflected one of the most prevalent spirits of the times. Do we wonder why animosity dominates our discourse? Do we wonder why so many people were ready and willing to receive a message that declared even decency itself a "secondary value"? 

The real crisis in American Christian political engagement isn't truly over Christian positions. Opposition to abortion, to take one example, is vital and just. And there is ample room for good-faith Chrsitian disagreement over the proper response to American challenges ranging from race to economics to immigration to sexuality and to the pandemic. 

The real crisis is instead a crisis of the heart. Our orthodoxy is undermined by our actions, and our actions spring forth from the deepest parts of our being. At a time of rising antipathy, a Christian political community should blaze forth with a radiant countercultural embrace of kindness and grace. Instead, all too many of us have forgotten a fundamental truth. There are no "right people" to hate. 

BECAUSE IT'S THE BEST SPORT:

Malamud's friend (and sometimes rival), Philip Roth wrote his own baseball novel two decades later with 1973's satirical The Great American Novel.

The great postmodernist trickster Robert Coover wrote his baseball novel in the early innings of his career. His second novel, The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (1968), followed an accountant who escapes from his dreary life into a dice-simulated baseball game.

NOT TO MENTION...:

I get the idea of promoting a rival to a position where they find themselves in greater political peril. This happens in both democracies and military dictatorships. In juntas, sometimes military rulers will promote possible rivals to battle commands with the expectation that they will either flounder or be killed. In the United States, the Obama administration's appointment of Jon Huntsman to be U.S. ambassador to China could have been viewed as a way to neutralize a potential general election appointment.

Here we get to the flaw in the plot. Promoting a rival to put them in danger is one thing. Promoting a rival so that they control the single-most important raw material in the galaxy makes no sense whatsoever. Anyone who knows anything about the concept of weaponized interdependence knows that giving House Atreides even temporary sovereignty over Arrakis gives them control over the most important chokepoint in the galactic political economy. It is way too big a risk to take just to dispatch a possible rival. Just because the surprise attack worked does not mean it was a good idea.

There are additional problems with this strategy. If the Emperor is trying to eliminate House Atreides without getting his hands dirty, why commit crack imperial Sardaukar troops to the operation? Even if they are in disguise, the chances of them being identified -- like, say, Vladimir Putin's "little green men" -- would be pretty high, thereby getting the Emperor's hands pretty dirty.

Most importantly, a violent recapturing of Arrakis turns a troubled occupation into an even riskier enterprise. As Emily Meierding demonstrated in "The Oil Wars Myth," it is difficult for an occupying force to extract resources -- and spice harvesting on Arrakis seems way more difficult than drilling for oil in the Middle East. To paraphrase a former president, the notion that the Emperor can withdraw Harkonnen forces, then reinvade and simple "take the spice" does not hold up.

NOT TO MENTION...:

I get the idea of promoting a rival to a position where they find themselves in greater political peril. This happens in both democracies and military dictatorships. In juntas, sometimes military rulers will promote possible rivals to battle commands with the expectation that they will either flounder or be killed. In the United States, the Obama administration's appointment of Jon Huntsman to be U.S. ambassador to China could have been viewed as a way to neutralize a potential general election appointment.

Here we get to the flaw in the plot. Promoting a rival to put them in danger is one thing. Promoting a rival so that they control the single-most important raw material in the galaxy makes no sense whatsoever. Anyone who knows anything about the concept of weaponized interdependence knows that giving House Atreides even temporary sovereignty over Arrakis gives them control over the most important chokepoint in the galactic political economy. It is way too big a risk to take just to dispatch a possible rival. Just because the surprise attack worked does not mean it was a good idea.

There are additional problems with this strategy. If the Emperor is trying to eliminate House Atreides without getting his hands dirty, why commit crack imperial Sardaukar troops to the operation? Even if they are in disguise, the chances of them being identified -- like, say, Vladimir Putin's "little green men" -- would be pretty high, thereby getting the Emperor's hands pretty dirty.

Most importantly, a violent recapturing of Arrakis turns a troubled occupation into an even riskier enterprise. As Emily Meierding demonstrated in "The Oil Wars Myth," it is difficult for an occupying force to extract resources -- and spice harvesting on Arrakis seems way more difficult than drilling for oil in the Middle East. To paraphrase a former president, the notion that the Emperor can withdraw Harkonnen forces, then reinvade and simple "take the spice" does not hold up.

HAMAS-INDUCED HAVANA SYNDROME:

There has been a particular increase in cases in Israeli communities near the Gaza border, seemingly because the condition can be triggered by trauma.

...AND CHEAPER...:

Every year for the foreseeable future, Microsoft expects to build 50-100 new data centers to keep up with customer demand. That's a challenge for a company that has a goal to soon be carbon negative--meaning it sequesters more carbon that it emits--and water positive, meaning that it returns more water to the environment than it uses. Right now, even though technology keeps getting more efficient, data centers still use huge amounts of energy and water (to keep the data centers cool); globally, the industry uses an estimated 200 terawatt-hours of electricity a year, or more than some countries.

Inside the company's datacenter "advanced development" team, researchers are exploring how future data centers can change, with solutions from the understandable--hydrogen fuel cell backup power--to the far-out, like building the centers out of algae bricks "We readily say the technology we need for five and ten years out doesn't largely exist yet," says JoAnn Garbin, director of innovation for the datacenter advanced development team. "We investigate what's needed. And then we create it."

The company is shifting to 100% renewable electricity by 2025 and continuing to shrink energy use, but to eliminate its carbon footprint, it also has to rethink how datacenter buildings are built to avoid the carbon footprint of materials like concrete and steel. It's testing, for example, structural tubes made from mycelium, the strong root-like threads that grow under mushrooms. Bricks that are grown from algae can be carbon negative, because the algae stores carbon as it grows.

BIGOTRY IN FANCY DRESS:

THE GENIUS OF WITHDRAWAL:

Iran is hosting a meeting of Afghanistan's neighbors plus Russia on Wednesday to discuss the current situation in the war-ravaged country.     

The conference, organized by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, will see the foreign ministers of Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Russia holding talks in the Iranian capital Tehran on Afghanistan's political future and the formation of a new government.

YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

Hertz Global Holdings Inc., fresh off a blockbuster order for 100,000 Teslas, reached an exclusive agreement to supply Uber drivers with electric vehicles and signed up Carvana Co. to dispose of rental cars it no longer wants. 

Taken together, the deals represent a trifecta of aggressive and innovative initiatives with the potential to upend the car-rental business and hasten the transition to greener fuel sources. The car order on Monday, the largest-ever for EVs at $4.2 billion, was such as watershed moment that it propelled Tesla Inc.'s valuation past $1 trillion.

Just as surprising: The company behind it all is barely out of bankruptcy. Only 17 months ago, with the Covid-19 pandemic raging, Estero, Florida-based Hertz was so troubled and its future so uncertain that it was forced to seek protection from creditors. Now, under the control of hedge fund and private-equity owners, Hertz is leaning on mobile technology and digitization to transform a stodgy industry known for uninspiring cars and poor customer experiences.

Under the agreement with Uber Technologies Inc., drivers for the ride-hailing giant who previously had to provide and maintain their own EVs will, starting Nov. 1, be able to rent a Tesla from Hertz instead. It's an alternative to buying or leasing and, according to Hertz, will be cheaper than either.

THERE IS NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION:

It's the latest baby step toward tax reform, to which Beijing has aspired for years without much success. With one-party control and little overt political opposition, using the tax code to advance social policy wouldn't seem so difficult. But the Communist Party is sensitive to public opinion, particularly among the middle class, and taxes are as politically fraught in China as they are anywhere else. 

In 2013, China's top governmental body called for broader property taxes and moving toward an inheritance tax, according to an official notice. Months of internal debate downgraded the recommendations from guidelines to "opinions." To further weaken their impact, the State Council released them right before the country's busiest holiday. 

"All the sharp corners were smoothed out," said Jia Kang, director of the China Academy of New Supply-side Economics and the former head of the Ministry of Finance-backed Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences which was a party to the talks.

Beijing's latest move on property taxes shows how much Xi relies on the support of China's massive middle class, which in turn has gotten richer under his leadership.

WHO KNEW?:

Five years earlier, few (if any) who knew Sprague would have imagined her playing a lead role in something like this, or even standing in front of a thousand people. Back then, she struggled to walk across a room, due to debilitating chronic pain. She rarely left her family's house, except for frequent visits to doctors. But things had changed dramatically, and Sprague's gratitude toward the "spirit friends" who had taken away her pain would motivate much of the rest of her life, including her involvement in the Rutland Free Convention.

After the election of officers that morning in Rutland, the congregators took turns proposing resolutions for the convention to adopt. The second of the 11 resolutions stated, "that Slavery is a wrong which no power in the universe can make right." Taking a radical stance against slavery's institutional enablers, the resolution explained that any government or any religious body or figure that "by silence or otherwise, authorizes man to enslave man, merits the scorn and contempt of mankind."

To modern readers, Spiritualists may seem strange partners to abolitionists, women's rights advocates, and other 19th-century radicals, but Spiritualism was more than just floating tables. The movement sprang up in the United States in the 19th century and encompassed a wide range of beliefs. But unlike mainstream Christianity, it had no doctrine and no official leaders. The only thing all Spiritualists had in common was a belief that the dead could communicate with the living.

Angels and spirits were credited with acting through mediums who painted, sang, recited poetry, wrote, lectured and took daguerreotype photographs under their influence. Freedom and the shedding of chains were popular Spiritualist themes, particularly of Sprague's.

Sprague herself was a "trance medium." While standing in front of audiences of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people, she willed spirits to possess her -- and she spoke as they bid her to.

Not everyone at these events was a believer. Sprague was sometimes heckled. She was particularly vexed by a group of rowdy ladies in Middlebury, Vermont, who rapped and laughed during her lecture. But for those who listened carefully, her lectures delivered a surprisingly radical message.

By the time Sprague took the floor in Rutland, as the last speaker of the convention's first day, the sun had set. The New York Times reported that after standing with her eyes closed for five minutes, her face twitched, her legs were unsteady and her hands spasmed. Then, she spoke, addressing the crowd as if giving a sermon. Her words were later published in a book of the convention's proceedings:

"Shall any say, 'Let the captive go free, burst the gyves [shackles] from the slaves, take poverty away from the world, let every one be blest with enough and to spare, let ignorance be enlightened, in this world, before we raise the question of the immortality of the human soul?'

When man thinks God is a vengeful and wrathful deity, how can he help wishing to be revenged upon his enemies?"

Her delivery was captivating. Sprague "carried herself with entire ease and self-possession -- if that is the proper term to apply to one who is possessed by a spirit," reported The Burlington Free Press, describing another of Sprague's trance lectures. "At first, her eyes were closed, but after a while her eyes opened and her appearance was in no wise different from that of a good looking woman delivering with much action and some feeling, a lecture," the Free Press wrote. "Her discourse was remarkable for its steady flow of words, which rolled out without a moment's hesitation."

On that evening in Rutland, the words that flowed forth from Sprague advised that if men and women were confident of their immortality, they would be inspired to act selflessly. These spiritually free people would say, "I will do my duty nobly, because I see its truth and nobleness in my own spirit."

"The soul, set free from its bondage, hears the clanking of the chains of the prisoner and of the slave with harsher discord than ever before," Sprague said, implying that the most noble souls are prison reformers and abolitionists.

BEAUTY IS OBJECTIVE:

The researchers examined models based on 43 artificial neural networks--a technology that consists of thousands or millions of interconnected nodes, similar to neurons in the brain. Each node processes data and feeds them to other nodes. Some of the models the M.I.T. team looked at were optimized for next-word prediction, including the well-known Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT-2), which has made an impression because of its ability to create humanlike text.

The researchers found that the activity of the neural network nodes was similar to brain activity in humans reading text or listening to stories. They also translated the neural networks' performance into predictions of how brains would perform--such as how long it would take them to read a certain word.

The work lays a foundation for studying higher-level brain tasks. "We view this as a sort of a template or a guideline of how one can take this entire approach of relating models to data," says Martin Schrimpf, a Ph.D. student in brain and cognitive sciences at M.I.T. and lead author of the paper.

The researchers found that the models that were best at guessing the next word were also best at predicting how a human brain would respond to the same tasks. This was especially true for processing single sentences and short paragraphs. The models were significantly worse at predicting words or human responses when it came to longer blocks of text. None of the other tasks reflected what was going on in the brain. The authors argue this is strong evidence that next-word prediction, or something like it, plays a key role in understanding language. "It tells you that, basically, something like optimizing for predictive representation may be the shared objective for both biological systems and these in silico models," Fedorenko says.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

In Cullman, Ala., Ray DeMonia was having a cardiac emergency and sought treatment at his local hospital, but he was not admitted because there was no ICU bed available. The local hospital contacted 43 other hospitals in three states, and all were filled beyond capacity. He was eventually transferred to a hospital in Mississippi about 200 miles away, but it was too late to save his life.

In Bellville, Texas, Daniel Wilkinson was diagnosed in his local emergency room with gallstone pancreatitis. He needed immediate surgery, but the hospital was not equipped to perform the procedure. His emergency room physician tried for seven hours to locate another hospital where the surgery could be performed. Finally, a bed became available at the VA hospital in Houston, but by the time he was airlifted to the hospital, it was too late to perform the surgery and he died.

In Alaska, as well as other states with high levels of Covid-19 cases, "crisis standards of care" have been implemented to allocate scarce resources in a state where vast distances between hospitals often makes it infeasible to transfer patients in a medical emergency. Medical staff members were forced to decide which patients got life-saving dialysis, the use of a ventilator or an ICU bed.

The pandemic has killed over 700,000 Americans, but it has indirectly killed many more -- all the people with treatable health emergencies who were

SEEMED SUSTAINABLE...:

IT'S A GEOCENTRIC UNIVERSE:

A radio signal detected by an Australian telescope in 2019, which seemed to be coming from the star closest to the Sun, was not from aliens, researchers report today in two papers in Nature Astronomy.

"It is human-made radio interference from some technology, probably on the surface of the Earth," says Sofia Sheikh, an astronomer at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and a co-author of both papers.

PITY THE POOR FLATLANDERS:

The report, released by Wallethub Tuesday morning, ranks the Granite State fourth in personal safety, tenth in road safety, and number one in financial safety. The data analysis company used metrics including:

-- Fewest assaults per capita (#2)

-- Fewest deaths per miles driven (#5)

-- Fewest workplace fatalities per capita (#1)

-- Lowest unemployment (tied for #1)

Not that New Hampshire has a perfect record. The state ranks among the worst for bullying of school kids (#46), and while its tenth-place ranking for the percentage of the population that's fully vaccinated is high, it's the lowest in New England.

A key reason for the state's high ranking, Wallethub analyst Jill Gonzalez tells NHJournal, is its strong economic performance.

"New Hampshire topped the other states in financial safety. Its unemployment rate is just 2.9 percent, it has the lowest poverty rate in the country, 7.6 percent, and the lowest share of unbanked households, less than 1 percent. More than 73 percent of the state's households have an emergency fund, and it registered one of the lowest numbers of personal bankruptcy filings per capita," Gonzales said.

THE rIGHT IS FRENCH:

Zemmour doesn't share the Donald's obsessions with real estate or China. What he does have is a sense of declinism: "Things were better before" is a familiar refrain. Then there's his scapegoating and simplism: If only there were no immigrants and industrial jobs back onshore, the economy would prosper. His choice of language -- "rapists, assassins" -- to describe immigrants evokes Trump, too. [...]

And although Zemmour isn't a promoter of QAnon or anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, he walks a similarly paranoid path. He is a fan of the racist "Great Replacement" theory, made notorious by white supremacists in Charlottesville in 2017. The fact that he is of Algerian-Jewish origin makes his open courting of anti-Semites all the more cold and calculating. He's gone to great lengths to whitewash the Vichy regime and cast doubt on the Dreyfus Affair.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

Russia reported a record high number of coronavirus deaths Tuesday as Europe's hardest-hit country braces for nationwide restrictions this week.

Russia has repeatedly set new all-time highs for Covid-19 deaths over the past month and is currently reporting the second-highest number of daily fatalities in the world after the U.S.

PRESENT AND ACCOUNTED FOR:

[The "New-York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, and Protecting Such of Them as Have Been, or May Be Liberated," better known as the New York Manumission Society] encouraged members and all others to manumit persons held in bondage. Society officers believed that "the good Example set by others, of more Enlarged and liberal Principles, and the face of true Religion, will, in time, dispel the mist which Prejudice, self Interest and long habit have raised...."--an awkward sentiment, given that Jay and many other members owned slaves. 

Many slaves confiscated from Loyalist owners during the Revolution and held by the state government had been sold back into bondage. The Society demanded and got an amendment stipulating that all remaining slaves still held by the New York government be freed. And the Society's efforts to find and unshackle freed Blacks who had been kidnapped and sold south led in 1788 to a ban on exporting bondsmen and -women for sale to buyers in slave states, infuriating slaveholders. 

On September 26, 1789, the Senate unanimously confirmed John Jay as the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. To avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, Jay resigned the Manumission Society presidency, but informally continued his abolition work.  

In New York, a proslavery legislative backlash arose. When Society member Matthew Clarkson introduced a gradual emancipation bill in 1790, that piece of legislation stalled, as did kindred efforts to strangle the slave trade. In 1792, the backlash broadened. That year Jay did as many Federalists suggested and challenged four-time governor George Clinton at the polls. Jay seemed poised to win until opponents played the abolitionist card. Jay would not renege on his principles. "Every man, of every colour and description, has a natural right to freedom," he declared. "And I shall ever acknowledge myself to be an advocate for the manumission of slaves." Clinton won a fifth term.

Events began to work in abolition's favor. America's conflict with Algerian pirates who enslaved White Americans refocused discussion: Why go to war over enslaving Whites but not Blacks? Slavery suffused the debate over ratifying the Constitution, which nowhere contains the word "slavery" but instead refers to enslaved persons, leaving inspecific the governmental role regarding abolition of slavery. 

These debates also raised the issues surrounding the end of the foreign slave trade, slated in the U.S. Constitution for 1808, and the formulation of the Three-Fifths Compromise, an equation that increased Southern states' political power by mandating that slaves be counted in the national census as three-fifths of a White person. Against this backdrop, New Yorkers debated what kind of society they wanted and worried about bondage's potentially negative economic impact. Thanks to the Manumission Society's work and a growing population of free Blacks, journalists were filling the state's periodicals with reports of Blacks integrating successfully into the majority society. Meanwhile, the Haitian Revolution, which began in 1791, was eventually to overturn French rule and emancipate Haiti's slaves, heightening concerns about slave revolts as a feature of a slaveholding society. In New York, the state's White population growth had shifted north and west, coming to be dominated by farmers and merchants who owned no slaves and were not about to support slave interests through taxes or other means.  

While Jay was in England during 1794-95 negotiating a treaty to ease tensions with the crown, New York held another gubernatorial election. Jay's friends nominated and won him the office, advocacy he may or may not have known of. Jay returned having accomplished his diplomatic mission to find himself governor-elect--and pilloried for what became known as "Jay's Treaty," an achievement that may have benefited the abolition cause by helping to "nudge New York past an obstacle to gradual abolition," according to historian David N. Gellman. Although Jay's treaty focused on issues that lingered between America and Britain after the 1783 Treaty of Paris, that document ignored the matter of compensation to colonial slaveholders for slaves said to have been "stolen" by the British during the war. Gellman argues that after the American colonies' fight for liberty from Britain, Jay and others felt loath to compensate slaveholders for enslaved persons who sought emancipation by fleeing to and fighting for the British. 

Proslavery forces continued to challenge every abolition bill floated in New York. Jay, determined to keep his 1780 promise, thought it prudent to absent himself from the public process, lest he become the focus of debate. In January 1796, state Representative James Watson, acting as Jay's proxy, introduced a gradual abolition bill. The measure stalled when slaveholders argued against citizenship rights such as suffrage for manumitted persons. Naysayers insisted the state compensate former owners for freeing their bondsmen. However, abolitionists had learned their lessons. The Manumission Society had begun making effective use of the legal system to free numerous slaves and to rescue free Blacks at risk of kidnap back into bondage. The cost to appeal the resulting court rulings was giving slaveholders pause. Emergence of governmental and charitable aid to the needy was weakening the argument that, once freed, help for indigent Blacks would create an unworkable drag on the state. 

Most importantly, abolitionists realized that they needed to find a way to work with slaveholders. A 1798 effort also stalled, mainly over remuneration, but abolitionists engineered a compromise.

On March 29, 1799, the New York legislature passed a gradual emancipation bill taking effect that July 4. Children born to enslaved mothers after Independence Day 1799 would be free but would have to serve their birth mothers' masters under indenture until age 28 for males, 25 for females. As of July 4, slaveholders would have to register children newly born to enslaved mothers, not only to record manumissions but also to document emancipation as a defense against attempted kidnap or transport south. Abandoned slave children would become wards of local jurisdictions. The bill allowed unrestricted manumission of elderly or unproductive slaves. Jay's son William wrote years later that his father felt "no measure of his administration afforded him such unfeigned pleasure" as that bill's passing and enactment.

POWER OF THE DAD:

After a violent week of fighting in school that saw 23 students arrested in three days, Southwood High School parents knew something had to change.

Some dads decided to take matters into their own hands. They formed Dads on Duty -- a group of about 40 dads who take shifts spending time at the school in Shreveport, Louisiana, greeting students in the morning and helping maintain a positive environment for learning, rather than fighting.  [...]

Now, any negative energy that enters the building has to run the gauntlet of good parenting.

"I immediately felt a form of safety," one of the students said. "We stopped fighting; people started going to class."

"You ever heard of 'a look?'" one student asked while describing a "power" they claimed all dads have.

But it's not just the firm stares and stern warnings -- it's also the dad jokes.

"They just make funny jokes like, 'Oh, hey, your shoe is untied,' but it's really not untied," a student commented.

"They hate it! They're so embarrassed by it,"LaFitte said of the students.

And it's that perfect mix of tough love and gentle ribbing that dads do so well that has helped transform this school.

"The school has just been happy -- and you can feel it," a student said.

And now the dads plan to keep going to Southwood indefinitely.

SNOWFLAKERY:

The woman, Laura Murphy, started her campaign in 2012 after her son, then a senior in Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, had night terrors after reading the book in his Advanced Placement English class.

BLEEDING THE HILLBILLIES:

As America has largely transitioned away from coal-fired power, West Virginia has thrown its weight behind it. The state is the second-largest coal producer in the country, and coal generates nearly 89% of its electricity compared to just 19% nationwide -- a steep fall from 1990, when coal powered 52% of US electricity.

But coal has become more expensive than renewables or natural gas, the prices of which have fallen rapidly, and in West Virginia, the ratepayers are footing the bill. With three of the state's major coal-fired power plants in need of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of mandatory upgrades, costs for ratepayers like Chase will continue to go up.

IT'S NOT CRT WHEN WE SAY IT:

For more than three decades, best-selling author and Hoover Institution senior fellow Shelby Steele has illuminated the psychology of race in America. But his rare ability to unmask the individual under the skin has also made him guilty of an unpardonable sin of our time: remembering that racial groups are composed of individual human beings. "The mistake everybody makes when they look at race," he once explained, "is to look at race."

The key insight running through Steele's five books, many essays, and various film projects is that race in America is never what it appears. "I have long believed that race is a mask through which other human needs manifest themselves," he asserted in his Emmy Award-winning 1990 documentary, Seven Days in Bensonhurst. "I think we often make race an issue as a way of not knowing other things about ourselves."

SIMPLE ECONOMICS:

YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

Rental car company Hertz has ordered 100,000 Teslas as part of an ambitious plan to electrify its fleet. A first tranche of Tesla's Model 3 sedans will be available to rent from Hertz in major US and European markets from early November, said the company in a press statement. The announcement comes just months after Hertz escaped bankruptcy.

TREASON IS AS TREASON DOES:

YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

Tesla Inc.'s Model 3 was the top-selling vehicle in Europe last month, the first time an electric car has outsold rival models with gasoline engines.

...AND CHEAPER...:

A recent study by the non-partisan Pacific Research Institute (PRI) provides compelling evidence that competition in power markets has been a boon for consumers. Using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), PRI's researchers found that wholesale electricity prices in competitive markets have been generally declining or flat over the last five years. For example, compared to 2015, wholesale power prices in New England have dropped more than 44 percent, those in most Mid-Atlantic States have fallen nearly 42 percent, and in New York City they've declined by nearly 45 percent. Wholesale power costs have also declined in monopoly states, but at a considerably slower rate.

As for end-users, states that have competitive retail electricity markets have seen smaller price increases compared with monopoly states. Again, using EIA data, PRI found that in 14 competitive jurisdictions, retail prices essentially remained flat between 2008 and 2020. By contrast, retail prices jumped an average of 21 percent in monopoly states.  The ten states with the largest retail price increases were all monopoly-based frameworks. A 2017 report from the Retail Energy Supply Association found customers in states that still have monopoly utilities saw their average energy prices increase nearly 19 percent from 2008 to 2017 while prices fell 7 percent in competitive markets over the same period.

The PRI study also observed that competition has improved grid reliability, the recent power disruptions in California and Texas notwithstanding. Looking at two common measures of grid resiliency, PRI's analysis found that power interruptions were 10.4 percent lower in competitive states while the duration of outages was 6.5 percent lower.

Citing data from the EIA between 2008 and 2018, PRI reports that greenhouse gas emissions in competitive states declined on average 12.1 percent compared to 7.3 percent in monopoly states. This result is not surprising.  In a competitive wholesale market, independent power producers have an incentive to seek out lower-cost options, including subsidized renewables like wind and solar.

IT'S A DEFLATIONARY EPOCH:

3D-printed cement houses are about to take off, offering a cheaper, more efficient way to provide homes for those who need them -- as long as they can be built in ways that don't worsen climate change.

Why it matters: Developers of 3D-printed homes think they can take on multiple challenges: the affordable housing crisis, the shortage of skilled labor and rising material costs.

At least one is also adapting its technology to mass-produce homes without releasing too much carbon into the atmosphere.

A DESERT TEXT:

Originally published in 1978, the Hebrew translation of Dune--now in its 22nd printing (far more than any other Hebrew translation of a modern science fiction book)--is widely hailed by Israeli fans for its rich use of the Hebrew language, which reflects the vibrant mosaic of linguistic, cultural, and scientific elements in Herbert's original novel. Some Israeli fans even consider Lottem's translation superior to the original--an assessment that Lottem feels uncomfortable with when I ask him. The richness of his translation, he explains, comes from a simple principle that has always guided him.

"My method has always been to use a Hebrew term when such a term exists as a parallel to a term from a foreign language." As an example, he points to the term זחליל חולות (Zahlil Holot) which he used as a translation for the name of a mining vehicle in Dune, the Sandcrawler. While the translation is literal, the word Zahlil is uncommon in spoken Hebrew (it is used in Hebrew military terminology, in reference to tanks). "My guiding principle was to find Hebrew words that would make the text flow naturally. Herbert did not invent most of his terms; he borrowed them from different sources. I also did not need to invent many new terms for Dune." [...]

After making sure he got the job, Lottem was quick to share the news with colleagues, some of whom were also science fiction fans and volunteered to help. Notably, David Matnai, an expert in classic Arabic who went on to become one of Israel's leading diplomats, helped Lottem with the different Arabic terms--a major help as it turned out, since Herbert's own Arabic was not well developed. As Lottem recalls, Matnai remarked that "Herbert must have picked up most of his Arabic during a two-week vacation in Morocco."

One example of this problem occurred early in the book, when Paul Atreides passes the deadly Gom Jabbar test, which causes horrific pain to assess a subject's humanity, and the Reverend Mother who tests him calls "Kull Wahad!" in excitement. As Lottem explains, Hebrew readers, even if they don't know Arabic, will immediately recognize the meaning of the term as simply "each one," so he replaced it with the more proper Arabic enthusiastic exclamation, "Ajayeb."

In other places, deeper meanings of terms in the book sent Lottem to search for parallels in biblical sources. This is how the name of planet Arrakis' mighty sandworms was not simply translated as תולעי חול, or worms, but rather given the biblical name עקלתונים (Akalatonim) instead. "The English word 'worm' has deeper meanings--one of them is a reference to dragons," Lottem explains. "The Hebrew word for worm, תולעת, (tola'at) has no such connotations. But the Hebrew language is not particularly rich with names for mythical beasts. One such name comes from the book of Isaiah: לויתן, נחש עקלתון (Leviathan, the coiling serpent). It seemed appropriate, since the word Akalaton has wormlike connotations in Hebrew."

Another term with deep roots in Hebrew sources was used by Herbert himself in his novel: The title Kwisatz Haderach, referring to Atreides' status as the bringer of the next step in human evolution, actually comes from Talmudic term קפיצת הדרך (Kfitzat Haderech), referring to a quick miraculous passage from one place to another. How did a Hebrew term find its way into the mix of Islam and Zen Buddhism in Herbert's novel? According to Lottem, "Herbert did extensive research as a preparation for writing the book, and he needed a term that symbolizes the ability to be in several places at once--which is not 100% similar to the meaning of the Hebrew term, but is close enough."

Other elements bring Herbert's novel closer to the world of the Hebrew reader, notably the idea of a charismatic leader leading his followers in a jihad against the planet rulers--which I thought was an odd point of identification for Israelis in particular. Lottem does not see it this way: "I do not think of the book in terms of identification, but in terms of a story that's masterfully told." He also rejects comparisons between the book and current Middle Eastern politics: "The jihad Paul leads is different from what we currently think of as jihad. It is closer to the original meaning of the term--a conquest, yes, but one aimed at converting, rather than punishing the infidels." Lottem also points to the fact that Paul is very reluctant about leading any sort of jihad: "Paul rides the wave--he is not the wave itself. He appears to lead it, but he is actually carried by it. He sees how, under the existing conditions, the pressure on the Fremen (Dune's native people) is going to lead to an explosion; he attempts to control the explosion and fails. But one can certainly identify with a man who attempts to struggle not just against his own destiny but also against the fate of the people who adopted him, and fails."

ABRAHAM ACCORDION:

I watch him rushing to embrace the worst rhetoric of Maurice Barrès and Charles Maurras as if he wanted to smash the synagogues on the martyred pediment of Notre-Dame. I see him trampling on everything in the French Jewish legacy that pertains to responsibility for others, or the noble effort to embrace strangers, love thy neighbor, and offer hospitality toward migrants.

In this transgression there is something that chills the blood.

I said as much five years ago to American Jews tempted by Trumpism: To make a pact with that, to follow a bad shepherd who respects only power, money, and the tinsel of his own palaces, could be likened to suicide. Now French Jews are facing the same choice.

And I say it again today to French Jews tempted to identify with the sinister simplifications of Éric Zemmour, who, they believe, will take their side against those who attack schools and synagogues, and who see the failure of the state to deliver justice in the case of Sarah Halimi and others as a threat--not unreasonably--to their own lives: The enemy of your enemy can be your enemy, too. His nationalistic and racist hubris; his cruelty; his renunciation of Jewish generosity, vulnerability, humanism, and sense of otherness; his ignorance of the real knowledge, written in blood in family memories, that argues for wariness in the face of history's whirlwinds and its acid jets of persecution--these are an insult to the Jewish name that all Jews carry within them, unless and until they explicitly throw it overboard.

Mr. Zemmour is certainly not the first person to create the impression that one can be both a Jew and a populist extremist. And fortunately, there will always be Jews assertive enough to object that Paul Claudel himself would not have wanted anyone to have to choose between Claudel and the Talmud. But this is not a contest of ideas or aesthetics in which we welcome the widest variety of challengers in order to sharpen and strengthen our own views. It is a contest for raw political power, which in turn will directly affect the fate of Jews living in France and beyond.

The size and force of the wave that Zemmour is riding should not be underestimated. The idea that in the pursuit of power he will desecrate his own name and the name of our people--and in so doing, become the instrument of forces against which Jewish hopefulness has fought for millennia--is unbearably obscene.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Sunday that he is looking to enact legislation that will provide a $5,000 bonus to police officers to relocate to Florida, where they can avoid vaccine mandates. 

THE GND IS TOO CAUTIOUS:

Solar power has again delivered more than 100 per cent of local demand in South Australia, in what is expected to become an increasingly regular occurrence.

IT DID NOT COST ENOUGH:

"Thus did Robert E. Lee," writes Guelzo, "irrevocably, finally, publicly [turn] his back on his service, his flag, and ultimately, his country. All of this was done for the sake of the preservation of a political regime whose acknowledged purpose was the preservation of a system of chattel slavery that he knew to be an evil and for which he felt little affection and whose constitutional basis he dismissed as a fiction.... It would, in the end, cost him nearly everything ...."

Guelzo's reconstruction of Lee's turn to treason is meticulous, comprehensive, and fair, a master class in historiography. Lee's present-day detractors will likely think it's beside the point, at least for their purpose, which is to place Lee beyond the pale on the basis of his racial views alone. Lee is often described as a traitor today, even among the left, but never as the primary charge in the indictment; his betrayal usually is featured almost as an afterthought, the cherry on top of his inequity, like condemning Charles Manson for his terrible table manners. In the catalogue of evils nowadays, treason, all by itself, ranks pretty low. The Richmond crowd cheering the removal of the Lee statue probably couldn't work up much righteous anger against Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden.

The relative indifference to treason is a symptom of our intelligentsia's weakening devotion to the nation state. "In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of globalism," Guelzo writes, "the notion of treason has acquired an antique feel." This is a weakening indeed. As Guelzo notes, for all its faults, the nation-state works (imperfectly) as a stay against ethnic, dynastic, and religious mischief of the kind that put Europe in a state of perpetual warfare until the 18th century. "To wave away treason as a crime is to put in jeopardy many of the benefits the nation-state has conferred in the last three centuries."

Guelzo's judgment of Lee, balanced as it is, should discomfit conservatives no less than liberals, especially anyone on the right willing to gloss over Lee's crime against our country in favor of his undoubted martial virtues or some magnolia-fragranced image of agrarian heroism. 

THE CONSUMERS ARE THOSE MOST LIKELY TO HAVE PARASITES:

Before the pandemic, Taj Pharmaceuticals Ltd. shipped negligible amounts of ivermectin to Russia for veterinary use. But over the past year it's become a popular product for the Indian generic drug maker: Since July 2020, Taj Pharma has sold $5 million worth of the pills for human use in India and overseas. That's a bonanza for a small family-owned company with an annual revenue of about $66 million.

Sales of the drug, which is primarily approved to treat diseases caused by parasites in livestock and humans, have surged around the world as anti-vaccine propagandists and others tout it as a Covid-19 cure. They claim it could end the pandemic if only people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, would open their eyes to it. "We are working 24/7," says Shantanu Kumar Singh, Taj Pharma's 30-year-old executive director. "The demand is huge."

STRUCTURE:

The Justice Department will prioritize redlining investigations with Attorney General Merrick Garland pledging the crackdown on discriminatory lending would be unprecedented in its aggressiveness. [...]

In a sign of the renewed focus, the department brought an enforcement action Friday against a unit of Trustmark Corp., alleging the subsidiary structured its business practices to avoid providing home loans and other mortgage services to people living in majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Memphis area. 

From 2014 through 2018, the unit's alleged redlining practices included having nearly all its branches and loan officers in majority-white neighborhoods, according to the government's lawsuit filed in federal court in Tennessee. Without admitting or denying the allegations, Jackson, Mississippi-based Trustmark agreed to pay $5 million in penalties to the CFPB and OCC. The lender, which has $17 billion of assets, will also make several changes to its lending program.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

[O]n Thursday, DeSantis called for a special session of the state legislature, which will cost Florida taxpayers $1 million, to oppose the federal mandate and punish businesses with vaccine mandates, recommending they be held liable if a worker has an "adverse reaction." He also said these businesses will no longer qualify for COVID-19 liability protection. One might think that "death" is the worst "adverse reaction" to a pandemic that has killed more than 700,000 Americans, but GOP leaders won't let the Grim Reaper deter their endless culture war to rally their radicalized base and take back political power in 2022.

DeSantis tweeted that "no one should lose their job over a COVID shot," but he seems less concerned with Floridians losing their lives over COVID. His state had more deaths than any other during the Delta variant spike this summer, and altogether over 58,000 people in his state have died so far from the virus. Unfortunately, it seems DeSantis, who is allegedly "pro-life," cares more about his political future, softball interviews on Fox News, and the supposed rights of selfish and reckless pro-death GOP voters to spread the virus and kill the elderly and immunocompromised before Christmas.

ENDING ENERGY DEPENDENCE:

Western Australia is calling for proposals to help develop the state's first "disconnected microgrids" - isolated, self-supported networks powering small towns that operate independently from the rest of the grid, and comprise at least 90% renewables.

The idea is to take whole towns off the grid - saving money from having to upgrade ageing poles and wires that are vulnerable to winds, storms and bushfires.

It is part of Western Power's long mooted "modular grid" and is effectively the end of the old hub and spoke model built around large centralised generation that dominated Australia's power system for decades.

It has already been estimated that tens of thousands of remote and regional customers - individuals and communities - could be served with cheaper, cleaner and more reliable power by having renewables-based micro-grids, rather than relying on power sent from centralised generators hundreds of kilometres away.

CAN'T HAVE A CLASH OF CULTURES WHEN THERE IS ONLY ONE:

IT'S A RICO CASE:

THAT'LL DO:

The Biden administration said Friday that the 2021 deficit, for the budget year that ended Sept. 30 was $360 billion lower than 2020 as a recovering economy boosted revenues, helping to offset government spending from pandemic relief efforts.

THEY HAVE TO BE LUCKY EVERY DAY...:

"A US airstrike today in northwest Syria killed senior al-Qaeda leader Abdul Hamid al-Matar," said Central Command spokesman Army Major John Rigsbee in a statement.

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

SURE, AND THE NAZIS DIDN'T BOMB PEARL HARBOR...:

Earlier this week, a horrifying story about a woman's rape on Philadelphia public transit went viral. Police said that the woman's assault was witnessed by passengers who filmed the attack instead of intervening or calling the police. "I'm appalled by those who did nothing to help this woman," said Timothy Bernhardt, the superintendent of the Upper Darby Township Police Department. The story ran everywhere CNN to the New York Times to Fox News. There's just one problem. There's no evidence that's what happened.

"That is simply not true -- it did not happen," said District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer of Delaware County. Stollsteimer says security footage doesn't back up the police narrative of "calloused" passengers declining to get involved in a woman's attack. Instead, footage shows that while a "handful" of passengers may have been on the car at the time of the assault, it's not clear they were aware of what was happening. Two passengers may have took footage, one of whom then "probably" called the police.

"This is the El, guys. We've all ridden it," Stollsteimer said. "People get off and on at every single stop. That doesn't mean when they get on and they see people interacting that they know a rape is occurring." [...]

The story bears striking similarity to the infamous 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese. At the time, the New York Times reported that at least 38 people witnessed Genovese's murder in a parking lot outside her apartment complex, but none bothered to intervene. The incident gave rise to what's known as "Genovese syndrome" or the Bystander Effect -- the idea that most people can't be counted on to help others in duress.

But the Genovese story also turned out to be untrue. It's not clear exactly how many people witnessed Genovese's attack but it was far fewer than originally reported, and at least a few of them called the police. And instead of being calloused, bystanders were horrified. One elderly woman went into the street and cradled Genovese in her arms while she died.

The Times retracted its story in 2016, saying it had "grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived." But, like the story in Philadelphia, the lie had already sunk so deeply into the public consciousness that there is little the truth could do to displace it.

THE RIGHT IS THE LEFT:

"Countercultural challenges to orthodoxy take different forms at different times," wrote Irving Kristol in 1994, "but a common substratum of attitudes and belief is discernible." Counterculturalists feel alienated from their societies. They are estranged from, suspicious of, and antagonistic toward the ideals of their civilization. They experience outrage and indignation at the institutions that perpetuate corrupt values and social injustice. They fixate on sex--how it is regulated, who defines normality and abnormality, where children are raised and schooled. They succumb to enthusiasm and fanaticism, to crankery and conspiracy. "When in the grip of a countercultural passion," Kristol explained, "one can easily lose or repress the ability to distinguish the nutty from the sensible." [...]

Suddenly, the modified orthodoxy of liberal, "Bobo" democracy--what's come to be known in some quarters as "neoliberalism"--faced a countercultural challenge of its own. Liberal principles of free markets, internationalism, democratic government, individual rights, and the rule of law trembled under pressure. What made this latest countercultural rebellion unique was its pincer attack. There used to be one counterculture. Now there are two.

The left counterculture--what critic Wesley Yang calls the "successor ideology"--sees the United States as fundamentally corrupt and irredeemable, a zone of grotesque violence against racial and sexual minorities, a systemically racist polity desperately in need of censorship, reeducation, and massive government intervention to rectify centuries of brutality and oppression. The left counterculture's alienation from mainstream society is expressed in its polemics and jeremiads. Its indignation was manifest in the riots over the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. Its revisionist attitude toward sexual codes is evident in the Black Lives Matter platform's (now revised) call to "disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure," and in the centrality of transgenderism to its worldview. The left counterculture proves time and again George Orwell's dictum that there are some ideas so foolish that only intellectuals will believe them.

The right counterculture, meanwhile, sees America as on the verge of collapse, on the brink of secession and civil war, a frightening place ruled by a bureaucratic-woke-medical-corporate "regime" not unlike the former Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. The alienation of the right counterculture from modern America is apparent whenever its spokesmen demean and defame their fellow countrymen, say their country is lost or not worth saving, and look to foreign strongmen for guidance and succor. "Indignation" cannot begin to describe the right counterculture's outrage at the direction of society, at the limits and frustrations of politics, at the bewildering tempo and fevered temper of current events. This rage at modernity, along with corrupt leadership and social media conspiracy theories, produced the riot in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The right counterculture's uneasy conscience over the events of that day is visible in its attempts at historical revisionism and blame-shifting. It too is focused on the family, peppering its discourse with references to the baby bust, lack of male marriage prospects, and threats to childhood innocence and traditional religious values.

THE POINT OF AN ECONOMY IS TO GENERATE WEALTH:

The growing rift between business and a Trumpified GOP marinating in grievance and paranoia should be opening doors for Democrats. But they've got a business problem of their own, namely the high media profile of leftwing activists who are reflexively hostile to our largest and most successful companies.  

Listen to almost any speech by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or members of the "Squad," and it quickly becomes apparent who the villains are in their anti-capitalist morality play: billionaires and big corporations. As they tell it, these sinister forces have rigged the economic game, crushed the working class, enfeebled unions, pushed inequality to record levels and corrupted our elected representatives with campaign cash.  

As with most conspiracy theories, there are shards of truth in this dark narrative. But much is left out. The same "Big Tech" and e-commerce companies that some Democrats threaten to break up helped Americans stay connected to family and friends, keep working and learning, and shop without leaving home during the pandemic shutdowns. They also generated the most robust job growth during the COVID recession. Major drug companies, ritually flayed by politicians for high prices, also have banked good karma by coming up with highly sophisticated and effective COVID vaccines in record time. 

No one thinks America's economy is working as it should, but there's scant evidence that voters are ready to trade free markets for democratic socialism. There's a strong public appetite for building a fairer society and a more inclusive prosperity, as President Biden's Build Back Better agenda aims to do. 

But Americans also want a more dynamic private sector that generates lots of new jobs and avenues for career advancement, as well as the new private wealth that enables more generous social investment and redistribution.

WALKING BACK TREASON:

DO ANY TWO BROTHERS ON EARTH NOT FIGURE THEY INVENTED IT?:

HONORING THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS:

Forty-three countries on Thursday called on China at the UN to "ensure full respect for the rule of law" with regard to the Muslim Uighurs community in Xinjiang, where respect for human rights remains "particularly" worrying.

"We call on China to allow immediate, meaningful and unfettered access to Xinjiang for independent observers, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and her office," the countries said in a joint statement, read at the United Nations by France.

"We are particularly concerned about the situation in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region," the statement said, citing "credible" reports that "indicate the existence of a large network of 'political reeducation' camps where over a million people have been arbitrarily detained."

The declaration, signed by the United States, European countries, Asian states and other spoke of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, forced sterilization, sexual and gender-based violence and forced separation of children, which it said "disproportionately continues to target Uighurs and members of other minorities."

Israel was not among the signatories.

CHRISTOPHER WHO?:

Vikings from Greenland -- the first Europeans to arrive in the Americas -- lived in a village in Canada's Newfoundland exactly 1,000 years ago, according to research published Wednesday.

Scientists have known for many years that Vikings -- a name given to the Norse by the English they raided -- built a village at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland around the turn of the millennium. But a study published in Nature is the first to pinpoint the date of the Norse occupation.

The explorers -- up to 100 people, both women and men -- felled trees to build the village and to repair their ships, and the new study fixes a date they were there by showing they cut down at least three trees in the year 1021 -- at least 470 years before Christopher Columbus reached the Bahamas in 1492.

PSEUDO IS REDUNDANT:

The demarcation problem-- the difficulty of finding criteria that distinguish science from pseudoscience -- has a long history in the western tradition. In the Charmides, a Platonic dialogue, Socrates inquires into how we can differentiate between medicine and quackery, and concludes that it takes medical-level expertise to do so. But of course, very few people have the time and resources to become doctors, physicists, biologists, psychologists, and so forth, in order to arrive at an informed assessment of the soundness of any given claim.

Karl Popper, one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, thought he had the answer: falsificationism. He reckoned that for a statement or theory to be considered scientific it ought to be possible, in principle, to show that it is false, if in fact it is false. For instance, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity is scientific because it makes precise predictions that could potentially be falsified, by way of observation or experiment. Freudian psychoanalysis, by contrast, according to Popper, is pseudoscience because there is no conceivable human behavior that Freudians could not somehow reconcile with the vague statements of their theory.

Neat, right? A bit too neat, as it turns out. Some theories that many people consider scientific, such as the notion of parallel universes, are not falsifiable, even in principle [4]. And some pseudosciences, like homeopathy, can be -- and have been -- falsified. Yet, their proponents keep acting as if nothing happened. The current consensus among philosophers of science, therefore, seems to be that there is no straightforward answer to the demarcation problem, and that a main reason for this is that both science and pseudoscience are inherently fuzzy cluster concepts: they are defined by a cluster of criteria which however are individually neither necessary nor sufficient to include or exclude all individual instances of the concept.

PITY THE POOR PETROPHILES:

What are the particular advantages of this technology over both what we already have and the next generation of nuclear? There's been a lot in the papers lately about nuclear fusion. We've all seen this big drop in prices for solar. What is the compelling case for geothermal?

Oh my gosh. Let's start. For one, geothermal is baseload. It's 24/7. You don't need energy storage for geothermal. That is a big deal. When you talk with utilities struggling right now with increasing intermittence on the grid, and you look at where energy storage is in terms of scalability, for grid scale energy storage, having a clean baseload source of energy in the very near term is an exciting prospect. Geothermal also has a tiny footprint compared to other renewables. If you look at sources of clean energy, like solar and wind, the geothermal footprint, comparatively megawatt to megawatt, is about 1 percent of that of solar and wind. That's a big deal in a space-constrained world, particularly if you're wanting to put power plants near population centers, where there are people and you don't have a lot of land. That's another really exciting thing. Job creation: Geothermal per megawatt creates three or four times more jobs than other renewables do. I think that's a really interesting concept. And what I've really grabbed on to, and you mentioned nuclear, are next-gen nuclear concepts coming down the pike. [...]

 For geothermal to be ready for prime time -- meaning we're getting teams into the field, getting technologies demonstrated, full-scale, get oil and gas engaged and start scaling this thing -- it's a drop in a bucket comparatively in terms of what's needed for investments. About maybe a half a billion dollars worth of field deployments might get us to a place for geothermal where we could have a scalable concept ready to go, and we'd be off on another shale boom, but this time for clean energy. I think that's really an interesting thing to think about. What's it going to take to get massive scale in terms of the dollars invested? And that's where geothermal, I think, really bests nuclear. But the thing that I'm really excited about, of course, and this is what my focus is right now, is the fact that we have an existing, globally present industry with millions of highly trained individuals in the workforce that are perfectly suited to take geothermal to scale really fast.

LAUGHINGSTOCKS:

...AND CHEAPER...:

As a graduate student at Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Schedler built the Symbiopunk, a bioreactor that transforms feces into humus--the fertile, black substance in soil (not the chickpea dip). The work was done in collaboration with the composting toilet company Kildwick.

The Symbiopunk is entirely mechanical, requiring no electricity to operate. You feed solid waste into the Symbiopunk's large copper drum. (It flips upside down, and spins left to right, to make this job easy.) The waste sits in this copper for two to three days, because over this time feces will actually increase in temperature due to its active microbes. The copper offers a literal cooling-off period, and copper itself is antimicrobial, which helps sterilize the waste.

After a few days, the waste makes its way through the black tube you see at the bottom of the contraption. This is a screw feeder. By twisting the white handle, the feeder lifts the waste into the big black tank while also incorporating mycelium (the base organism of a mushroom) into the mix.

Then, after a couple of weeks, mushrooms sprout, purifying and breaking down the waste into humus. Human waste becomes organic fertilizer, which you can then incorporate into a garden or farm.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER:

The infamous former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke is taking credit for having blazed a trail for two major political voices of the right -- former President Donald Trump on the one hand, and Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson on the other -- saying that they are following in his own footsteps in promoting the idea that white people are under threat of "replacement."

The "great replacement" theory posits that white people are being systematically "replaced" via mass immigration by people of color. The Guardian explained that the theory attributes this plot to "a shadowy group" planning to rule the world: "This group is often overtly identified as being Jews, but sometimes the antisemitism is more implicit."

On the October 13 edition of his podcast, Duke claimed that "Trump really knows what his movement is based upon" -- that is, from Duke's own political campaigns. "You know, [Trump] had to know that I ran my campaigns primarily on the immigration issue, on fair trade issues, on the issues of preserving American culture, on stopping the replacement of European Americans -- which people are all talking about now, years and years and years."

...AND CHEAPER...:

On some solar farms in New York state, sheep act as landscapers, grazing among the solar panels to manage vegetation. It's a way to manage industrial-scale solar arrays without the use of fossil fuel-powered equipment like lawn mowers, and it provides an opportunity for local farmers to earn money contracting out their sheep. It could also spur the creation of a business cooperative to coordinate between shepherds and solar companies.

Ramping up renewable energy means setting aside more and more land for solar arrays, and often it's agricultural land that gets transferred to solar production. To some, this expansion seems like a loss of farmland, but to others, it's a new opportunity for farmers. 

STRUCTURE FOR $1000, ALEX:

The accusations against Kelly -- now the coach at UCLA -- prompted my own statistical investigation into how race might matter in NFL roster decisions. My analysis of data collected on each player's racial background from Best Tickets' Unofficial 2014 NFL Player Census2 found that the 10 teams in 2014 who had Black people in the key leadership roles of head coach and/or general manager had significantly more Black players on their rosters than the 22 other NFL teams. No team did more to drive that year's statistically significant negative correlation3 between whiter team leadership and having fewer Black players on NFL rosters than Kelly's Eagles. In fact, the significant differences4 between the percentage of Black players on the Eagles (50.9 percent) and the rest of the NFL (68.3 percent) were beyond the statistical threshold that the courts and federal bureaucracy generally recognize as potential discrimination.

Meanwhile, the team most responsible for driving the positive correlation between African American general managers having more Black players on their rosters in 2014 was none other than the Raiders. Under the leadership of the team's African American general manager, Reggie McKenzie, the Raiders (then playing in Oakland) had a higher share of Black players on their roster (79.2 percent) than any other NFL team in 2014. According to data compiled on the racial composition of each NFL team's roster by ProFootballLogic,5 the Raiders also had the NFL's highest percentage of Black players (82.3 percent) in 2016 -- the year that McKenzie won executive of the year honors after the team's impressive 12-win showing. It's probably not a coincidence, either, that the two teams with the next highest shares of Black players, the Giants and Bills, also had African American GMs. Indeed, the five NFL teams with Black GMs in 2016 had rosters that were, on average, 75.4 percent Black, compared with 67.7 percent for the 27 teams that did not -- a statistically significant difference6 in percent of Black players that we can be confident was not simply due to random variation.   

The Raiders' racial composition was virtually identical in 2017, the year before Gruden began his second stint as the team's head coach. While there's no publicly available data on the racial composition of NFL rosters after 2016, my admittedly crude coding7 of the team's roster once again found that 82.0 percent of the Raiders' players were Black in 2017. But the number of Black players on the Raiders sharply declined soon after Gruden became the Raiders' "de facto football czar." By the end of the 2018 season, McKenzie had been fired, and Gruden assumed even more control over the Raiders' personnel decisions. That included changing the roster's racial composition: My analysis of the team's rosters found that the share of Black players on the Raiders declined from 82.0 percent in 2017 to 69.0 percent in 2019 and 67.1 percent in 2020 and 67.2 percent in 2021.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

For nearly 20 straight months, Yevgeny Ryabov has watched coronavirus patients come through the doors of his hospital in central Moscow. Lately, most are unvaccinated.

The Covid-ward coordinator observes how the virus ravages their bodies and, time after time, he hears the dying say they regret not getting the jab.

"They usually give some excuse -- that they wanted to do it tomorrow," Ryabov says. "Unfortunately, tomorrow came today."

And the sick keep coming.

On commutes home, Ryabov witnesses Russia's largest city and the epicentre of the country's outbreak act as if there is nothing to fear, with bars, restaurants and theatres open as usual.

"You drive and see people without masks, people having fun -- both old and young -- and it's upsetting because you're working for them. Unfortunately they don't understand," he says.

"In those cases I want to scream," adds the 54-year-old, who lost five colleagues to the virus before a vaccine became available.

While the pandemic is receding in many Western countries, Russia's outbreak is worse than ever, with authorities saying the latest surge of the virus has spread at its most rapid pace yet among a population that is only 35-percent fully vaccinated.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

A New York prosecutor has opened up a previously unreported criminal probe of Trump Organization finances, NPR has confirmed.

The investigation by Westchester District Attorney Miriam E. "Mimi" Rocah is examining property valuations at Trump National Golf Club Westchester, north of New York City. A source with knowledge of the investigation has confirmed that the town that collects local taxes from the course, Ossining, has received a subpoena from Rocah's office for documents.

IF ONLY THERE WERE A THEORY OF HOW RACE IMPACTS LAW...:

The NFL and lawyers for thousands of retired NFL players have reached an agreement to end race-based adjustments in dementia testing in the $1 billion settlement of concussion claims, according to a proposed deal filed Wednesday in federal court.

The revised testing plan follows public outrage over the use of "race-norming," a practice that came to light only after two former NFL players filed a civil rights lawsuit over it in 2019. The adjustments, critics say, may have prevented hundreds of Black players suffering from dementia to win awards that average $500,000 or more.

The Black retirees will now have the chance to have their tests rescored or, in some cases, seek a new round of cognitive testing, according to the settlement, details of which were first reported in The New York Times on Wednesday.

EVEN THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS NEED A SYMBOL:

[O]ver the past few years, the Punisher logo has become a symbol of military power and deterrence among many U.S. army personnel. It has also become appropriated by American far-right and white supremacist movements, and was visible among some of the people who took part in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The use of this emblem among Israel's security forces recently gained attention after it was worn by a soldier who attacked Palestinian and Israeli activists at a protest in the South Hebron Hills; the emblem was also spotted on a helmet inside a military vehicle at the same incident. During the violent weeks of May, the symbol was also seen on the vest of an Israeli police officer dressed in civilian clothing in Jaffa.

In August, security guards and residents of Kibbutz Nir David in northern Israel were photographed wearing the Punisher logo alongside the kibbutz's emblem, as they confronted activists who are fighting for public access to a river under the kibbutz's control. In another incident that month, an Israeli soldier was seen wearing the logo while the army demolished agricultural terraces and uprooted trees and a vineyard in the Palestinian village of Khalat al-Furn near Hebron.

"The Punisher symbol is part of the frightening image that we [Israelis] are trying to create, of how we want to be seen in the eyes of the person standing before us" says Uri Givati, an Israeli activist with the anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence, who has researched the symbol's prevalence in Israel. "When we wear the skull on our uniforms, we are sending a clear message: we are not here to protect -- we are here to attack, to frighten."

Although the Israeli army does not officially permit the displaying of the Punisher symbol on its uniforms (it has a specific list of authorized symbols that can be worn), the logo has become a common sight in its combat units.

In its Israeli incarnation, the skull often appears next to or intertwined with the Israeli flag, a combination that can be bought in a variety of online stores in Israel and abroad. Deutsch Tactic, an Israeli store in Haifa that specializes in tactical gear, even offers a free patch to anyone who purchases a shirt from them. According to the store, only a few IDF units actually prohibit the Punisher patch from being worn, and its use is widely accepted in practice.

...AND CHEAPER...:

Scientists temporarily attached a pig's kidney to a human body and watched it begin to work, a small step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants.

SIMPLE ECONOMICS:

Its new analysis of the 835 operational gas power plants in Europe with a total nameplate capacity of 189GW, and 2,200 plants in the United States with a nameplate capacity of 513GW, Carbon Tracker estimated that  that 43GW worth of European plants and 159GW of US plants are loss making.

Worse, it said most gas plants currently planned or under construction will never recover their investment - a fate that awaits, most Australian energy analysts agree, new gas projects in Australia such as Snowy Hydro's government funded Kurri Kurri gas generator in the Hunter Valley.

Carbon Tracker said that more than $US24 billion is at risk in the United States and nearly $US3.5 billion in the UK is at risk, even if such new or planned gas plants run for their full planned lifetime.

HOW WE GET RID OF SOCIAL SECURITY::

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is offering progressives a trade: He'll vote for their cherished social programs if they accept strict income caps for the recipients, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.

Why it matters: Manchin's plan to use so-called means-testing for everything from paid family medical leave to elder and disabled care would drastically shrink the size and scope of the programs. It also would bring a key moderate vote to the progressive cause.

Widespread means-testing has the potential to slash the overall price tag for President Biden's Build Back Better agenda to the $1.5 trillion range -- the most Manchin says he'll support.

DEFUND:

The appropriations bill, released Monday by Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), allocates just $14.5 billion to CBP for the 2022 fiscal year, down from $15 billion the year before and $80 million less than what President Joe Biden requested in his budget. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would receive $7.9 billion, a cut of $40 million from the previous year and $58 million less than what Biden asked for.

DONALD WHO?:

Despite Trump's pleas and being called out in public, Abbott never put the audit bill on the call, stressing that his own efforts through the Secretary of State's office would be sufficient.

Even so, both bills passed quickly in the Senate in early October, but neither received a committee hearing in the House. The legislative session ends Tuesday.

"It's clear the president was driving the narrative on much of this," said Brandon Rottinghaus, political science professor at the University of Houston, adding that the failure of these bills "does show you the limitation of Donald Trump on these voting issues."

WITH THE BARK ON:

In his nearly five years in the corner office, Sununu has never clashed with fellow Republicans the way he has now. COVID policy has become the major point of friction between Sununu, who likes to sell his brand of Republicanism as data-driven, and veteran GOP officials, who Sununu spent much of the past few weeks deriding as delusional.

"They don't understand, and they are getting all emotional, and listening to social media nonsense and repeating it as elected officials, so that was incredibly frustrating and I had to shut it down hard," Sununu said on WGIR radio last week, dismissing fellow Republicans on the Executive Council as inhabiting "bizarro world."

...AND CHEAPER...:

Harnessing wind power could soon become a breeze. Today, most of our wind power comes from large-scale wind farms set upon rolling hills and windswept coastlines. Floating wind farms are also cropping up in deeper waters, where the winds are stronger. But what if we could build wind turbines in our cities, right here in our own backyards? Not the tall and bulky poles with the huge spinning blades, but a new kind of wind turbine--one that could hide in plain sight and easily be mistaken for a wall?

American designer and entrepreneur Joe Doucet has created such a concept, and it looks like a kinetic art installation. His wind turbine wall consists of a grid of square panes spinning simultaneously along 25 axes. The exact size and format aren't set in stone, so variations of that wall could be used anywhere with a decent span, like on the side of a highway or the fence around a building. In other words, it could make wind farms even more pervasive--not just in the ocean but also on land.

NOW WHERE WILL THE rIGHT GET ITS "NEWS":

FBI agents are at the home of Russian energy tycoon Oleg Deripaska, the agency confirmed Tuesday.

The agents are conducting "court-authorized law enforcement activity" at Deripaska's home in Washington, D.C., an FBI spokeswoman told CNBC.

Back in 2018, I was the opinion editor for The Daily Caller. I had worked for the website for about five years as a journalist and editor. I really believed in what we were doing. I believed in what founders Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel said they were building. (More on that later.)

In early March 2018, Deripaska submitted an opinion piece to The Daily Caller. He didn't submit it directly to me or through the Caller's conventional submissions process. Presumably, villainous Russian billionaires are above such hoi polloi procedures. Instead, Daily Caller publisher Patel contacted me directly one day saying he had received Deripaska's op-ed. He wanted to know how I felt about it.

I hated it. Anyone with a passing knowledge of European politics would know who Deripaska is and what he represents. I had been in the U.S. foreign service for a bit, so, of course, I knew.

More importantly, Deripaska's op-ed itself was--and remains--an extraordinary exercise in audacious Russian propaganda.

"The ever-changing 'Russia narrative' in American politics is today's Wag the Dog scenario," Deripaska wrote (or, more likely, had ghostwritten), citing the 1997 movie about a fake war starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro.

Deripaska went on to weave a fantastic conspiracy theory which is fundamentally at odds with the findings of the United States Senate. He describes American foreign policy experts as "the 'Deep State,'" which, he claimed, is "shadow power exercised by a small number of individuals from media, business, government and the intelligence community, foisting provocative and cynically false manipulations on the public."

The Russian billionaire complained that American foreign-policy professionals have "scurrilously attacked" him "for two decades."

After several paragraphs suggesting a host of strange conspiracies fit for a late Stalin purge, Deripaska attempted to quote Abraham Lincoln and then suggested that the U.S. foreign policy establishment has "invented narratives" that "impede internationally shared efforts on the world's most pressing, real issues."

At the time, I told Patel I had deep reservations about publishing Deripaska's op-ed. I would reject it, I said. But Patel wanted to publish the piece and so, of course, that's what I did.

AND NO ONE MOVES THERE:

Evergrande's unraveling is still commanding global attention, but its troubles are part of a much bigger problem.

For weeks, the ailing Chinese real estate conglomerate has made headlines as investors wait to see what will happen to its enormous mountain of debt. As the slow-moving crisis unfolds, analysts are pointing to a deeper underlying issue: China's property market is cooling off after years of oversupply. [...]

The warning signs have been flashing for some time. Prior to Evergrande's meltdown, tens of millions of apartments were thought to be sitting empty across the country. In recent years, the problem has only gotten worse.

Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, estimates that China still has about 30 million unsold properties, which could house 80 million people. That's nearly the entire population of Germany.

ECONOMICS EVEN CHICOMS CAN UNDERSTAND:

Plunging costs of solar and battery technologies could underpin China's pivot away from coal, with new research showing that by 2060 almost half of China's electricity needs could be supplied by super cheap solar power, helping the world's largest emitter achieve its decarbonisation goals.

New research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, estimated that by 2060 more than 43 per cent of China's electricity could be supplied by solar projects.

Critically, the researchers predicted that these solar supplies could be provided at a price below US 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour - even after energy storage is accounted for - significantly undercutting China's existing supplies of coal power.

WHERE'S ARGO?:

IT DIDN'T MATTER:

"He lied, lied and lied," said Maryam, a 51-year-old Iraqi writer and mother of two in northern Iraq who spoke on condition her last name not be used because one of her children is studying in the United States.

"He lied, and we are the ones who got stuck with never-ending wars," she added.

As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell oversaw the Persian Gulf war to oust the Iraqi army in 1991 after Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

But Iraqis remember Powell more for his U.N. presentation justifying the invasion of their country more than a decade later by casting Saddam as a major global threat who possessed weapons of mass destruction, even displaying a vial of what he said could have been a biological weapon. Powell had called Iraq's claims that it had no such weapons "a web of lies." 

NO ONE WILL MISS JOBS:

The global chip shortage has slashed vehicle inventories and left dealers with few cars to sell. It has also left car salesmen and women with less to do on the dealership lot.

Dealerships laid off thousands of salespeople at the start of the pandemic. While some have been rehired, about 70,000 people who worked at new-car dealerships have been permanently let go.

For those who remain, the job has been transformed both by pandemic restrictions and an accelerated shift to online buying. [...]

"We are not going to get back to pre-pandemic employment levels," Mr. Cannon said. "Why would you immediately rebuild staff if you're running more efficiently?"

SHABBOS GOY MADE GOOD:

Melvin Klein's family had Powell over every week to watch Milton Berle and Molly Goldberg on one of the first televisions in the neighborhood. Powell's sister's "closest" chums were the Teitelbaum sisters. He earned a quarter every Shabbat to turn off the lights at an Orthodox synagogue. And Jay Sickser, the Jewish owner of Sickser's -- "Everything For The Baby" store -- gave Powell a job when he was 14. (Powell's father also worked at Jewish businesses, including Ginsburg's in the garment district, where he rose to become foreman of the shipping department.)

The future general worked at Sickser's until he was a sophomore year in college, and learned a considerable amount of Yiddish there, which he enjoyed sprinkling into his conversations with Jews and even the prime minister of Israel. "Men kent reden Yiddish" he told an astounded Yitzhak Shamir, then Israeli prime minister, ahead of the first Gulf War in 1991. "We can speak Yiddish." [...]

"Let me put to rest this rumor as to whether or not I speak Yiddish," Powell said in a speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington in 1991. "I really do not speak Yiddish, maybe a bissel (a little), who knows?"

It was more than a bissel." In "My American Journey," Powell -- called "Collie" by Sickser -- relates that he had picked up enough Yiddish so that when couples were speaking to each other on the store's second floor about how much they might be willing to spend on a stroller or crib, he understood. But he didn't always let on.

"This shwarz klabe what did he understand?" Powell wrote, using the Yiddish phrase for "black boy," a term now considered pejorative."I'd excuse myself and report to Mr. S., who would come up, armed with my intelligence, and close the deal."

In 1992, Powell recalled, at a Hanukkah dinner at Yeshiva University, that Sickser's would give him a "gezunten keppel", a blessing head, and mimed a slap.

"To keep me straight," Powell explained.

THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said Monday that far-right members of Knesset are the "ideological heirs" of Yitzhak Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir, using a special parliamentary session in memory of the former premier to swipe at political rivals.

"Yigal Amir's ideological heirs are today serving in Israel's Knesset. Had we not performed the miracle of the 'change government,' they would be ministers in the government," Lapid said, as Bezalel Smotrich, who heads the far-right Religious Zionism party, was escorted out of the plenum by security guards, shouting "You're an anti-Zionist."

ONCE WAS A REPUBLICAN PARTY:

I know this will be everywhere today but I want it here. When we played it earlier, I got a choked up.
I remember watching the Sunday it aired. It was one of the most important things I'd ever heard an American leader say. I remember the relief I felt that someone finally said it pic.twitter.com/P3rEXrmsry

— It's Me, Margaret (@MargaretMenefee) October 18, 2021

EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD TRY POLITICS:

LOCKDOWN WORKED:

U.S. household balance sheets are in their best shape in years, giving Americans greater capacity to propel consumer spending and, in some cases, to make life-altering decisions.

Across a number of measures, consumers are flush. Their debt-servicing costs have tumbled as a share of after-tax income and swelling wealth has made their liabilities shrink in relative terms. Economic growth has outpaced total household debt.  

"From a credit perspective, the consumer is the best we've seen in decades," said Matthew Mish, a credit strategist at UBS Group AG.

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has vowed to end all subsidies for renewable energy and tear down all France's wind turbines, if she is elected the country's next President.

The far-right National Front, recently renamed the National Rally, or Rassemblement National, is better known outside of France for its anti-immigration stance, and is led by Marine Le Pen, the daughter of one of the party's founders, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

In comments on French commercial radio network RTL last week, Le Pen declared: "Wind and solar, these energies are not renewable, they are intermittent. If I am elected, I will put a stop to all construction of new wind parks and I will launch a big project to dismantle them," according to Reuters.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

Instead of including county deaths in its weekly reports, the state directed the public to find that information via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But the CDC relied on Florida's online portal of COVID data -- which the state also took down in June. The CDC's tally of deaths for Florida went blank.

The number of people dying in each Florida county went missing from June 4 through Sept. 17. Miscommunication has plagued the relationship between the state and federal agency since the start of the pandemic.

Now that data is available, and it shows how many people died in Tampa Bay as the delta variant tore through the state:

A total of 4,437 residents in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Manatee, Polk, Hernando and Citrus counties died over four months. That's an average of 36 Tampa Bay residents dying each day from COVID-related complications from June 5 to Oct. 7, according to the latest data.

The data reveals how deadly the latest COVID wave has been in two of the region's smallest, most rural counties: Citrus and Hernando rank third and fourth in deaths per 100,000 residents since June 5.

nATIONALISM ISN'T WORKING:

China's GDP grew  4.9% in the third quarter, the slowest pace in a year, as the country continues to grapple with a series of black swan events ranging from power shortages to a liquidity crunch amongst property developers.

Year-on-year GDP growth for July to September was the slowest since the third quarter last year, when China's economy also expanded by 4.9%. It is worse than a 5.2% rate forecast by analysts polled by Reuters, and below the 18.3% and 7.9% growth in the first and second quarter, pointing to a continued decline. 

NO ATHEISTS IN FOXHOLES:

Behind an arched stone facade in Heidelberg, Germany, Natalie Grams spent years welcoming patients into bright rooms with plastered white walls and hardwood floors. As a homeopathic physician, she listened to their concerns and prescribed tinctures, ointments, and little white pills for their ailments. People trusted her, and Grams was certain that these nontraditional treatments (echinacea for colds; arnica for muscle pain) made them better.

For her, homeopathy was more than a profession. It was something she accepted on faith and an essential part of her identity. She treated herself homeopathically and her young family, too. "I was convinced that homeopathy could heal everything, really everything," Grams says.

Then one day in 2013 at a nearby lake, Grams fell violently ill with a viral infection. Under different circumstances, she might have turned to a tincture or those little pills, which homeopaths call globules. But there was no time. Her fever was spiking, and her sense of reality was fading away. Her family called an ambulance. Bumping along the potholed country road, the medics tried to distract Grams by inquiring about her work. When she said she was a physician, they asked what field of medicine. Vulnerable and scared, she couldn't bring herself to tell them. These are real doctors, she thought. They save lives. They were saving her life. She couldn't do what they did. What, then, did that make her? So she lied and said she was a general practitioner.

It would be a few more years before Grams fully turned her back on homeopathy--becoming, practically overnight, Germany's most prominent skeptic of the practice. But that afternoon in the ambulance, she began to question her devotion. "I was, somehow, for the first time, not sure whether it was a good thing to be a homeopath," she recalls.

BECAUSE THE rIGHT IS NOT CONSERVATIVE:

Peter Marki-Zay, a conservative provincial mayor, was chosen as the unified opposition challenger to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at next year's election, after winning a primary vote Sunday, according to partial results. 

Marki-Zay, a practising Catholic and father-of-seven, led Klara Dobrev, an MEP with the leftist Democratic Coalition party (DK) by a margin of around 58-42 percent in Sunday's second-round run-off, with 60 percent of the votes counted. 

"From now on I support Peter Marki-Zay," said Dobrev during a concession speech, urging opposition unity after a bruising election campaign.

The primary was organised by a six-party opposition alliance formed last year in an effort to combat the mainly first-past-the-post election system that favours Orban and his ruling right-wing Fidesz party. 

THE DISCIPLINE OF DEMOCRACY:

Iraq's election was a disaster for the pro-Iranian former paramilitary force Hashed al-Shaabi, with voters desperate for an economic recovery rather than shows of military muscle.

According to preliminary results the Conquest (Fatah) Alliance, the political arm of the multi-party Hashed, emerged with only around 15 MPs from the October 10 vote.

In the last parliament it had 48, which made it the second largest bloc.

The big winner, with more than 70 seats according to the initial count, was the movement of Moqtada Sadr, a Shiite Muslim preacher who campaigned as a nationalist and critic of Iran.

...AND CHEAPER...:

On Orkney and Shetland, which are nearer to Norway than London, giant standing stones are a visual reminder of the ancient Neolithic past.

Now, gleaming white wind turbines are seen as symbols of a brighter, more sustainable future.

"A lot of people describe Orkney as a living laboratory," said Jerry Gibson, operations technician at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), which tests wave and tidal energy converters on Orkney.

"And we have lots of test sites and various different companies that are all working together... in this sort of green economy that we've got going on."

EMEC itself produces "green" hydrogen from renewable sources via a tidal turbine and electrolysis using seawater from Eday, one of Orkney's 20 inhabited islands.

The hydrogen is pressurised and transported 16 miles (26 kilometres) south to the port of Kirkwall, where it is transformed into electricity to power the ferries at the quayside.

Given its plentiful natural resources from wind and waves, Orkney -- home to some 22,000 people -- produces more energy than it uses.

"Hydrogen is important because it's another means of storing energy rather than using batteries or going straight to the electricity grid," said Gibson.

EMEC is also testing wave energy generators in the laboratory, which is more complex to model than tidal energy.

On the island of Yell, some 100 miles northeast on the former Viking stronghold of Shetland, another company, Nova Innovation, is also betting on the ebb and flow of tides.

"The beauty of tidal energy is that it's totally predictable," said Tom Wills, offshore manager at the company. 

"So I can tell you tomorrow or 2,000 years from now, how much tide is going to be flowing through that channel out there, our energy resources are not dependent on the weather."

That predictability is crucial for the stability of energy supply as economies try to move away from high-polluting hydrocarbons.

SPEAKING OF DESTRUCTIVE ADDICTIONS:

Burning coal is responsible for a massive chunk of carbon dioxide emissions, making it a major threat to limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, as agreed in the 2015 Paris climate deal.

But beyond its contribution to global warming, it also exacts a heavy toll on local communities.

At a village of red-roofed houses in the shadow of the Suralaya plant, coal dust often builds up on rooftops and residents complain of poor health. 

"Problems reported in the area include coughing and breathing difficulties," said Misnan Arullah, from NGO Suralaya Care Forum, which campaigns on behalf of those affected by pollution.

"People complain of irritation to their eyes when they are out working in the fields."

Resident Edi Suriana said his sister-in-law, who used to run a stall on a beach close to where ash from the plant was dumped, died in 2010 after developing lung problems. 

"She was exposed to coal dust when she was working at her stall," he told AFP. "The shop was around 20 to 50 metres from the place where they dumped ash."

Medics were unable to draw a firm conclusion on her cause of death, but Suriana said the family believes it was due to the pollution.

And local fisherman Suwiro blamed the plant for a dramatic fall in the size and quality of his catches over the years.

"I used to be able to catch 100 kilograms of fish every time I went out to sea," said the 60-year-old, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

"But since the sea has become so polluted, we are lucky to get five to 10 kilos."

THOSE ARE THE SAME THING:

With shaved heads, oversized tunics and the terrified gaze of the hunted, the drug addicts rounded up by the Taliban brace for 45 days of painful withdrawal.

For some, the hardliners' raids may potentially help them cast off the yoke of addiction.

But for many the stay at Kabul's Ibn Sina centre will just mark a short change of scene, marked by a brutal approach to forcing users off their powerful dependence.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

As the rest of the U.S. begins to refer to the second "summer surge" of the coronavirus pandemic in the past tense, Montana has for weeks stood out as one of the nation's hotspots, with no sign of a slowdown as statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations set a new record this week. [...]

States with lower vaccination rates have fared significantly worse than their more-immune counterparts elsewhere in the country, and Montana is no exception. As of Friday, 49% of the state's population was fully vaccinated, versus 57% nationwide. Meanwhile, the state's daily COVID-19 cases per capita remain the second-highest in the nation, with Alaska saddled with the country's most severe outbreak.

And while some states with higher vaccination rates have also seen cases rise as the highly contagious Delta variant took hold during the summer and early fall, as of Friday all but one of the 10 states with the highest per-capita caseloads also have vaccinations rates below the national average.

Dr. Neil Ku, an epidemiologist at Billings Clinic, noted in an interview Friday that while no single strategy to curb the spread of the virus is a "magic bullet," vaccination rates correlate strongly with how states and communities have fared during the second surge of the coronavirus.

"Ultimately, the goal is, if we can get to a certain level of immunity in the community, then yes, that would provide enough protection for the community themselves," Ku said. But, he added, in the absence of immunity being prevalent enough to stave off community spread, people still need to take precautions that have been proven to be effective in curbing the virus' reach.

"Public health measures, like physical distancing and masking, the use of masks, don't seem to be as prioritized by much of the public," Ku said. "And that's partially because the general consensus of the public, compared to a year ago, is it doesn't appear to them as bad as what was made out to them."

The rate of survival for those who get sick has improved slightly, Ku noted, but overwhelmed hospitals across the state show the current surge is as grave last year's, before vaccines were available. Billings Clinic's intensive care unit was at 164% of capacity as of Friday morning, according to a hospital spokesperson -- similar to other medical facilities in the state. The hospital set a new record for ICU patients earlier in the week, with 52, and had 18 COVID-positive patients on ventilators by Friday afternoon. Four COVID patients there had died in the past 48 hours.

THE DISCIPLINE OF GOVERNANCE:

Two months after the terrorist group seized control of Afghanistan, fighters who have spent the past two decades as insurgents are struggling to govern the country's 40 million residents, experts say. If the Taliban government fails to provide for citizens' basic needs, including food, water and medical care, it too could find itself pushed out of power sooner rather than later, said Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace. 

"We might see another collapse over the next six months, maybe 12 months, a little bit down the road. The Taliban are really struggling to govern the country," Mir said at the Soufan Center's Global Security Forum in Doha. "It's a real crisis that is brewing in that country, and I don't see any international actor having much interest in extending a helping hand to the Taliban."

When the Taliban was an insurgent group, they were able to pick and choose the government services they would to provide to supplement what the U.S.-backed government was doing, said Jason Campbell, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. For example, Taliban fighters and judges of sharia law would travel the country to set up "mobile courts" to settle conflicts such as land disputes. 

That level of governance is "fine, until you take over the country," Campbell said. "There is absolutely the risk of being the proverbial dog that caught the car, because now you don't get to pick and choose where you provide services....They are ill-equipped from a financial standpoint and even a bureaucratic standpoint to manage and organize."

GREAT REPLACEMENT:

It's a dramatic turn of events for a group of candidates who have traditionally struggled to raise the huge sums of money necessary to win marquee statewide elections. As a result, they've frequently faced skepticism about their electoral viability or failed to achieve buy-in for their campaigns from party brass.

"This may be an era where we can level the playing field," said Donna Brazile, a former Democratic National Committee chair. "I think Black candidates have proven more and more than ever that we're talented, but we didn't have the resources to compete...this is the future. This is what I think Dr. [Martin Luther] King and his generation always envisioned."

While individual Black candidates have posted robust fundraising performances in the past, there may never have been a quarter where quite so many raised quite so much. Warnock's leading Republican challenger, former football star Herschel Walker, collected $3.8 million in his first five weeks of campaigning. In North Carolina, former state Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, pulled in $1.5 million over the course of the fundraising quarter that lasted from July through the end of September.

Glynda Carr, founder and CEO of Higher Heights, which supports Black female Democratic candidates, points to Demings and Beasley as "proof of concept."

"We continue to prove that we're the best return on investment," Carr said. "We see more and more donors and institutions supporting Black women early. And so we're moving in the right direction."

The standout numbers weren't just limited to the South. In Kentucky, Charles Booker, a former state legislator fresh off a 2020 Senate Democratic primary defeat in which he was financially outgunned, raised $1.7 million. And in Wisconsin, Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes pulled in $1.1 million in his crowded Senate primary, raising more from donors -- both big- and small-dollar -- than two of his wealthy white primary opponents, who needed huge personal loans to break the $1 million mark.

MAKE THE GLOBAL TAX A CONSUMPTION TAX:

Consumers in Europe and the U.S. aren't rushing to spend more than $2.7 trillion in savings socked away during the pandemic, dashing hopes for a consumption-fueled boost to economic growth on both sides of the Atlantic.

THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT (profanity alert):

In 2011, sociologists Charlotte Ward and David Voas coined the term "conspirituality". Ward defined it as "a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews". It describes the sticky intersection of two worlds: the world of yoga and juice cleanses with that of New Age thinking and online theories about secret groups, covertly controlling the universe. It's a place where you might typically see a vegan influencer imploring their followers to stick to a water fast rather than getting vaccinated, or a meditation instructor reminding her clients of the dangers of 5G, or read an Instagram comment explaining that vaccines are hiding tracking devices. It's a place where the word "scamdemic" might comfortably run up the side of a pair of yoga pants (88% polyester, £40, also available in "Defund the Media" print, "World Hellth Organisation" and "Masked Sheeple", in millennial pink).

While the overlap of left-wing, magazine-friendly wellness and far-right conspiracy theories might initially sound surprising, the similarities in cultures, in ways of thinking - the questioning of authority, of alternative medicines, the distrust of institutions- are clear. But something is happening, accelerated by the pandemic - the former is becoming a mainstream entry point into the latter. An entry point that can be found everywhere from a community garden to the beauty aisle at a big Tesco. Part of what makes a successful influencer is the ability to compel their followers to trust them, and they do that by sharing their lives, their homes, their diets, their concerns. It's become clear, both by the products they buy and the choices they make, that many people trust their influencers more than their own doctor.

THE CONSTITUTION DOES NOT REQUIRE PRECISION:

Using sophisticated techniques drawn from statistics and geometry, mathematicians have developed tools that could play a huge role in a gerrymandering lawsuit filed in Ohio and during court fights expected in Georgia, Texas and Oregon. The algorithms can determine whether a map benefits one party or another, with the aim of providing courts and citizens with an objective gauge rather than relying on partisan arguments.

While both mapmakers and their critics have long used software to draw the lines, this year will be the first redistricting cycle in which opponents will have the mathematical measures to objectively show that a map is gerrymandered as the maps are being approved for the next decade. That could potentially alter a process that may determine control of the U.S. House in next year's midterms.

GREG WHO?:

Texas Governor Greg Abbott wouldn't want you to mistake his push to forbid private companies and others from issuing vaccine mandates as just another attempt to court conservative voters or tee up a White House bid. His executive order seeking to ban mandates in his state plainly says it's part of a larger plan "aimed at protecting the health and safety of Texans."

Sure, the order hopes to curtail "federal overreach" and stymie the Biden administration's "bullying," but don't attribute that to partisan hackery. After all, the goal is "achieving the least restrictive means of combatting the evolving threat to public health."

Fortunately, two major airlines based in Texas understand that vaccinations are one of the most effective ways to protect public health in the Covid-19 era. They plan to ignore Abbott's browbeating. Other companies large and small should follow suit, no matter the political standoffs and threats in Texas and elsewhere.

THE BLUE BRAND:

The coronavirus has become the leading cause of death for officers despite law enforcement being among the first groups eligible to receive the vaccine at the end of 2020. The total stands at 476 Covid-19 related deaths since the start of the pandemic, compared to 94 from gunfire in the same period.

TRUMP LITE:

Dozens of immigration advocates walked out, virtually, on top Biden officials Saturday in protest of the administration's decision to continue border policies enacted during the Trump administration, according to several people who were in the meeting.

Advocates asked for time before the beginning of a video meeting Saturday morning with several Biden administration officials, including people from the Department of Homeland Security officials and the White House Domestic Policy Council's Esther Olavarria. The activists read a statement accusing the administration of "playing politics with human lives" and said they could no longer "come into these conversations in good conscience."

THE FIRST IS WHY ISRAEL AND THE PLO COLLABORATE:

Speaking to Al-Aqsa TV, Al-Hayya explained that his movement's vision to rearrange the Palestinian national home consists of three stages.

"The first stage is the reformation of the Palestinian leadership represented by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) through elections," he stated, noting that if elections could not be held, a temporary body should be formed to run a transitional period.

"The second stage is the agreement on a national strategy based on resisting the occupation," pointing out that this stage would lead to the third one: "The third stage is the field action and behaviour on the ground."

IT'S A DEFLATIONARY EPOCH:

Don't look now, but the worst may be over for the supply-chain snarls that have plagued shipments of everything from Coca-Cola Co. ingredients to paint, toys and industrial fasteners. 

Average ocean freight rates have declined for three straight weeks. A composite index of global container prices has fallen back under $10,000 for a 40-foot box for the first time since Labor Day, according to data released Thursday by maritime advisory and research firm Drewry. The cost relief is modest: The freight rate benchmark remains almost 300% higher than it was at this time last year. But the feverish climb in shipping costs at least appears to be waning. Rates had climbed for 23 straight weeks before the recent step back, Drewry data show.

DONALD WHO?:

Three House Republicans targeted by former President Donald Trump raised more money in the third quarter than his hand-picked candidates to defeat them, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

NOT YOUR FATHER'S TALIBAN:

UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Omar Abdi, who visited Kabul last week, told reporters at UN headquarters that five of Afghanistan's 34 provinces - Balkh, Jawzjan and Samangan in the northwest, Kunduz in the northeast and Urozgan in the southwest - are already allowing girls to attend secondary school.

He said the Taliban's education minister told him they are working on "a framework" to allow all girls to continue their schooling beyond the sixth grade, which should be published "between a month and two."

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

A Texas school superintendent apologized to his district on Thursday after one of his top officials advised teachers that, if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should give students access to a book from an "opposing" perspective.

...AND CHEAPER...:

Fusion energy has been the promise of physicists for decades, but is it finally arriving? As we face a warming climate and increasing energy needs, fusion power may hold the potential to deliver an abundant, clean energy future. On a recent episode of "Political Economy," Arthur Turrell discussed whether nuclear fusion will be powering our homes any time soon, what government can do to push this technology forward, and if renewables are making fusion obsolete before it can get off the ground.

Arthur is Deputy Director at the Data Science Campus of the Office for National Statistics in the UK and the author of The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet.

Below is an abbreviated transcript of our conversation. You can read our full discussion here. You can also subscribe to my podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher, or download the podcast on Ricochet.

Pethokoukis: A skeptic might say that nuclear fusion is the future of energy . . . and always will be. Yet over the past year, it seems to me that there's been a lot of activity. So what's going on?

Turrell: The investment and the human ingenuity that's been put into fusion is starting to demonstrate some really interesting breakthroughs recently. The biggest of those has been the emergence of a private sector in fusion, which suggests that there's some market confidence. Investors must think that they're able to get some return, whether from fusion energy or from technologies related to fusion.

The other thing is there have been a number of technological breakthroughs, things like superconductors, which allow for new types of experimental fusion reactor design. For instance, there's been an enormous result at the National Ignition Facility -- which is trying to do a type of fusion called laser fusion -- recently, where they've demonstrated a world-record beating net energy gain from fusion. So the breakthroughs have really given the whole field a sense of optimism.

SELL YOUR NORDSTREAM SHARES:

They also agreed on using 2% of land for on-shore wind power farms, to equip all suitable roof tops with solar panels and to cut time for planning and permits by at least half, the draft document said.

YEAH, BUT...BLM!:

Because they're submitted as evidence in a court proceeding, any media outlet can now use these videos, which offer an up-close look at the violence and chaos that day. pic.twitter.com/gwUPgCCqkr

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) October 15, 2021

THE TRUMAN SHOW:

We are all Designist @JimPethokoukis https://t.co/seZ1ozPre5

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) October 15, 2021

IT'S A START...:

EMIGRATING IS NOT ESCAPING:

Around one hundred footballers and coaches including female players have been evacuated from Afghanistan to Doha on a Qatar Airways flight, FIFA announced on Friday.

DONALD WHO?:

 In the Czech Republic the right-wing blowhard Prime Minister Andrej Babis recently lost narrowly against a coalition of center-left and center-right parties. Babis -- who explicitly modeled himself on Donald Trump to the point of producing his own trucker hat with a slogan of "Strong Czechia" -- tried to win by whipping up deranged anti-immigrant xenophobia, but his feckless governance and manifest corruption helped bring him down. It was more support for democracy in general and a reaction against a spectacularly crooked far-right demagogue than a surge for the center-left Pirate Party that finished him. Nevertheless, it still counts as a move away from the right.

All these countries have their own national peculiarities, and of course I am no expert. But one can still point to two developments that have undoubtedly had a powerful effect in every European country: the 2008 financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic. As I have previously written, after the financial crisis, Europe suffered under hegemonic austerity politics that created an economic lost decade. The U.S. did quite badly after the crisis economically, but Europe did far, far worse -- the eurozone grew about half as much as America, and countries like Greece and Spain suffered a Great Depression-scale catastrophe. That was fuel for the far right: One study of over 800 elections found that after such a crisis, far-right parties surge in popularity by 30 percent. "After a crisis, voters seem to be particularly attracted to the political rhetoric of the extreme right, which often attributes blame to minorities or foreigners," write authors Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick, and Christoph Trebesch. Studies of Greece and the U.K. found austerity directly causes increases in right-wing sentiment.

However, the pandemic seems to have cracked the austerian consensus. Countries were simply forced to borrow and spend hugely to keep their economies on ice during the pandemic, and later the European Union created a giant investment and stimulus fund to help kick-start economic recovery. Now, despite some early snags in vaccine distribution, Europe's superior welfare states have allowed every Western European country to far surpass the U.S. in vaccination, and most of Eastern Europe is catching up fast.

After 2008, a crisis afflicting all of Europe was catastrophically mishandled, and problems were unfairly pinned on helpless scapegoats like Greece. The result was economic disaster, political chaos, and a rise in right-wing extremism. But in 2020, a similarly-broad crisis was approached with a reasonable amount of continent-wide solidarity. Every country in the E.U. got at least modest help, helping to discredit the nationalist xenophobia of right-wing parties.

Has Central Europe's populist wave crashed? Although populist politicians have been riding high in recent years, this week, two prominent populist prime ministers suddenly fell from power. The billionaire populist who revolutionized Czech politics, Andrej Babiš, lost his bid for reelection on October 8 and 9 after the Pandora Papers revealed that he used a series of secretive shell companies to buy luxury real estate in France. In neighboring Austria, the populist-leaning Sebastian Kurz abruptly announced that he was stepping down on October 9 after prosecutors raided his offices in a bribery probe. Suddenly, two key Central European populists were gone.

And just as suddenly, analysts began to question whether Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the self-styled guru of Europe's national populist right and future CPAC host, might not survive a tough re-election battle in 2022 against a newly united opposition. Orbán joined Babiš on the campaign trail in the last days of September, touting their populist alliance, to no effect. Meanwhile, in Germany, the far right AfD party experienced disappointing results in September's parliamentary elections, losing 11 of their 93 Bundestag seats.

It's too soon to say that populist leaders are receding as suddenly as they rushed into power in many Central European capitals, but the populist wave has hit some shoals. A combination of corruption scandals, united opposition, and recovering European economies seem to be causing more voters to return to the political center.

EVEN MELANIA BELIEVED THE REST:

THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:

In "On the Jewish Question," published in 1844, Karl Marx famously stood the notion of Jewish emancipation on its head, writing that "Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as Christians have become Jews," i.e., admirers of Mammon. Far from being ghettoized and excluded, deprived of basic freedoms, and subjected to horrific individual and mass accusations and physical violence for centuries, Marx explained to his followers, the Jews of Europe were in fact historical oppressors bent on conquest. "The everyday Jew devoted himself to endless bartering ... It was still Judaism, practical in its nature, that was victorious," Marx explained. "Egotism permeated society."

Jews were not only all-conquering, Marx continued, but also maleficent. "We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time, an element which through historical development--to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed--has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism." Case closed.

Quantities of ink worthy of a Talmudic discussion have been spilled explaining away the explicit content of Marx's essay. But his private writings make it impossible to assert that Marx was not a carrier of a virulent strain of racist Jew-hatred that has infected some of his followers to this day. In a letter to Engels on July 30, 1862, attacking Ferdinand Lasalle, Marx's Jewish opponent among socialists, for example, Marx wrote that "It is now quite plain to me--as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify--that he is descended from the negroes who accompanied Moses' flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger)."

But even Marx at his worst did not approach the venomous opinions of his rival, the father of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon expressed his feelings for Jews in his notebooks in an entry dated Dec. 26, 1847, an entry less anti-capitalist than exterminationist: "Jews. Write an article against this race that poisons everything by sticking its nose into everything without ever mixing with any other people. Demand its expulsion from France with the exception of those individuals married to French women. Abolish synagogues and not admit them to any employment. Demand its expulsion. Finally, pursue the abolition of this religion. It's not without cause that the Christians called them deicides. The Jew is the enemy of humankind. They must be sent back to Asia or be exterminated."

Rare is the radical movement of the early- to mid-19th century, particularly in France, that did not contain an antisemitic component. An exception to this sorry rule, a socialist movement that not only did not hate the Jews as an article of faith, but one in which Jews occupied leadership positions, managed funds, and offered intellectual guidance, were the utopian socialists inspired by Count Henri de Saint-Simon.

Saint-Simonism was a small movement, and even classifying it as socialist is questionable...

GENERAL GRANT, WE NEED YOU AGAIN:

Before Trump beamed in and headliner Steve Bannon took the stage at Wednesday night's rally, the audience was asked to pledge allegiance to a flag the organizers said was carried at the "peaceful" Jan. 6 Capitol protest. 

McAuliffe urged Youngkin on Thursday to "issue a statement or go before the cameras today" and say "it was not appropriate to pledge allegiance to a flag" that "tried to destroy the democracy." He added that "they really brought a flag up there and they did pledge of allegiance to a flag that was used to bring down the democracy that that American flag symbolizes." 

BEHIND THE MOB:

Since its formation earlier this year, the Virginia-based Parents Defending Education (PDE) has emerged as a leading group targeting school boards. Following the NSBA's September 29 letter, PDE criticized the group for seeking the assistance of the Department of Justice.

"It is shameful that activists are weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice against parents,"  PDE President Nicole Neily said. "This is a coordinated attempt to intimidate dissenting voices in the debates surrounding America's underperforming K-12 education - and it will not succeed. We will not be silenced." 

PDE's activities include encouraging parents to create social media pages to "document examples of woke indoctrination" and waging lawsuits against "woke" curricula. 

PDE also maintains an "IndoctriNation Map" where it targets schools for reasons including committing to anti-racism, offering teachers support through affinity groups, and acknowledging inequity. 

"Through network and coalition building, investigative reporting, litigation, and engagement on local, state, and national policies, we are fighting indoctrination in the classroom -- and promoting the restoration of a healthy, non-political education for our kids," reads the organization's website. 

PDE purports to be a "national grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas." 

But Neily, the group's president, has a long history in right-wing political organizations. Neily is also the founder of Speech First, a right-wing nonprofit group that advocates for "free speech" on campuses. In 2018, the Nation reported that Speech First's board of directors included "a former head of a Koch-backed trust and two conservative attorneys from Koch-funded programs." 

Parents Defending Education's sophisticated operations have raised eyebrows. In June, Maurice Cunningham, a recently retired professor who has been monitoring PDE, pointed out to the Daily Beast that for a group that was only incorporated in January 2021, PDE was suspiciously well-organized:

The next thing you know, this group of moms is hiring a law firm that has represented Donald Trump, has a sophisticated PR approach, has extensive...instructions on how to go about the things they're encouraging people to do. And you have to say to yourself, okay, that takes a lot of money."

Prior to her work with Speech First, Neily worked for other Koch-funded organizations including Franklin News Foundation and the conservative nonprofit, Independent Women's Forum. Neily was also "a "Koch summer fellow for both the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights and the Competitive Enterprise Institute," according to the watchdog group SourceWatch.

PDE senior fellow Elizabeth Schultz is a former Trump official. She appeared on Fox News' America's Newsroom morning show last week criticizing the Fairfax County School Board. "They feel like they are in charge of us, and I think it is responsible for citizens to stand up and speak up about how their taxpayer dollars are spent," Schultz said.

No Left Turn in Education is a prominent conservative group that, according to its website, seeks to "mobilize community participation in school board meetings." The group, which was founded in 2020, says it is combating "radical teachings" in schools "motivated by a political agenda." 

No Left Turn was founded by Elana Yaron Fishbein, who rose to prominence after appearing on prime-time Fox News shows. The group was relatively small until Fishbein appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight, after which the group's Facebook page "shot up from fewer than 200 followers to over 30,000" overnight. 

No Left Turn aims to "combat racial indoctrination in our K thru 12 education system," despite the fact that Critical Race Theory is not taught in K-12 schools in the United States. Her group says the 1619 Project, a project developed by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones examining the consequences of slavery, aims to "overturn our society by sowing divisiveness and hate."

Fishbein and her organization, however, frequently engage in divisive rhetoric. In a social media post, Fishbein wrote, "White students who attend predominantly black inner-city high schools fear for their lives daily, but no one marches in the streets declaring 'White Lives Matter.'" 

No Left Turn, according to Media Matters, has "compared the efforts of public school educators to that of Pol Pot, Vladimir Lenin, and Adolf Hitler." The group has also posted anti-LBGTQ rhetoric, including "telling activists to go 'back to Trans-sylvania'" and stating that accepting LGBTQ children "represents the 'dismantling of the family unit!'"

The group has held rallies to "[s]top Critical Race Theory and Social Justice Indoctrination" in both Georgia and Virginia.

HOFFER SMILES:

For the past decade, populists like Mr. Babis have often seemed politically invincible, rising to power across Central and Eastern Europe as part of a global trend of strongman leaders disdainful of democratic norms. But on Saturday, the seemingly unbeatable Mr. Babis was defeated because opposition parties put ideological differences aside and joined together to drive out a leader they fear has eroded the country's democracy.

Their success could have major repercussions in the region and beyond. In Hungary and in Poland, where nationalist leaders have damaged democratic institutions and sought to undermine the European Union, opposition leaders are mobilizing, trying to forge unified fronts and oust populist leaders in upcoming elections.

"Populism is beatable," said Otto Eibl, the head of the political science department at Masaryk University in Brno, the South Moravian capital. "The first step in beating a populist leader is to suppress individual egos and to compromise in the interest of bringing a change."

The biggest showdown could come in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban has promoted himself as Europe's standard-bearer for "illiberal democracy," while his Fidesz party has steadily stripped away democratic checks, squeezing independent media and the judiciary. Mr. Orban has staked out right-wing political positions -- including hostility to immigration, the European Union and L.G.B.T.Q. rights (if also proving adept at adopting left-wing welfare policies) -- that have been emulated by his allies in Poland, the governing Law and Justice party.

In recent years, champions of liberal democracy have been confounded in their efforts to battle their way back into power against nationalist leaders skilled at stoking fear and presenting themselves as saviors. Faced with well-oiled and well-financed political machines, like Mr. Orban's Fidesz party or Mr. Babis's party, Ano, opposition forces have been notoriously divided -- until now.

This weekend, six Hungarian parties will complete a weekslong opposition primary race, the first of its kind, to whittle down the list of potential contenders in every electoral district to oppose Mr. Orban's party. The coalition includes groups ranging from nationalist conservatives to leftists, who disagree on most things but share a fervent desire to dispatch Mr. Orban.

In Poland, Donald Tusk, a former prime minister and European Council president, returned to Poland this summer to rally the main opposition party and people who often do not vote, and lure support from a plethora of other opposition groups.

THANKS, DONALD!:

By the time vaccines for the coronavirus were introduced late last year, the pandemic had taken two of Lucenia Williams Dunn's close friends. Still, Ms. Dunn, the former mayor of Tuskegee, contemplated for months whether to be inoculated.

It was a complicated consideration, framed by the government's botched response to the pandemic, its disproportionate toll on Black communities and an infamous 40-year government experiment with which her hometown is often associated.

"I thought about the vaccine most every day," said Ms. Dunn, 78, who finally walked into a pharmacy this summer and rolled up her sleeve for a shot, convinced after weighing with her family and doctor the possible consequences of remaining unvaccinated.

"What people need to understand is some of the hesitancy is rooted in a horrible history, and for some, it's truly a process of asking the right questions to get to a place of getting the vaccine."

In the first months after the vaccine rollout, Black Americans were far less likely than white Americans to be vaccinated. In addition to the difficulty of obtaining shots in their communities, their hesitancy was fueled by a powerful combination of general mistrust of the government and medical institutions, and misinformation over the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.

But a wave of pro-vaccine campaigns and a surge of virus hospitalizations and deaths this summer, mostly among the unvaccinated and caused by the highly contagious Delta variant, have narrowed the gap, experts say. So, too, have the Food and Drug Administration's full approval of a vaccine and new employer mandates. A steadfast resistance to vaccines in some white communities may also have contributed to the lessening disparity.

STILL WAY TOO MANY HOURS:

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

The White House formally rejected the request by former President Donald Trump to assert executive privilege to shield from lawmakers a subset of documents that has been requested by the House committee investigating January 6, and set an aggressive timeline for their release.

WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

Developed by scientists in Switzerland, a new 3D virtual reality universe allows you to travel through space and time pic.twitter.com/sPuE7tDc9N

— Reuters (@Reuters) October 13, 2021

PRIVILEGE IS AS PRIVILEGE DOES:

Complete this sentence: "New Hampshire drivers are the (fill in the blank) in the nation."

We're the very best!

At least, that's what you'll find if you mash together one company's data about accidents, speeding tickets, DUIs and citations this year, put the result into a spreadsheet program and order it by states: New Hampshire comes out on top.

DEFUND:

The Transportation Security Administration says 4-in-10 members of its workforce, including screeners, remain unvaccinated against Covid-19 as its deadline looms.

The deadline for civilian federal government workers to be fully vaccinated is November 22 -- the Monday before Thanksgiving, one of the busiest travel times of the year.

KIND OF LIKE OPPOSING BUSING BLACK KIDS TO BETTER SCHOOLS:

There is a growing gulf between the progressive immigration values President Joe Biden professes and the enforcement policies he's implementing at the border -- and it's led to confusion among immigration officials, uncertainty for migrants, and questions about whether the president has a coherent strategy on immigration at all.

On the campaign trail, Biden promised a more humane approach to the southern border than former President Donald Trump, whom he described as launching an "unrelenting assault on our values and our history as a nation of immigrants" and "bullying legitimate asylum seekers."

But during his first year in office, Biden has leaned on his predecessor's efforts to cut off access to the asylum system on the border more than he admits.

The Biden administration has clung to pandemic-related border restrictions enacted by Trump, known as the Title 42 policy, under which the US has expelled hundreds of thousands of migrants without giving them access to their legal right to apply for asylum. And faced with a recent spike in Haitian migrants at the border, Biden forcibly returned thousands to Haiti despite an ongoing political and humanitarian crisis there.

"IT'S NOT TERRORISM WHEN WE DO IT!":

An extreme-right party's violent exploitation of anger over Italy's coronavirus restrictions is forcing authorities to wrestle with the country's fascist legacy and fueling fears there could be a replay of last week's mobs trying to force their way to Parliament.

Starting Friday, anyone entering workplaces in Italy must have received at least one vaccine dose, or recovered from COVID-19 recently or tested negative within two days, using the country's Green Pass to prove their status. Italians already use the pass to enter restaurants, theaters, gyms and other indoor entertainment, or to take long-distance buses, trains or domestic flights.

But 10,000 opponents of that government decree turned out in Rome's vast Piazza del Popolo last Saturday in a protest that degenerated into alarming violence.

WHERE'S GENERAL RENO WHEN YOU NEED HER...:

HOW ARE WE EVER SUPPOSED TO TELL TRUMPBOTS FROM PUTINISTS WHEN THERE ARE NO DIFFERENCES?:

In an ongoing effort to appeal to American conservatives, savvy promoters of Putin's reign lean heavily on social media outlets, including YouTube. Editor-in-chief of RT Margarita Simonyan recently described such platforms as "weapons," more effective than any others. Certain segments of Russian state TV shows are often translated and posted to YouTube, including one recent broadcast that laid the blame for Russia's troubles with the West not on Moscow's own destructive foreign policy decisions, but instead on American women.

Appearing on The Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, political scientist Sergey Mikheyev asserted in the clip: "We're witnessing a major deterioration of political analysis and decision-making in America... There are many reasons for that, but personally I believe that, among other things, this clearly has to do with the rise and advancement of femininity in the West today... we observe too much hysteria, too much emotion. We see unpredictable and irrational behavior. We see ignorance and stubbornness. We see unwillingness to listen to logical arguments... These are all attributes of femininity that got out of control."

Host Vladimir Soloviev gleefully declared: "When they show this in the U.S., the title at the bottom of the screen will say, 'MALE CHAUVINIST PIGS.'"

Mikheyev exclaimed: "Yes, of course! And it's no laughing matter. This has to do with the decline of masculinity... When society abandons traditional and religious values, masculinity declines... It loses its intellectual, analytical and volitional capabilities... It gets increasingly feminine... In the West, they claim that men and women are the same... We know it's a lie. It's a lie... We see more and more feminine hysterical reactions from Western political leaders." Throughout Mikheyev's rant, an all-male panel nodded approvingly.

The host and experts then moved on to the topic of Trump's presidency, claiming that the former president was disliked and criticized "just because he is a man." Mikheyev reluctantly admitted that according to Russian standards of masculinity, Trump was "kind of strange," but nonetheless still preferable to any inherently "irrational" female.

With a smirk, Kremlin propagandists ludicrously claimed that former U.S. National Security Council official Fiona Hill and former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham were "jealous" that Trump expressed no interest in them, neither personally nor professionally--accusing his female critics of "reverse sexism."

SHORT DRIVE:

A warning: Conspiracy theories about covid are helping disseminate anti-Semitic beliefs to a wider audience, warns a new report by the antiracist advocacy group Hope not Hate. The report says that not only has the pandemic revived interest in the "New World Order" conspiracy theory of a secret Jewish-run elite that aims to run the world, but far-right activists have also worked to convert people's anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine beliefs into active anti-Semitism. 

Worst offenders: The authors easily managed to find anti-Semitism on all nine platforms they investigated, including TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Some of it uses coded language to avoid detection and moderation by algorithms, but much of it is overt and easily discoverable. Unsurprisingly, the authors found a close link between the amount of anti-Semitism on a platform and how lightly or loosely it is moderated: the laxer the moderation, the bigger the problem. 

Some specifics: The report warns that the messaging app Telegram has rapidly become one of the worst offenders, playing host to many channels that disseminate anti-Semitic content, some of them boasting tens of thousands of members. One channel that promotes the New World Order conspiracy theory has gained 90,000 followers since its inception in February 2021. However it's a problem on every platform. Jewish creators on TikTok have complained that they face a deluge of anti-Semitism on the platform, and they are often targeted by groups who mass-report their accounts in order to get them temporarily banned. 

"IT'S NOT TERRORISM WHEN WE DO IT":

THE SAN LEANDRO HOSPITAL emergency department, where nurse Mawata Kamara works, went into lockdown recently when a visitor, agitated about being barred from seeing a patient due to Covid-19 restrictions, threatened to bring a gun to the California facility.

It wasn't the first time the department faced a gun threat during the pandemic. Earlier in the year, a psychiatric patient well known at the department became increasingly violent, spewing racial slurs, spitting toward staffers, and lobbing punches before eventually threatening to shoot Kamara in the face.

"Violence has always been a problem," Kamara said. "This pandemic really just added a magnifying glass."

In the earliest days of the pandemic, nightly celebrations lauded the bravery of front-line health care workers. Eighteen months later, those same workers say they are experiencing an alarming rise in violence in their workplaces.

A nurse testified before a Georgia Senate study committee in September that she was attacked by a patient so severely last spring she landed in the ER of her own hospital.

At Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, security was called to the Covid unit, said nurse Jenn Caldwell, when a visitor aggressively yelled at the nursing staff about the condition of his wife, who was a patient.

In Missouri, a tripling of physical assaults against nurses prompted Cox Medical Center Branson to issue panic buttons that can be worn on employees' identification badges.

Hospital executives were already attuned to workplace violence before the pandemic struck. But stresses from Covid have exacerbated the problem, they say, prompting increased security, de-escalation training, and pleas for civility. And while many hospitals work to address the issue on their own, nurses and other workers are pushing federal legislation to create enforceable standards nationwide.

Paul Sarnese, an executive at Virtua Health in New Jersey and president of the International Association for Health Care Security and Safety, said many studies show health care workers are much more likely to be victims of aggravated assault than workers in any other industry.

I'LL TAKE SYSTEMIC RACISM FOR $55, ALEX:

The emails exposed the NFL as a multibillion-dollar leviathan with a red, brightly flashing Achilles' heel. The league's weak spot is precisely how the powers that be speak about players behind closed doors. There is a racial contradiction in the NFL that we pretend isn't staring us in the face. Gruden picked at that contradiction with his sophomoric bigotry -- and to say this is a problem with one man's conduct is to miss the larger point.

Gruden's missives were part of the NFL's investigation into the culture of sexual harassment in the Washington Football Team organization. Gruden's portion of these emails -- the only ones the public has seen, perhaps just the first drop in the bucket -- also included his beliefs that the NFL shouldn't be compelled to draft "queers" and that it should fire safety Eric Reid for taking a knee during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality.

Even if Gruden was not working directly for the NFL at the time he sent these emails, he was the prime-time voice of ESPN's "Monday Night Football" and a former Super Bowl-winning coach: a powerful figure even among the power brokers of the NFL's elite.

Unlike over the weekend, when Gruden -- in retrospect quite brazenly -- said an email in which he used a racist trope to describe NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith was just a one-time offense, this document dump of emails sent over a seven-year period displays a pattern. All the NFL heads who rallied around Gruden over the weekend, supporting his statement that he did not have "a blade of racism" in him, are looking remarkably foolish.

The only person in the NFL world who seemed to get the significance from jump was Smith, who told The Wall Street Journal when only the email targeting him was being discussed, "This is a thick skin job for someone with dark skin, just like it always has been for many people who look like me and work in corporate America."

"You know people are sometimes saying things behind your back that are racist just like you see people talk and write about you using thinly coded and racist language," Smith said.

"Racism like this comes from the fact that I'm at the same table as they are and they don't think someone who looks like me belongs," he said. "I'm sorry my family has to see something like this but I would rather they know. I will not let it define me."

DEFENDING JIM CROW BEING THE APPROPRIATE COMPARISON:

Shortly after she arrived at her first school board meeting, Jessica Miley watched a man with his hand on the knife in his waistband scream expletives at a security officer.

She was still wiping away tears when the meeting started. Outside, a crowd kept from entering because of COVID protocols flanked the entrance and chanted "let us in."

After Miley finished speaking, security insisted on walking her to her car. The officer shone his flashlight on her tires to check for tampering. He told the mother of two to get in her car, lock the doors, turn on the headlights and waste no time leaving. That's exactly what she did.

Is this normal, she wondered? At a school board meeting?

In many places, it is now. What before the pandemic was an often overlooked part of civic life is back at the forefront of the culture wars: Fights over reopening turned into fights over masks and vaccines, all of that happening simultaneously to districts and boards' embrace of efforts to make schools more equitable places after George Floyd's murder.

The vitriol reached a fever pitch this summer across the country and in Hampton Roads, where police have investigated threats to shoot Virginia Beach School Board members before ultimately determining it to be "posturing." People have screamed at board members that they were going to hell, and several meetings have been gaveled into recess after speakers either screamed profanities or made profane gestures.

Previous coverage: After hours of vitriol and misinformation, Virginia Beach School Board votes to make masks mandatory for students, staff »

Some local board members say they take increased security precautions after their houses have been egged, their cars scratched and firecrackers set off in their yards in the middle of the night. Once the resulting fire was out, the chairwoman of Suffolk's board said she found a note telling her she better vote to reopen schools. [...]

The anger directed at school boards feels new but is part of a long tradition, said Adam Laats, a historian at New York's Binghamton University who studies the history of cultural battles over schooling and school reform.

"Unfortunately it's never new," Laats said. "It's un-American only in the sense that it goes against America's best idea of itself. It's very American in the fact that it keeps happening all across the country, every decade."

The attacks on school boards over desegregation in the 1950s after the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education and later in the 1970s over school busing are probably some of the most recognizable conflicts, Laats said. But they pop up very generation or so, he said.

ALL THAT RACIAL ANIMUS FOR NAUGHT:

When Georgia Republicans passed a new voting law, voting rights groups feared democracy-shattering barriers would undermine elections.

But a body of research on voting rules such as those in Georgia doesn't support the narrative that turnout will decline significantly because of the law.

Studies in Georgia and across the nation indicate that almost all voters who want to vote will find a way to cast their ballots despite tougher ID requirements, limits on ballot drop boxes and a shorter early voting period before runoffs.

While Georgia's law reduces the ease of voting in several ways, particularly for those using absentee ballots, that doesn't necessarily mean a lot of people will be prevented from casting ballots in upcoming elections, such as this fall's race for Atlanta mayor or next year's statewide vote.

Still, even relatively small numbers of voters unable to participate could swing election outcomes in Georgia, a battleground state where November's presidential election was decided by fewer than 12,000 votes.

SIMPLE ECONOMICS:

JUST MAKE CARBON TAXES CONFISCATORY:

Renewable energy sources can still help us avoid the worst climate disasters, and the faster we adopt them, the more efficient and cheaper they get, write Oxford's Eric Beinhocker, J. Doyne Farmer and Cameron Hepburn. Instead of studying time travel like I did at Oxford (I have never been to Oxford), they discovered Moore's Law and Wright's Law apply to green tech the same way they apply to computer chips and such. Fun fact: They do not apply to fossil fuels, which are just as inefficient and expensive as they were 100 years ago.

So fossil fuels are bad, paleo fuels. But they are also highly available fuels. That makes them important while we transition to the greener stuff. This is where the time machine would come in handy. We could, of course, just transition more quickly, as the Oxford trio suggests and as President Joe Biden's spending plan would do. But that requires political will, and have you seen our politics lately?

Meanwhile, relying on fossil fuel for the transition keeps exposing people to shortages and price spikes. This in turn causes politicians to do desperate, knee-jerk stuff to energy prices, the net effect of which is to make decarbonization even more difficult, writes Liam Denning. It's one of the few things California, Texas and the United Kingdom all have in common, aside from a (basically) shared language and love of fried foods.

The latter country is suffering its own energy crisis, with high gas prices and vanishing supply just ahead of winter. It has responded by hunkering down over its precious price caps and supplier bailouts, as one does. Therese Raphael suggests the U.K. needs a more fundamental reboot of its whole energy metaverse. But that requires political will, and have you seen our politics lately?

So at some point consumer bills will rise, and consumers will blame green energy, and time will move backward instead of forward. Liam suggests a better way is to subsidize the consumers rather than the gas suppliers, to help smooth this changeover and offer saner incentives.

WHAT AN ECONOMY IS:

Now we have "America is Running Out of Everything" by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic. Thompson highlights the many shortages -- semiconductors, shipping containers, workers -- affecting the recovering global economy, including here in the United States. The following insight, in particular, seems to be a real eye-opener: "The one lesson of the Everything Shortage is: You cannot redistribute what isn't created in the first place. The best equality agenda begins with an abundance agenda."

Still, it's strange that it took a pandemic to teach the lesson of the Everything Shortage. No less a left-wing economic authority than Paul Krugman has famously said: "Productivity isn't everything, but, in the long run, it is almost everything. A country's ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker." Raising the productivity of workers and thus the productive capacity of the US economy must be at the heart of any "abundance agenda."

So what might such an agenda look like? Klein and Thompson suggest the sorts of things most economists would probably agree with: housing and labor market deregulation, more immigration, more science research (including new ways to spend that money, such as a greater emphasis on innovation prizes). I like those ideas, too.

But "supply-side" progressives must go further, such as looking at environmental policies that stymie the development of new nuclear and geothermal energy sources. Supply-side progressives also need to think more seriously about how taxes affect innovation and the high-impact entrepreneurship that gives us the mega-companies of the future (as well uberbillionaires). In the new working paper "The Effects of Taxes on Innovation: Theory and Empirical Evidence," Harvard University economist Stefanie Stantcheva writes that "the efficiency costs from reduced innovation may need be taken into account when setting taxes and to pinpoint the factors on which the magnitudes of these costs depend."

I'm skeptical that many of the recent tax proposals coming from progressives are thinking seriously about the "efficiency costs from reduced innovation." And if you're looking for more of my "abundance agenda" ideas, keep reading Faster, Please!

WINNING THE WoT:

The terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K, provided one of the last searing images of the United States' 20-year counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan when two of its suicide bombers killed thirteen U.S. troops at Kabul's international airport, the deadliest day for U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan since 2011. 

But with that attack, ISIS also meant to demonstrate that the Taliban were unfit to protect Afghanistan.  Instead, ISIS's attack hastened the final U.S. troop withdrawal from Kabul, allowing the Taliban to finalize its fait accompli takeover of Afghanistan. Now, jihadists of all stripes are rejuvenated by the Taliban's victory, but with one notable exception: ISIS. The group that once was able to take half of Iraq and Syria still lurks with designs against the Taliban and the world. That's why the United States should not discount ISIS-K's threat in Afghanistan and beyond. 

The Islamic State needed Afghanistan's chaos. It has not regrouped since the death of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019 and the loss of its territorial caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Al-Qaeda also has been a shell of its former self, even long before U.S. troops killed Osama bin Laden. In fact, terrorist attacks worldwide in 2020 markedly decreased. And in Afghanistan, ISIS-K was competing directly with al-Qaeda for dwindling fighters and funding there, amid thousands of U.S. and NATO troops. [...]

Like its parent, ISIS-K quickly became known for its indiscriminate brutality, attacking religious minorities, government officials, and those who resisted the group's austere form of Islam. Totalitarian in nature, ISIS-K members would kill anybody that would not accede to the group's desire to control all aspects of an individual's social, political, and religious life. As ISIS-K's followers slaughtered innocents from 2016-2020, they would use complex attacks, often combining suicide bombings and small-arms, to wreak havoc. In 2020, ISIS-K attacked a maternity ward in a Shiite neighborhood of Kabul, killing more than 20 women and newborns. 

ISIS-K also believes that al-Qaeda and the Taliban are too locally focused and disinterested in establishing a global caliphate. In 2015, Al-Qaeda's former leader Ayman al-Zawahiri chastised ISIS's al-Baghdadi for anointing himself caliph of the self-declared Islamic State. Al-Qaeda was always opposed to creating a global caliphate too quickly, citing the need to govern successfully by tending to the masses. ISIS instead bet on its ability to metastasize globally and for a time eclipsed the already-diminished al-Qaeda within jihadist circles. 

WE ALL KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOING:

[I]n our new research paper (Benzell et al. 2021), we developed a state-of-the-art, large-scale, computable general equilibrium model of global automation and skill-biased technological change. The model features 17 regions (the US, China, Russia, Western Europe, sub-Saharan Africa etc.) containing over 150 countries, each with three skill groups and 101 overlapping generations in each year. Each region has firms that hire workers, rent capital, and decide whether to use new (capital and high-skill biased) technologies or legacy technologies. Our model is closely calibrated to real world data, with the marginal effect of new technologies based on Acemoglu et al. (2020). We consider multiple technological scenarios, including a 'baseline' scenario where new factor share-shifting technologies are invented at a rate consistent with US input share shifts post-1980. Using this model, we predict the consequences of future automation and skill-biased technological change for workers in different regions, skill groups, and age groups. We also evaluate potential policy responses to automation. 

It is important to begin by acknowledging the benefits of automation. New technologies can boost output and growth. Our model finds that automation will boost GDP in countries that adopt the automating technology, and for the world overall. If automation continues at its historical pace, it will increase US GDP by about 5% in 2050 (versus a scenario with no new factor-share-shifting automation technologies). Western Europe and Japan, which have high wages, high capital use intensity, and aging populations, also benefit disproportionately. While stylised models have shown that automation has the potential to lower global growth by redistributing from young savers to old spenders, and thereby reducing investment (Benzell et al. 2015), our model shows that this possibility isn't particularly likely.

Countries do not benefit equally. Automation technologies are detrimental to regions that do not choose to adopt. Consistent with the stylised predictions of Zeira (1998), the most developed countries adopt and benefit the most from new technologies. This is because these regions have the highest low-skill wages, the most high-skill workers, and tend to have lower corporate taxes. In countries where low-skill labour is cheap and capital relatively expensive it makes little sense to automate. These developing countries are left worse off, as scarce capital is diverted to rich, automating nations. Mexico is the country that is made the worst off. In our baseline automation scenario and relative to no automation, Mexico's GDP is 3.6% lower in 2050. This is because its capital stock is 9.2% lower in 2050, due to investment being siphoned to the US and other developed regions.

We predict, therefore, that new factor-share-shifting technologies will exacerbate inequality across regions. But perhaps an even more important impact is their exacerbation of inequality within regions. We find that these technologies leave the low-skilled (bottom income third, 60-80% of the population depending on the region) of most countries worse off while greatly benefiting the high-skilled (top income third, 2-15% of the population). Despite projected automation increasing global GDP, the average living global adult in 2050 is left roughly 1% worse off. Only in Japan - with its high share of high skill workers, very old population, and highly redistributive fiscal system - are all skill groups born after 2027 made better off in the baseline scenario relative to no automation. However, as Figure 3 shows, in the very long run, economic growth from automation partially offsets the inequality it induces.

How can nations deal with these challenges? We evaluate two policies - one for developed nations who adopt the technologies, and one for less developed regions that do not. Using the US as an example, we show how a universal basic income (UBI), funded with a combination of debt-financing and a progressive income tax, can make automation into a win-win for all skill and age groups. Paying for the universal basic income comes at a peak fiscal cost of 5.1% of GDP. The program would pay out, in 2017 dollars, $250 per month in 2025 and $650 per month in 2050. This policy lowers US GDP by 2.5% versus baseline automation without a UBI but leaves it higher than globally banning new automation technologies outright. In terms of welfare, young low-skilled workers are made roughly 10% better off, leaving them indifferent between automation plus UBI and no automation. The mid- and high-skilled are hurt by the program's higher taxes but are still significantly better off with automation and the UBI. 

...AND CHEAPER...:

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

#VAGov -- @GlennYoungkin in an email to supporters today: "The out-of-touch politicians know they're in trouble, which is why they're calling on the likes of George Soros and Mike Bloomberg to bankroll their failing races."

The two billionaires singled out happen to be Jewish

— Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) October 13, 2021

PASSING THE POISONED CHALICE:

For the first time in two decades, and arguably for the first time since the late 1970s, there is a semblance of calm in Afghanistan's countryside. The U.S. troop withdrawal last August, ending Washington's 20-year misadventure in the country, has ushered in a period when airstrikes, IEDs, and Taliban-orchestrated bombings are no longer daily facts of life. Afghans who haven't seen their relatives for years are now able to travel the roads without worrying about getting menaced by Taliban gunmen or fleeced by corrupt Afghan army troops.

At the same time, Afghanistan is at a perilous moment in its history. The 11-day collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government and the dissolution of the Afghan security forces (paid, equipped, and trained courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer at a cost of $90 billion) has not only exposed the fecklessness of what was the American-constructed political system in Kabul, but yielded an imminent humanitarian catastrophe. The Taliban have learned that governing a weak, poor, and fractious nation of 40 million people is a lot more difficult than waging an insurgency against a kleptocratic government dependent on foreigners. [...]

The Biden administration, successfully extracting U.S. forces from an unwinnable civil war despite the objections of senior U.S. military leadership, recognizes the gravity of Afghanistan's humanitarian situation. 

YEAH, BUT IF IT'S FROM A LAB...:

ENSHI, China - Hundreds of caves are spread throughout the mountains of Enshi prefecture, an agricultural corner of China's Hubei province. The most majestic, Tenglong, or "flying dragon," is one of China's largest karst cave systems, spanning 37 miles of passages that contain numerous bats.

Nearby are small farms that collectively housed hundreds of thousands of wild mammals such as civets, ferret badgers and raccoon dogs before the pandemic, farm licenses show - animals that scientists say can be intermediate hosts for viruses to cross over from bats to humans.

The World Health Organization has requested access to China's wildlife farming areas such as Enshi, calling it a key step in the search for the origins of the coronavirus. Beijing has denied the requests.

The Washington Post made a rare trip in September to Enshi, six hours' drive west of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected.

A reporter observed human traffic into Enshi caves, including domestic tourism, spelunking and villagers replacing a drinking water pump inside a cave. Defunct wildlife farms sat as close as one mile from the entrances.

Scientists briefed on The Post's reporting said it documents a plausible pathway for how a coronavirus could have spread from bats to other animals, then to Wuhan's markets.

Asked if bats, farmed animals and local residents were tested for the coronavirus in Enshi, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said they could not verify the specific situation at the moment, and said China banned the trade and consumption of wild animals in February 2020. Enshi's forestry bureau did not respond to faxed questions; two officials declined interview requests in person.

Western Hubei is home to at least seven types of horseshoe bats, according to the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, a research institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. One type, Rhinolophus affinis, has been found farther southin China carrying a virus 96 percent identical to SARS-CoV-2.

In the rolling land near the caves, Enshi officials for years promoted wildlife farming to alleviate poverty. Enshi accounted for 17 percent of Hubei wildlife farms shut down in the pandemic, official announcements show. Authorities estimated that the 290 shuttered Enshi farms had 450,000 to 780,000 animals.

MIGHT BE TIME TO STOP USING THE TERM "ESCAPE":

During his 2008 visit to Afghanistan, a helicopter carrying Biden, along with then-Sens. John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, made an emergency landing because of a snowstorm. A group of U.S. service members and their Afghan partners helped rescue them over land, including a man identified as Aman Khalili by the Wall Street Journal, which first reported his story.

After Biden ended the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and withdrew all troops and personnel in August, Khalili pleaded for help getting out -- sharing this message for Biden with ABC News: "Please do not forget me and my family. Please find a way to get me out."

In a statement to ABC News on Monday, the State Department also confirmed Khalili and his family had successfully been evacuated from Afghanistan and had "initiated onward travel from Pakistan."

DOES ANTIFA EVEN EXIST:

A Texas man pleaded guilty on Sept. 30 to a federal riot charge, and admitted he traveled to Minneapolis after George Floyd died to sow mayhem.

Ivan Harrison Hunter, 24, admitted he traveled from the San Antonio area to Minneapolis after Floyd's death and fired 13 shots from an AK-47 style semiautomatic rifle into the Minneapolis Police Department's Third Precinct building on May 28, 2020.

THAT WAS EASY:

KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

INDEPENDENCE:

Rooftop solar panels are up to 79% cheaper than they were in 2010. These plummeting costs have made rooftop solar photovoltaics even more attractive to households and businesses who want to reduce their reliance on electricity grids while reducing their carbon footprints.

But are there enough rooftop surfaces for this technology to generate affordable, low-carbon energy for everyone who needs it? After all, it's not just people who own their own houses and want to cut their bills who are in need of solutions like this. Around 800 million people globally go without proper access to electricity.

Our new paper in Nature Communications presents a global assessment of how many rooftop solar panels we'd need to generate enough renewable energy for the whole world - and where we'd need to put them. Our study is the first to provide such a detailed map of global rooftop solar potential, assessing rooftop area and sunlight cover at scales all the way from cities to continents.

We found that we would only need 50% of the world's rooftops to be covered with solar panels in order to deliver enough electricity to meet the world's yearly needs.

YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

Cars are fun again, with innovation on the rise. It's thanks to batteries. Car makers have embraced electric vehicles and are now churning out models with great driving specs and useful, new features.

Friday, Ford Motor (ticker: F) hosted a drive-along event to showcase its new all-electric F-150 Lightning. The truck is great. The drive is exhilarating. But the drive isn't the best part.

The dual-electric motor, all-wheel-drive truck Barron's rode in went from zero to 60 miles per hour in barely 4.5 seconds. It feels odd for a truck that weighs 6,500 pounds to be quicker than many sports sedans, but it is. The acceleration can induce butterflies if passengers aren't ready for the torque. It feels like riding in a sports car.

Ford, it's safe to say, knows trucks: The F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. for 40-plus years. Ford has taken their truck leadership and applied it to the electric F-150. Customers might think the Lightning is just a regular truck at first glance, with its all-electric nature not immediately apparent.

But the vehicle is also two other things: a rolling generator and a workshop.

THE BLUE BRAND:

Last weekend, more than 1,000 protesters swarmed city streets around the State House calling for medical freedom and an end to any federal vaccine mandate. Main Street was clogged for a time and someone reported a man armed with an assault rifle.

No arrests were made.

At the end of September, angry demonstrators opposing the federal testing mandate shut down an Executive Council meeting set to vote on vaccine outreach funding. State officials said they feared for their safety. No arrests were made but the Attorney General's office is investigating.

On Sunday, outside Merrimack Station in Bow, state police showed up with riot gear, wearing helmets and body armor to deal with peaceful protestors who want to see the last remaining coal plant in New England shut down to make for a cleaner environment. Bow Police and State Police arrested 18 protestors for criminal trespass and criminal mischief.

THANKS, COVID!:

As we transition into a new world of virtual and hybrid work, we're reimagining our professional environments. In our most recent research at McCann, we found something intriguing; among people who self-identify as a minority, 81% believe that remote work has helped their working life (vs. 69% of non-minorities) and 77% of the minority group believe that remote working has encouraged greater diversity and inclusion at their company (this is also  higher among younger employees, with 75% of 18-34s agreeing to this versus 54% of those aged 55+).

For many, it seems that the virtual meeting is something of a leveler. The "hand raise" function in Teams or on Zoom allows those who are reticent to speak over others to get some airtime. The chat window allows for contributions from more introverted people who might not want to speak in front of the group.

WHERE'S WFB WHEN YOU NEED HIM:

On a sunny Saturday in a Knoxville, Tennessee park, a man with a microphone told a crowd of parents to bar entry to their children's schools.

"Starting Monday morning and until this is over, we need to bring Knox County schools to a screeching halt," he said to applause. He called on parents, students, and staff to participate. "We have a moral obligation to our children's future. Block the entrance to the school with your car. That's my suggestion. Block the entrance to the drive--don't even let a bus in your schools. If you can be that bold in your groups, do it."

The event, "Parents In The Park" was billed as a meet-up for parents who objected to a mask mandate in Knox County schools. But the Sept. 26 gathering was more than just concerned caregivers. It was organized and hosted by the John Birch Society (JBS), a far-right organization that found the peak of its power in the 1960s and '70s--when it fought civil rights legislation, attracted segregationists, and believed that communists were poisoning Americans with fluoride--before rejection by mainstream conservatives sent it into decline. But the organization has made efforts to rebuild since the 2010s. And in its opposition to COVID-19 restrictions, the once-fringe group is hoping to tap into a popular right-wing grievance.

THE CENTER HOLDS:

But first . . . Biden needed a little help. It was January 2020. Sanders was surging in the Democratic presidential primary and the former vice president was sputtering, holding out hope the South Carolina primary on February 29 would salvage his third White House bid and save him from an embarrassing hat trick. Team Trump was rallying for "Crazy Bernie," trying to give the socialist Vermont senator a boost in a bid to extinguish the one viable, mortal threat to the incumbent's reelection.

In fact, if Democrats were serious about electability, they'd nominate the guy who actually won primary contests and proved he can play David to Goliath in key places four short years ago. Sanders bested Clinton in 22 states in 2016, including battlegrounds such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, while earning more than 13 million votes and 1,800 delegates.

Their meddling gave Longwell a germ of an idea. If Team Trump could interfere in the Democratic primary, so could she--but on behalf of Biden, who stood a better chance against the president in the general election. Or, to be more precise, stood any chance. Tim Miller, the veteran Republican consultant turned outspoken Never Trump political operative, helped transform Longwell's idea into an executable game plan. Miller, who is gay, spent what seemed like a lifetime in Republican politics in Washington as a pithy, slice-and-dice communications strategist with a sharp eye for narrative: spokesman for the Republican National Committee; spokesman for former Utah governor Jon Huntsman's 2012 presidential campaign; spokesman for former Florida governor Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential campaign; original cofounder of America Rising, a Republican super PAC that concentrates on digging up, and weaponizing, opposition research against the Democrats. After Bush's White House dreams faded, Miller pivoted to Our Principles PAC, possibly the first of the anti-Trump groups, in a bid to block the Republican front-runner from the nomination. Miller, then, was more than a Never Trump gun for hire; he was a true believer.

Skip ahead four years. Miller had left Washington and decamped to the Bay Area of Northern California. With the first votes of the 2020 presidential primaries about to begin, Miller and his like-minded circle of Republican expatriates were talking about what they were going to do. They weren't voting for Trump--obviously. But with a remotely viable GOP challenger failing to emerge to give them another Republican option, what to do? Should they vote in the Democratic primary? Could they? If they wanted to, and if they could, how would that work, logistically?

All of that got Miller thinking that there might be a lot of Republican voters, or independents who regularly participated in Republican primaries in states with open nominating contests, who were like him and his friends: contemplating voting Democrat for the first time in their lives but with no idea how to go about it.

Together, through Center Action Now, a political nonprofit they founded, Longwell and Miller married the ideas of giving Biden a leg up in the Democratic primary by playing in states that allowed non-Democrats to participate, boosting the participation of disaffected Republicans and center-right independents. The plan was to generate votes for Biden by encouraging registered Republicans, conservative independents, and swing voters opposed to Trump to support a so-called moderate alternative to Sanders--and educating them how to do so. Longwell and Miller had a pretty good idea of who these voters might be, too.

Between the approximately three hundred thousand people who had signed up to support Republicans for the Rule of Law, the group Longwell and Kristol started to support the Russia investigation, plus subscribers to the Bulwark, she had amassed a decent list of prospective voters, many of them living in the suburbs, who identified as moderates, Republican-leaning independents, and soft Republicans who tended to be unhappy with Trump's leadership and open to supporting his 2020 Democratic challenger. With the purchase of additional voter lists and bolstered by knowledge of the electorate gained through her focus group work, Longwell and Miller ran a very robust but very under-the-radar digital campaign, text messaging and the like, targeting these voters. It wasn't a persuasion advertising campaign. Center Action Now was not specifically advocating for Biden. It was simple electioneering: show up and vote. Longwell and Miller figured if their target audience participated in the Democratic primary, they were more likely to punch the chad for Biden; former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg; or Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar than they were for Sanders (and by extension, über progressive Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren). And that was good enough.

In New Hampshire, where the effort started, Sanders still won. But Buttigieg and Klobuchar finished a close second and third. In South Carolina, where Longwell went next, Biden resurrected his campaign with a resounding victory. There, she focused on turning out voters in suburban Greenville, in the upstate region. Next, Longwell took her turnout game to suburban Dallas and Houston, in Texas, as well as Virginia. Both Super Tuesday states helped Biden solidify what was then a growing lead in nominating delegates. This effort was the progenitor of Republican Voters Against Trump, the group Longwell and Miller would unveil next to elect Biden, the eventual Democratic nominee who they had a hand in boosting at a critical time.

As much as Longwell and Miller despised Trump, they learned something along the way that some of his detractors, especially the Democrats among them, couldn't come to terms with. He had won in 2016 because so many Republican voters who would never countenance a racist, or an authoritarian, or a crook, didn't think he was any of that. Was Trump the dictionary definition of "moral rectitude"? Obviously not. Personally offensive and given to hyperbole? Obviously yes. But the country was broken and maybe this pragmatic businessman provocateur could fix it. And that was the thing--in the swing states that matter in presidential elections, a majority of voters didn't see Trump as particularly ideologically threatening. This image, and pure, unadulterated distrust in and distaste for Clinton, helped the 2016 Republican nominee hold on to traditional Republican voters while expanding the GOP tent by adding a bunch of white working-class Democrats and former Democrats. This crucial community of traditional Republican voters was not tiring of Trump because of the record number of conservative judges he appointed to the federal bench, or because he moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, or because he championed a historic $1.3 trillion overhaul of the federal tax code.

No, what gave them pause was his conduct (the frothing, impolitic tweets and public utterances): the chaos in Washington that he fomented, that he thrived on, of which the most troubling aspect was his seeming lack of command over the government response to the coronavirus and his penchant for spraying gasoline on the fire of racial unrest that gripped the country in the aftermath of George Floyd's death. Longwell and Miller figured out how to reach those voters, and where they could make a difference--states like Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania. (Biden won two out of three.) They listened to disappointed Trump voters in focus groups and tested advertising. Mean spots that hit voters smack in the face with the litany of Trump's supposed failures, the stuff the Lincoln Project was peddling, were a turn-off. This is the sort of politics Trump practiced that they were, theoretically, trying to get away from. So instead, they asked Republican voters who pulled the lever for Trump the first time but wouldn't do so again in 2020 to record testimonials and send them in to Republican Voters Against Trump. These became the ads the group ran in major advertising campaigns in key swing states, raising and spending more than $10 million from July to November. The clips commissioned by Longwell and Miller even showed up at the virtual Democratic convention that nominated Biden as a part of the former vice president's strategy to appeal to disaffected Republican voters.

TAX THE EXTERNALITIES:

In his How To Avoid A Climate Disaster, Bill Gates proposes a quintupling of the $22 billion he estimates the government now spends on "clean energy R&D". One example is small modular reactors, a technology into which TerraPower (founded by Bill Gates), will pour $1 billion and more. Gates hopes these SMRs will produce power at a cost competitive with new combined-cycle gas plants. 

Other developments include work being done by private cement companies -- which account for about six per cent of global emissions -- to develop concrete that can store carbon dioxide (adding 15 per cent to costs). European and American steel makers are researching ways to make steel without using fossil fuels (adding more than 60 per cent to capital spending). About 80 per cent of the burden will fall on those two industries. 

The broader point is that, to be successful, R&D must draw on the financial and intellectual resources of private-sector players to the greatest extent possible, particularly players sensitive to the possibility of purchasing carbon offsets to net against their emissions if that is more efficient than new manufacturing processes. 

But R&D take a while to get results. Gates says that TerraPower's design "exists only in our supercomputers" and that "we're still years away from breaking ground on a new plant." Losses will be incurred by investors exploring many approaches, and the patience of a democratic polity sorely tested. 

During this period of research and development, which should include deepening markets for carbon offsets which provide the "net" in "net-zero carbon emissions", adaptation might take pride of place. After all, over generations people have adapted to changes in climate because that is what they had to do to survive and be comfortable. 

The process of mitigation has a virtue: it can be costly. As voters see with their own eyes and feel in their own wallets the cost of mitigation and adaptation, carbon taxes might come to be seen as the least expensive, most efficient and fairest way to cope with warming.

The IPCC bureaucracy has not been the only one at work since Paris. The European Commission has unloaded a fully developed, 291-page "Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a carbon border adjustment mechanism". The essence of the proposal is a border tax on the carbon content of imports. This comes most perfectly upon the hour in America: President Biden needs quite a lot of cash, "pay-fors" as they are called by legislators, to fund his infrastructure programme and welfare state expansion. A carbon border tax -- Democrats prefer "a polluter import fee" -- would provide at least some of that cash: about $500 billion over the next decade, according to Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen. 

Putin's Russia reluctantly and belatedly joined the Paris accord in 2019, but with no intention of reducing emissions: a carbon border tax would hit his country's troubled economy and its industries hard. KPMG says that border-tax surcharges on Russia's high-carbon-content exports would total $60 billion between 2022 and 2030. But RUSAL, Russia's giant aluminium producer, is spinning off its dirtiest plants into a subsidiary that will sell only in domestic markets, and will use its cleanest plants to serve export markets. Such "circumventions" are anticipated in Article 27 of the European Commission-proposed regulations. 

China also would be hard hit. Its manufacturers rely heavily on coal-fired electricity: about 58 per cent of China's energy use is coal-based (the roughly comparable US figure is 23 per cent), and since 2011 China has consumed more coal than the rest of the world combined. Its CO₂ emissions per tonne of steel are about three times those in the US and the EU. Little wonder that China's vice-environment minister, Zhao Yingmin, says a border tax is a form of protectionism that will hurt global growth. 

Call it what they will, the Chinese authorities know the EU will present them with a choice over the next decade: reduce the emissions embedded in your exports -- thus raising manufacturing costs -- or face border taxes that will reduce their competitiveness in the EU and US markets that account for around 40 per cent of China's exports.

Brussels's proposal must be approved by the European Parliament, 27 countries with widely varying interests. Negotiating details with the industries affected will not be easy, and is expected to take two years. But the goal is worth fighting for. Markets work better if prices reflect production and consumption costs more accurately. And pollution charges, rebated for lower earners, send signals not only to consumers considering how to spend their incomes, but to investors who decide where to employ their capital. Asian investors such as the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group are already joining US banks in ending the flow of capital to coal projects. 

Climate change measures expand the reach of government. But markets are more efficient than men in making most decisions directing resources and only a well-functioning price system can process such information efficiently. Embed the social cost of emissions in the prices consumers pay and innovators face, and most of the rest that needs to be done will be done by the millions of participants in the world's energy markets.

NEEDS MUST:

State Department spokesman Ned Price said the U.S. delegation at the weekend talks in Doha, Qatar, focused on security and terrorism concerns and safe passage for U.S. citizens, other foreign nationals and Afghans, as well as on human rights, including the meaningful participation of women and girls in all aspects of Afghan society.

He said the two sides also discussed "the United States' provision of robust humanitarian assistance, directly to the Afghan people."

"The discussions were candid and professional with the U.S. delegation reiterating that the Taliban will be judged on its actions, not only its words," Price said in a statement.

KEEPING THE JOB IN NUTJOBS:

The vast majority of Americans subject to workplace vaccination mandates have complied with them, confounding predictions that such requirements would worsen labour shortages by prompting unvaccinated workers to resign en masse. [...]

Recent enforcements show that most workers choose to get vaccinated. Employers that introduced mandates saw the share of vaccinated workers climb as much as 20 percentage points to hover around 90 per cent, according to a White House report. As many as 28m Americans have been vaccinated since President Joe Biden announced a separate mandate for federal employees in late July, but many of those vaccinations could also have been driven by the Delta spike.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

Earlier this year, 17 letters were sent to the families containing the 51 individuals, some of whom were born in Israel and some of whose children have served in the IDF.  

YOU CAN'T HAVE A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS WHEN THERE IS ONLY ONE:

To speak of the loss of America's story, then, is a fanciful but powerful way to get at this. The change is not a result of accumulation and dispassionate weighing of evidence. It proceeds from something almost a priori, the abandonment of a fundamental vision of the nation's aspirational character, of its mythos, of the wind that has lifted our wings for two and a half centuries, and replaced it with....what?

Maybe by nothing at all. Why (it may be asked) do we need a story, after all? Maybe the need for an animating story was, like the need for fairy tales, a part of our national childhood, something we have now outgrown, just as we have learned to outgrow the need for heroes and exemplars, since we now know that no one in the past has ever deserved a statue in his honor. Presumably, we'll get used to it.

Perhaps we have similarly outgrown the need for transcendence, since we have become so savvy, so clued-in to the way that human beings invent the transcendent in the image of immanent needs and desire, and then go on to exploit it as an instrument of power. So perhaps we should throw transcendence out the door too. Maybe the momentum of institutions and economics, or maybe the power of spontaneous organization, will be enough to carry us forward, and give us the staying power to raise the generations that will succeed us. Who knows? The only thing that's clear is the imperative need to resist the very idea of the national mythos.

Yet there is something interesting, if obvious, about the 1619 Project that tends to be overlooked. Although the Project's principal author, Nikole Hannah-Jones, famously declared that the national ideals were "lies" when they were stated, she made no effort to separate her Project from the truth of those ideals, let alone put forward an alternative set of ideals. It is one thing to say that the national story needs to be told in a different way--that is what the forever-revising work of historians is all about--but quite another to say that the story was a complete and utter lie that should be dispensed with tout court. The difference is enormous. 

In other words, the moral critique offered by the 1619 Project is entirely dependent upon the moral heritage carried forward by the American story. No moral heritage, no cause for outrage. What was unfortunate about the Project, and what has made it such a costly missed opportunity for America, was its stubborn and spiteful unwillingness to connect the nation's moral failings with a full account of its aspirations--the aspirations against which the gravity of those moral failings can be properly assessed.

DONALD WHO?:

Former President Donald Trump lashed out at his successor after the White House refused to exert executive privilege over documents being sought by Congress.

In his Friday night statement, Trump also referred to November 3, 2020 - Election Day - as "the insurrection" and a crime."Biden has rejected our request to withhold White House information from the House Unselect Committee investigating the January 6th protest,

"Biden has rejected our request to withhold White House information from the House Unselect Committee investigating the January 6th protest, but has not taken a stance on the insurrection that took place on November 3rd, often referred to as the Crime of the Century," Trump said.

ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

While the term is often avoided for fear of ridiculing something more serious,mass psychogenic illness (MPI) -- also known as mass sociogenic illness (MSI) or mass hysteria -- is a real occurrence that can cause a variety of physical symptoms to manifest in groups of people despite the lack of any physical cause. Often compared toconversion disorder, in which emotional issues are "converted" into physical problems, MPI tends to occur among people who share anxieties, fears, and a sense of community. In the right group of people, it can spread like a virus.

A curious case of the condition related to TikTok videos shows both how imagined conditions can spread and how our modern media landscape presents new problems never even dreamt of in a time before the internet.

In 2019, a strange slew ofnew Tourette's cases made its way into hospitals all over the world. Oddly, these were suddenly occurring in children well over the age of six, the age of typical onset. Most peculiar of all, many of the patients were exhibiting identical symptoms and tics. While many cases of Tourette's are similar, these symptoms were precisely the same.

As it turned out, the tics were also identical to those exhibited by one Jan Zimmermann, a 23-year-old YouTuber from Germany with Tourette's. On his channel,Gewitter im Kopf, he documents his daily life with the condition. All of the patients who suddenly claimed to have tics were fans of his or of similar channels on YouTube and TikTok.

There was nothing physically wrong with the large number of people who suddenly came down with Tourette's-like symptoms, and most of them recovered immediately after being told that they did not have Tourette's syndrome. Others recovered after brief psychologicalinterventions. The spread of the condition across a social group despite the lack of a physical cause all pointed toward an MPI event.

DEPENDENCE ISN'T WORKING:

China broadened a production halt at mines and chemical factories in its top coal-producing province, after a week of torrential rain that ravaged the area.

Shanxi province suspended output at 60 coal mines, 372 non-coal mines and 14 dangerous chemical factories, the provincial government said in a statement published on its official WeChat account Saturday. Heavy rainfall earlier this week led to collapses and landslides in many cities in the province, causing fatalities, the government said, without providing further details.

MY VALLEY IS FINALLY GREEN:

Dawdon coalmine in northeast England was abandoned three decades ago, but is being brought back to life as the unlikely setting for a green energy revolution.

The carbon-intensive colliery, near the town of Seaham on the windswept northeast English coast, hauled coal from deep underground until its closure in 1991.

Dawdon has long since flooded with water because part of the mine is below sea level, and is heated by geothermal energy.

Authorities now want to capture and harness this valuable and unlimited green energy source to power a new garden village development.

"The heat is basically coming from the ground," said Durham County Council official Mark Wilkes, whose portfolio includes climate change.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

Allen West on Thursday said he had attended a "packed house" Mission Generation Annual Gala & Fundraiser in Seabrook, Texas. [...]

In October 2020, West took part in a protest outside Abbot's home, criticizing the Republican governor's executive orders -- including a statewide mask mandate and lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic. Those restrictions are no longer in place.

ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

In early September 2021, a CIA agent was evacuated from Serbia in the latest case of what the world now knows as "Havana syndrome."

Like most people, I first heard about Havana syndrome in the summer of 2017. Cuba was allegedly attacking employees of the U.S. Embassy in Havana in their homes and hotel rooms using a mysterious weapon. The victims reported a variety of symptoms, including headaches, dizziness, hearing loss, fatigue, mental fog and difficulty concentrating after hearing an eerie sound.

Over the next year and a half, many theories were put forward regarding the symptoms and how a weapon may have caused them. Despite the lack of hard evidence, many experts suggested that a weapon of some sort was causing the symptoms.

I am an emeritus professor of neurology who studies the inner ear, and my clinical focus is on dizziness and hearing loss. When news of these events broke, I was baffled. But after reading descriptions of the patients' symptoms and test results, I began to doubt that some mysterious weapon was the cause.

I have seen patients with the same symptoms as the embassy employees on a regular basis in my Dizziness Clinic at the University of California, Los Angeles. Most have psychosomatic symptoms - meaning the symptoms are real but arise from stress or emotional causes, not external ones. With a little reassurance and some treatments to lessen their symptoms, they get better.

The available data on Havana syndrome matches closely with mass psychogenic illness - more commonly known as mass hysteria. 

WAIT'LL THEY SEE DISNEY WORLD...:

Strolling casually with their machine guns in hand, Halimi and hundreds of fellow Taliban fighters enjoyed a rare day off with a visit to a popular waterside amusement park in Kabul.

Friday's day trip to the sandy shores of the capital's Qargha reservoir was a welcome break for the fighters after months of conflict and weeks of security duty since the Taliban took power in mid-August.

"I feel very cheerful about coming to Kabul and being able to visit Qargha for the first time ... the people welcomed me and my companions in a brotherly manner," Halimi, 24, a fighter from the central Maidan Wardak province, told Reuters, asking not to give his full name.

The fighters, who were all heavily armed at the park, sipped tea and bought snacks from stalls dotted along the shoreline.

Some queued up to try the amusement park rides, which included a pirate ship and a flying chairs carousel.

Behind Halimi, Ziaul Haq, 25, also from Maidan Wardak, beamed as he went for a horse ride.

Most of the fighters had never been to Kabul until the Taliban took control of the capital on Aug. 15, and some were eager to visit the amusement park before returning to their duties around the country.

...AND CHEAPER...:

A global treaty curbing chemicals that destroy the ozone layer could prevent 443 million cases of skin cancer and 63 million incidents of vision damage that might have required cataract surgery by the end of this century, according to a new study.

 [...]

Apart from health benefits, they include environmental benefits for crops, terrestrial wildlife and oceans.

The authors of the new study, which include scientists from NCAR and EPA, constructed a model projecting U.S. benefits based on health data and population projections in the future.

SCRATCH A TRUMPIST FIND AN ANTI-SEMITE:

Ohio US Senate candidate @JoshMandelOhio believes "coronavirus, January 6th, the entire BLM and Antifa looting and riots," were operations organized by the Deep State and funded by George Soros. pic.twitter.com/mhJZv8116W

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) October 9, 2021

WHAT HAS GOVERNMENT EVER DONE FOR YOU?:

There is a beautifully simple principle at the heart of modern nanotechnology research. Bulk materials become brand-new when miniaturized or restructured at the nanoscale. Their properties change in strange and marvelous ways. For example, a gold nanoparticle is not the shiny yellow color we know from rings and medals; it can exhibit any color of the rainbow depending on size and shape. Through synthetic fine-tuning, chemists have discovered how to make gold prisms, cubes, rods and even more exotic and complex-shaped nanoparticles that can be blue, green, red or purple.

Why does that matter? After all, nanoelectronics were already powering laptops, cameras and other consumer devices by the late 1990s. Chips kept getting smaller and more powerful. (Hence, the endless tales of nanobots gone rogue.) The miniaturization of electronics would have continued without the NNI.

What the NNI did was move nanotechnology into places it had not significantly ventured before, like the medical, chemical, optical and transportation industries. Size-wise, the nanoscale is comparable to biological structures such as proteins, viruses and DNA. This realization has allowed the preparation of unique classes of hybrid nano-bio structures that have fundamentally changed how we study, track and treat disease.

Indeed, some of the most exciting developments of the last two decades pertain to medicine. Many powerful new diagnostic tools have been developed and commercialized based upon nanoparticle probes. Early nanotechnology research was at the foundation of rapid tests that made it possible for schools and society to reopen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the powerful nucleic acid and antigen tests that definitively diagnose disease are based upon nanotechnology platforms. Also, dozens of new nanomedicines, based upon the concept of restructuring drug or vaccine components on the nanoscale to make them more potent or capable of crossing biological barriers, are now in or will be in clinical trials for psoriasis, debilitating cancers, neurological disorders, diseases of the eye and even COVID-19. Specifically, spherical nucleic acids, nanoparticle structures densely modified with short snippets of DNA or RNA, are new forms of the "blueprint of life" that interact with living systems in ways not observed before--ways that allow them to access and penetrate tissues and be used as powerful new genetic medicines. The ultimate components of the biological gene-editing nanomachine CRISPR-Cas9 have been identified, isolated and reconstituted as medicines. Many of these nanomedical tools are highly modular, allowing for rapid development for a variety of different targets.

Moreover, as a new route to inter- or transdisciplinary research, which was at the core of the NNI, nanotechnology has driven a new narrative in STEM: collaboration. Nanotechnology has captured the imagination of a generation of materials scientists, chemists, physicists and biologists to synthesize and understand new materials; as well as inspiring engineers who are trained to develop tools for making and manipulating such structures; and doctors who can use them in the clinic. Collaborative nanotechnology research at our institute unites faculty members from 32 departments across four schools at Northwestern. This diversity of training and perspective does more than broaden the scope of our research. It enables us to identify, understand and address big problems--and it helps us break down barriers between the lab and the marketplace.

THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT (profanity alert):

But what if, hidden below their laptop stickers and campaign totes, these young people represent a real political risk for Democrats? And what if, contrary to conventional Democratic wisdom, the power that these young people wield within the party is actually hurting its chance at the ballot box rather than helping it?

In the eyes of David Shor, one of the Democratic Party's most coveted and most controversial data gurus, that's exactly what's happening. In some respects, Shor understands the power that young, hyper-educated staffers wield in the world of Democratic politics because he once wielded it himself -- and to great effect. In 2012, at the age of 20, Shor joined Barack Obama's re-election campaign to develop and oversee its election forecasting system, a complex statistical modeling system that helped campaign staff decide how and when to spend money to optimize support in specific areas. In 2020, during the height of that summer's racial justice protests, Shor was fired from the progressive data firm Civis Analytics for tweeting out an academic study suggesting that riots have historically hurt Democrats in major election years. The firing, however, has not done much to diminish Shor's influence within the party, and he reportedly still has the ear of both Obama and senior members of the Biden administration.

This week, Shor's theory of the electorate was subjected to a long, skeptical but sympathetic scrub by Ezra Klein, who seemed persuaded by Shor's pessimism about the Democrats' chances to hold the Senate, but more mixed on his prescriptions for how to fix it. Shor has another theory, though, about the Democratic Party itself -- a mirror he holds up to his own side, and which might be similarly unpalatable to its insiders and even his friends.

"It is descriptively true that people who work in campaigns are extremely young and much more liberal than the overall population."

At its most basic, Shor's theory goes something like this: Although young people as a whole turn out to vote at a lower rate than the general population, the aforementioned type of young person is actually overrepresented within the core of the Democratic Party's infrastructure. According to Shor, the problem with this permanent class of young staffers is that they tend to hold views that are both more liberal and more ideologically motivated than the views of the coveted median voter, and yet they yield a significant amount of influence over the party's messaging and policy decisions. As a result, Democrats end up spending a lot of time talking about issues that matter to college-educated liberals but not to the multiracial bloc of moderate voters that the party needs to win over to secure governing majorities in Washington.

"It is descriptively true that people who work in campaigns are extremely young and much more liberal than the overall population, and also much more educated," said Shor who at the advanced age of 30 says he feels practically geriatric in professional Democratic politics. "I think that this is pushing them to use overly ideological language, to not show enough messaging or policy restraint and, from a symbolic perspective, to use words that regular voters literally don't understand -- and I think that that's a real problem."

People who paid close attention to the 2016 presidential campaign probably remember the most-watched Democratic campaign commercial from the cycle, Hillary Clinton's "Mirrors" ad, which featured images of young women gazing at themselves in mirrors intercut with footage of Donald Trump making disparaging comments about women. It was powerful stuff -- at least among the young liberals on Clinton's staff.

The "Mirrors" ad featured prominently in a series of experiments that Shor did with Civis to evaluate the effect of various Democratic campaign commercials on voters' decisions. The findings of the experiments were not encouraging. For one, they found that a full 20 percent of the ads -- including "Mirrors" -- made viewers more likely to vote for Republicans than people who hadn't seen the same ads. And after his team started polling members of Civis's staff, they made an even more troubling discovery. On average, the more that the Civis staff liked an ad, the worse it did with the general public.

"The reason is that my staff and me, we're super f---ing different than than the median voter," said Shor. "We're a solid 30 years younger."

AMERICA'S GAME:

EL PASO IS about 83% Latino, most of that of Mexican descent. But decades ago, the city was a lot whiter. And back in those days, Alameda Avenue was a sort of dividing line. If you were white, you likely lived north of that street. If Mexican, you stayed south. Between that avenue and the Rio Grande, on the eastern part of El Paso County where land is cheaper and it becomes clear that this is life deep in the Chihuahuan Desert, is San Elizario.

San Eli is what everyone here calls it. That's where Ricardo's childhood home stands about a mile south of Alameda Avenue and double that distance north of the Rio Grande and the rust-colored border wall that scars the soul of this place. The overgrown weeds, the still-hanging Christmas lights, the empty rooms and the white car with deflating tires parked in the back, make it feel like the home was hastily abandoned. As if an opportunity came up that couldn't be passed.

Like many houses in this neighborhood, the Pepis' former home looks like it's still in the process of being constructed. Good enough to live in -- the doors and windows lock, the water and electricity work, the roof doesn't leak -- but still unfinished.

"I built it," Daniel, Ricardo's father, says in Spanish. Whenever extra money came in, it went to the house. Little by little, working on the weekends and after long weekdays doing construction, Daniel built this with his hands.

"When Ricardo was growing up, the conditions weren't the best for us," Daniel says. "That was part of the reason we lived in San Eli. It wasn't because we wanted to. I didn't grow up in a rural area where the roosters wake you up, where the neighbors have cows."

Ricardo grew up in San Elizario, near the Texas-Mexico border, and did drills with his dad near this old Spanish Colonial church. Digital Light Source/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

From this house, Daniel and his wife, Annette, raised their young family. It was a life common to many El Pasoans. Monday through Friday, while working or at school, they stayed on the north side of the Rio Grande. On weekends and the random weeknight, the Pepis returned to the south side of the river to spend time with family still living in Juárez, Mexico.

"We consider it one city, one community," Daniel says of El Paso and Juárez. "It doesn't really matter if you live in El Paso or live in Juárez, you cross that bridge as much as you can."

From this house, Ricardo -- the oldest of the three Pepi children -- started playing soccer at 4 years old. He'd grown up watching his father play, and Daniel coached him for a few years. Apart from practice, they'd sometimes do drills on a field in the shadow of a church that traces its roots as far back as the U.S. Constitution.

Daniel put his son in leagues a year or two above Ricardo's age. Yes, he did it to push him. To challenge him. But he also did it because Ricardo was always bigger than his peers. His family nickname had once been Gordo. Outside of El Paso, Daniel had to carry his son's birth certificate to show that he wasn't older than the competition, he was actually younger.

Ricardo had, what Daniel says in Spanish, "el olfato de gol." Some words or phrases lose their beauty in translation. This is an example. But the idea is that even at a young age, Ricardo had a nose for goal. Like he could smell it. Like he could feel it. Like he could seemingly score at will -- which he often did -- even when his father had him playing defense. And as he did that, the opponent's parents doubted Ricardo's age again.

"QUINCEAÑERO!" those parents screamed, implying the young boy was 15.

"¿CUÁNDO ES LA BODA?" they yelled, sarcastically asking when he was getting married.

Daniel laughs when he remembers those days. But he turns serious when asked if he feels like he pushed his son too hard. Like during those games when Ricardo didn't feel like running because sometimes that's the last thing 7-year-olds want to do. When that happened Daniel would take Ricardo out the game, then drive him home. It's a long, lonely drive out to San Eli. It's a perfect stretch of road for a proud man to brood in silence.

"Yes, I was hard on him," Daniel admits.

"I'd make him take his uniform and cleats off and put them in the trash. I'd tell him, 'Look, if you don't want to play, that's fine. Don't play. But you're not going to be wasting my time and much less, my money.'"

WHEN YOU'RE THE child of immigrant parents, you often feel as if you've got to make their struggles and sacrifices count for something. Calling it a burden is too much. Call it that feeling you get when you look at your father or mother and wonder what dreams they had before life shook them awake.

Because sometimes your mother is 16 years old when she had you. And sometimes your father pawns the family car and borrows money because those can become tomorrow's problems if it means everyone's eating today. And sometimes, you live in a place like El Paso and Juárez that are often neglected by their governments, and it feels like you must escape.

IT HASN'T FALLEN YET, JUST SHIFTED WEST:

Although everyone from schoolchildren to scholars now learn that the Western Roman Empire fell in 476, 5th century Romans did not see anything particularly special about Odoacer's coup. Nine different Western Roman emperors had risen and fallen since 455 and most of them had been overthrown by barbarian commanders like Odoacer. In four cases, the barbarian generals toppled one emperor and delayed appointing another. One of these imperial vacancies stretched for 20 months, a span longer than the entire reigns of more than 20 previous Roman emperors. Even Romulus Augustus himself was a usurper who assumed the imperial office after an imperfectly executed coup that left Julius Nepos, the legitimate emperor Romulus replaced, still in charge of Western Roman imperial territories in what is now Croatia. In other words, while the West had lost an imperial usurper in 476, it still had a legitimate Roman emperor.

Odoacer maintained most of the structures of the Roman government during the nearly 17 years he controlled the state. The Senate continued to meet in Rome just as it had for nearly a millennium. Latin remained the language of administration. Roman law governed the land. Roman armies continued to fight and win victories on the frontiers. And Roman emperors appeared on the coins that Odoacer minted. These coins showed Julius Nepos at first and then, after Nepos's death in 480, they featured the busts of the Eastern Roman emperors who reigned in Constantinople.

These aspects of Roman life continued after the Gothic ruler Theoderic overthrew Odoacer in 493. Theoderic proved even more successful than Odoacer in reviving Italian fortunes after the political chaos of the mid-5th century. His armies campaigned successfully in modern Croatia, Serbia and France. He made much of Spain into a protectorate for a time. Large scale repairs were made to churches and public buildings throughout Italy. Either Theoderic or Odoacer undertook renovations to the Colosseum following which senators proudly inscribed their names and offices on their seats.

Rather than imagining that Roman rule had ended in 476, Italians in the late 5th and early 6th centuries spoke about its recovery. Bishop Ennodius of Pavia spoke of the "filth" that Theoderic "washed away from the greater part of Italy," leaving Rome, as it emerged from "the ashes," "living again." Theoderic's military victories meant that "the Roman empire has returned to its former boundary" and returned "the culture of our ancestors" to Romans who had lived in the regions he reconquered. Ennodius even went so far as to claim that "the revival of Roman renown brought Theoderic forward" as a rival to Alexander the Great because he had sparked a Roman "Golden Age."

How did it happen that Odoacer's coup, the beginning of this Roman resurgence, instead came to be seen as the fall of Rome? The answer lies not in Italy but in Constantinople. 

WE ALL KNOW WHERE WE'RE HEADED:

GiveDirectly -- a charity that pioneered the practice of sending money to people in poverty, no strings attached -- recently announced it sent $1,000 each to more than 178,000 U.S. households in need during the pandemic, with plans to reach another 20,000 over the next few months.

GiveDirectly works with Propel -- a company that provides software that helps Americans digitally manage food stamps and other benefits -- to identify households in need and quickly send out money.

The direct cash giving model's greatest advantage is its "exceptional efficiency," says Alex Nawar, GiveDirectly's U.S. director, who estimates that 98-99 cents of every dollar donated to the charity goes directly to giving, with little required for overhead.

Between the lines: GiveDirectly's program, as successful as it was, is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in direct stimulus checks and expanded jobless benefits from the federal government that have flowed to Americans during the pandemic.

That aid -- much of it cash -- not only prevented much of the massive economic pain Americans could have suffered during the pandemic, but it actually helped reduce the U.S. poverty rate in 2020.

But what both private philanthropy and government aid demonstrate is the power of rapidly distributed cash to shield the needy from catastrophe and actually lift people out of poverty.

THANKS, W:

Last year, violence marred more than half of the world's national elections, the highest rate in four decades. This past Jan. 6, the United States saw its own election-related violence with the invasion of the Capitol by pro-Trump activists. Yet in Iraq, a country where the U.S. planted democracy, an election on Oct. 10 has seen little violence in the final weeks before the vote. That's quite a change from the violence of the four previous elections since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

The reasons for this progress are complex, but perhaps the strongest one is that young Iraqis rose up in 2019 to protest years of violent conflict and government corruption. In response, Iran-backed militias and the government killed hundreds of pro-democracy activists. But the movement did result in a new and reformist prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi. And it also led to a major shift in how elections are held.

THE ESSENCE OF REPUBLICAN LIBERTY:

The Spirit of 1776 was as much about science as it was about freedom. George Washington required the entire Continental Army to get inoculated against smallpox--the first army-wide vaccination in history. Mortality dropped from 30% to 1%. Mandatory vaccinations just might have won America its freedom. From that auspicious beginning, Americans have let vaccine science protect our soldiers in the military, our students in school, our healthcare workers on the front lines--everyone.

Vaccine mandates are undoubtedly constitutional. The Supreme Court explained back in 1905 that freedom can be limited, especially when wielded to harm others' rights: "The liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States does not import an absolute right in each person to be at all times, and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint..." 

During WWII, the court specifically said that religious freedom is no excuse to shun vaccines: "The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death." Even the late, uber-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia singled out religious exemption from "compulsory vaccination laws" as not required by the First Amendment. Most state courts have independently reached the same conclusion.

In hundreds of cases across more than a century, the law is clear: vaccine mandates are constitutional and religious exemptions are not constitutionally required.

SERVICING HIS BASE (profanity alert):

Former President Donald Trump went on Fox News Thursday night to suggest that it would be a "death wish" to allow Haitian migrants into the U.S. because they "probably have AIDS," an echo of racist comments he made during his presidency referring to Haiti and African nations as "[****] countries."  [...]

The abysmal treatment of refugees at the border burst into public view when U.S. Border Patrol agents were filmed threatening Haitian refugees while on horseback. The Biden administration ended the use of horse patrols there and opened an investigation into the officers' conduct.

While some Haitians have been allowed into the country to await immigration and asylum proceedings, thousands have been deported back to Haiti under a Trump-era usage of the public health order Title 42, which Biden has continued. This decision has prompted the resignation of multiple State Department officials, including the senior envoy for Haiti policy. 

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, however, Biden's predecessor hated Haitians coming to the United States. During one meeting with members of Congress in 2018 about protections from refugees from Haiti, El Salvador, and some African countries, Trump reportedly asked: "Why are we having all these people from [****} countries come here?" (Trump instead suggested that the U.S. admit more migrants from Norway, an overwhelmingly white, European country with no refugee crisis.) 

THE TRUMP BRAND:

To this aversion for African Americans, latter-day white supremacists have added their repulsion for Latinos, Muslims, Asians and, of course, people identified as LGBTIQA+. Not to mention their anti-Semitism, another KKK legacy.

Such people may belong to the conspiracy sect QAnon or to The Base (a name which refers to the organisational and terrorist methods of al-Qaeda ("the base" in Arabic) or The Proud Boys (whom Donald Trump called on to "be ready" during his first debate with Joe Biden) or the Patriot Prayer Movement made up of Christian fundamentalists. As Vegas Tenold, who does research for the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, told The Insider. These last two movements "have a very vague ideology. all you can say about them is that they are pro-God and pro-First Amendment" (which guarantees freedom of speech). These people all have in common the conviction that the white "race" is superior to all the others. And that since this alleged supremacy is threatened, in order to preserve it, anything goes.

Conniving with these newcomers on the far right are some fifteen neo-Nazi splinter groups like the Storm Front or the national socialist party Vanguard America, which has adopted Hitler's slogan "blood and soil" ("Blut und Boden"). But also, The Atomwaffen Division (AWD), based in the United States but with branches in the United Kingdom, Germany and in the Baltic countries. These people will stop at nothing. Suicide bombings included. In an article posted online in June 2021, a member of AWD declared: "The culture of martyrdom and insurrection in groups like the Taliban and ISIS is to be admired and imitated in the neo-Nazi terrorist movement." In 2018, its founder and leader, Brandon Russell was arrested and convicted for possession of a destructive device and explosive substances.

To this incomplete list must be added the "Incels" (i.e., involuntary celibate) whose speciality is militant misogyny. Holding women responsible for their forced celibacy, this group of frustrated males was founded in 1993 and recruits worldwide via the Internet. It is taken very seriously by the FBI and has already perpetrated several acts of terrorism. In May 2014 one of its devotees, Elliot Rodger, murdered six people with a ram-raiding car in Isla Vista, California, and injured fourteen others, men and women indiscriminately, before committing suicide.

This ghastly survey would not be complete without mentioning the "Bogaloos," obsessed with the idea of starting a civil war before their guns are confiscated--this despite the widely respected 2nd amendment. Often seen wearing Hawaiian shirts (flaunting their poor taste), they even demonstrated with the crowds protesting the murder of George Floyd in hopes of sparking an uprising against the authorities (flaunting their mental confusion). They are in favour of preventive (civil) war, no matter who starts it. Like all the other conspiracy theorists, they are heavily armed and despite their hazy thinking and folksiness, they are dangerous.

All in all, these "entrepreneurs of violence", as political scientist Bertrand Badie has dubbed them, are thought to number around 100,000. This is at once few for a country whose population is just over 328 million, but enough to develop harmful networks, create online hubs like My Militia (subheading "An American Patriot Network"). These enable cybernauts to locate an existing militia or create one, set up platforms like Gab, Discord, Minds and Bitchute, open forums like Stormfront and IronForge, hammer out their theories about the "Great Replacement", destabilise democratic proceedings (as illustrated by the "storming" of the Capitol building by a handful of these people), and trigger criminal actions on a significant scale.

According to a report published on 17 June 2020 by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, right-wing extremists are responsible for two-thirds of the acts of terrorism and conspiracies fomented in the United States in 2019 and more than 90% between January 1st and 8 May 2020. It was these worrisome statistics that led the US Department of Home Security to conclude in a report published in October 2020 that "racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists--specifically white supremacist extremists (WSEs)--will remain the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland."

WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

Though he catches flak for it, Garrett Kenyon, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, calls artificial intelligence (AI) "overhyped." The algorithms that underlie everything from Alexa's voice recognition to credit card fraud detection typically owe their skills to deep learning, in which the software learns to perform specific tasks by churning through vast databases of examples. These programs, Kenyon points out, don't organize and process information the way human brains do, and they fall short when it comes to the versatile smarts needed for fully autonomous robots, for example. "We have a lot of fabulous devices out there that are incredibly useful," Kenyon says. "But I would not call any of that particularly intelligent."

Kenyon and many others see hope for smarter computers in an upstart technology called neuromorphic computing. In place of standard computing architecture, which processes information linearly, neuromorphic chips emulate the way our brains process information, with myriad digital neurons working in parallel to send electrical impulses, or spikes, to networks of other neurons.

WHEN YOU NEED TO SEE YOURSELF AS A CUTTING-EDGE REBEL...:

The United States has a long history of vaccine mandates--and subsequent backlash. Between 1989 and 1903, according to the New York Times, angry parents marched on schools and demanded that their children who were unvaccinated against smallpox be admitted. Cities and towns all over the United States also faced backlash over the mandates, but somehow they didn't gain much traction. Resistance proved futile and smallpox was eradicated in the US in 1949 and globally by 1980.

In the 1940s, the spread of polio, a debilitating virus that often left children paralyzed, began to increase. In 1955, Jonas Salk invented a vaccine to prevent the disease and, thanks to a successful campaign often involving giving children the vaccine in sugar cubes at school, the US was polio-free by 1979. Unlike today, there was hardly a widespread backlash to the life-saving vaccine.

All of which is to say that vaccine requirements are not new. Proof of having been vaccinated against measles, tetanus, and yellow fever, to name a few, are required for travel, certain jobs, and admission to public schools and universities. And when it comes to COVID, the mandates have widespread support. A September 2021 Gallup poll found that 58 percent of people are in favor of the mandate that requires businesses with more than 100 employees to vaccinate their staff.

United Airlines, one of the first major companies to implement a mandate, announced that only 600 people out of its 67,000 employees would be terminated after refusing to get their shots (for a little perspective, that's less than 1 percent). In North Carolina, the Novant Health hospital system, which has more than 35,000 staffers, fired only about 175 workers for noncompliance (again, less than 1 percent). Many colleges and universities required students and staff to be vaccinated--after all, most universities already require that students receive several other vaccines before they enroll. 

NO ONE JUST HATES MEXICANS:

What makes the leader of a small central European country so appealing to conservatives in the world's richest democracy? Because Orban shows how the switch to illiberalism can be done. Success breeds imitation. The first time Orban was in power -- in 1998 -- he led a pro-small government free market party. He was defeated in 2002. In those days his Fidesz party had a lot in common with Reagan Republicans. When Orban returned to power in 2010, it was with a very different ideology. He was "Trump before Trump" as Bannon put it. The libertarian philosophy had been replaced by the politics of resentment. European identity made way for talk of defending Hungary's Christian civilisation. The new Orban was an enemy of independent media, courts and universities. He also became Europe's chief scapegoater of immigrants.

Unlike Trump, who promised to build a wall on the US-Mexico border, but only partially delivered, Orban blanketed Hungary's southern borders with barbed wire fencing. In 2015, the year after his party won the two-thirds majority he needed to overhaul Hungary's constitution, Orban said: "We are experiencing the end of all the liberal babble. An era is coming to an end." The jury is still out on whether he was right. Among US conservatives, however, the road map he has provided is too relevant to ignore.

Orban's example is two-fold. Peripheral Hungary is a surprisingly good model for the Republican heartlands of small town and rural America. Just as Orban harvested resentment of the networked metropolitans of Brussels, Berlin and Paris, so today's Republicans rail against New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Red state America is subsidised by its more urban Democratic counterparts -- the fiscal transfer from urban to non-urban America grows larger every year. Hungary, too, is dependent on huge subsidies from the EU. Both resent the cosmopolitan hands that feed them.

Orban has tilted Hungary's electoral system against opposition parties and shown how to win super-majorities without a majority of voters. In the country's 2018 elections, Fidesz won 67 per cent of the seats with 49 per cent of the vote. Orban's governance model is even more relevant. Having secured a stranglehold on power, he has parcelled out EU-funded largesse to allies on a grand scale. Almost half of Hungary's public contracts have just one bidder. This would be hard to replicate in a federal democracy the size of the US. But there are many pages that can be taken from Orban's book, including how to win a culture war with the urban elites.

SYSTEMIC:

Three police officers were crowded into the assistant principal's office at Hobgood Elementary School, and Tammy Garrett, the school's principal, had no idea what to do. One officer, wearing a tactical vest, was telling her: Go get the kids. A second officer was telling her: Don't go get the kids. The third officer wasn't saying anything.

Garrett knew the police had been sent to arrest some children, although exactly which children, it would turn out, was unclear to everyone, even to these officers. The names police had given the principal included four girls, now sitting in classrooms throughout the school. All four girls were Black. There was a sixth grader, two fourth graders and a third grader. The youngest was 8. On this sunny Friday afternoon in spring, she wore her hair in pigtails.

A few weeks before, a video had appeared on YouTube. It showed two small boys, 5 and 6 years old, throwing feeble punches at a larger boy as he walked away, while other kids tagged along, some yelling. The scuffle took place off school grounds, after a game of pickup basketball. One kid insulted another kid's mother, is what started it all.

The police were at Hobgood because of that video. But they hadn't come for the boys who threw punches. They were here for the children who looked on. [...]

In the assistant principal's office at Hobgood, the officer telling Garrett not to get the kids was Chris Williams. Williams, who is Black, had been a Murfreesboro cop for five years. "What in the world?" he thought, when he learned what these arrests were about. At Hobgood, two-thirds of the students were Black or Latino. Williams wondered if such arrests would be made at a school that was mostly white. He had a daughter who was 9. He pictured her being arrested. This is going to blow up, he thought; I'm going to end up in federal court over this. He considered quitting, but instead tried to get someone to intervene. Tucked in an office corner, he called a sergeant, a lieutenant and a major, but couldn't find anyone to call it off.

The officer not saying anything was Albert Miles III. Growing up, Miles, who is Black, had friends who hated the police. But Miles' dad was a cop. Miles wanted to prove that police could be trusted. That afternoon, Miles had been pulled out of roll call along with another officer; a sergeant told the two to go arrest some kids at Hobgood. The sergeant didn't say why, but at Hobgood, Miles started picking up details. Miles, too, wondered if these arrests would happen at a school full of white students.

LOST GENERATION TO GOLDEN GENERATION?:

After the first two games in September, the pitchforks were out. Now, after two consecutive wins, the hype surrounding some of these youngsters -- like 18-year-old Ricardo Pepi, 20-year-old Brenden Aaronson and 18-year-old Yunus Musah -- is already crescendoing. 

What these four games have taught us about this team is that it is very much learning on the go. And that the growth isn't always going to be linear. There are going to be some downs beats that won't be as bad as they'll feel in the moment, and there are going to be some highs that won't stick, even if they seem like they should. 

It will be a constant challenge to find that equilibrium for a team trying to navigate the growing pains of youth. This World Cup qualifying cycle is meant to build the foundation of a group that can get the U.S. back to the World Cup and then compete in Qatar. And beyond even that, it's about then using that tournament to springboard into greater heights when the World Cup comes back to American soil in 2026. 

It can be difficult to fully grasp how young this team is, and how quickly this group is coming together. The U.S. played the youngest lineup in its history last month and then added another 18-year-old to the starting lineup on Thursday. Another teenager, Joe Scally, is starting regularly in the Bundesliga and seems destined for a call-up soon.

Just two years ago, Aaronson was a Philadelphia Union homegrown midfielder with a grand total of 25 career MLS games under his belt. Sergiño Dest had just featured for the U.S. at the U-20 World Cup and played his first seven games for Ajax's first team. Pepi had just 212 first-team minutes to his name. Musah was an England youth international who had only played four professional games for Valencia's second team.

All of them are now starting together for this team and are expected to get the U.S. back to the World Cup.

IGNORE THE INDICATORS; LOOK AT THE GLOBAL TRENDS:

As Goodhart explained, once upon time there were once two competing theories: the Friedmanite monetary theory that inflation was the result of too much money chasing too few goods and the Philips Curve theory that postulated a relationship between inflation and unemployment.

Both theories have broken down empirically over the past three decades. For myself, both are nice examples of the notion that it is better to think in terms of mechanisms (and ask if those mechanisms are still working) rather than models.

The replacement, in central bank land, has been what Goodhart dubbed a "a bootstrap theory of inflation": that as long as inflation expectations remain anchored, inflation itself will remain anchored. With a wonderful turn of phrase, Goodhart went on to call this "a very weak reed". As he demonstrated with his first slide, inflation expectations are reasonably backward looking and people tend to extrapolate their recent experience into the future.

Rudd's paper, which Goodhart went on to quote, picks up the story from this point.

It is easy to see why such an inflation model is appealing to central bankers. As he argues:

For a central bank with a price stability mandate, monitoring measures of inflation expectations can provide an important gauge of how well the monetary authority is meeting its goal, while attempts to shape the public's inflation expectations through central bank communications and policy actions will represent time well spent.

In such a world the job of central banking would be quite straightforward: as long as policymakers can credibility commit to take the necessary steps to keep inflation at a given rate - say, 2% - over the medium to longer term then firms and households would set prices and bargain for wages based on such an expectation. Shocks (like, for example, a pandemic) might temporarily cause inflation to rise or fall but it should return to its expected path. Expectations become almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Rudd though, it seems, is not one for telling reassuring stories. After demonstrating that the theoretical case for expectations determining actual inflation was always weak (surely for example firms and workers care more about short term inflation when setting prices and bargaining for wages and yet the theoretical case, in policy circles, has usually rested on long term expectations) he goes on to demonstrate that the empirical case has also always been weak. He does not pull his punches.

...it nevertheless remains the case that we have nothing better than circumstantial evidence for a relationship between long-run expected inflation and inflation's long run trend, and no evidence at all about what might be required to keep that trend fixed

Right now, the debate about how transitory or temporary the global spike in inflation will be is the hottest topic in macro. Between them, Goodhart and Rudd have done a good job of demonstrating that the best answer might be "we don't know". 

The Labor Department's official unemployment rate--the most well-known gauge of the labor market's health--counts as unemployed only those who aren't working but are actively seeking a job.

Yet there is very little that we can infer from the jobless rate about the health of the economy.  The unavoidable conclusion is that the only reason investors follow the calculation is because both Washington's politicians and the Federal Reserve are expected to react to it. [...]

Briefly, the unemployment rate is rather unrevealing if we do not know details about who is dropping out; if there were new programs introduced or eliminated, thus changing incentives - as has been the case with many Covid-provoked benefits, if changing tax rates and regulations induce people to cease looking for jobs and are living from a variety of black markets or falsely claimed government benefits, etc.  We also do not know if this society made investments abroad that are bringing in unexpected returns, positive or negative, implying that more than the domestic labor force is sustaining this society.  But the Statistics Bureaus, in the U.S. and elsewhere do not provide such information - often for the simple reason that even if they had information on demography (that sometimes can change rapidly - Do we know how many illegal immigrants are there?), they wouldn't know the certain meaning of the changes. 

Consider the present.  Though there was significant hiring with the easing of the Covid panic, as of October 10 weekly jobless claims totaled 326,000. These claims having been roughly stable since June.  Continuing claims for unemployment fell to 2.71 million, a decline of 97,000.  The total of those receiving benefits under all programs dropped to 4.17 million as some pandemic-related programs ran out (a year ago the number was a not-sustainable-for-long 25 million).  Meanwhile the Federal Reserve of Dallas estimates that 2.6 million people retired during the Covid episode which, if in the ballpark, would suggest that labor force participation would stay roughly where it is now - at almost 62%; some 2 percent less than pre-Covid. 

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

Congressman Paul Gosar tweeted a link on Wednesday to a website that routinely publishes the work of neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and Holocaust deniers.

It was the Republican from Arizona's latest plunge into the world of far-right extremism, having previously palled around with militias, spoken at a conference organized by a white nationalist, and repeatedly promoted the work of another Holocaust denier.

The website is The Unz Review, which was founded in 2013 by former California businessman Ron Unz, who has written "it far more likely than not that the standard Holocaust narrative is at least substantially false, and quite possibly, almost entirely so."

DEFUND (profanity alert):

Body-worn camera footage released this week shows Minneapolis Police bragging about "hunting" protesters with rubber bullets during demonstrations in the days following the police murder of George Floyd.

In the videos, which were obtained by a Minnesota lawyer and provided to the Minnesota Reformer, officers appear to treat the streets of Minneapolis like an active warzone, and protesters like enemy combatants.

COME BACK, ADMIRAL POINDEXTER, ALL IS FORGIVEN:

The CIA's decades-old spying model has been overtaken by technology, according to a former CIA officer who studied the matter for the agency.

"The very idea of a globally dispersed cadre of undercover officers operating in the shadows, away from prying eyes, is obsolete," said Duyane Norman, who retired in 2019 after a 27-year career at the CIA that included a special project examining the future of espionage.

THE rIGHT IS NOT cONSERVATIVE:

YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

Yesterday (Oct. 6), General Motors (GM) told investors it plans to take the lead in electric vehicle (EV) sales in the US. Part of this ambitious plan hinges on releasing a new electric SUV priced at about $30,000--more than $10,000 cheaper than the cheapest Tesla, the Model 3 sedan. GM did not share a timeline for this but it seems plausible, especially given that Tesla routinely hikes prices.

THE DAUGHTERS OF HAWLEY:

A group of militant anti-vaccine activists protested children walking to school in Beverly Hills on Wednesday, with one notorious anti-vaxxer screaming, "They're trying to rape our children with this poison."

The protester in question was Shiva Bagheri, a dog walker, dancer, and founder of the protest group Beverly Hills Freedom Rally, which has held numerous anti-mask and anti-vaccine events in recent months.

She was also recently caught on camera punching a cancer survivor while protesting a mask mandate at a cancer clinic.

THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:

Adding to Democratic infighting over the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package pending in Congress, progressive Senator Bernie Sanders refused to sign onto a joint statement condemning the harassment of moderate Senator Kyrsten Sinema unless it included a provision urging her to support the bill.

THE RIGHT NUMBER IS HOWEVER MANY WANT TO BE AMERICAN:

In the United States, immigration is first and foremost a matter of caps and limits. The maximum number of refugees the Biden administration has agreed to accept in fiscal year 2022: 125,000. The number of refugees it has so far funded for that year: 65,000. The number of refugees actually accepted in 2021 (despite a refugee ceiling of 62,500): only 7,600. 

The number of Afghans that the U.S. plans to allow in after a 20-year occupation of their country: around 50,000. The number of people who would benefit if a pathway to citizenship survives budget negotiations: at least eight million. The number of immigrants currently stuck in a green card backlog: nine million.  

Beneath all of these statistics lies the question: "How many is too many?" The various answers to this question fit together like Lego pieces, forming the backbone of the current immigration system in the United States. Views on immigration may appear poles apart, but in truth, Democrats and Republicans alike set artificial limits on immigration based on a sliding scale of restrictionism. Their politics, on this front, are arguably more similar than different. 

ONLY THE SUBSIDIES KEEP IT COMPETITIVE:

The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11 million every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidized by $5.9 trillion in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were "adding fuel to the fire" of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed.

SEND THEM ALL; WE NEED YOUTH AND WORKERS:

The crisis on the southwest border is forcing the Department of Homeland Security to consider flying migrants all the way to Vermont for processing, according to internal documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

Federal immigration agencies are preparing contingency plans for a chaotic fall and winter that include looking to states thousands of miles away for assistance. According to a memo obtained by the Free Beacon, DHS is husbanding resources for the "unconfirmed" transfer of migrants to New York and Vermont and awaiting a response from Border Patrol about the number of additional processing machines required.

THE TRUMP BRAND (profanity alert):

If you are young, white, ambitious, and hoping to become a prominent conservative, openly declaring your racism seems like a way to hasten your ascent.

It's worked so far for Crystal Clanton, who back in 2017 briefly made headlines for a text stating, simply but emphatically, "I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like [****] them all...I hate blacks. End of story."

When that message and others like it she'd sent were made public, Clanton was in her fifth year as second-in-command at the right-wing campus group and hotbed of bigotry Turning Point USA; TPUSA head Charlie Kirk had previously called Clanton the organization's "best hire" and claimed that "Turning Point needs more Crystals; so does America." Her next stop was a highly visible media position with Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and "Stop the Steal" conspiracy theorist. This spring, Clanton will graduate from law school at George Mason University School and step into her most prestigious role yet, clerking for federal appeals court judge William Pryor.

EVERY HOME A NODE:

These and similar problems are not accidents and do not result from one-off difficulties or calamities. Forget about the perfect storm excuse. The problems arose because electric companies chose to defer capital and maintenance expenses, skimped on adequate fuel reserves, and focused on cost efficiencies. Customers would have been better served had they focused on hardening grid infrastructure and preserving continuous service against an increasingly hostile climate. Excessive focus on creating shareholder value can mean cutting corners to achieve savings. But the implied hope (and whether hope is an adequate basis for corporate strategy is another question) is that nothing untoward happens as a result. It's like building a house of cards outside assuming the wind will never blow. It was in this vein that electric utilities adopted what amounts to a just-in-time supply system mentality with respect to electricity. 

And there is another point to be emphasized. A well-functioning just-in-time inventory management system is a thing of beauty, efficiency, and cost minimization. But because of the extreme interdependency, one factory relies on the output of another, often thousands of miles away, any break in this carefully choreographed manufacturing process results in chaos and dysfunction. This corporate mentality has resulted in electricity systems that are now relatively low-cost but increasingly fragile.

Puerto Rico, for example, is a simple case of underinvestment. The electric company, PREPA,  would have had to raise prices substantially to improve the network. If the UK had sufficient gas reserves in storage low wind conditions would not have been a big problem for power generation. But new construction and adequate gas reserves cost money. And UK regulators have worked heroically to keep down capital spending.

The Europeans signed up voluntarily for Russian gas and nixed other projects. More pipelines serving their market meant paying the overhead on several competing gas transport lines which were not deemed economically efficient. As for Chinese and Indian utilities, having at least a 90-120 day coal inventory may become part of normal operations if one burns coal. But again all that adds substantially to costs.  

INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE:

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on whether the U.S. government can be made to disclose information about the alleged torture of a detainee who was suspected of being an al Qaeda operative, or if certain details should remain protected as state secrets.

Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, commonly known as Abu Zubaydah, is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, while Polish authorities are investigating the circumstances surrounding his apprehension and detention. His attorneys sought a subpoena for testimony and documents from former CIA contractors who conducted the "enhanced interrogation" at a "black site." But while the federal government claims that they cannot divulge certain information due to the risk of revealing state secrets, Justice Neil Gorsuch asked why they cannot just ask Abu Zubaydah himself.

"Why not make the witness available?" Gorsuch asked as acting Solicitor General Brian Fletcher was about to begin his rebuttal toward the end of the morning's arguments. "What is the government's objection to the witness testifying to his own treatment, and not requiring any admission from the government of any kind?"

Fletcher said that because Abu Zubaydah is being held at Guantanamo, he is subject to the various communication limitations and security screenings as everyone else there.

"That's not really answering my question, I don't think," Gorsuch said. "I'm asking much more directly: Will the government make the petitioner available to testify on this subject?"

WE SHOULD FUND IT:

Remarkable news from the World Health Organization today, where the world's first malaria vaccine has been approved for distribution. Malaria is the oldest known infectious disease, responsible for killing around half a million people every year -- mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa. The quest to find a vaccine is around 100 years old, and its success could save tens of thousands of lives every year.

Dr. Pedro Alonso, director of the WHO's global malaria program, called the endorsement "a historic event."

"From a scientific perspective, this is a massive breakthrough," he continued. "From a public health perspective this is a historical feat."

"The long-awaited malaria vaccine for children is a breakthrough for science, child health and malaria control," Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the W.H.O agreed. "[It] could save tens of thousands of young lives each year."

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

if the Good Lord did not want them fleeced He would not have made them sheep. https://t.co/gtJzUxTexU

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) October 6, 2021

ONLY ONE IS FEMALE, BLACK AND MUSLIM:

The language used against the Squad members after they opposed the funding was much harsher compared to criticism against Paul, and in some cases included accusations of antisemitism. One example was Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, who said in a briefing with Jewish American groups last month that the Squad members, like Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, are "either ignorant or antisemitic."

Erdan had until recently also served as Israel's ambassador to Washington. He was not alone in invoking antisemitism against Omar and her colleagues. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy stated that Democrats "capitulate to the antisemitic influence of their radical members," ignoring the fact that the vast majority of Democratic lawmakers supported the funding.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, too, said the affair was "about calling out an extremely troubling trend toward antisemitism."

A Republican running for Senate in Ohio called the group "Jew Haters," while a conservative columnist in the Washington Post called Omar a "bigot" and accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of allowing antisemitism to grow in the Democratic caucus. 

The American Jewish Committee, one of the oldest Jewish establishment organizations in America, also linked the opposition to anti-Jewish sentiment. "Insisting that the U.S. deny Israel defensive capability implies that Israeli lives are expendable and smacks of antisemitism," said Julie Fishman Rayman, AJC's senior director of policy and political affairs.

Such accusations were not leveled at Paul this week for taking a step that is similar to what Omar and her colleagues did last month. 

THE AXIS AGAINST MUSLIM SELF-DETERMINATION:

Israel is working to expand its ties with Arab states, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said at the Jewish Federations of North America's annual conference yesterday.

"I wouldn't name names because this will harm the process, but of course, we're working with the United States and with the new friends in the Emirates, in Bahrain and Morocco... in order to expand this to other countries," he said.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

As the United States has struggled to fully vaccinate its population, Fox News has aired a continued stream of coverage that has undermined the vaccine effort. Fox pushed a claim undermining vaccines during 99% of the days in the past six months despite the effectiveness of the vaccines at stopping death and serious illness from COVID-19 and the higher rate of deaths and hospitalizations among the unvaccinated.  

Fox's efforts to undermine the coronavirus vaccines really kicked into gear following President Joe Biden's inauguration. According to a Media Matters analysis, in the 254 days since Biden took office (from January 20 through September 30), Fox undermined the vaccination efforts at least once on 238 of the days (94%). The network's efforts to undermine inoculations increased as we got further into Biden's presidency; from January 20 through March 31, Fox undermined the vaccine effort at least once on 80% of the days (57 out of 71), but from April 1 through September 30, the network undermined the vaccine efforts at least once on 99% of the days (181 out of 183). 

DEFUND:

The FBI raided the Manhattan offices of a New York City police union Tuesday, and hours later, the union's outspoken leader resigned.

Bearing a warrant, agents searched the headquarters of the fifth-biggest police union in the country, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, or SBA, which represents 13,000 active and retired New York City police sergeants.

Simultaneously, FBI agents searched a home in the Long Island suburb of Port Washington, an FBI spokesperson said. It belongs to Ed Mullins, who has led the union since 2002, sources said.

THREATEN HIM AND SEE HOW CHILL HE IS:

In his memo announcing the effort, Garland said, "In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation's public schools." Those engaging in the violence are often angry about mask mandates in schools and the supposed teaching of what they call "critical race theory."

Hawley went on an extended rant about Garland's announcement at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday with Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, telling her that the effort to crack down on the harassment and intimidation of school officials is intended to "chill" free speech.

David Reilly has already been disavowed by one school district. In August 2017, Pennsylvania's Berwick School District cut ties with a radio station where Reilly worked after Reilly attended a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In the ensuing years, Reilly tweeted that women's voting rights were "a mistake," that women should not be allowed on social media, that more Americans should believe antisemitic stereotypes, that "Judaism is the religion of anti-Christ," and that "all Jews are dangerous."

Now Reilly is running for school board in Idaho--this time, with backing from a local GOP that doesn't seem to mind his tweets.

...AND CHEAPER...:

Australian researchers have found that advances in nanomaterial technologies could be the key to lower cost and more durable next generation solar cells that are easier to manufacture than conventional silicon-based solar technologies.

The research team, based at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland, used nanomaterials to improve the efficiency of next-generation perovskite solar cells to a level on par with conventional silicon-based solar cells.

MAGA MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!:

An estimated 477,200 more people died because of Covid-19 and other reasons from March to December 2020 compared to the same time in 2019, according to a study led by researchers with the National Cancer Institute published Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Overall deaths of male and female Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans were two to three times higher than those of white and Asian males and females during the assessed period when population per 100,000 people was accounted for, the study said.

Of the 477,200 "excess deaths" last year, 351,400 people -- or about 74 percent -- died from Covid as the underlying cause, researchers said. The study said Black, Latino and Native American Covid-related deaths were "at least 2 times higher" than those of their white counterparts. [...]

The study listed structural inequities as factors that have led to the pandemic's negative effects on many communities of color.

"Racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-19 risk, hospitalization, and death have been attributed to structural and social determinants of health with established and deep roots in racism," the study said.

PITY THE POOR MALTHUSIANS:

Malthus was, of course, wrong. For one thing, he never considered that the resources available to support populations might exceed expectations. Consider the work of the 20th-century American economist Norman Borlaug, whose "green revolution" dramatically increased crop yields and garnered him the Nobel Peace Prize. Some have even suggested that Borlaug saved more lives than any single human being who has ever lived. Malthus also failed, though understandably, to anticipate the introduction of contraceptives. More significantly, he failed to foresee the possibility that, enabled to control their own fertility, people might choose to limit their fecundity in order to increase their standard of living. In general, richer nations such as the US, Germany, and Japan have relatively low fertility rates. In fact, to increase standards of living, such nations need not fewer but more births.

Yet it was not only as a forecaster that Malthus was wrong. He was also wrong in a moral sense, and in large part because of the influence he exerted on other thinkers, such as Darwin. Malthus's closed-fisted nature, in which resources are never sufficient, played a crucial role in shaping Darwin's conception of a biological world dominated by a principle of competition. If the earth provides enough for every organism, then each can live and let live. But in a world characterized by scarcity, a struggle to survive inevitably ensues, in which organisms better adapted to prevailing conditions survive and those that do not perish. It was but a small step from Darwin's "survival of the fittest," repeatedly recharged by Malthusianism, to eugenics, the effort to rebalance the fit and unfit.

Malthus evinces an awareness of the possibility of something very much akin to eugenics but dismisses it as impractical. Considering the notion that some enlightened families might take steps to protect their best characteristics, he writes,

I know of no well-directed attempts of this kind, except in the ancient family of the Bickerstaffs, who are said to have been very successful in whitening the skins and increasing the height of their race by prudent marriages, particularly by that very judicious cross with Maud, the milk-maid, by which some capital defects in the constitutions of the family were corrected.

Inspired by Darwin, many intellectual descendants of Malthus entertained no such laments, and instead advocated heartily for both negative eugenics--programs to reduce the numbers of people bearing undesirable traits--and positive eugenics--programs aiming to increase the numbers of people with desirable traits.

Perhaps the most baleful feature of this benign man's theory is the scarcity mentality it both posits and reinforces, and which has crept into contemporary thinking in biology, environmentalism, and economics. 

CAN'T HAVE A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS WHEN THERE IS ONLY ONE:

The ex-detective turned whistleblower asked to be identified only as Jiang, to protect his family members who remain in China.

In a three-hour interview with CNN, conducted in Europe where he is now in exile, Jiang revealed rare details on what he described as a systematic campaign of torture against ethnic Uyghurs in the region's detention camp system, claims China has denied for years.

"Kick them, beat them (until they're) bruised and swollen," Jiang said, recalling how he and his colleagues used to interrogate detainees in police detention centers. "Until they kneel on the floor crying."

During his time in Xinjiang, Jiang said every new detainee was beaten during the interrogation process -- including men, women and children as young as 14.

"Everyone uses different methods. Some even use a wrecking bar, or iron chains with locks."

The methods included shackling people to a metal or wooden "tiger chair" -- chairs designed to immobilize suspects -- hanging people from the ceiling, sexual violence, electrocutions, and waterboarding. Inmates were often forced to stay awake for days, and denied food and water, he said.

"Everyone uses different methods. Some even use a wrecking bar, or iron chains with locks," Jiang said. "Police would step on the suspect's face and tell him to confess."

The suspects were accused of terror offenses, said Jiang, but he believes that "none" of the hundreds of prisoners he was involved in arresting had committed a crime. "They are ordinary people," he said.

AMEN, BROTHER:

A senior State Department official is leaving his role in the Biden administration. And on his way out, he has sent a scathing internal memo criticizing the president's use of a Trump-era policy to expel migrants from the southern border.

In a detailed legal memo dated October 2 and obtained by POLITICO, Harold Koh, a senior adviser and the sole political appointee on the State Department's legal team, called the use of the public health authority known as Title 42 "illegal," "inhumane" and "not worthy of this Administration that I so strongly support."

WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

THE GND IS TOO CAUTIOUS:

Speaking to reporters, Mr Johnson said "We can get to complete clean energy production by 2035.

"We can do for our entire energy production by 2035 what we're doing with internal combustion engine vehicles by 2030," he said in a reference to the incoming ban on selling petrol and diesel-powered cars.

The prime minister argued that the move would reduce the UK's dependence on energy from overseas "with all the vagaries in hydrocarbon prices and the risks that poses for people's pockets".

Being reliant on "our own clean power" would help keep costs down, he added.

ON THE OTHER HAND, THEIR REPLACEMENTS ARE AT THE BORDER:

COVID-19 hasn't disappeared in blue states like California and New York. But places that have managed to surpass 65 percent vaccination are in a better position than red states like West Virginia, Idaho, or Wyoming, where hospitals are overrun with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients. (Idaho's COVID death rate last week, for example, was seven times that of New York state.) Even at the county level, as David Leonhardt shows at The New York Times, there's a marked partisan bias: Republican counties in blue states have vastly more cases and deaths on average, while Democratic counties in red states are faring better than their neighbors.

A primary reason for this disparity is how right-wing media has come out hard against COVID vaccines. From pundits on Fox News to the gutters of Trumpist Facebook, anti-vaccine misinformation is everywhere. As a result, vaccination rates are starkly partisan. Many Republicans aren't getting vaccinated, and a lot of them are dying. Rejecting the vaccines is costing the GOP votes it can ill afford to lose.

Tucker Carlson may be the worst offender: He's the top-rated cable news host in the country and a prolific source of anti-vaccine lies. Ever since President Biden was elected, Carlson has spread false stories that the vaccines don't work and the government is covering it up -- or that they're killing thousands of people and the government is covering it up -- or that there are folk remedies like ivermectin which are better than vaccines for treating COVID and, yes, the government is covering it up.

WITH NO CULTURE OF THEIR OWN:

Almost everyone who ever wrote about the Afghans has found it necessary to refer to the legend of supposed Hebrew origins. The impact of this popular belief was so strong that in the early decades of the 20th century, in an era of racism and antisemitism, Afghan scholars in Afghanistan took great pains to prove that the Afghans are of neither Jewish, Turkish, Mongol, nor Greek origin, but rather of pure Aryan stock; and that the Aryans' original home was in Afghanistan (it sort of was). Later on, the national airline was christened "Ariana." On the other hand, many rustic or overly religious Jews and Israelis are also prone to believe in the Hebrew origin of the Afghan tribesmen; and several books, written by the hunters of lost tribes, have appeared in the last three decades.

In fact, the Western (and Jewish) myth of the Hebrew origins of Pashtun tribes evolved out of a combination of the lack of their written history up to the late 15th and early 16th centuries; very low level of traditional Islamic knowledge among the Pashtuns up to the last decades (the emergence of the Taliban, "the students of Religion," was, partly, an answer to this ignorance); Anglo-Israelist views or awareness of the early-19th-century British scholars/officers in northwestern India; and the general noninterest/ignorance about "such remote places."

There are several arguments that are commonly brought up to claim the Hebrew origin of some Pashtun tribes:

1. Afghanistan is far away, and who knows how far the Lost Tribes of Israel might have traveled.

2. Some Pashtun women used to kindle lights at the end of the Muslim Friday holiday.

3. Some Pashtun tribesmen wear a shawl similar to tallit, sometimes with fringes.

These last two customs are not Jewish in origin but are Iranian imports.

The sudreh/sedreh is a sleeveless white shirt made of a whole cut of thin cotton with nine stitches and a small pocket (where good deeds are collected); it is worn by Zoroastrians, both men and women, along with a white woolen belt (kushtig/kusti/kostik) woven from 72 white woolen cords no more than a finger wide, with the strands divided at the ends into six knots of 12 strands each.

The Zoroastrian tradition acknowledges that sudreh and kushti are pre-Zoroastrian in origin; whereas the Pashtun tribesmen are no Zoroastrians, they are nominal Muslims (before the advent of Islam, most of them were Buddhists). What some accounts see as Jewish prayer shawls were simply a version of a sudreh.

As for the Friday lights, anyone versed in Zoroastrian lore would recognize the origins of the custom and its association with women's observance and rituals.

The myth of the Hebrew origins of the Pashtun was invented by the first Pashto-writing authors, who suffered from a grave inferiority complex toward the Persians and sought to glorify the Pashtun past. The myth was created in northern India in the courts of Pashtun and partly-Mongol conquerors, who extended their hospitability to Catholic missionaries and enjoyed listening to their stories, including those from the Bible.

True that the Persians have poetry and civilization, but we the Pashtuns can boast noble origins, their line of reasoning went.

The Pashtuns, the majority ethnic group in modern Afghanistan, appeared late on the historical scene. The only clue to their early history is their language, which belongs to the eastern Iranian branch. Nevertheless, their quick rise to dominance in the region in the 15th century was as powerful as it was late. Lacking the long and developed cultural and historical traditions of the Persians, some early Pashtun writers created a literary myth of the noble origins of their people which traced their genealogy to the biblical Israelites, filtered through Quranic traditions.

SAVING THEM FROM THEMSELVES:

Coronavirus vaccine mandates imposed by employers seem to be working so far, suggesting that most vaccine holdouts would rather get the shot than lose their job. [...]

States with vaccine mandates for health care workers that have taken effect, like California and New York, have seen a large uptick in vaccinations.

These, of course, are blue states and have higher vaccination rates to begin with. But some health systems in red states, like Texas, have seen similar results when their mandates took effect.

High-profile mandates outside of the health care sector have also been successful. For instance, United Airlines achieved nearly 100% vaccination among its employees, and Tyson Foods announced that more than 90% of its workers are now vaccinated.

The Biden administration announced that it will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workers are vaccinated or tested weekly, but this hasn't yet been implemented.

...AND CHEAPER...:

NOT DONALD ISN'T ENOUGH, BUT IT'S A START:

President Joe Biden's budget includes a provision that provides billions of dollars in cash to illegal aliens with children.

The $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill extends the Child Tax Credit to anyone in the United States who provides an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, overturning a crucial safeguard against fraud. Federal law required a valid Social Security number to receive the cash transfer from the federal government. The potential payout for illegal immigrants is massive, with each family receiving a monthly payment of $250 to $300 per child.

A survey from the Pew Research Center found that roughly 675,000 children are not eligible for a Social Security number, making the tax credit expansion for illegal aliens cost between $2.025 billion to $2.43 billion a year. Other estimates put the total number of illegal children residing in the United States at more than 800,000.

SIMPLE ECONOMICS:

Past projections of energy costs have consistently underestimated just how cheap renewable energy would be in the future, as well as the benefits of rolling them out quickly, according to a new report out of the Institute of New Economic Thinking at the University of Oxford.

The report makes predictions about more than 50 technologies such as solar power, offshore wind, and more, and it compares them to a future that still runs on carbon. "It's not just good news for renewables. It's good news for the planet," Matthew Ives, one of the report's authors and a senior researcher at the Oxford Martin Post-Carbon Transition Programme, told Ars.

The paper used probabilistic cost forecasting methods--taking into account both past data and current and ongoing technological developments in renewables--for its findings. It also used large caches of data from sources such as the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and Bloomberg. Beyond looking at the cost (represented as dollar per unit of energy production over time), the report also represents its findings in three scenarios: a fast transition to renewables, a slow transition, and no transition at all.

Compared to sticking with fossil fuels, a quick shift to renewables could mean trillions of dollars in savings, even without accounting for things like damages caused by climate change or any co-benefits from the reduced pollution.

WE KNEW WHAT THE FAR EAST DOES:

 A new paper published by leading academics argues that the western medical profession's centuries-long battle against miasma theory initially blinded it to the fact that Sars-CoV-2 was airborne.

As a result, a whole string of precautions, including the wearing of masks and the better ventilation of hospitals, schools, airports and other public spaces, were tragically and unnecessarily delayed, it says.

Entitled Echoes Through Time: The Historical Origins of the Droplet Dogma and its Role in the Misidentification of Airborne Respiratory Infection Transmission, the paper is co-authored by more than 20 leading academics from around the world and is likely to cause a major stir as it moves through the peer-review process.

"Resistance to the idea of airborne spread of a respiratory infection is not new," says the paper. "It has occurred repeatedly over much of the last century and greatly hampered understanding of how diseases transmit.

"The slow and haphazard acceptance of the evidence of airborne transmission of Sars-CoV-2 by major public health organizations contributed to a suboptimal control of the pandemic."

Only now - 160 years after John Snow - has there finally begun a new "paradigm shift in the understanding of disease transmission", say the authors.

"Not only are respiratory diseases not transmitted exclusively by droplets, but also it is likely that many or most respiratory diseases have an important airborne component.

"This does not mark a return to past miasmatic ideas, but a more informed understanding of airborne transmission."

TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT, NOT WHAT YOU DO:

Austria's governing coalition announced tax reforms on Sunday including the introduction of a new carbon tax and declining health care contributions for low-income individuals which will help offset a reduction in the corporate tax.

At a news conference with several ministers from his cabinet, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz labeled the reforms "eco-social" and said the country is following the example of Germany in taxing carbon dioxide emissions.

THE TERRORIST THREAT:

A bomb struck near the entrance of the large Eidgah mosque in Kabul Sunday during the memorial service for the mother of Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman.

AFP news agency reported at least two people were killed, citing Qari Sayed Khosti, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. The Italian-run NGO Emergency, which operates a hospital in Kabul, said on Twitter it was treating four people wounded in the blast. 

THANKS, DONALD!:

In 2020, amid a year of violence and fear, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were hypervisible -- and that changed the way they look at themselves and politics, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

As the global pandemic took hold, former President Donald Trump started using xenophobic terms to blame Chinese people for spreading Covid-19. Anti-Asian hate crimes spiked, with people self-reporting more than 9,000 incidents to the advocacy organization Stop AAPI Hate. A shooter in Atlanta killed eight people, six of them East Asian women, and sparked national outrage. Then came a shooting in Indianapolis that had Sikhs mourning.

All of these events created a political solidarity unlike anything the community has seen before. The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll -- one of the most extensive surveys across nearly 50 ethnic groups that make up the diaspora -- shows that two in 10 adults are now more likely to identify with the broader "AAPI" label than they were pre-pandemic, a notable shift for a racial group that tends to be "nationality-first." This movement in identity, on the heels of a massive voter turnout jump from 2016 to 2020, is key to building electoral clout, experts say.

The heightened solidarity promises to change both the way Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders vote and the way campaigns reach out to them, according to interviews with numerous people involved in AAPI politics or campaigns that made overtures to AAPI voters.

THE ECONOMY AND THE ENVIRONMENT ARE NATURAL ALLIES:

"This was a climate election. All major parties promised more ambitious climate policy during the campaign," said Christoph Bals, policy director at Bonn-based nonprofit Germanwatch. "Whoever will form the next coalition government, voters and civil society will hold them to account for delivering on these promises."

That the Greens managed to shift the conversation so strongly is an encouraging signal to advocates around the world, who have made climate change a top issue in elections from Norway to Canada. 

THE WAR AGAINST REALITY:

1. What is critical race theory?

Critical race theory, or CRT, proposes that any analysis of American society must take into account its history of racism and the role race has played in shaping attitudes and institutions. In some ways, it can be seen as an extension of other academic approaches that developed in the 1970s and 80s, such as gender studies, that seek to investigate the power relationships embedded within laws and customs. Critical race theory often overlaps with discussions of systemic racism -- the ways policies, procedures and institutions work to perpetuate racial inequity even in the absence of personal racial animus.

2. What's an example? 

The typical White U.S. household has seven times the amount of wealth of the average Black one. That gap can be traced back to, among other things, the U.S. government's practice of "redlining" Black neighborhoods, ostensibly as poor credit risks, denying mortgages to many residents of those neighborhoods over four decades. The effects of that discrimination are still felt today, as home ownership has been the biggest source of wealth accumulation for the middle class.

FOSSIL DEPENDENCE:

The global energy crunch forced a German electricity producer to halt a power plant after it ran out of coal.

Steag GmbH closed its Bergkamen-A plant in the western part of the country this week due to shortages of hard coal, it said by email. The closure is the first sign that Europe may need to count on mild and windy weather to keep the lights on as the continent faces shortages of natural gas and coal is unlikely to come to rescue.

GET RID OF THE WHOLE CODE AND JUST TAX CONSUMPTION:

The first chapter lays out how farm subsidies and supports introduced during the Great Depression have morphed into the current $867 billion farm bill -- up from the previous $489 billion bill, which ended in 2018. According to the authors, "Ninety percent of farmland in America is covered under a farm program subsidy and most of the money goes to big farming operations."

The top recipient, Alamo Freight Lines, "received over $5.6 million in 2014 alone, qualifying for subsidies because of farmland it leases in West Texas, even though its primary business doesn't involve farming or farm property." The authors point out that those in the top 1 percent in terms of farm income received an average of $1.5 million in annual farm subsidies in 2015.

Subsequent chapters highlight what one would hope are other unintended consequences of state subsidies and tax incentives. Many were designed to create more jobs. By comparing the number of jobs promised to the loss in tax revenue or subsidy provided, the authors make clear the lengths to which local governments will go to create a few jobs.

Clean Coal Power Options, for instance, promised to create 830 local jobs for $500 million in tax rebates in McCracken County, Kentucky. And Ector County, Texas, was promised 100 local jobs in return for $91 million in property tax abatements for a carbon-capture coal gasification plant.

The authors point out that the job argument is often just window dressing: The number of jobs actually created is usually lower than promised. The benefits accrue to the investors instead.

WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

As it turns out, human colonization of the harsh and exotic atmosphere on Mars (if we can achieve it) might accelerate our species' evolution. "Given how different the Martian environment is, you'd expect strong natural selection," says Scott Solomon, an evolutionary biologist at Rice University in Houston, Texas. 

IT'S NOT?:

For all of its modernity, military firepower, and high-tech know-how, Israel has for decades been unable to keep images of women from being defaced in some public spaces. Billboards showing women -- including soccer players, musicians, and young girls -- have been repeatedly defaced and torn down by religious extremists in Jerusalem and other cities with large ultra-Orthodox populations over the past 20 years.

Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel was erased from a 2015 photograph of world leaders in Paris published by an ultra-Orthodox newspaper.

The pattern is especially uncomfortable now.

"This is not Kabul, this is Jerusalem," said Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, a Jerusalem deputy mayor. "This is a concerted campaign by radicals to erase women from the public space, which belongs to all of us."

THE GND IS TOO CAUTIOUS:

The combination of rooftop and large scale solar met all of South Australia's demand, and more, during multiple trading intervals on Saturday, highlighting once again the rapid progress of renewables in Australia's main grid.

South Australia is already a world-leader with an average of more than 62 per cent wind and solar in the past year, and it regularly reaches 100 per cent renewables, usually with the help of its 2GW of installed wind farm capacity.

FOREVER KRAKEN US UP:

The election audit contract that Arizona's state Senate leaders signed with the Cyber Ninjas last March never specified that the pro-Trump firm would produce a report that included a definitive recount of the votes in 2020's presidential race. And as revealed by a close examination of the most detailed data released from the Senate review so far, the Cyber Ninja recount is incomplete, inaccurate, and far from definitive.

The Cyber Ninja document containing the most detailed vote-count data, "Arizona Senate Maricopa County Election Audit: Machine Paper Ballot Count Report, was prepared by Randall Pullen, former Arizona Republican Party chair and a former partner with Deloitte & Touche, a nationwide accounting firm. But an October 1 analysis by a bipartisan team of retired election auditors found the data set in Pullen's report does not account for one-third of the ballots that were hand-counted by the Cyber Ninjas. Moreover, a line-by-line comparison of the data in Pullen' report with Maricopa County's official records shows that nearly half of the figures are missing or wrong.

"What we are saying is that any discussion of the [presidential] votes based on the hand counts is meaningless," said Benny White, a lawyer, data analyst and longtime election observer for the Arizona Republican Party. "That's our bold conclusion in this report."

"We believe our worst fears have happened - the entire exercise in hand counting ballots on lazy Susans [rotating stands] for two months, was a hoax," wrote Larry Moore, the founder and former CEO of Clear Ballot, in an October 1 blog on their latest findings.

FIRST NATURAL, THEN MAN-MADE:

THE BLUE BRAND:

This study examines the presence and extent of under-reporting of police violence in US Government-run vital registration data, offers a method for correcting under-reporting in these datasets, and presents revised estimates of deaths due to police violence in the USA. [...]

Findings

Across all races and states in the USA, we estimate 30 800 deaths (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 30 300-31 300) from police violence between 1980 and 2018; this represents 17 100 more deaths (16 600-17 600) than reported by the NVSS. Over this time period, the age-standardised mortality rate due to police violence was highest in non-Hispanic Black people (0·69 [95% UI 0·67-0·71] per 100 000), followed by Hispanic people of any race (0·35 [0·34-0·36]), non-Hispanic White people (0·20 [0·19-0·20]), and non-Hispanic people of other races (0·15 [0·14- 0·16]). This variation is further affected by the decedent's sex and shows large discrepancies between states. Between 1980 and 2018, the NVSS did not report 55·5% (54·8-56·2) of all deaths attributable to police violence. When aggregating all races, the age-standardised mortality rate due to police violence was 0·25 (0·24-0·26) per 100 000 in the 1980s and 0·34 (0·34-0·35) per 100 000 in the 2010s, an increase of 38·4% (32·4-45·1) over the period of study.

Interpretation

We found that more than half of all deaths due to police violence that we estimated in the USA from 1980 to 2018 were unreported in the NVSS. Compounding this, we found substantial differences in the age-standardised mortality rate due to police violence over time and by racial and ethnic groups within the USA

WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST NOW:

To many, it's a familiar story--the simple, single-celled organisms living in the ancient Earth's proverbial "primordial stew" slowly evolved into complex, multicellular organisms that today includes modern humans. But that crucial leap from unicellular to multicellular is poorly understood, in part due to scientists today having no real way to witness it happening. Now, new research that's been released as a preprint explains how scientists have observed hundreds of thousands of yeast cells start to create multicellular groups, possibly modeling how this process played out. [...]

In researching the formation of these multicellular organisms, Ratcliff used a strain of snowflake yeast with budding "daughters" that tend to cling to their parents, allowing the creation of small clumps of connected yeast cells.

THE PROPER OBJECT OF THE rIGHT'S HATRED IS THEMSELVES:

A member of the far-right Boogaloo Boys had admitted he traveled from Texas to Minneapolis in the wake of George Floyd's death and posed as a Black Lives Matter supporter while wreaking havoc on the city. Ivan Harrison Hunter, 24, pleaded guilty Thursday to a single count of rioting. He admitted to firing 13 rounds from an AK-47-style rifle into the 3rd Precinct police station as rioters set the building alight in May 2020. He was then filmed yelling "Justice for Floyd!" Hunter wore a distinctive skull mask during the riot that investigators later matched to a video on his Facebook page.

HIS GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT...:

Six things, Novak argues, echoing Russell Kirk's six tenets of conservatism, intentionally or not, help define democratic capitalism: free labor; reason; continuous enterprise; impersonality; stable networks of law; and cities and towns. These six, Novak takes from the great sociologist, Max Weber.  As such,

the spirit of democratic capitalism is the spirit of development, risk, experiment, adventure. It surrenders present security for future betterment. In differentiating the economic system from the state, it introduced a novel pluralism into the very center of the social system.  Henceforth, all societies of its type would be internally divided--an explosively revolutionary.

The revolutionary element of democratic capitalism comes not just from the freedom of the economic system--"to live in an energetic, dynamic, free society is to experience culture shock frequently"--but, especially, from its embrace of pluralism. For, Novak writes, "in a genuinely pluralistic society, there is no one sacred canopy."  Thus, such places as Brazil and China--no matter how competitive their markets--cannot be considered as having embraced the spirit of democratic capitalism. Such places become examples of what should not be. In its pluralism, "a democratic capitalist society mirrors the infinity of God through the conflicting, discordant, irreconcilable differences of huge numbers of persons, each of whom is an originating agency of distinctive insight and distinctive choice." Here, Novak sounds very similar to John Paul II, who called each person an unrepeatable center of dignity and freedom.

In contrast, Novak contends, traditionalist societies care too much about maintaining "order and stability," while socialist societies overly worry about "inequalities in wealth and power."  The democratic capitalist society, though, most "fears is tyranny, most notably by the state, but also by excessive private power." In its promises, democratic capitalism never claims to end sin, but it does hope to inculcate traditional virtues through persuasion rather than force. Still, Novak cautions, "democratic capitalism is not a system of radical individualism," as some of its critics and proponents have proclaimed.  Rather

Parties and factions loom large in it.Family is central to it.Structures, institutions, laws, and prescribed procedures are indispensable to its conception. In economic matters, its chief social inventions are the business corporation and the free labor union. Its theory of sin makes such complexity necessary. Its theory of sin makes creative use even of self-interest.

And, "the success of democratic capitalism in producing prosperity and liberty is its own danger," and, thus, "the commercial virtues are not, then, sufficient to their own defense. A commercial system needs taming and correction by a moral-cultural system independent of commerce."

In these arguments, Novak sounds very much like Madison, especially in Federalist no. 10, and Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. And, to be sure, Novak lists "the inventors of democratic capitalism--Montesquieu, John Adams, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson. . ."

IT'S ALMOST LIKE THE TALIBAN ISN'T WHO WE THINK THEY ARE:

Taliban fighters raided a hideout of the Islamic State group north of the Afghan capital on Friday, killing and arresting an unspecified number of militants, a Taliban spokesman said.

Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in mid-August, there has been an increase in attacks by IS militants targeting Taliban members. The Taliban and IS are enemies, and the attacks have raised the specter of a wider conflict between the long-time rivals.

In late August, an IS suicide bomber targeted US evacuation efforts outside Kabul international airport in one of the deadliest attacks in the country in years. The blast killed 169 Afghans and 13 US service members.

ST. REPUBLICAN:

THANKS, W:

It says something about progress in the Middle East that top Islamist leaders in Iraq and Tunisia are crying out for democracy in their Muslim countries. Their public faith in individual liberties and rights is a timely counterpoint to the hardening of Islamist rule in Iran and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a highly influential religious authority, has called on voters to shed their apathy and participate "consciously and responsibly" in crucial parliamentary elections Oct. 10. "Make a good choice, otherwise the failures of the previous parliaments and the governments emanating from them will be repeated," he said Sept. 29, referring to political leaders elected after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that planted democracy in Iraq.

The election, he added, is the best path for Iraq to "reach a hopefully better future than the past, and through which the risk of falling into the abyss of chaos and political stalemate will be avoided." [...]

In Tunisia, where a democracy sprang up during the 2011 Arab Spring, the leading Islamist party, Ennahda, has led calls to reverse a power grab by President Kais Saied. In July, the former law professor suspended parliament and seized near-total power, claiming the government was in political gridlock. Although he promised his actions were temporary, he has since cracked down on opposition and added to his powers. Ennahda's leader, Rached Ghannouchi, who is Tunisia's leading Islamist politician and the speaker of parliament, said the president had effectively "canceled the constitution."

THE OPENED BORDER:

Now issue a blanket amnesty and make it official and permanent. https://t.co/RFSfPXHaVT

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) October 1, 2021

GEL-CAP NUMBER OF THE BEAST:

You don't want to see what this will do to Nikki Minaj's uncle's cousin's brother. https://t.co/ssTx0iCtwV via @timesofisrael

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) October 1, 2021

...AND CHEAPER...:

CARTHAGO DELENDA EST:

After decades of scholarship denying that the Carthaginians sacrificed their children, new research has found 'overwhelming' evidence that this ancient civilisation really did carry out the practice.

A collaborative paper by academics from institutions across the globe, including Oxford University, suggests that Carthaginian parents ritually sacrificed young children as an offering to the gods.

The paper argues that well-meaning attempts to interpret the 'tophets' - ancient infant burial grounds - simply as child cemeteries are misguided.

And the practice of child sacrifice could even hold the key to why the civilisation was founded in the first place.

The research pulls together literary, epigraphical, archaeological and historical evidence and confirms the Greek and Roman account of events that held sway until the 1970s, when scholars began to argue that the theory was simply anti-Carthaginian propaganda.

WHEN YOU'RE UNCOMPETITIVE WITH THE EDUCATED:

Republicans have a dilemma as states start redrawing their political maps: Draw as many Republican districts as they can now--even if it makes them vulnerable to demographic changes in the future--or draw safer, more future-proof districts for Republican incumbents, even if it means ceding a few more seats to Democrats now.

America's rapidly changing suburbs are largely where those decisions will be made. Suburban voters will be critical in deciding if Democrats hold on to their slim House majority in next year's midterm elections. They're also at the center of contentious redistricting battles under way right now as states propose new congressional maps. How states connect suburbs to dense, heavily-Democratic cities and rural areas safe for Republicans could determine House majorities for the next 10 years.

In the last redistricting cycle, Republicans opted for maximizing gains in many states by combining Democratic-leaning urban areas with enough suburban and Republican-leaning rural areas to draw districts that delivered comfortable victories for their candidates. But over the decade, demographic changes shifted many of those seats toward Democrats. The suburbs voted around 5 percentage points more Democratic in the 2020 presidential election compared to 2012, and new Census data shows these areas are among the fastest growing in the country and more diverse than ever.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

The best comedy is, at heart, an exploration of our anxieties. A form of catharsis via other people's embarrassment. To steal from Mel Brooks: Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. Being an urbane gent, I'm very fond of sophisticated humour and satire, but nothing will ever crease me so powerfully or reliably as the public misfortune of others. Yes, Fleabag is edgy and honest and brutal, but have you seen that YouTube clip of the ageing rocker tipping over on his office chair?

The Goes Wrong Show, returning to BBC One this week, expertly mines that streak of hilarity through disaster. The premise is genius: an amateur theatre group stage a series of plays each week, soldiering on despite the sort of technical screw ups that would close most major theatres. Spun from a smash hit stage production, it's savvy take on the age-old popularity of the blooper reel, the writers understanding that we will always find it easier to identify with glorious failure than brilliant success. Most importantly, it's frequently the sort of funny that makes a grown man cry. (It's also the sort of funny that a grown man can share with his kids, with only the occasional moment of bawdy awkwardness.)

This is a precious thing in our current cultural moment, where comedies often seem to worry more about getting their audience onside than provoking them to laughter. As Stewart Lee put it in Content Provider, audiences used to laugh at his material, now they just agree furiously. In an age of microaggressions and language as violence, there is a wariness about the perceived cruelty inherent in comedy.

THE ANTI-LIFE TRUMPISTS:

Idaho doctors see an alarming Covid-19 trend -- maternal deaths, stillbirths and sicker babies -- in a state where hospitalizations keep setting records, health care is rationed and vaccination rates are low, the Idaho Statesman newspaper reported.

"I've never seen anything like it in my life," said Stacy Seyb, a specialist in high-risk pregnancies at St. Luke's Magic Valley Medical Center in Twin Falls.

St. Luke's perinatal doctor Lauren Miller said: "I have personally seen several cases here in the last couple of weeks that had no other ... cause for their stillbirth other than their proximity to having a significant COVID infection, and that is very scary." 

...AND CHEAPER...:

"The battery is made of iron salt and water," said Hossfeld. "Unlike lithium-ion batteries, iron flow batteries are really cheap to manufacture."

Every battery has four components: two electrodes between which charged particles shuffle as the battery is charged and discharged, electrolyte that allows the particles to flow smoothly and a separator that prevents the two electrodes from forming a short circuit.

Flow batteries, however, look nothing like the battery inside smartphones or electric cars. That's because the electrolyte needs to be physically moved using pumps as the battery charges or discharges. That makes these batteries large, with ESS's main product sold inside a shipping container.

What they take up in space, they can make up in cost. Lithium-ion batteries for grid-scale storage can cost as much as $350 per kilowatt-hour. But ESS says its battery could cost $200 per kWh or less by 2025.

Crucially, adding storage capacity to cover longer interruptions at a solar or wind plant may not require purchasing an entirely new battery. Flow batteries require only extra electrolyte, which in ESS's case can cost as little as $20 per kilowatt hour.

"This is a big, big deal," said Eric Toone, science lead at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which has invested in ESS. "We've been talking about flow batteries forever and ever and now it's actually happening."