(date: 2023-12-17 09:36:55)
date: 2023-12-19, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Bogush, Gleb; Nalepa, Monika; Remington, Thomas F. Burkhardt, Fabian; Orttung, Robert; Perović, Jeronim; Pleines, Heiko; Schröder, Hans-Henning; Powell, Ellen
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/648037 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: City of Santa Clarita
Happy Birthday, Santa Clarita by City Manager Ken Striplin Just a few days ago on December 15, the City of Santa Clarita officially turned 36-years-old. Our community has evolved incredibly since incorporation back in 1987. Originally measuring 39-square-miles, with only 130,000 residents at the time of our incorporation, the City now spans over 73-square-miles and […]
The post Happy Birthday, Santa Clarita appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2023/12/17/happy-birthday-santa-clarita/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
The 49ers (10-3) must focus on stopping James Conner and Kyler Murray on the ground in today’s game against the Cardinals (3-10).
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/17/49ers-keys-to-victory-today-at-arizona-cardinals/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Liliputing
Intel’s Meteor Lake H-series processors promise modest gains in CPU performance over the previous-gen Raptor Lake chips, but big boosts in graphics performance. And while many of the first Meteor Lake PCs announced were laptops, they’re also starting to show up in compact desktop computers. The new ASRock NUC Ultra 100 Box and NUCS Ultra 100 […]
The post ASRock NUC Ultra 100 Box Series mini PCs have Intel Meteor Lake-H inside appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/asrock-nuc-ultra-100-box-series-mini-pcs-have-intel-meteor-lake-h-inside/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: VOA News USA
MEXICO CITY — Once nearly impenetrable for migrants heading north from Latin America, the jungle between Colombia and Panama this year became a speedy but still treacherous highway for hundreds of thousands of people from around the world.
Driven by economic crises, government repression and violence, migrants from China to Haiti decided to risk three days of deep mud, rushing rivers and bandits. Enterprising locals offered guides and porters, set up campsites and sold supplies to migrants, using color-coded wristbands to track who had paid for what.
Enabled by social media and Colombian organized crime, more than 506,000 migrants — nearly two-thirds Venezuelans — had crossed the Darien jungle by mid-December, double the 248,000 who set a record the previous year. Before last year, the record was barely 30,000 in 2016.
Dana Graber Ladek, the Mexico chief for the United Nation’s International Organization for Migration, said migration flows through the region this year were “historic numbers that we have never seen.”
It wasn’t only in Latin America.
The number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean or the Atlantic on small boats to reach Europe this year has surged. More than 250,000 irregular arrivals were registered in 2023, according to the European Commission.
A significant increase from recent years, the number remains well below levels seen in the 2015 refugee crisis, when more than 1 million people landed in Europe, most fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Still, the rise has fed anti-migrant sentiment and laid the groundwork for tougher legislation.
Earlier this month, the British government announced tough new immigration rules aimed at reducing the number of people able to move to the U.K. each year by hundreds of thousands. Authorized immigration to the U.K. set a record in 2022 with nearly 750,000.
A week later, French opposition lawmakers rejected an immigration bill from President Emmanuel Macron without even debating it. It had been intended to make it easier for France to expel foreigners considered undesirable. Far-right politicians alleged the bill would have increased the number of migrants coming to the country, while migrant advocates said it threatened the rights of asylum-seekers.
In Washington, the debate has shifted from efforts early in the year to open new legal pathways largely toward measures to keep migrants out as Republicans try to take advantage of the Biden administration’s push for more aid to Ukraine to tighten the U.S. southern border.
The U.S. started the year opening limited spaces to Venezuelans — as well as Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians — in January to enter legally for two years with a sponsor, while expelling those who didn’t qualify to Mexico. Their numbers dropped somewhat for a time before climbing again with renewed vigor.
Venezuelan Alexander Mercado had only been back in his country for a month after losing his job in Peru before he and his partner decided to set off for the United States with their infant son.
Venezuela’s minimum wage was the equivalent of about $4 a month then, while 2.2 pounds (a kilogram) of beef was about $5, said Angelis Flores, his 28-year-old wife.
“Imagine how someone with a salary of $4 a month survives,” she said.
Mercado, 27, and Flores were already on their way when in September the U.S. announced it was granting temporary legal status to more than 470,000 Venezuelans already in the country. Weeks later, the Biden administration said it was resuming deportation flights to the South American nation.
Mercado and Flores hiked the well-trod trail through the jungle, managing to push through in three days. Flores and their son, in particular, got very sick. She believes they were infected by the contaminated water they drank along the way.
“There was a body in the middle of river and the ‘zamuros’, those black birds, were eating it and picking it apart … all of that was running in the river,” she said.
For Mercado and Flores, the journey accelerated once they left the jungle. In October, Panama and Costa Rica announced a deal to speed migrants across their countries. Panama bused migrants to a center in Costa Rica where they were held until they could buy a bus ticket to Nicaragua.
Nicaragua also seemed to opt for speeding migrants through its territory. Mercado said they crossed on buses in a day.
After discovering that Nicaragua had lax visa requirements, Cubans and Haitians poured into Nicaragua on charter flights, purchasing roundtrip tickets they never intended. Citizens of African nations made circuitous series of connecting flights through Africa, Europe and Latin America to arrive in Managua to start travelling overland toward the United States, avoiding the Darien.
In Honduras, Mercado and Flores were given a pass from authorities allowing them five days to transit the country.
Adam Isacson, an analyst tracking migration at the Washington Office on Latin America, said that Panama, Costa Rica and Honduras grant migrants legal status while they’re transiting the countries, which have limited resources, and by letting migrants pass legally the countries make them less vulnerable to extortion from authorities and smugglers.
Then there are Guatemala and Mexico, which Isacson called the “we’re-going-to-make-a-show-of-blocking-you countries” attempting to score points with the U.S. government.
For many that has meant spending money to hire smugglers to cross Guatemala and Mexico, or exposing themselves to repeated extortion attempts.
Mercado didn’t hire a smuggler and paid the price. It was “very difficult to get through Guatemala,” he said. “The police kept taking money.”
But that was just a taste of what was to come.
Standing outside a Mexico City shelter with their son on a recent afternoon, Flores recounted all of the countries they had traversed.
“But they don’t rob you as much, extort you as much, send you back like when you arrive here to Mexico,” she said. “Here the real nightmare starts, because as soon as you enter they start taking a lot of your money.”
Mexico’s immigration system was thrown into chaos on March 27, when migrants held in a detention center in the border city Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, set mattresses on fire inside their cell in apparent protest. The highly flammable foam mattresses filled the cell with thick smoke in an instant. Guards did not open the cell and 40 migrants died.
The immigration agency’s director was among several officials charged with crimes ranging from negligence to homicide. The agency closed 33 of its smaller detention centers while it conducted a review.
Unable to detain many migrants, Mexico instead circulated them around the country, using brief, repeat detentions, each an opportunity for extortion, said Gretchen Kuhner, director of IMUMI, a nongovernmental legal services organization. Advocates called it the “politica de desgaste” or wearing down policy.
Mercado and Flores made it all the way to Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, where they were detained, held for a night in an immigration facility in the border city of Reynosa and then flown the next morning 650 miles (1046 kilometers) south to Villahermosa.
There they were released, but without their cell phones, shoelaces and money. Mercado had to wait for his brother to send $100 so they could start trying to make their way back to Mexico City through an indirect route that required them to travel by truck, motorbike and even horse.
In late November, they had just made it back to Mexico City again. This time Mercado was unequivocal: They would not leave Mexico City until the U.S. government gave them an appointment to request asylum at a border port of entry.
“It is really hard to make it back here again,” he said. “If they manage to send me back again I don’t know what I would do.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/7401569.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Here are statements from Santa Clara County and its officials to the Bay Area News Group in response to the news organization’s ongoing investigation into the fentanyl-related death of a 3-month-old Phoenix Castro.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/17/santa-clara-countys-responses-to-baby-phoenix-investigation/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Occasion marked by virtual anniversary ceremony.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/17/cupertino-celebrates-45-years-as-sister-city-of-toyokawa-japan/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Family Giving Tree is aiming to deliver 44K gifts.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/17/milpitas-nonprofit-holds-holiday-wish-drive/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Six Bay Area parents have been arrested over the deaths.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/17/list-fentanyl-has-killed-at-least-6-bay-area-babies-since-2020/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Homestead High student honored for musical prowess.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/17/sunnyvale-teen-wins-youngarts-award/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Casa di Mir set to relocate to San Jose after 25 years in old post office.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/17/montessori-school-moving-from-campbell-to-cambrian-park/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Nonprofit will open in new space in new year.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/17/cancer-carepoint-moves-its-offices/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Ring in 2024 across time zones.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/17/new-years-eve-at-childrens-discovery-museum/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: San Jose Mercury News
Nikita Garcia’s turnaround is what advocates envision from Santa Clara County’s commitment to keep families together instead of removing children from abusive or neglectful homes.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/17/this-san-jose-mom-lost-her-first-two-children-while-homeless-heres-how-she-turned-her-life-around-for-the-third/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: The Lever News
From billionaires bankrolling judges’ luxury trips to the politics of Israeli soccer hooligans, here’s a roundup of our reporting from the past week.
https://www.levernews.com/lever-weekly-when-do-they-have-time-to-be-judges/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, updated: 2023-12-17, from: The LAist
Experts warn that new tropical viruses are headed for the U.S. – and the country should take active measures to fend them off.
https://laist.com/news/health/the-u-s-is-unprepared-for-the-growing-threat-of-mosquito-and-tick-borne-viruses Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, updated: 2023-12-17, from: The LAist
The Lego version is designed by the same landscape architecture firm behind the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing — currently under construction across the 101. It needs your vote to become a reality.
https://laist.com/news/los-angeles-activities/the-lego-version-of-the-worlds-biggest-wildlife-bridge-thats-being-built-in-la-needs-your-vote Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Guam Daily Post
The Commission on the Healing Arts of Guam opened the floor for discussion on whether the various boards would be interested in the Health Professional Licensing Office becoming semi-autonomous.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/public-health-seeks-input-from-boards-on-licensing-office-becoming-semi-autonomous/article_693f4c32-9a35-11ee-9fe7-efa03544f205.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Guam Daily Post
After years of waiting and overcoming obstacles, the University of Guam and its partners held a groundbreaking ceremony Friday for the new School of Engineering building.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/uog-holds-groundbreaking-for-school-of-engineering-building/article_0b2d66ec-9af3-11ee-afd8-13c64e739ee4.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Guam Daily Post
Department of Corrections officers found makeshift weapons in the cell of an inmate who has a history of violent convictions, court documents state.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/makeshift-weapons-found-in-inmate-s-cell/article_8764672e-9c74-11ee-8e24-e7a77552232e.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Guam Daily Post
A number of capital improvement projects at Guam Community College are making progress despite some challenges, according to the institution’s president.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/minor-delays-in-gcc-construction-progress/article_2977cfa6-9c7a-11ee-9387-ef3501f5d715.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Guam Daily Post
The Guam Visitors Bureau held its December meeting Thursday afternoon and questions were raised and answered concerning canceled flights and tourism, green electric scooters spotted around Guam and New Year’s drones and fireworks.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/gvb-potential-canceled-flights-lack-of-rooms-electric-scooters-among-concerns/article_5cf8e31c-9afc-11ee-9ab6-07d7ff68f6c3.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Guam Daily Post
A man who allegedly lashed out at his ex-girlfriend after seeing her new love interest is behind bars waiting for bail to be set.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/man-allegedly-threatens-couple-with-knife/article_51af2a18-9c71-11ee-b19a-cf9e5e4603cd.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Guam Daily Post
It was a bittersweet Sunday at Ritidian, where some people went to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the wildlife refuge and others stood in protest, mourning the loss of ancestral land.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/ritidian-wildlife-refuge-celebrates-30th-anniversary-families-protest/article_4a1fc2de-9c86-11ee-bf56-bbb1e90a073a.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Status-Q blog
Spotted in the skies above Derbyshire a couple of weeks ago. First thing in the morning, perhaps after a good strong coffee… Later in the day, in those same skies… Phew, Bob – that was a bit close!…
https://statusq.org/archives/2023/12/17/11859/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Robert Reich on Substack
And last week’s winner
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-caption-contest-grandpa-explains Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, updated: 2023-12-17, from: The LAist
The L.A. Memorial Coliseum is home to a crew of feral cats, which lucky visitors can sometimes catch a glimpse of after USC games. They help keep rats and other pests away.
https://laist.com/news/los-angeles-activities/meet-the-la-memorial-coliseums-rat-catching-crew-of-25-30-feral-cats Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Liliputing
The ACEMAGIC TANK03 is a mini PC with the kind of features you’d expect from a premium gaming laptop, including support for up to a 12th-gen Intel Core i9 H-series processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080M graphics. But instead of putting those components in a laptop, ACEMAGIC stuffed them inside a tiny desktop computer that’s just a […]
The post ACEMAGIC TANK03 Review: Tiny gaming PC with up to Core i9-12900H and NVIDIA RTX 3080M appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/acemagic-tank03-review-tiny-gaming-pc-with-up-to-core-i9-12900h-and-nvidia-rtx-3080m/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: The Signal
By David Hegg It is the 5th century B.C. Greek philosopher Plato, who gets the credit for both creating and promoting what has become known as the “noble lie.” In “The Republic,” he blatantly declared that not all persons are created equal. He put it this way: “When God made you, he used a mixture […]
The post David Hegg | Noble Lies Aren’t Noble appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/david-hegg-noble-lies-arent-noble/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Howard Jacobson blog
‘Why are there hippos on the beach?’ I asked the lifeguard. He looked like an older Tadzio from Death in Venice, clad in striped concentration-camp pyjamas, conscious of his beauty. He answered my question with a question. ‘You’ve heard of liposuction?’
https://jacobsonh.substack.com/p/last-night-i-dreamed-of-hippos-on Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Tilde.news
Article here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.08396.pdf
<p><a href="https://tilde.news/s/xg8cbh/ssh3_faster_rich_secure_shell_using_http_3">Comments</a></p>https://github.com/francoismichel/ssh3 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>About two dozen gleaming motorcycles with riders sporting the colors of different clubs pulled up to the curb fronting the Southwest Airlines ticket counter at Hilo International Airport shortly afternoon Friday.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/hawaii-news/motorcycle-clubs-southwest-airlines-deliver-toys-for-lahaina/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>A 42-year-old Puna man is accused of assaulting three neighbors — while he was naked.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/hawaii-news/police-naked-assailant-attacks-3-neighbors/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>It’s the heart of the holiday season and people are in a giving mood.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/hawaii-news/scams-ramp-up-during-holidays/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>A 70-year-old Hilo man accused of the hit-and-run death of a 79-year-old Hilo woman will remain in the custody of Hawaii Community Correctional Center — at least for now.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/hawaii-news/judge-orders-bail-study-in-hit-and-run-case/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — It was the most painful inflation Americans had experienced since 1981, when “The Dukes of Hazzard” and “The Jeffersons” were topping the TV charts. Yet the Federal Reserve now seems on the verge of defeating it — and without the surge in unemployment and the deep recession that many economists had predicted would accompany it.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/nation-world-news/federal-reserve-on-cusp-of-what-some-thought-impossible-defeating-inflation-without-steep-recession/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>VATICAN CITY — A Vatican tribunal on Saturday convicted a cardinal of embezzlement and sentenced him to 5½ years in prison in one of several verdicts handed down in a complicated financial trial that aired the city state’s dirty laundry and tested its justice system.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/nation-world-news/cardinal-is-convicted-of-embezzlement-in-big-vatican-financial-trial-sentenced-to-5%c2%bd-years/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio was in the throes of a bitter debate over abortion rights this fall when Brittany Watts, 21 weeks and 5 days pregnant, began passing thick blood clots.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/nation-world-news/a-black-woman-was-criminally-charged-after-a-miscarriage-it-shows-the-perils-of-pregnancy-post-roe/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LONDON — A U.S. warship shot down 14 suspected attack drones over the Red Sea on Saturday, and a Royal Navy destroyer downed another drone that was targeting commercial ships, the British and American militaries said.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/nation-world-news/us-and-britain-say-their-navies-shot-down-15-attack-drones-over-the-red-sea/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>NEW YORK — It could be a cold, grim New Year for thousands of migrant families living in New York City’s emergency shelter system. With winter setting in, they are being told they need to clear out, with no guarantee they’ll be given a bed elsewhere.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/nation-world-news/no-room-at-the-inn-as-holidays-approach-migrants-face-eviction-from-new-york-city-shelters/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>JERUSALEM — Three Israeli hostages who were mistakenly shot by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip had been waving a white flag and were shirtless when they were killed, military officials said Saturday, in Israel’s first such acknowledgement of harming any hostages in its war against Hamas.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/nation-world-news/netanyahu-says-israel-is-as-committed-as-ever-to-war-after-soldiers-mistakenly-killed-3-hostages/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>In exchange for approving a supplemental national-security bill providing aid to Israel and Ukraine, Republican lawmakers are insisting on a far-reaching crackdown on the flow of migrants at the US’s southern border. Many Democrats continue to resist the GOP’s demands. They should reconsider.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/opinion/democrats-make-a-border-deal-to-save-ukraine/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Hilo 54 - Kea‘au 15</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/sports/biif-basketball-hilo-5-0-ksh-overcomes-honokaa/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Waiakea 7 - HPA 0</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/sports/biif-soccer-roundup/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>CINCINNATI — Trailing 17-3 late in the third quarter behind an offense that had struggled to move the ball, the Bengals needed Jake Browning to be nearly perfect — and he was.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/sports/jake-browning-shines-again-for-bengals-rallying-them-to-27-24-overtime-win-over-vikings/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Half of UH-Hilo Baseball’s upcoming 50-game 2024 slate will be played right here at home at Francis Wong Stadium.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/sports/uh-hilo-baseball-schedule-released/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>DETROIT — Jared Goff and the Detroit Lions bounced back and took a step toward ending a six-season playoff drought.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/sports/jared-goff-throws-5-td-passes-as-nfc-north-leading-lions-bounce-back-beat-broncos-42-17/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>PHOENIX — Once the initial shock wore off on the price tag of Shohei Ohtani’s record-shattering $700 million, 10-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers, details about the contract emerged that were nearly as stunning.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/sports/dodgers-ohtani-got-creative-with-700-million-deal-but-both-sides-still-have-some-risk/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>INDIANAPOLIS — Gardner Minshew got the most out of his depleted supporting cast.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/sports/gardner-minshew-colts-bolster-playoff-chances-beat-fading-steelers-30-13/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>AI ‘infantilizes younger generation’</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/opinion/your-views-for-december-17-5/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>In my fifth year at UH Hilo, I am finally accomplishing one of my personal goals: studying Hawaiian language. I have studied languages my whole life. My mother bought some Spanish language records for me while I was in grade school. That was followed by Spanish, French, and German study in high school, more Spanish and Portuguese during study abroad trips, and dabbling in Catalan, Greek and Russian as an undergraduate, with more serious study of Arabic, Farsi, and Latin in graduate school.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/opinion/irwin-the-importance-of-language-and-family/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Hiking wasn’t my primary concern when I RSVPed to a destination wedding in an architecturally stunning town in central Mexico.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/features/traveling-abroad-isnt-all-about-sightseeing-heres-how-to-get-outdoors-wherever-you-are/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Kilauea has erupted three times in 2023 — January–March, June, and September — and has also experienced significant intrusive activity to the southwest of the summit since the beginning of October.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/community/volcano-watch-sniffing-out-stealthy-gas-escape-between-kilaueas-eruptions/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Maybe you’ve heard about the ascendant restaurant scene in Puerto Rico. Most people haven’t: The island is still principally known as a highly convenient place for sun and beaches, with no passport required for U.S. citizens, and the food scene is often relegated to what’s convenient to cruise ship ports.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/17/features/puerto-ricos-restaurant-scene-has-never-been-better-heres-why/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: The Signal
In a December 2020 interview with Stephen Colbert, former President Barack Obama mused about having a third term as president. When asked about it, Obama said, “People ask me, knowing what you know now, do you wish you had a third term? And, I used to say, you know what, if I could make an […]
The post Arthur Saginian | Obama the Puppeteer appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/arthur-saginian-obama-the-puppeteer/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-middle-east-vision-emerges-as-biden-focuses-beyond-gaza-war-/7400564.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The White House has been increasingly pressuring Congress to pass stalled legislation to support Ukraine’s war against Russia, saying that funding has run out.
On Tuesday, however, President Joe Biden touted a new military aid package worth $200 million for Ukraine.
Money is dwindling. But the announcement of more weapons being sent to Kyiv just underscores the complexity of the funding. So has the money run out? Or are there still a few billion dollars floating around?
It’s complicated.
Store credit …
In a Nov. 4 letter to Congress, White House budget director Shalanda Young said flatly: “We are out of money to support Ukraine in this fight. This isn’t a next year problem. The time to help a democratic Ukraine fight against Russian aggression is right now.”
Since then, the U.S. has announced three more aid packages totaling $475 million. That may seem contradictory, but it’s due to the complex programs used to send aid to Ukraine.
There are two pots of money for weapons and security assistance set up specifically for the war. One is the Presidential Drawdown Authority, or PDA, under which the U.S. provides weapons already in its stockpile. The other is the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which funds long-term weapons contracts.
Money for USAI has all been spent. That pot is empty.
And money for the PDA also appeared to be gone. But then the Pentagon determined that it had overstated the value of the weapons it had already sent Ukraine, overcharging the Ukraine weapons account by $6.2 billion. That effectively left Ukraine with a store credit that is slowly being whittled down. It now stands at around $4.4 billion.
PDA packages continued to be announced every few weeks. But in recognition of the dwindling money, the latest packages have been smaller — about $200 million or less, compared with previous ones that often totaled $400 million to $500 million.
… but empty shelves
In theory, the Pentagon would have enough equipment to offer these smaller packages for months. But there’s a caveat: While the credit exists, there may not be enough stock on the Pentagon shelves. So some weapons may be unavailable.
Congressional funding to buy weapons to replace the ones the U.S. sends to Ukraine is now down to about $1 billion. That dwindling money means the military services are worried they won’t be able to buy all the weapons they need to ensure the U.S. military is ready to defend the American homeland.
For example, the 155 mm rounds commonly used by Howitzers are one of the most requested artillery munitions by Kyiv. The demand has been so high that the Army has pressed the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Pennsylvania, where the shell casings for the rounds are made, to increase production in order to meet war demands and have enough on hand for American military needs.
On Thursday, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters the U.S. could provide the full $4.4 billion in weapons, but with only a quarter of that amount available for replenishment, it’s a tough choice. “We have to start to make decisions about our own readiness,” he said.
Political wrangling
The U.S. has already sent Ukraine $111 billion in weapons, equipment, humanitarian assistance and other aid since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion more than 21 months ago. But the latest package is stalled.
Support for Ukraine funding has been waning as some lawmakers see the war taking funding from domestic needs. But the broader problem is a political battle over the southern U.S. border.
President Joe Biden is urging Congress to pass a $110 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other national security needs. It includes $61.4 billion for Ukraine, with about half to replenish Pentagon stocks. It also includes about $14 billion for Israel as it fights Hamas and $14 billion for U.S. border security. Other funds would go for security needs in the Asia-Pacific.
Prospects for compromise remain in doubt, even as Zelenskyy warned in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington on Monday that, “If there’s anyone inspired by unresolved issues on Capitol Hill, it’s just Putin and his sick clique.”
The jobs argument
Harkening back to the “all politics is local” idea, the Pentagon and the White House have rolled out maps and statistics to show members of Congress how their own districts and states are reaping benefits from the Ukraine funding.
Charts detail $10 billion in industry contracts for weapons ranging from air defense systems and missiles to a wide array of drones, ammunition and other equipment. And they break out an additional nearly $16.8 billion in contracts to replenish Pentagon stocks.
The maps show contracts benefitting industries and companies in more than 35 different states. And U.S. officials are hoping the local jobs argument will help build support for the funding.
How big is the need?
Winter has set in, so the fighting in Ukraine has leveled off a bit. And along stretches of the battlefront, fighting is somewhat stalemated.
But Ukrainian forces have been taking ground back in some key locations, and Zelenskyy and other leaders have said they want to keep pushing forward. Ukraine does not want to give the Russians weeks or months this winter to reset and further solidify their fighting positions — as they did last winter.
During his visit to Washington this week, Zelenskyy said his forces are making progress, and the White House pointed to newly declassified intelligence that shows Ukraine has inflicted heavy losses on Russia in recent fighting around the eastern city of Avdiivka — including 13,000 casualties and over 220 combat vehicles lost. The Ukrainian holdout in the country’s partly occupied east has been the center of some of the fiercest fighting in recent weeks.
Putin on Thursday, however, said his troops are making gains.
“Almost all along the line of contact our armed forces, let’s put it modestly, are improving their positions, almost all are in an active stage of action and there is an improvement in the position of our troops all along,” he said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7399654.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/what-white-house-gardens-say-about-america/7398469.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/men-charged-with-killing-3-600-birds-to-sell-on-black-market-/7399142.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1839 – Judge John F. Powell born in Galway, Ireland [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-dec-17/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: VOA News USA
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio was in the throes of a bitter debate over abortion rights this fall when Brittany Watts, 21 weeks and 5 days pregnant, began passing thick blood clots.
The 33-year-old Watts, who had not shared the news of her pregnancy even with her family, made her first prenatal visit to a doctor’s office behind Mercy Health-St. Joseph’s Hospital in Warren, a working-class city about 100 kilometers southeast of Cleveland.
The doctor said that, while a fetal heartbeat was still present, Watts’ water had broken prematurely and the fetus she was carrying would not survive. He advised heading to the hospital to have her labor induced, so she could have what amounted to an abortion to deliver the nonviable fetus. Otherwise, she would face “significant risk” of death, records of her case show.
That was a Tuesday in September. What followed was a harrowing three days entailing: multiple trips to the hospital; Watts miscarrying into, and then flushing and plunging, a toilet at her home; a police investigation of those actions; and Watts, who is Black, being charged with abuse of a corpse. That’s a fifth-degree felony punishable by up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.
Her case was sent last month to a grand jury. It has touched off a national firestorm over the treatment of pregnant women, and especially Black women, in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump elevated Watts’ plight in a post to X, formerly Twitter.
Michele Goodwin, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Policing The Womb, said the case follows a pattern of women’s pregnancies being criminalized against them. She said those efforts have long overwhelmingly targeted Black and brown women.
Even before Roe was overturned, studies show that Black women who visited hospitals for prenatal care were 10 times more likely than white women to have child protective services and law enforcement called on them, even when their cases were similar, she said.
“Post-Dobbs, what we see is kind of a wild, wild West,” said Goodwin. “You see this kind of muscle-flexing by district attorneys and prosecutors wanting to show that they are going to be vigilant, they’re going to take down women who violate the ethos coming out of the state’s Legislature.”
She called Black women “canaries in the coal mine” for the “hyper-vigilant type of policing” women of all races might expect from the nation’s network of health care providers, law enforcers and courts now that abortion isn’t federally protected.
At the time of Watts’ miscarriage, abortion was legal in Ohio through 21 weeks, six days of pregnancy. Her lawyer, Traci Timko, said Watts sat for eight hours at Mercy Health-St. Joseph’s awaiting care on the eve of her pregnancy reaching 22 weeks, before leaving without being treated.
Timko said hospital officials had been deliberating over the legalities.
“It was the fear of, is this going to constitute an abortion and are we able to do that,” Timko said. The hospital didn’t return calls seeking confirmation and comment.
But B. Jessie Hill, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said the hospital was in a bind.
“These are the razor’s edge decisions that health care providers are being forced to make,” she said. “And all the incentives are pushing hospitals to be conservative, because on the other side of this is criminal liability.”
Warren Assistant Prosecutor Lewis Guarnieri told Warren Municipal Court Judge Terry Ivanchak during Watts’ preliminary hearing that she left home for a hair appointment after miscarrying, leaving the toilet clogged. Police would later find the fetus wedged in the pipes.
“The issue isn’t how the child died, when the child died,” Guarnieri told the judge, according to TV station WKBN. “It’s the fact the baby was put into a toilet, was large enough to clog up the toilet, left in that toilet, and she went on (with) her day.”
In court, Timko bristled.
“This 33-year-old girl with no criminal record is demonized for something that goes on every day,” she said.
The size and stage of development of Watts’ fetus became an issue during her preliminary hearing.
At the time, vigorous campaigning over Issue 1, an ultimately successful amendment to enshrine a right to abortion in Ohio’s constitution, included ads alleging the amendment would allow abortions “until birth.”
A county forensic investigator reported feeling “what appeared to be a small foot with toes” inside Watts’ toilet. Police seized the toilet and broke it apart to retrieve the intact fetus as evidence. An autopsy confirmed that the fetus died in utero before passing through the birth canal and identified “no recent injuries.”
The judge acknowledged the case’s complexities when he bound the case over to the grand jury.
“There are better scholars than I am to determine the exact legal status of this fetus, corpse, body, birthing tissue, whatever it is,” he said from the bench.
Assistant Trumbull County Prosecutor Diane Barber, lead prosecutor on Watts’ case, could not speak specifically about the case, other than to note the county is compelled to move forward with it. She doesn’t expect a grand jury finding this month.
Timko, a former prosecutor, said Ohio’s abuse-of-corpse statute is vague.
“From a legal perspective, there’s no definition of ‘corpse,’” she said. “Can you be a corpse if you never took a breath?”
Grace Howard, assistant justice studies professor at San José State University, said clarity on what about Watts’ behavior constituted a crime is essential.
“Her miscarriage was entirely ordinary,” she said. “So I just want to know what (the prosecutor) thinks she should have done. If we are going to require people to collect and bring used menstrual products to hospitals so that they can make sure it is indeed a miscarriage, it’s as ridiculous and invasive as it is cruel.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-woman-criminally-charged-after-miscarriage-/7401364.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
Letter from the Editor: Issue 4 Volume 64 Yesterday’s News: Remembering CSUN’s football program Technology: A formula for success The Menu: The diet of an athlete Goals and goosebumps: Introducing the rising star of women’s soccer Women’s soccer reaches new heights Too Close for Comfort: The great Pacific partition Campus Talk: Intramural sports and clubs…
https://sundial.csun.edu/177600/print-editions/november-2023-volume-64-issue-4/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The Dons will host Agoura on Wednesday beginning at 2 p.m.
The post Santa Barbara Pulls Away From Corona Del Mar for 89-78 Victory appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/16/santa-barbara-pulls-away-from-corona-del-mar-for-89-78-victory/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/black-american-solidarity-with-palestinians-rises-testing-ties-to-jewish-allies-/7401358.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — The scene: A crowded shopping center in the weeks before Christmas. Or a warehouse store. Or maybe a packed airport terminal or a commuter train station or another place where large groups gather.
There are people — lots of people. But look around, and it’s clear one thing is largely absent these days: face masks.
Yes, there’s the odd one here and there, but nothing like it was three years ago at the dawn of the COVID pandemic’s first winter holidays — an American moment of contentiousness, accusation and scorn on both sides of the mask debate.
As 2023 draws to an end, with promises of holiday parties and crowds and lots of inadvertent exchanges of shared air, mask-wearing is much more off than on around the country even as COVID’s long tail lingers. The days of anything approaching a widespread mask mandate would be like the Ghost of Christmas Past, a glimpse into what was.
Look at it a different way, though: These days, mask-wearing has become just another thing that simply happens in America. In a country where the mention of a mask prior to the pandemic usually meant Halloween or a costume party, it’s a new way of being that hasn’t gone away even if most people aren’t doing it regularly.
“That’s an interesting part of the pandemic,” says Brooke Tully, a strategist who works on how to change people’s behaviors.
“Home delivery of food and all of those kind of services, they existed before COVID and actually were gaining some momentum,” she says. “But something like mask-wearing in the U.S. didn’t really have an existing baseline. It was something entirely new in COVID. So it’s one of those new introductions of behaviors and norms.”
The situation now is … situational
It tends to be situational, like the recent decision from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hospital system to reinstate a mask mandate at its facilities starting Dec. 20 because it’s seeing an increase in respiratory viruses. And for people like Sally Kiser, 60, of Mooresville, North Carolina, who manages a home health care agency.
“I always carry one with me,” she says, “’cause I never know.”
She doesn’t always wear it, depending on the environment she’s in, but she will if she thinks it’s prudent. “It’s kind of like a new paradigm for the world we live in,” she says.
It wasn’t that long ago that fear over catching COVID-19 sent demand for masks into overdrive, with terms like “N95” coming into our vocabularies alongside concepts like mask mandates — and the subsequent, and vehement, backlash from those who felt it was government overreach.
Once the mandates started dropping, the masks started coming off and the demand fell. It fell so much so that Project N95, a nonprofit launched during the pandemic to help people find quality masks, announced earlier this month that it would stop sales Monday because there wasn’t enough interest.
Anne Miller, the organization’s executive director, acknowledges she thought widespread mask usage would become the rule, not the exception.
“I thought the new normal would be like we see in other cultures and other parts of the world — where people just wear a mask out of an abundance of caution for other people,” she says.
But that’s not how norms work, public safety or otherwise, says Markus Kemmelmeier, a professor of sociology at the University of Nevada, Reno.
In 2020, Kemmelmeier authored a study about mask-wearing around the country that showed mask usage and mandate resistance varied by region based on conditions including pre-existing cultural divisions and political orientation.
He points to the outcry after the introduction of seat belts and seat belt laws more than four decades ago as an example of how practices, particularly those required in certain parts of society, do or don’t take hold.
“When they first were instituted with all the sense that they make and all the effectiveness, there was a lot of resistance,” Kemmelmeier says. “The argument was basically lots of complaints about individual freedoms being curtailed and so forth, and you can’t tell me what to do and so forth.”
Figuring out the balance
In New York City’s Brooklyn borough, members of the Park Slope Co-op recently decided there was a need at the longstanding, membership-required grocery. Last month, the co-op instituted mask-required Wednesdays and Thursdays; the other five days continue to have no requirement.
The people who proposed it weren’t focused on COVID rates. They were thinking about immune-compromised people, a population that has always existed but came to mainstream awareness during the pandemic, says co-op general manager Joe Holtz.
Proponents of the mask push at the co-op emphasized that immunocompromised people are more at risk from other people’s respiratory ailments like colds and flu. Implementing a window of required mask usage allows them to be more protected, Holtz says.
It was up to the store’s administrators to pick the days, and they went with two of the slowest instead of the busy weekend days on purpose, Holtz says, a nod to the reality that mask requirements get different responses from people.
“From management’s point of view,” he says, “if we were going to try and if there’s going to be a negative financial impact from this decision that was made, we want to minimize it.”
Those shopping there on a recent Thursday didn’t seem fazed.
Aron Halberstam, 77, says he doesn’t usually mask much these days but wasn’t put off by the requirement. He wears a mask on the days it’s required, even if he doesn’t otherwise — a middle ground reflecting what is happening in so many parts of the country more than three years after the mask became a part of daily conversation and daily life.
“Any place which asks you to do it, I just do it,” Halberstam says. “I have no resistance to it.”
Whatever the level of resistance, says Kemmelmeier, the culture has shifted. People are still wearing masks in places like crowded stores or while traveling. They do so because they choose to for their own reasons and not because the government is requiring it. And new reasons can come up as well, like when wildfires over the summer made air quality poor and people used masks to deal with the haze and smoke.
“It always will find a niche to fit in with,” he says. “And as long as there are needs somewhere, it will survive.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/face-masks-now-an-occasional-feature-of-us-landscape-/7401355.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
Today is the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, when 30 or more men boarded three trading vessels in Boston Harbor. They broke open 342 chests of tea and dumped about 90,000 pounds of the valuable leaves overboard. The pointed destruction of a cargo worth about $1.7 million in today’s dollars escalated the ongoing struggle between the British government and thirteen of its North American colonies.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-16-2023-saturday Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Both Dos Pueblos and San Marcos will play at home on Tuesday.
The post Rivals Dos Pueblos and San Marcos Battle to Scoreless Draw in Boys’ Soccer appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2023/12/16/rivals-dos-pueblos-and-san-marcos-battle-to-scoreless-draw-in-boys-soccer/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Jirka’s blog
Happy new year to everyone!
http://jirka.1-2-8.net/20231217-0443_PF_2020 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Jirka’s blog
I’m sitting in front of my SGI O2 workstation, browsing Mastodon, syncing my Plucker feeds, listening ORF Radio Wien on-line, and of course writing this phlog.
http://jirka.1-2-8.net/20231217-0443_January_1st Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Jirka’s blog
I have several these computers: they are traditional home computers from 1980s (computers with integrated keyboards, with several ports and which can be connected to old TVs) except for two things: they were made in the USSR and they do not have 8bit CPUs - they run Soviet CPU which is compatible with the PDP-11 (they are not copies so differences in instruction set can be found).
http://jirka.1-2-8.net/20231217-0443_Elektronika_BK_0010_01 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Jirka’s blog
I wrote yesterday than my GPD Pocket refused to charge and also didn’t power on. I also noted that some people recommend to disconnect its internal battery and to wait some time.
http://jirka.1-2-8.net/20231217-0443_Another_GPD_Pocket_failure_update Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Jirka’s blog
It seems that something is wrong with my GPD Pocket. Roughly before one year I had to replace the faulty battery. Now the battery seems to look OK but the device does not charge. When on AC power then it shows 1-4% of battery and obviously refuses to start.
http://jirka.1-2-8.net/20231217-0443_Another_GPD_Pocket_failure Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Jirka’s blog
During 2018 and 2019 I used the PSION Organiser IILZ as my alarm clock. It was very good for that: it is possible to define eight or so different alarms which can be repeated daily, on workdays, on weekends or just in selected day of week. It fitted my needs very well. And she sound was loud enough (unlike the alarm on m68k Palms which is useless because it is quiet and very short). It has been also practical to have a simple note taking device near my bed - to record some evening ideas and so.
http://jirka.1-2-8.net/20231217-0443_Alarm_clock_failure Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Jirka’s blog
I’m in the process of installing of software to my brand new Aceeca PDA32. It synchronises well with my Fedora/ppc64le workstation (“modprobe visor”, “pilot-xfer -p /dev/ttyUSB0 -i XXX” ; the “pilot-xfer..” must be sometimes repeated).
http://jirka.1-2-8.net/20231217-0443_Aceeca_Software Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Jirka’s blog
There is several devices at the eBay. It seems to be and industrial PDF which runs Palm OS 5.4. It was released about 2010, long after the Palm OS was pronounced dead.
http://jirka.1-2-8.net/20231217-0443_Aceeca_Palm_PDA32 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: VOA News USA
arlington, virginia — A Confederate memorial is to be removed from Arlington National Cemetery in the U.S. state of Virginia in the coming days, part of the push to remove symbols that commemorate the Confederacy from military-related facilities, a cemetery official said Saturday.
The decision ignores a recent demand from more than 40 Republican congressmen that the Pentagon suspend efforts to dismantle and remove the monument from Arlington cemetery.
Safety fencing has been installed around the memorial, and officials anticipate completing the removal by December 22, the Arlington National Cemetery said in an email. During the removal, the surrounding landscape, graves and headstones will be protected, the Arlington National Cemetery said.
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin disagrees with the decision and plans to move the monument to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said.
In 2022, an independent commission recommended that the memorial be taken down, as part of its final report to Congress on renaming of military bases and assets that commemorate the Confederacy.
The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot pedestal, and was designed to represent the American South. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a Biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
Some of the figures also on the statue include a Black woman depicted as “Mammy” holding what is said to be the child of a white officer, and an enslaved man following his owner to war.
In a recent letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, more than 40 House Republicans said the commission overstepped its authority when it recommended that the monument be removed. The congressmen contended that the monument “does not honor nor commemorate the Confederacy; the memorial commemorates reconciliation and national unity.”
“The Department of Defense must respect Congress’ clear legislative intentions regarding the Naming Commission’s legislative authority” the letter said.
U.S. Representative Andrew Clyde, a Georgia Republican, has led the push to block the memorial’s removal. Clyde’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Saturday.
A process to prepare for the memorial’s removal and relocation has been completed, the cemetery said. The memorial’s bronze elements will be relocated, while the granite base and foundation will remain in place to avoid disturbing surrounding graves, it said.
Earlier this year, Fort Bragg shed its Confederate namesake to become Fort Liberty, part of the broad Department of Defense initiative, motivated by the 2020 George Floyd protests, to rename military installations that had been named after confederate soldiers.
The North Carolina base was originally named in 1918 for General Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general from Warrenton, North Carolina, who was known for owning slaves and losing key Civil War battles that contributed to the Confederacy’s downfall.
The Black Lives Matter demonstrations that erupted nationwide after Floyd’s killing by a white police officer, coupled with ongoing efforts to remove Confederate monuments, turned the spotlight on the Army installations. The naming commission created by Congress visited the bases and met with members of the surrounding communities for input.
https://www.voanews.com/a/confederate-memorial-to-be-removed-from-arlington-national-cemetery-/7401330.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: The Signal
Christine and Dwayne’s Christmas day is not one that resembles a Christmas movie shown on TV. The two take care of their granddaughter as their foster child. On Saturday, foster families registered in the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services celebrated Christmas at Hart Park at the annual foster children holiday toy […]
The post <strong>Christmas – a day of happiness and hardship for the foster community; DCFS lightens the load</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/christmas-a-day-of-happiness-and-hardship-for-the-foster-community-dcfs-lightens-the-load/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: The Signal
The Santa Clarita Ballet Company presents “The Nutcracker” — a beloved community performance for 29 years, which took place at the Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center at College of the Canyons on Saturday. Attendees were taken through an enriching ballet experience, where dancers in tutus and pointe shoes leaped their way across the stage, while they […]
The post Photos: The Nutcracker 2023 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/photos-the-nutcracker-2023/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2023-12-17, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Mastodon by having native support for RSS 2.0 did the right thing. Very important.
https://social.masto.land/@dave/111593060141975473 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: The Signal
Dr. Suess’s famous character The Grinch is known to be a cranky, solitary creature who attempts to destroy Christmas for the citizens of Whoville on Christmas Eve. He got a little bit of an image makeover Friday night in Newhall. During the holiday celebration at the Newhall Community Center, the Grinch happily greeted children and […]
The post How the Grinch’s heart grew in size at the Newhall Community Center appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/how-the-grinchs-heart-grew-in-size-at-the-newhall-community-center/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Tilde.news
https://iffybooks.net/event/permacomputing-dec-17/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: IT for Archivists
Version 1.11.0 of siegfried is now available. Get it here. CHANGELOG v1.11.0 (2023-12-17) glob-matching for container signatures; see digital-preservation/pronom#10 sf -update requires less updating of siegfried; see #231 default location for siegfried HOME now follows XDG Base Directory Specification; see #216. Implemented by Bernhard Hampel-Waffenthal siegfried prints version before erroring with failed signature load; requested by Ross Spencer update PRONOM to v116 update LOC to 2023-12-14 update tika-mimetypes to v3.0.0-BETA update freedesktop.
https://www.itforarchivists.com/post/sf1110/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: ETH Zurich, recently added
Kerr, Jasmine I.
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/648038 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-17, from: Full Circle Magazine
Credits
https://fullcirclemagazine.org/podcasts/podcast-344/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2023-12-16, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
If you prefer JSON you can still have RSS. 😀
http://scripting.com/rss.json Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: The Signal
The Santa Clarita International Film Festival’s third annual celebration allowed attendees to watch unique films and learn more about the possibilities in the film industry. Filmmakers were recognized with awards for their unique storylines on the big screen during the closing of the festival. SCIFF was founded in 2021 by Lisa deSouza and other independent […]
The post <strong>SCIFF: A growing mecca for independent film lovers</strong> appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/sciff-a-growing-mecca-for-independent-film-lovers/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: VOA News USA
washington — An American destroyer shot down more than a dozen drones Saturday in the Red Sea launched from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said.
“The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS CARNEY… operating in the Red Sea, successfully engaged 14 unmanned aerial systems launched as a drone wave from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen,” CENTCOM said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The aerial vehicles were “assessed to be one-way attack drones and were shot down with no damage to ships in the area or reported injuries,” according to the statement.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have launched a series of drone and missile strikes targeting Israel since Hamas militants poured over the border into Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures. Around 240 people were kidnapped in the attacks.
Vowing to destroy Hamas and bring back the hostages, Israel launched a massive military offensive that the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry says has killed more than 18,000 people, mostly women and children, according to the latest toll from the Hamas government in Gaza.
The Houthi rebels have threatened to attack any vessels heading to Israeli ports unless food and medicine are allowed into the besieged Gaza Strip.
The latest attacks mark a significant escalation in the threat to shipping in the area.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-destroyer-downs-14-drones-in-red-sea-launched-from-yemen-/7401016.html Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
No matter how hard we try, no matter how much we want to make a difference, for most of us, all the difference we make happens when we’re alive, there is no lasting value to our existence after we’re gone. Most people know that, but some people (like me) struggle against it.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/16.html#a204657 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Liliputing
The MECHREVO imini Pro is a 154 x 152 x 38mm (6.1″ x 6″ x 1.5″) computer with support for up to 64GB of DDR5-5600 memory and WiFi 6. It’s also one of the first mini PCs powered by a 14th-gen Intel Core chip based on Intel’s new Meteor Lake architecture. The MECHREVO imini Pro showed […]
The post MECHREVO imini Pro is one of the first Meteor Lake Mini PCs appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/mechrevo-imini-pro-is-one-of-the-first-meteor-lake-mini-pcs/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: The Signal
Fall colors were still showing in the parking lot of the Santa Clarita Public Library in Canyon Country earlier this month as the colors continue to show out midway through December. The fall season is set to end on Wednesday with the winter solstice. Photos by Dan Watson/The Signal
The post Photos: Fall colors still showing out in December appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/photos-fall-colors-still-showing-out-in-december/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
The Pacific-12 Conference, better known as the Pac-12, has effectively ceased to exist as we know it. What happened to the Pac-12 is tragic, but money does talk and the millions were screaming. Prior to the imminent dissolution of Pac-12, the conference consisted of two divisions, the North and the South. The South consisted of…
https://sundial.csun.edu/177322/print-editions/print-stories/the-great-pacific-partition-mapping-the-rescue-boats-that-western-collegiate-teams-are-jumping-to-post-pac-12/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: The Signal
I was back in Sacramento recently for a meeting, where I got to enjoy the beautiful crisp fall weather and colorful leaves that I normally miss out on when the Legislature is out of session. Out on the west steps the big, beautiful Christmas tree stood tall, dressed up with lights, ribbons and ornaments. It […]
The post Scott Wilk | Sacramento’s Progressives Flaunt Shiny Distractions appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/scott-wilk-sacramentos-progressives-flaunt-shiny-distractions/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: The Signal
The left has been on a crusade to delegitimize the Supreme Court since it has started to return us to a Constitutionally based government, with claims of the court taking away people’s rights, then pointing to “rights” nowhere found in the Constitution, but rather to “rights” created by earlier courts under an assumed power to […]
The post Stephen Maseda | The Left’s Supreme Court Crusade appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/stephen-maseda-the-lefts-supreme-court-crusade/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: VOA News USA
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA — Cambodia has welcomed the announcement that New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will return more than a dozen pieces of ancient artwork to Cambodia and Thailand that were tied to an art dealer and collector accused of running a huge antiquity trafficking network out of Southeast Asia.
This most recent repatriation of artwork comes as many museums in the United States and Europe reckon with collections that contain objects looted from Asia, Africa and other places during centuries of colonialism or in times of upheaval.
Fourteen Khmer sculptures will be returned to Cambodia and two will be returned to Thailand, the Manhattan museum announced Friday, although no specific timeline was given.
“We appreciate this first step in the right direction,” said a statement issued by Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts. “We look forward to further returns and acknowledgements of the truth regarding our lost national treasures, taken from Cambodia in the time of war and genocide.”
Cambodia suffered from war and the brutal rule of the communist Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and 1980s, causing disorder that opened the opportunity for its archaeological treasures to be looted.
The repatriation of the ancient pieces was linked to well-known art dealer Douglas Latchford, who was indicted in 2019 for allegedly orchestrating a multiyear scheme to sell looted Cambodian antiquities on the international art market. Latchford, who died the following year, had denied any involvement in smuggling.
The museum initially cooperated with the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and the New York office of Homeland Security Investigations on the return of 13 sculptures tied to Latchford before determining there were three more that should be repatriated.
“As demonstrated with today’s announcement, pieces linked to the investigation of Douglas Latchford continue to reveal themselves,” HSI Acting Special Agent in Charge Erin Keegan said in a statement Friday. “The Metropolitan Museum of Art has not only recognized the significance of these 13 Khmer artifacts, which were shamelessly stolen, but has also volunteered to return them, as part of their ongoing cooperation, to their rightful owners: the People of Cambodia.”
This isn’t the first time the museum has repatriated art linked to Latchford. In 2013, it returned two objects to Cambodia.
The Latchford family also had a load of centuries-old Cambodian jewelry in their possession that they later returned to Cambodia. In February, 77 pieces of jewelry made of gold and other precious metal pieces — including items such as crowns, necklaces and earrings — were returned. Other stone and bronze artifacts were returned in September 2021.
Pieces being returned include a bronze sculpture called the “Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara Seated in Royal Ease,” made sometime between the late 10th century and early 11th century. Another piece of art, made of stone in the seventh century and named “Head of Buddha,” will also be returned. Those pieces are part of 10 that can still be viewed in the museum’s galleries while arrangements are made for their return.
“These returns contribute to the reconciliation and healing of the Cambodian people who went through decades of civil war and suffered tremendously from the tragedy of the Khmer Rouge genocide, and to a greater strengthening of our relationship with the United States,” Cambodia’s Minister of Culture and Fine Arts, Phoeurng Sackona, said in her agency’s statement.
Research efforts were already underway by the museum to examine the ownership history of its objects, focusing on how ancient art and cultural property changed hands, as well as the provenance of Nazi-looted artwork.
https://www.voanews.com/a/cambodia-welcomes-museum-s-plan-to-return-looted-antiquities/7400953.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: NASA breaking news
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/dream-chaser-undergoes-testing-at-nasa-test-facility-in-ohio/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News
I posted this on Mastodon.
Trying to wrap my head around the idea of Facebook in the Fediverse. This is a company that strives to deliver Disneyland on the internet.
Who cares if a node blocks them, what’s really going to bake your noodle is when they run access to the fediverse like Apple manages their App Store.
And that is how it’s going to work.
They’re also going to implement Facebook-only APIs, and you’re going to want to support them, because they give you access to many millions of people.
It might be better for the Fediverse if they’re just bluffing, but don’t be so sure you’re going to like the way it works once they’re fully in (if they ever are).
PS: Bluesky, I’m beggin you – get those RSS 2.0 feeds in there asap, and hook up with Mastodon now. Let’s go. It’ll be so much fun and give people all they want without putting Facebook in the middle.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/16/183210.html?title=disneylandOnTheInternet Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: The Signal
By Michele E. Buttelman One of the joys of the holiday season is to bake cookies, cakes and other holiday goodies for friends and family. Many bakers are hesitant to make candy or other confections because it seems complicated. However, there are many holiday candy and confection recipes that are very simple and will impress […]
The post Make Your Own Holiday Confections appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2023/12/make-your-own-holiday-confections/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, updated: 2023-12-16, from: The LAist
Perry was using ketamine infusion therapy for depression and anxiety, but his last infusion was likely not responsible for his death, according to his autopsy.
https://laist.com/news/health/what-is-ketamine-the-drug-tied-to-actor-matthew-perrys-death Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
Howard Weaver, who was a giant both in journalism and blogging, has died. A bunch of my pieces really pissed him off, like this one. You didn’t have to guess where you stood with him. And he listened when you told him he was all fucked up and full of it and didn’t understand the first thing about what you said. He was from Alaska and I am from the east and west coasts. We were friends. I’lll miss his caustic and broad dismissals. I knew then and now that his heart was in it, and it is a good heart. ❤️
http://scripting.com/2023/12/16.html#a181815 Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I
listened to a podcast
interview
with Norman
Lear. He’s a great talker and story-teller and philosopher, and a
great human being. I had never heard him interviewed before, or read
anything written by him, but I watched all his TV shows in the 70s. The
people in them were people from my neighborhood, but funnier. Why should
it be surprising that the stories this man told in real life were the
same ones he told in his scripts. Now I want to find more interviews
with him. Great stuff.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/16.html#a171518 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Cory Doctorow’s blog
Today’s links Linkdump Minkchump: A thoroughly assorted Saturday. This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Linkdump Minkchump (permalink) It’s linkdump time! Saturday has arrived and I once again find myself with a zillion tabs’ worth of things that I couldn’t squeeze into this week’s newsletters. This is lucky linkdump number 13 – here’s the previous dozen installments: https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/ Let’s ease into it with some whimsy: a Death Metal cover of JohnCage’s 4’33” from Dead Territory. Warning, once you hear them perform this banger, it’ll be stuck in your head all day, especially in those quiet moments of reflection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGEG4JiOqew Those guys go hard. You know who else goes hard? Billionaires. Especially when they’re bribing judges. The Clarence Thomas/Samuel Alito bribery scandal prompted the Supremes to proffer an entirely ornamental and toothless code of conduct: https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/17/red-team-black-robes/#security-theater It takes a lot of work to create an accountability mechanism that’s worse than the system that other federal judges answer to. The Judicial Conference oversees the rest of the federal bench, and it’s far too flimsy to qualify as a paper tiger – maybe a toilet-paper kitten? https://www.propublica.org/article/judicial-conference-scotus-federal-judges-ethics-rules Here’s how weak the ethics code for non-SCOTUS federal judges is: 100 members of the US federal judiciary enjoyed 251 luxury junkets paid for by two billionaire-controlled dark money orgs: https://www.levernews.com/billionaires-are-bankrolling-judges-luxury-travel/ The Antonin Scalia Law School (“the finest in legal education”) funneled money from its wealthy backers to judges on 152 occasions, paying for transport, meals and/or lodging. The Federalist Society did the same on at least 99 occasions. Gifts from these two orgs constitute 42% of all judicial disclosures from the entire judiciary. While some of these trips took judges to GMU’s campus, the majority of these junkets were sited at tropical beauty-spots at fancy resorts. No other organization does anything remotely similar and not every judge gets to enjoy Fedsoc and GMU hospitality – just the ones who produce rulings favorable to the organizations’ backers. Oligarchy takes many forms, but it is a single project: the transfer of wealth and power from the many to the few. This isn’t an easy sell. The manifest problems of organizing our society to benefit a few wealthy people at the expense of the rest of us mean that the system’s legitimacy is constantly crumbling and must be continuously shored up. Take the US “health” system, unique on the world stage for how much it costs and how little it delivers. As with other American pathologies (like, say, internet access), the US health system is more expensive and less effective than dozens of rival systems (however, it is more lucrative than those systems). And yet…the US health insurance system keeps finding new depths of sleaze to plumb. From Patrick M Rucker, Doris Burke and David Armstrong for Capitol Forum and Propublica: a deeply reported story of the worst doctors in America and their indispensable role for insurers: https://www.propublica.org/article/malpractice-settlements-doctors-working-for-insurance-companies Doctors are overwhelmingly highly trained, ethical professionals who want to help their patients. But they are often thwarted by insurers, who deny their recommended treatments as unnecessary. When patients complain that corporate bean-counters are overriding their medical professionals’ advice, the insurers insist that nothing of the sort is taking place. Your claims aren’t being denied by an algorithm or an accountant – rather, they’re being individually reviewed by another qualified MD, who’s helping you avoid allopathic risk by offering a second opinion and keeping you safe from unnecessary interventions. It’s true that insurance companies pay trained doctors to assess (and deny) claims – but which doctors do they employ? Absolute fucking butchers. Propublica found that insurance companies are the preferred second act for MDs who have lost their medical licenses and their malpractice insurance after repeatedly, egregiously maiming and killing their patients. These doctors bumbled their way out of the ability to see patients, and now they get paid big bucks to review 10,000 cases per year and override the judgments of their competent, still-practicing peers. Only in America! These docs killed with scalpels and prescription pads, and now they get to continue to hurt the sick and injured with a DENIED rubber-stamp. Oligarchy makes everything worse – even Twitter, a thing that was objectively very bad before it was acquired by a fool who found greater fools to bankroll his folly. An excellent package in The Verge lays out a timeline of bad-to-worse, leavened with some of the better moments: https://www.theverge.com/c/23972308/twitter-x-death-tweets-history-elon-musk Musk didn’t inaugurate Twitter’s enshittification, but he sure speedran it. The sudden platform collapse syndrome he brought to the hellsite prompted a mass exodus, with millions of ex-Twitterers landing on Mastodon. Of course, not all of them stayed on Mastodon, which is a totally normal pattern for platform growth: https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/of-course-mastodon-lost-users/ Far more interesting are the people who wanted to leave Twitter, but didn’t. Bootlicker economists will tell you that your continued presence on a platform you loathe is a “revealed preference.” As David Roth says, the job of a neoclassical economist is to come up with new ways to say, “Actually, your boss is right.” Meanwhile, tech bros will tell you that the reason you keep using their products despite professing a deep loathing for them is that they are dopamine-hacking evil sorcerers, a claim that doubles as a salespitch to credulous advertisers who love the idea that they can rent time on a mind-control ray and use it to trick you into buying their garbage. But there’s a simpler explanation for platform stickiness, one that neither gaslights you by insisting that you like things you hate, nor does it validate the self-serving claims of delusional high-tech Rasputins. The reason you use platforms you hate is because you love the people there. The reason they’re using the platform is that you’re there. You have a collective action problem: you all want to go, but you can’t agree on when to depart or where to go. You’re like the residents of Anatevka in Fiddler On the Roof, who, despite getting six kinds of shit kicked out of them by Cossacks on the reg, all stay put in their village because they can’t bear to part with one another: https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/23/when-the-town-square-shatters/ A scholarly analysis of which communities left Twitter supports this thesis. “Drivers of social influence in the Twitter migration to Mastodon,” published in Nature, finds that the looser a community was – the less important its members were to one another – the easier it was for them to up sticks and move from Twitter to Mastodon: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-48200-7 In other words, if the people you hung out with on Twitter weren’t that important to you, then switching to Mastodon wasn’t a big deal. You would find equally satisfying people to hang out with there. Ironically, this made it easy for the community to remain intact, because its members could trickle from one platform to the other without undue suffering during the transitional phase. Your ability to change your technology habits is ultimately governed by “switching costs” – the things you have to give up when you go switch vendors. When a company can hold something you value hostage – the people you love, the data you rely on, or even access to your front door locks – then can treat you worse and you’ll still stick around. The “revealed preference” here is that you like your family photos more than you hate Mark Zuckerberg: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs If we’re going to make a new, good internet that stays good, we have to keep switching costs low. One way to do that is to decentralize our services through federation, like Mastodon does. But federation is just table-stakes. For full decentralization, you want peer-to-peer, in which our devices talk directly to one another. P2P was once the new hotness, but copyright lawsuits chased P2P design underground for a generation. Now, it’s reemerging. New P2P systems are popping up and popping off. My EFF colleague Ross Schulman breaks down the promise of two of these: Spritely and Veilid – the latter having taken last summer’s Defcon by storm: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/meet-spritely-and-veilid Moving the locus of control to your own device is critical to staving off abusive conduct. If you want to make sure a company won’t hurt you, then make sure it can’t hurt you. High-tech guns on the mantelpiece in Act I will blow your face off in Act III. Last week, I wrote about Polish security researchers who discovered that NEWAG, who make locomotives, had boobytrapped them with remote killswitches that shut them down if they were independently serviced: https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill It’s a wild story, and it keeps getting wilder. This week, 404 Media’s Jason Koebler got deeper into the story, surfacing juicy technical details and connecting the scam to his years of excellent reporting on right to repair: https://www.404media.co/polish-hackers-repaired-trains-the-manufacturer-artificially-bricked-now-the-train-company-is-threatening-them/ The dirty tricks used to brick locomotives to punish disloyal customers are widespread in heavy equipment, but they started in personal devices. Apple, in particular, has been an endless innovator of fuckery, finding all kinds of nasty ways to control how you use your device after you buy it: https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently Inevitably, Apple insists that it’s engaging in these dirty tricks to protect it customers. That’s the rhetoric the three trillion dollar tech giant rolled out last week when they smeared Beeper Mini: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/without-interoperability-apple-customers-will-never-be-secure Beeper Mini is an iMessage app for Android, which independently re-implements Apple’s iMessage end-to-end encryption so that Apple customers’ data isn’t left unprotected and unencrypted when they communicate with Android users. Apple’s message to its customers is that if they want security, they should confine themselves to communicating with other Apple customers. If that’s not good enough, Apple says, you should buy your Android-using friends iPhones: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/7/23342243/tim-cook-apple-rcs-imessage-android-iphone-compatibility This is of a piece with Apple’s anti-repair rhetoric. Apple claims that they’re taking away your right to get your phone repaired by the depot of your choosing in order to protect you from unethical repairers who steal your data. That really is a risk: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-computer-repair-shops-customers-personal-data/ But it’s a risk that can be mitigated. Google just announced a new “Repair Mode” for Android devices – this lets technicians boot and test your phone without accessing your data: https://gizmodo.com/google-pixel-8-phone-self-repair-1851102537 It’s nice to see Google guarding its customers’ backs every now and again, even from its depraved enshittified depths. Google also just announced that it will move GMaps’ location data storage to your device. That means that it will no longer be able to use Maps data to answer “geofence warrants” (AKA “reverse warrants”), where the cops demand the identities of everyone in a location – say, all the participants in a Black Lives Matter demonstration: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/end-geofence-warrants As with Repair Mode, this is a best of all worlds solution. Maps users can still get access to their location history, but Google can’t. Google’s also end-to-end encrypting Maps data backups, so you can store your Maps data in the cloud and recover it if you lose your device, but Google can’t see that data and use it to answer law enforcement demands. It’s a marker of how far Google has moved on locational privacy. Just a couple years ago, top Google execs who oversaw Google Maps were caught complaining that they couldn’t figure out how to opt out of Google location tracking: https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#goog That’s why – as my EFF colleague Jen Lynch writes, we have to look very closely at these new privacy promises: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/end-geofence-warrants “Google collects additional location information as well. It remains to be seen whether law enforcement will find a way to access these other stores of location data on a mass basis in the future”: https://apnews.com/article/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb Sorting corporate technical claims from reality requires independent verification and discussion – AKA hackers. The reverse-engineers who relentlessly poke at the workings of tech are how we get to find out whether it’s safe to rely on the systems in our life. One of the oldest and best hacker cons in 2600’s Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE), now heading into its fifteenth biannual edition: https://www.2600.com/content/hope-xv-officially-announced-special-ticket-deal-week I’ve attended many of these cons, and they’re amazing. I’m also a huge fan of 2600 magazine – I’m a contributor and lifetime subscriber. The archives of 2600 were critical when I was researching and writing Picks and Shovels, the third Martin Hench novel, which comes out in Feb 2025. I relied on 2600’s DRM-free ebook archives: https://www.2600.com/Magazine/digital-back-issues Keeping ebooks DRM-free means that they don’t contribute to high switching costs that lock you into platforms that harm you. If you can quit a platform and keep your ebooks, then the second a platform sours, you can bolt for the exits. This cuts both ways: DRM keeps readers locked into platforms, but it also keeps publishers locked in. As Charlie Stross prophesied over a decade ago, Kindle DRM locks in the publishers’ best customers, meaning that the publishers would not be able to credibly threaten to sell elsewhere because their readers wouldn’t be able to leave Amazon without surrendering their books: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/04/more-on-drm-and-ebooks.html In the intervening years, Amazon has found a myriad of ways to shift value from publishers to themselves. Pro-monopoly economists say this doesn’t matter, so long as Amazon remains good to readers, but unfortunately for those economists, reality has an anti-neoliberal bias: https://www.fastcompany.com/90996547/e-books-are-fast-becoming-tools-of-corporate-surveillance Ebooks are now surveillance honeypots, allowing Amazon to capture an astonishing amount of private data on readers – data that is especially dangerous in an era of rampant book banning: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2023-12-07-25-human-rights-organizations-call-on-2024-congress-to-investigate-big-tech-and-publishings-stranglehold-over-digital-books The irony here is that all of this surveillance data isn’t even accessible to publishers, who know less about their readers every day – even as Amazon, a monopolist that dominates bookselling, and competes directly with publishers – becomes the world’s leading authority on publishers’ best customers. Blunders like DRM make it easy to dismiss publishing as a “legacy industry.” But any industry that sticks around long enough will accumulate layers of hard-to-budge cruft. Irrational conduct is often an emergent property of a series of perfectly rational choices. For a fascinating case-study in how this works, check out Patrick McKenzie’s history of how checks came into existence in the USA, and why American still rely on these antiquates slips of paper to move billions of dollars around: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/the-long-shadow-of-checks/ But inertia can be broken. When the status quo is terrible enough, and the alternatives are compelling enough, we can change. Take the US job market. Today, the true US minimum wage is $0: that’s how much you earn if no one will give you a job. The “actually, your boss is right” economists insist that this is a feature, not a bug. The reserve army of unemployed people – we’re told – are necessary to fight inflation. When inflation rises, these economists insist that we have to make more people unemployed, to save the economy: https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/01/mayday/#inflationary-political-economy But there’s another form of automatic price-stabilization, one that’s been tried before in the USA to enormous success: a “Job Guarantee.” That’s where the feds fund jobs that are administered by local governments. These jobs – at socially inclusive wages, with good benefits – set the true minimum wage in the economy, because bosses have to beat the job guarantee offer to attract employees. The best authority on the Job Guarantee is Pavlina Tcherneva. Her slim book on the subject is a fantastic explainer, from how the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps’s proof of the lasting improvements a Job Guarantee can deliver to the nation, to how a new Job Guarantee could be part of a Green New Deal: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-06-24/forget-ubi-says-an-economist-its-time-for-universal-basic-jobs Tcherneva’s book was partial inspiration for my latest novel, the bestselling solarpunk adventure The Lost Cause, where a Green New Deal and its Job Guarantee are both under threat from seagoing, Neal Stephenson LARPing billionaire wreckers and their white nationalist, onshore shock troops: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause The case for a Job Guarantee is even stronger today than it was a couple years ago, when I was writing the novel. Tcherneva’s just launched “The Job Guarantee Program” (“An essential resource for scholars, policymakers, and engaged citizens”): https://www.jobguarantee.org/ The next time Larry Summers and co insist that we need to create an army of unemployed people to save the economy, you can refer them to the site’s FAQ: https://www.jobguarantee.org/faqs/ That about wraps up this week’s linkdump. It only remains for me to leave you with a lighthearted palate cleanser – a glorious Rube Goldberg clock that uses black and marbles fired into racing tracks to display the time. Part I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IF4esSNA3k Part II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtcqx2pZbrI (Image: Natalie Maynor, CC BY 2.0, modified) This day in history (permalink) #20yrsago Elf Sex, per Tolkien https://ansereg.com/what_tolkien_officially_said_abo.htm #20yrsago You need a license to say “I have a dream” https://web.archive.org/web/20031231034048/http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/seltzer/2003/12/16#a48 #20yrsago Cousin-identification chart for cousin-marriage advocacy https://web.archive.org/web/20031210061028/http://www.cuddleinternational.org/genetics/kinship.html #20yrsago Blockbuster prez calls for end to DVD region-coding https://web.archive.org/web/20060501151122/http://hometheater.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/home_video/brief_display.jsp%3Fvnu_content_id=2047010 #20yrsago LiveJournal demographics https://web.archive.org/web/20040212004957/https://www.livejournal.com/stats.bml #20yrsago Verisign calls for Internet redesign, Minitel-style https://www.isen.com/blog/archives/2003_12_01_archive.html#107166720994279652 #15yrsago Henry Jenkins’s Neil Gaiman interview video http://henryjenkins.org/2008/12/from_neil_gaiman_to_j_michael.html #15yrsago Steven Johnson’s “The Invention of Air” — how an eclectic minister/scientist/politician shows that history is a web https://memex.craphound.com/2008/12/17/steven-johnsons-the-invention-of-air-how-an-eclectic-minister-scientist-politician-shows-that-history-is-a-web/ #15yrsago Yahoo to anonymize logs after 90 days https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/yahoo-anonymize-logs-after-90-days-compared-google #15yrsago HOWTO Make a DNS dead-drop https://landonf.org/code/security/DNS_Dead_Drop.20060128201048.26517.luxo.html #15yrsago HOWTO build a Linux-based supercomputer out of Playstation 3s https://phys.org/news/2008-12-scientists-supercomputer-sony-playstation.html #15yrsago New York Public Library joins Flickr Commons https://web.archive.org/web/20081220071905/http://drupal02.nypl.org/blogs/2008/12/16/nypl-joins-flickr-commons #10yrsago Google yanks vital Android privacy feature https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/google-removes-vital-privacy-features-android-shortly-after-adding-them #10yrsago CopyrightX: Harvard’s ground-breaking MOOC on copyright law https://web.archive.org/web/20131214032640/http://copyx.org/ #10yrsago Amnesty petition to release Chelsea Manning https://web.archive.org/web/20131221031616/http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b=6645049&aid=520439 #10yrsago Arapahoe teacher on survival and resilience https://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2013/12/scar-tissue.html #10yrsago 60 Minutes attains new journalistic low with NSA puff-piece https://www.techdirt.com/2013/12/16/cbs-airs-nsa-propaganda-informercial-masquerading-as-hard-hitting-60-minutes-journalism-reporter-with-massive-conflict-interest/ #10yrsago Edward Snowden’s open letter to the people of Brazil, offering help in rooting out NSA spying in exchange for asylum https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/17/edward-snowden-letter-brazilian-people #5yrsago London cops are subjecting people in the centre of town to facial recognition today and tomorrow https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/londons-police-will-be-testing-facial-recognition-in-public-for-2-days/ #5yrsago Official UK investigation of $100 billion laundered through Scottish Limited Partnerships ignores all evidence https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/12/uks-reform-limited-partnership-law-dead-arrival.html #5yrsago No peace in Hungary as thousands fill the streets, risking police violence, to protest slave labor law https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/16/europe/hungary-protests-intl/index.html #5yrsago ISP that protested being ordered to block Sci-Hub by blocking Elsevier and government agencies now under threat for “Net Neutrality” violations https://torrentfreak.com/isp-faces-net-neutrality-investigation-for-pirate-site-blocking-retaliation-181217/ #5yrsago “Owning your data” will not save you from data capitalism https://memex.craphound.com/2018/12/17/owning-your-data-will-not-save-you-from-data-capitalism/ #5yrsago Science fiction writers on the future of work https://www.wired.com/story/future-of-work-sci-fi-issue/ #5yrsago Google’s secretive, data-hungry private city within Toronto will be much larger than previously disclosed https://rabble.ca/general/plan-re-image-torontos-waterfront-how-much-does-public-know-about-plan/ #5yrsago Internal sources say googler uprising has killed Google’s plans to launch a censored, spying Chinese search engine https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/google-china-censored-search-engine-2/ #5yrsago False Flag: my science fiction story about the future of copyright filters in an Article 13 Europe https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/false-flag/ #5yrsago Arizona realtor surprised to find Canadian “white hat” hacker talking to him through his smart doorbell https://memex.craphound.com/2018/12/17/arizona-realtor-surprised-to-find-canadian-white-hat-hacker-talking-to-him-through-his-smart-doorbell/ #5yrsago Developer who tore down historic San Francisco house ordered to build an exact replica https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/City-requires-property-owner-who-demolished-13467909.php #5yrsago Podcast: “Sole and Despotic Dominion” and “What is the Internet For?” https://ia600707.us.archive.org/27/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_298/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_298_-_Sole_and_Despotic_Dominion.mp3 #1yrago The antitrust Twilight Zone https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken Colophon (permalink) Today’s top sources: Evil Mad Scientist Labs (https://www.evilmadscientist.com/), Taylor Lorenz (https://mastodon.social/@taylorlorenz). Currently writing: A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025 The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024 Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM Latest podcast: Daddy-Daughter Podcast, 2023 edition https://craphound.com/news/2023/12/10/daddy-daughter-podcast-2023-edition/) Upcoming appearances: Internet Con (Peculiar Book Club), Jan 11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5UvzuJ1R4I Recent appearances: Enshittification: A Monopoly Story (Macro n Cheese) https://realprogressives.org/podcast_episode/episode-255-enshittification-a-monopoly-story-with-cory-doctorow Science Fiction and the Future of Science https://council.science/podcast/science-fiction/ AI needs to work with humans — not replace us (CBC IDEAS) https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/artificial-intelligence-provocation-ideas-festival-1.7046841 Latest books: “The Lost Cause:” a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/) “The Internet Con”: A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245). “Red Team Blues”: “A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before.” Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/. “Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin”, on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com “Attack Surface”: The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it “a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance.” Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism”: an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html) “Little Brother/Homeland”: A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A_Little_Brother%26_Homeland.html “Poesy the Monster Slayer” a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/. Upcoming books: The Bezzle: a sequel to “Red Team Blues,” about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024 Picks and Shovels: a sequel to “Red Team Blues,” about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025 Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025 This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://pluralistic.net/plura-list Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://twitter.com/doctorow Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic “When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla” -Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/16/hotchpotch/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Liliputing
The new Asus NUC 13 Rugged is a small, fanless and dustproof computer powered by either a 6-watt or 12-watt Intel Alder Lake-N processor (with options including the Intel Processor N50, Atom x7211E, and Atom x7425E). The computer supports up to 16GB of DDR5 memory, has multiple storage options, dual 2.5 GbE Ethernet ports, and support […]
The post Asus NUC 13 Rugged is a fanless mini PC with Intel Alder Lake-N appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/asus-nuc-13-rugged-is-a-fanless-mini-pc-with-intel-alder-lake-n/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: The Sundail (CSUN student paper)
Pain and struggle… …
https://sundial.csun.edu/177330/print-editions/print-stories/zeal-sports-poem/ Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
BTW, here’s the feedlandInstall repo. It has full instructions for setting up your own FeedLand instance.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/16.html#a155725 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: VOA News USA
PHOENIX, ARIZONA — Once the initial shock wore off on the price tag of Shohei Ohtani’s record-shattering $700 million, 10-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers, details about the contract emerged that were nearly as stunning.
A total of $680 million — 97% of the money — was deferred until 2034-43 with no interest.
Had the Dodgers invented some kind of contract voodoo new to Major League Baseball?
Not really. But it appears to be a team-friendly deal that also has benefits for Ohtani as the Japanese superstar departs the Angels, heads 30 miles up Interstate 5 and establishes a new home with the Dodgers in Chavez Ravine.
“Thanks to his endorsements and other off-the-field revenue streams, he has the luxury to defer compensation,” said Michael Rueda, head of the U.S. division of sports and entertainment at Withers law firm. “But there’s always some risk.”
Part of Rueda’s job is giving financial advice to high-profile sports stars and celebrities. He said the Ohtani-Dodgers deal looks like a solid arrangement, even if there are tradeoffs for both sides.
Make no mistake, the 29-year-old Ohtani is a rich man and will be rich long into the foreseeable future, but money promised later is never the same as money in hand.
One example of Ohtani’s risk: Former Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Mario Lemieux was out about $26 million in the 1990s when the franchise was in financial trouble and couldn’t pay the money it owed the hockey legend in a deferred deal.
Things eventually worked out. Lemieux converted his deferred salary into equity with the team, then partnered with Ron Burkle to pull the club out of bankruptcy. They eventually made a windfall after selling part of their stake in 2021 — but it’s a reminder that financial circumstances can change when 20 years pass. The Dodgers were certainly a fan-drawing juggernaut in 2023, but 2043 doesn’t come for a long time. L.A., after all, is only 12 years removed from filing for bankruptcy protection under former owner Frank McCourt.
There’s also at least some risk for the franchise: The New York Mets famously deferred $5.9 million that slugger Bobby Bonilla was owed in 2000 and — thanks to an 8% interest rate — will end up paying nearly $30 million total in annual installments until 2035.
In contrast, Ohtani’s deferred pay comes with no interest. That’s a potentially monstrous savings — maybe billions — on a deal that could have been much more costly. Ohtani’s deal with 8% interest would come out to nearly $3 billion by 2043.
“It’s interesting to me that the deferred money comes with no interest, from what I’ve read” Rueda said. “That’s giving up a lot of money.”
Ohtani’s other potential advantage from the contract is he receives $680 million of the $700 million after he’s done playing, which means he might not be living in California, where taxes are relatively high. Depending on where he lives from 2034-43, that could lead to sizable savings.
Rueda said there are many variables, particularly if he goes back to Japan.
“Tax is always a big part,” Rueda said. “The concept of moving to a different jurisdiction and avoiding the California state tax — yeah, that could be accurate.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/7400829.html Save to Pocket
@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-12-16, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)
I’m starting to scope out if it would be possible to create an Electron version of FeedLand. I had a conversation with ChatGPT about that. We did not arrive at a plan. FeedLand uses MySQL, I can’t convert to another SQL, we have to use the same codebase in all versions. If, after reading the chat, you have ideas, please post a note here.
http://scripting.com/2023/12/16.html#a154922 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Bunnie’s Studio Blog
Some might remember a book I released in 2016, “The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen”. A lot has changed in the world since then, and Shenzhen is no exception. There’s a new maintainer of the guide, Naomi Wu (@realsexycyborg), and she is crowdfunding an updated, new version with a snazzy red cover, called “The […]
https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6886 Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, updated: 2023-12-16, from: Russell Graves, Syonyk’s Project Blog
https://www.sevarg.net/2023/12/16/solar-shed-part-19-eg4-ll-lifepo4/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, updated: 2023-12-16, from: The LAist
TSA is now accepting Mobile Driver’s Licenses at security checkpoints in two LAX terminals.
https://laist.com/news/transportation/guide-to-using-your-phone-to-get-through-lax-security-faster Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, updated: 2023-12-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Comment You surely noticed much of the world was on fire this year, especially if you were in the western United States, western or eastern Canada, Australia, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Algeria, Tunisia… you get the idea.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/12/16/fossil_fuels_wildfires/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: The Lever News
Plus, Google suffers a big antitrust defeat, New York’s private colleges could lose wasteful tax breaks, and Massachusetts says goodbye to natural gas.
https://www.levernews.com/you-love-to-see-it-white-house-to-slash-drug-prices/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Guam Daily Post
Dozens of island residents attended the third annual Wreaths Across America event to pay tribute to veterans who have died.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/veterans-honored-in-3rd-annual-wreaths-across-america-ceremony/article_5e468d72-9bb6-11ee-a341-57c33f45cabe.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Guam Daily Post
A 30-year-old man is being sought by police in connection to several reports of thefts and burglaries.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/man-wanted-in-several-theft-burglary-reports/article_271b516e-9a3c-11ee-ae4c-2f9cb26912cd.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Guam Daily Post
Some 220 University of Guam students have something extra to celebrate this Christmas season as they wrap up their educational journey Sunday afternoon.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/uog-celebrates-220-graduates/article_d377c0b6-9bb6-11ee-8d91-07ae7a9534a8.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Guam Daily Post
A convicted robber, who tried to appeal the sentence imposed, will have to serve his time in prison as the Supreme Court of Guam found no error.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/supreme-court-upholds-convicted-robber-s-sentence/article_f411774c-9bbe-11ee-ae8c-cfb68f241aee.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Guam Daily Post
A man accused of family violence this past week was accused earlier this year of assaulting a man who gave him a ride and stealing the man’s car.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/man-accused-of-assaulting-driver-giving-him-a-ride-taking-car/article_4f2146f8-9aed-11ee-9052-b32a6c2d593a.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Guam Daily Post
Since COVID-19 there have been roughly 30 veterans who are homeless or living in substandard housing, but a pilot project to build tiny homes could decrease that number.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/pilot-project-aims-to-3d-print-concrete-homes-for-homeless-veterans/article_062dfbc0-9afd-11ee-aa5a-b3795c140b04.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Guam Daily Post
A man was accused of punching a wheelchair-bound victim in the jaw twice.
https://www.postguam.com/news/local/man-accused-of-punching-man-in-wheelchair-in-the-jaw/article_16ce921c-9aff-11ee-b58c-1fde766da438.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Manu - I write blog
How do you pirate a social media product though?
Sometimes you face questions that force you to think creatively. How do you pirate a social media product? What does it mean to pirate something and what’s “pirateable” in a social media product?
Online piracy or software piracy is the practice of downloading and distributing copyrighted works digitally without permission, such as music or software.
If we’re talking social media, what part of the whole experience is the pirateable product? Is it the shared content? In that case, pirating is easy: you grab whatever is shared, you take it out of the platform walls and you republish it somewhere else. Let’s pirate something now, shall we?
That right there, is social media content. You’re not consuming it on a social media platform. Meta will never know you saw that post (tweet?), your consumption of that content won’t be registered anywhere. I took it—without permission—and I’m now redistributing it.
Or maybe, the real product of a social media platform is not the content, but the social interactions. And the way you pirate those is by simply not engaging with the platform. By removing yourself from the platform you force the social interaction to happen elsewhere—on your blog, on your personal newsletter, in real life.
It’s a silly problem to think about. Silly, but also fun.
https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/lB9xVypmDrlu2TVM Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Robert Reich on Substack
With Heather Lofthouse and yours truly
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-are-house-republicans-so-ready Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Liliputing
The Morefine M10 is a pocket-sized computer with a 6-watt Intel Alder Lake N100 quad-core chip that can reach clock speeds up to 3.4GHz. It’s also equipped with 12GB of 4800MHz LPDDR5 memory and supports up to 2TB of PCIe NVMe solid state storge. The little computer is available from Morefine’s AliExpress store or the […]
The post Morefine M10 is a pocket-sized PC with two HDMI ports and Intel N100 appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/morefine-m10-is-a-pocket-sized-pc-with-two-hdmi-ports-and-intel-n100/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Heatmap News
Faulkner Architects have practiced from Truckee, California in the Sierra Nevada Mountain range for 35 years. The firm’s particular approach to design takes inspiration from founder Greg Faulkner’s former work in aircraft design. “Precision is one of the things we’re about,” Faulkner told me. “I was part of the wing group at Cessna. I drew — by hand — the wings and all the parts that make up a wing for the Citation III, the first intercontinental business jet with a low swept wing.” (A low swept wing improves aerodynamic performance.)
Translated to architecture, Faulkner thinks about precision in the assembly of pieces and parts to accommodate for expansion and contraction. He also takes direction from the natural shape and form of the building’s environment to determine materials. “Our work is not just an idea dreamt up separate from the place,” he said.
CAMPout, a Faulkner-designed home located in the Sierra Nevada mountains just 25 miles from where the 2021 Caldor Fire burned through more than 220,000 acres of woodland and destroyed roughly 1,000 structures, perfectly embodies that approach. I spoke with Greg about the story behind the house, designing for fire risk, the virtues of pine. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Where is CAMPout house located?
Near Lake Tahoe, at the base of a mountain that used to be a volcano and is now carved with ski runs. The house is at a high elevation with a lot of snow and looks south toward that mountain. The house is surrounded by an alpine forest and is in between the mountain and a former prehistoric lake with an all-desert bottom. A spring-fed creek runs through the property.
Courtesy
Faulkner Architects
Tell me about your architectural approach to the house.
For CAMPout, we used unfinished sugar pine trees throughout the interior. You get the scent of sugar pine, and the wood is soft to touch. We used it on the interior walls and ceiling.
We also used a fire-resistant concrete base to create a continuous surface materiality — you have boulders outside, concrete inside and out, and start to get a feeling of inside out, outside in. We wanted to create a seamless experience, using a singular wood species throughout the whole house — it’s not about a different experience everywhere. It’s expedient, and we use what is at hand.
Your Habitable score shows extreme fire risk. Were you aware of this when you built the home? What decisions did you have to make?
We did plan for fire. The exterior of the house is corten steel, [otherwise known as weathering steel, which resists corrosion,] and concrete. There are only these two exterior materials, and both are fire-resistant. Also, we designed an inner courtyard and glazed the exterior windows. The roof has a Class A rating, [meaning that it can withstand intense flames,] and is a combination of heavy plate steel over a layer of stone to protect from flying embers.
In 2021, the Caldor fire came within 25 miles [of the CAMPout property] and destroyed 1,000 structures nearby. In forest fire terms, that’s pretty close. Glazing on the interior glass in the courtyard made that somewhat of a safe room. While the courtyard provided some protection, it still would’ve been very smoky and best to evacuate.
We didn’t have to do too much to create escape routes because there are two ways out of the community where the house is built, in case one is blocked.
Habitable doesn’t have a risk factor for snow and Truckee had record snowfalls last year. How did CAMPout perform in the snow?
Snow is heavy on a roof. CAMPout house is designed for 175 or 200 pounds per square foot — that’s one person standing side by side over the whole roof. But last year we got double that weight in snow; the house had 10 feet of snow stacked on top. We had safety factors built in — we designed the roof to hold the snow in Swiss tradition because of the insulation it provides. Still, that’s a lot of snow.
The water content of snow varies so much. The roof could take a lot of light dry snow, but if it’s full of rain, it might not. Last year the engineer recommended after 5 feet or so to start knocking off the snow. In case another big storm comes, it would be difficult to remove.
Courtesy
Faulkner Architects
Is there anything you would’ve done differently?
We went back and forth on heating the inner courtyard surface for snow melting. We chose not to do it for sustainability reasons because it takes a lot of energy to heat the outdoors. But with these kind of storms, we might reconsider. Removing snow from the courtyard is difficult even with drains. They have to snow-blow it out, and with 10 feet of snow on the roof, it’s challenging.
What are your three top takeaways for people living in fire and extreme snow zones?
https://heatmap.news/lifestyle/campout-house-faulkner-fire-snow Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: The Markup blog
A massive civil suit from Musk’s X Corp. threatens to make web scraping legally perilous again. The ACLU’s Esha Bhandari explains what’s going on.
https://themarkup.org/hello-world/2023/12/16/how-elon-musk-is-trying-to-make-web-scraping-dangerous-again Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — It could be a cold, grim New Year for thousands of migrant families living in New York City’s emergency shelter system. With winter setting in, they are being told they need to clear out, with no guarantee they’ll be given a bed elsewhere.
Homeless migrants and their children were limited to 60 days in city housing under an order issued in October by Mayor Eric Adams, a move the Democrat says is necessary to relieve a shelter system overwhelmed by asylum-seekers crossing the southern U.S. border.
That clock is now ticking down for people like Karina Obando, a 38-year-old mother from Ecuador who has been given until January 5 to get out of the former hotel where she has been staying with her two young children.
Where she will end up next is unclear. After that date, she can reapply for admission to the shelter system. A placement might not happen right away. Her family could wind up getting sent to one of the city’s huge tent shelters far from where her 11-year-old son goes to school.
“I told my son, ‘Take advantage. Enjoy the hotel because we have a roof right now,’” Obando said in Spanish outside Row NYC, a towering, 1,300-room hotel the city converted into a shelter for migrants in the heart of the theater district. “Because they’re going to send us away and we’re going to be sleeping on the train, or on the street.”
A handful of cities across the U.S. dealing with an influx of homeless migrants have imposed their own limits on shelter stays, citing a variety of reasons, including spiraling costs, a lack of space and a desire to put pressure on people to either find housing on their own, or leave town entirely.
Chicago imposed a 60-day shelter limit last month and is poised to start evicting people in early January. In Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, has capped the number of migrant families in emergency shelters at 7,500.
Denver had limited migrant families to 37 days but paused the policy this month in recognition of winter’s onset. Single adults are limited to 14 days.
In New York, the first families were expected to reach their 60-day limits just days after Christmas, but the mayor’s office said those migrants will receive extensions through early January. Roughly 3,500 families have been issued notices so far.
Unlike most other big cities, New York has a decades-old “right to shelter” obligating the city to provide emergency housing to anyone who asks.
But officials have warned migrants there is no guarantee they will get to stay in the same hotel, or the same city borough, for that matter.
Adult migrants without children are already subject to a shorter limit on shelter stays: 30 days.
Those who get kicked out and still want help are told to head for the city’s so-called “reticketing center” that opened in late October in a former Catholic school in Manhattan’s East Village.
Dozens of men and women, many with their luggage and other belongings in tow, line up every morning in freezing weather where they must petition for a renewed stay.
They are offered a free, one-way ticket to anywhere in the world. Most people decline.
Some are able to secure another shelter for 30 days, but many others say they leave empty-handed and must line up again the next day to try their luck.
“I’m scared of dying, sleeping on the street,” Barbara Coromoto Monzon Peña, a 22-year-old from Venezuela, said as she spent a second day waiting in line on a recent weekday.
Obando said her eldest son, who is 19, hasn’t been able to find a place to rent since he and his wife exhausted their 30 allowed days at the Row NYC hotel.
“As a mother, it hurts,” she said, breaking down in tears. “He’s sleeping on the train, on the street, in the cold. He’s in a lot of pain, and now it’s our turn. They told me that this country was different, but for me it’s been hell.”
Adams has insisted the city is doing a lot more for migrant families than almost anywhere else. New York is on track to spend billions of dollars opening shelters, paying for hotel rooms, buying meals and offering assistance overcoming bureaucratic hurdles for asylum-seekers.
The mayor also has warned repeatedly that the city’s resources are stretched thin, with more than 67,200 migrants still in its care and many more arriving every week.
“We’re doing everything in our power to treat families as humanely as possible,” said Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for Adams. “We have used every possible corner of New York City and are quite simply out of good options.”
She stressed that the administration intends to avoid having families sleeping on the streets and said there will be an orderly process for them to request another 60-day stay.
Advocates for immigrants say the end result will still uproot vulnerable families during the coldest months of the year and disrupt schooling for new students just settling into classes.
“It’s maybe the most Grinch move, ever,” said Liza Schwartzwald, a director at the New York Immigrant Coalition. “Sending families with children out like in the middle of winter right after the holiday season is just cruel.”
Adams has stressed that migrant children would not be required to change schools when they move. But some kids could potentially face epic commutes if they are placed in new shelters far from their current schools.
Migrant parents say two months simply isn’t enough time to find a job, get kids settled into childcare or school and save up enough for rent.
Obando, who arrived in the U.S. three months ago, said that outside of the odd cleaning job, she has struggled to find consistent work because there is no one to care for her 3-year-old daughter with her husband still detained at the border in Arizona.
“It’s not that we Ecuadorians come to take their jobs or that we’re lazy,” she said. “We’re good workers. More time, that’s all we ask.”
For Ana Vasquez, a 22-year-old from Venezuela who is eight months pregnant, the situation is more urgent.
Her baby is due in late December, but she has until January 8 to leave the Row NYC, where she has been staying with her sister and two young nieces for the past four months.
“They are going to leave me out in the cold,” Vasquez lamented in Spanish one chilly morning this month outside the hotel. “We don’t have an escape plan. The situation is difficult, even more so with the baby.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/as-holidays-approach-migrants-face-eviction-from-new-york-city-shelters-/7400640.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A boy, his face coated in fresh blood, screams as rescuers try to pull him out of the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. A bruised, elderly Israeli hostage is taken away by Hamas in a golf cart as a man clutching a machine gun sits behind her, smiling. A 10-year-old girl cries next to the body of her brother as he is buried near Kyiv, Ukraine.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/nation-world-news/a-year-of-war-2023-sees-worst-ever-israel-hamas-combat-as-russian-attacks-on-ukraine-grind-on/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House has been increasingly pressuring Congress to pass stalled legislation to support Ukraine’s war against Russia, saying that funding has run out.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/nation-world-news/how-the-us-keeps-funding-ukraines-military-even-as-it-says-its-out-of-money/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LOS ANGELES — Matthew Perry died from the acute effects of the anesthetic ketamine, according to the results of an autopsy on the 54-year-old “Friends” actor released Friday.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/nation-world-news/matthew-perry-died-from-the-effects-of-ketamine-autopsy-report-says/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels slammed into a cargo ship Friday in the Red Sea near the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, following another attack only hours earlier that struck a separate vessel, authorities said.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/nation-world-news/2-attacks-launched-by-yemens-houthi-rebels-strike-container-ships-in-vital-red-sea-corridor/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — In a politically polarized nation, Americans seem to agree on one issue underlying the 2024 elections — a worry over the state of democracy and how the outcome of the presidential contest will affect its future.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/nation-world-news/americans-agree-that-the-2024-election-will-be-pivotal-for-democracy-but-for-different-reasons/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>PORTLAND, Maine — An independent report conducted for a police agency clears the agency’s response to growing concerns about the mental health of a man who later went on to commit the deadliest mass shooting in Maine history, but it does reveal missed opportunities to intervene to prevent the tragedy, legal experts said Friday.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/nation-world-news/a-review-defends-police-action-before-the-maine-mass-shooting-legal-experts-say-questions-persist/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Dean Spanos has decided he isn’t “All In” anymore on Brandon Staley and Tom Telesco leading the Los Angeles Chargers.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/sports/chargers-fire-coach-brandon-staley-general-manager-tom-telesco-in-midst-of-disappointing-season/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The Washington state Supreme Court declined on Friday to review the Pac-12’s appeal of a lower court ruling that gives full control of the conference to Oregon State and Washington State, keeping in place a legal victory for the league’s two remaining schools over its 10 departing members.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/sports/washington-supreme-court-denies-review-of-pac-12-appeal-handing-control-of-conference-to-osu-wsu/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>Anyone who has suspected that there are more women than men where they live, or vice versa, will find fodder for their suspicions in new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/nation-world-news/why-more-women-live-in-major-east-coast-counties-while-men-outnumber-them-in-the-west/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Being suspended for the first 25 games of the NBA season was tough on two-time All-Star Ja Morant, who said Friday he had “some horrible days” as he worked to focus on himself away from basketball. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/sports/no-regrets-for-ja-morant-over-suspension-with-actions-not-words-proving-lesson-learned/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Aaron Rodgers took a few more steps — and provided a highlight play — in his comeback attempt from a torn left Achilles tendon. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/sports/jets-aaron-rodgers-looks-normal-to-coach-during-practice-in-comeback-attempt/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>This is starting to feel like Tom Landry’s final days as an NFL coach, just before he was ingloriously put out to pasture. Or maybe it will be more akin to Don Shula, who trudged into a retirement that seemed forced on him. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/sports/column-time-for-belichick-to-leave-on-his-terms-sort-of-before-hes-shoved-out-the-door/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>The football rivalry between Hawaii and Fresno State will be renewed in 2024, according to the Mountain West Conference’s matchups announced Thursday.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/sports/hawaii-gets-rival-fresno-state-on-2024-football-schedule/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>CORALVILLE, Iowa — Donald Trump was uncharacteristically serious when he implored an audience in eastern Iowa to carry him to a blowout in next month’s Republican caucuses.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/nation-world-news/with-iowas-caucuses-a-month-away-trump-urges-voters-to-hand-him-not-just-a-victory-but-a-blowout/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli troops mistakenly shot three hostages to death Friday in a battle-torn neighborhood of Gaza City, and an Israeli strike killed a Palestinian journalist in the south of the besieged territory, underscoring the ferocity of Israel’s ongoing onslaught.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/nation-world-news/israeli-military-says-it-mistakenly-killed-3-israeli-hostages-in-battle-torn-part-of-gaza/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>LOS ANGELES — When Shohei Ohtani decided to move 30 miles up the I-5 freeway to the Dodgers, he left several massive holes in the Los Angeles Angels. </p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/sports/after-6-years-together-angels-move-on-from-shohei-ohtanis-departure-for-the-dodgers/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Hawaii Tribune Harold
<p>WASHINGTON — The United States experienced a dramatic 12% increase in homelessness to its highest reported level as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more Americans, federal officials said Friday.</p>
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2023/12/16/nation-world-news/us-homelessness-up-12-to-highest-reported-level-as-rents-soar-and-coronavirus-pandemic-aid-lapses/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog
My favourite take is that raise dead (or its reverse, finger of death) is a fifth level cleric spell in BX, takes a 7th level cleric to cast, which requires 70 000 xp to get to. But stone to flesh (and its reverse, flesh to stone) is a sixth level magic-user spell, takes an 11th level magic user to cast them, which requires 600 000 xp to get to. So petrification is way worse.
Also, since the stone can be turned to flesh and presumably the same person emerges, that means that you cannot resurrect them any other way. No paladin in hell, no devil in paradise, no fancy raise dead spell can reach you when you’re petrified at the bottom of the deepest ocean. The soul remains trapped in the stone.
And what if you break off the head? Distribute the parts? Grind it to dust? When is the soul truly free of that mortal, petrified husk?
Always be petrifying the evil dudes.
In our games, it has always been harder to find friendly level 11 magic-users than friendly level 7 clerics. Perhaps that is something to consider as well. And without the magic-users, are scrolls for sale? Not in my games…
https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2023-12-15-petrification Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-aid-remains-in-limbo-as-congress-nears-recess/7400556.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: OS News
Starting on February 22, 2024, you can no longer use Google Groups (at groups.google.com) to post content to Usenet groups, subscribe to Usenet groups, or view new Usenet content. You can continue to view and search for historical Usenet content posted before February 22, 2024 on Google Groups. In addition, Google’s Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) server and associated peering will no longer be available, meaning Google will not support serving new Usenet content or exchanging content with other NNTP servers. ↫ Google Groups Help According to Google, the reason for removing Usenet support is the declining popularity of Usenet, claiming that “much of the content being disseminated via Usenet today is binary (non-text) file sharing, which Google Groups does not support, as well as spam”. I can’t validate that claim, but regardless, relying on Google to access Usenet was never a good idea in the first place. There’s countless proper Usenet clients out there that won’t perform a classic Google rug pull.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138084/google-groups-ending-support-for-usenet/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/voa-immigration-weekly-recap-dec-3-16/7400161.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: VOA News USA
WEST END, N.C. — Jesse Wimberley burns the woods with neighbors.
Using new tools to revive an old communal tradition, they set fire to wiregrasses and forest debris with a drip torch, corralling embers with leaf blowers.
Wimberley, 65, gathers groups across eight North Carolina counties to starve future wildfires by lighting leaf litter ablaze. The burns clear space for longleaf pine, a tree species whose seeds won’t sprout on undergrowth blocking bare soil. Since 2016, the fourth-generation burner has fueled a burgeoning movement to formalize these volunteer ranks.
Prescribed burn associations are proving key to conservationists’ efforts to restore a longleaf pine range forming the backbone of forest ecology in the American Southeast. Volunteer teams, many working private land where participants reside or make a living, are filling service and knowledge gaps one blaze at a time.
Prescribed fire, the intentional burning replicating natural fires crucial for forest health, requires more hands than experts can supply. In North Carolina, the practice sometimes ends with a barbecue.
“Southerners like coming together and doing things and helping each other and having some food,” Wimberley said. “Fire is not something you do by yourself.”
More than 100 associations exist throughout 18 states, according to North Carolina State University researchers, and the Southeast is a hot spot for new ones. Wimberley’s Sandhills Prescribed Burn Association is considered the region’s first, and the group reports having helped up to 500 people clear land or learn how to do it themselves.
The proliferation follows federal officials’ push in the past century to suppress forest fires. The policy sought to protect the expanding footprint of private homes and interrupted fire cycles that accompanied longleaf evolution, which Indigenous people and early settlers simulated through targeted burns.
“Fire is medicine and it heals the land. It’s also medicine for our people,” said Courtney Steed, outreach coordinator for the Sandhills Prescribed Burn Association and a Lumbee Tribe member. “It’s putting us back in touch with our traditions.”
The longleaf pine ecosystem spans just 3% of the 360,000 square kilometers it encompassed before industrialization and urbanization. But some pockets remain, from Virginia to Texas to Florida. The system’s greenery still harbors the bobwhite quail and other declining species. The conifers are especially resistant to droughts, a hazard growing more common and more severe due to climate change.
A big tent of environmentalists, hunters, nonprofit groups and government agencies recently celebrated a 53% increase in the longleaf pine range since 2009, spanning an estimated 20,000 square kilometers. However, those strides fell short of their goal to hit 32,000 square kilometers.
Private landowners are central to the coalition’s latest restoration effort. They hold roughly 86% of forested land in the South, according to America’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative.
The partnership needs thousands of new landowners to support longleaf management on their properties. The nascent burn associations are vital in their education, according to a 15-year plan released in November.
Federal agencies back the endeavor through activities such as invasive species removal and land management workshops. Nearly $50 million in federal grants are available for projects bolstering forest health, including prescribed fire.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a “Longleaf Pine Initiative” partnering with burn groups like Wimberley’s. Farm bill money supports planning and planting. Personnel can help install firebreaks.
But applicants are increasingly competing for limited funding that cannot cover all the needed maintenance burns, USDA spokesperson Matthew Vandersande said.
Landowners say liability-concerned states are reluctant to send their relatively few burners onto private property and private contractors cannot meet the demand.
“When it comes time to drop the match, you’re kind of on your own,” said Keith Tribble, 62, who owns a North Carolina tree farm.
While state forestry services provide classes, Tribble credits burn associations for the hands-on experience and crews needed to confidently manage the pines.
Humidity and wind speed are the biggest factors in a burn plan, according to Hitchcock Woods Superintendent Bennett Tucker, manager of a private forest in South Carolina. The pine’s oils allow it to almost always carry fire and he typically burns at a relative humidity between 25% and 50%.
“With a prescribed fire, we can control the where, the when, the how and all those factors by choosing the best conditions,” Tucker said.
Handheld weather meters ensure wind speed, temperature and humidity fall within limits under plans written beforehand. The prescriptions also can reduce potential liability in the event a fire escapes. Runaway fires are rare, according to studies of federal agencies and surveys of community burn groups. Wimberley’s teams haven’t had one yet, even with 40 burns per year.
Climate change is reducing the number of safe burn days. Rising temperatures cause lower relative humidity in the South and intensify periods when it’s too dry, said Jennifer Fawcett, a North Carolina State University wildland fire expert.
As the severity and frequency of storms, droughts and wildfires increase, longleaf pines could become even more important for ecological resilience in the South. Deep roots anchor them during strong winds and stretch far into the ground for water. Flames enhance soil nutrients.
Further, the surrounding ecosystems have few known rivals for biodiversity in the U.S. Light pours through open canopies onto the sparse floor, giving way to flora like an insect-eating plant that needs sun exposure and wet soil. Gopher tortoises feed on the native vegetation and dig up to 4.5-meter burrows sheltering other at-risk species.
“It’s more than just planting trees,” said Lisa Lord, The Longleaf Alliance conservation programs director. “We want to take the time to restore all of the values of the forest.”
A late 1920s education campaign known as the “Dixie Crusaders” harmed those interdependent relationships. Federal officials turned southerners against the practice and burning fell off. Flammable needles and wiregrasses piled up to dangerous tinder levels.
Wimberley’s family resisted, knowing their livelihoods depended on fire. His ancestors first applied it to “sweat” out the pine’s lucrative sap distilled into turpentine or exported as sealants. Later generations burned to shield crops.
Burning looks different from the times Wimberley’s mother dragged kindling known as “fat lighter” through the forest. But public understanding of its importance is returning and the ranks are growing.
“We’re all a bunch of pyromaniacs,” said Tribble, the tree farm owner.
Still, Tribble burns for a reason: he values connecting with people and the land.
Before his burns, brush cluttered the ground, choking waterflow to parts of the property that were “bone dry.” Now water runs from more marshy areas and the squeaky call of the rarely spotted red-cockaded woodpecker resounds from mature pines. Wild turkeys appear when smoke fills the sky.
Steed, the Lumbee outreach coordinator, is heartened by the rekindling of this proactive “fire culture” beyond the tribe that she says introduced it to the region.
She ran through her grandfather’s scorched woods as a child, but the expanse has gone about a decade without fire. Steed plans to lead her first burn next year in Wimberley’s woods and then manage a family property she recently inherited.
“It feels empowering,” Steed said of prescribed fire. “It feels like a very tangible way to connect to the past and also guide the future.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/prescribed-burns-could-aid-forests-in-us-southeast-experts-say-/7399183.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1902 – Hi Jolly (Hadji Ali), Gen. E.F. Beale’s Syrian camel driver, dies at Quartzsite, Ariz. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-dec-16/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: VOA News USA
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New oil and natural gas leasing will be prohibited on state land surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park, an area sacred to Native Americans, for the next 20 years under an executive order by New Mexico Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard.
Wednesday’s order extends a temporary moratorium that she put in place when she took office in 2019. It covers more than 293 square kilometers of state trust land in what is a sprawling checkerboard of private, state, federal and tribal holdings in northwestern New Mexico.
The U.S. government last year adopted its own 20-year moratorium on new oil, gas and mineral leasing around Chaco, following a push by pueblos and other Southwestern tribal nations that have cultural ties to the high desert region.
Garcia Richard said during a virtual meeting Thursday with Native American leaders and advocates that the goal is to stop the encroachment of development on Chaco and the tens of thousands of acres beyond the park’s boundaries that have yet to be surveyed.
“The greater Chaco landscape is one of the most special places in the world, and it would be foolish not to do everything in our power to protect it,” she said in a statement following the meeting.
Cordelia Hooee, the lieutenant governor of Zuni Pueblo, called it a historic day. She said tribal leaders throughout the region continue to pray for more permanent protections through congressional action.
“Chaco Canyon and the greater Chaco region play an important role in the history, religion and culture of the Zuni people and other pueblo people as well,” she said. “Our shared cultural landscapes must be protected into perpetuity, for our survival as Indigenous people is tied to them.”
The tribal significance of Chaco is evident in songs, prayers and oral histories, and pueblo leaders said some people still make pilgrimages to the area, which includes desert plains, rolling hills dotted with piñon and juniper and sandstone canyons carved by eons of wind and water erosion.
A World Heritage site, Chaco Culture National Historical Park is thought to be the center of what was once a hub of Indigenous civilization. Within park boundaries are the towering remains of stone structures built centuries ago by the region’s first inhabitants, and ancient roads and related sites are scattered further out.
The executive order follows a tribal summit in Washington last week at which federal officials vowed to continue consultation efforts to ensure Native American leaders have more of a seat at the table when land management decisions affect culturally significant areas. New guidance for federal agencies also was recently published to help with the effort.
The New Mexico State Land Office is not required to have formal consultations with tribes, but agency officials said they have been working with tribal leaders over the last five years and hope to craft a formal policy that can be used by future administrations.
The pueblos recently completed an ethnographic study of the region for the U.S. Interior Department that they hope can be used for decision-making at the federal level.
https://www.voanews.com/a/nm-extends-ban-on-oil-and-gas-leasing-around-area-sacred-to-native-americans-/7399144.html Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: OS News
Windows AI Studio simplifies generative AI app development by bringing together cutting-edge AI development tools and models from Azure AI Studio Catalog and other catalogs like Hugging Face. You will be able browse the AI models catalog powered by Azure ML and Hugging Face, download them locally, fine-tune, test and use them in your Windows application. As all of the computation happens locally, please make sure your device can handle the load. ↫ Windows AI Studio Preview on GitHub Nothing particularly exciting here, until you get to the installation process, as noted by Venn Stone on Mastodon: you need to install Linux, in the form of Ubuntu 18.04 or higher on WSL, before you can use this Microsoft offering. I don’t know, but that’s just funny.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138082/microsofts-latest-ai-development-tool-requires-linux/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: OS News
You may have seen the news that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 plans to remove Xorg. But Xwayland will stay around, and given the name overloading and them sharing a git repository there’s some confusion over what is Xorg. So here’s a very simple “picture”. ↫ Peter Hutterer A more useful visualisation than I expected.
https://www.osnews.com/story/138080/xorg-being-removed-what-does-this-mean/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Matt Haughey blog
Volvo has a new small pure electric compact crossover coming out soon called the EX30, and from early reviews it’s going to be a killer small city EV, about a foot and a half shorter than most crossovers while having similar interior space, and can run for 200-250 miles on a charge. It’s also the …Continue reading “Volvo outdid Subaru”
https://a.wholelottanothing.org/2023/12/15/volvo-outdid-subaru/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: VOA News USA
PHOENIX — Arizona’s governor on Friday ordered the state’s National Guard to the border with Mexico to help federal officials manage an influx of migrants.
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs said she issued the executive order because “the federal government is refusing to do its job to secure our border and keep our communities safe.”
“I am taking action where the federal government won’t,” Hobbs said.
It was unclear when the troops would arrive at the border and exactly how many would be mobilized.
Hobbs asked President Joe Biden’s administration a week ago to mobilize 243 Arizona National Guard troops already in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector that includes Lukeville, Arizona, to help federal officers reopen the border crossing that was indefinitely closed December 4.
Customs and Border Protection has said shutting down the official crossing was necessary to allow personnel stationed there to help Border Patrol agents manage the hundreds of migrants illegally crossing in that area daily.
Although remote, the crossing is a popular route for Arizonans traveling to the Mexican resort of Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point, about 100 kilometers south of the border on the northern shores of the Sea of Cortez.
Hobbs said the National Guard members will be stationed at multiple locations along the southern border, including around Lukeville.
There, they will support state and local agencies engaged in law enforcement, including interdiction of illegal drugs and human trafficking.
The San Miguel crossing located farther east on the Tohono O’odham Nation is also seeing hundreds of migrant arrivals daily, but tribal officials said the National Guard would not be stationed on the reservation.
“We are in close communication with Governor Hobbs on this issue,” said Verlon Jose, chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation. “We made clear that no National Guard would be deployed to the Nation and her office has agreed. Today’s action by the Governor is a necessary step in addressing the current crisis at the border.”
Hobbs said the Biden administration had not responded to her request that the U.S. government reimburse Arizona for border security spending.
Customs and Border Protection officials said they did not have an immediate response to the governor’s decision.
The Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs, National Guard confirmed Friday afternoon it was activating members.
Major Gen. Kerry L. Muehlenbeck, who oversees the Arizona National Guard, noted that in September it wrapped up a 30-month active-duty mission providing support to law enforcement agencies in southern Arizona.
Muehlenbeck said the earlier mission provided logistics, administrative, cyber, and medical support.
U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, who represents southern Arizona, said he disagreed with Hobbs’ executive order.
“But I do appreciate that Governor Hobbs has rejected the brutal and cruel tactics of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott who have taken advantage of this crisis to inhumanely and illegally use migrants as political pawns and to politicize and pander instead of working on real solutions,” Grijalva said in a statement.
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@Santa Barbara Indenpent News (date: 2023-12-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News)
Best Dead-End, One-Way Street: The nominating committee hasn’t yet returned from its evaluating mission.
The post appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
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date: 2023-12-16, from: Heather Cox Richardson blog
CNN reporters today pulled together evidence from a number of sources to explain how “a binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency.” The missing collection of documents was ten inches thick and contained 2,700 pages of information from U.S. intelligence and that of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies about Russian efforts to help Trump win the 2016 presidential election.
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date: 2023-12-16, from: The Canyons News (COC student paper)
Tyler Bjorklund is not your average man, from his stature to hisstrength.…
The post A local strong man who lifts for a higher purpose appeared first on Canyons News.
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date: 2023-12-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The future Santa Clarita Bridge to Home Full-Service Interim Shelter, located at 23031 Drayton Street in Newhall is looking for donors seeking naming opportunites
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date: 2023-12-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Los Angeles Dodgers, coming off its high profile acquistion of famed Angels player Shohei Ohtani, are making another significant roster upgrade. The Dodgers have agreed to acquire right-hander Tyler Glasnow, in a trade with the Tampa Bay Rays.
https://scvnews.com/hart-high-standout-tyler-glasnow-traded-to-dodgers-by-rays/ Save to Pocket
date: 2023-12-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
On Friday, December 1, the Santa Barbara Association of REALTORS® held their 116th annual Installation & Awards Luncheon at the Hilton Santa
The post Santa Barbara Association of REALTORS® Installation & Awards Ceremony appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
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date: 2023-12-16, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The U.S.-China relationship will be defined by strategic competition in the coming decades but must involve engagement when the interests of the two countries align, the U.S. ambassador to China said Friday, one month after President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping to stabilize the fraught relations.
Nicholas Burns said the U.S. and China are “vying for global power as well as regional power” as they compete militarily, politically and economically.
“I think we are systematic rivals, if you think about our national security and economic and political interests around the world,” Burns said at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
In the Indo-Pacific region, China “wishes to be the strongest power,” Burns said.
“China has a very different view of global governance and the future of the liberal order,” he said. “And of course, we are attached to a liberal order because it speaks to our values and our interests, and we think this is the best order of the world.”
Yet, the two countries need to work together on issues such as climate change, narcotics, global health and food security, he said.
“No person in their right mind should want this relationship to end up in conflict or in war,” he said. “So we’re going to develop a relationship where we can compete, but, as the president says, to compete responsibly, drive down the probability of a conflict and bring our people together in a balanced relationship is one way to do that.”
Washington is recalibrating its relationship with Beijing after several years of tumult that began with the imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods under the Trump administration. Ties further deteriorated over the COVID-19 pandemic and military tensions in the South China Sea and in the Taiwan Strait.
Last month, Biden met with Xi in Woodside, California, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. The two leaders vowed to stabilize relations and agreed to combat illegal fentanyl and reestablish military communications.
Burns said China had begun shutting down some of the black market for fentanyl precursors, but the test would be whether the effort would continue. The ambassador said the resumption of military communications was important because the two militaries were operating “in very close proximity to each other” in the South China and East China seas, and communications could help prevent any crisis from getting out of control.
But differences on economic competition and global security remain.
On Thursday night, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the U.S.-China Business Council the Biden administration seeks to strengthen relationships with like-minded nations but also has established economic working groups with China to exchange information.
The Biden administration has kept the tariffs slapped on some Chinese goods by the previous administration and has tightened export controls and investments in high-tech areas such as advanced chips.
Xi also sent a letter to the business council, urging the group and its members to “build more bridges for friendly exchange” and expand cooperation. He vowed to build a better business environment in China.
“The Chinese-style modernization will create more opportunities for global businesses including U.S. companies,” Xi’s letter said.
China’s economy slowed in the third quarter, as global demand for its exports faltered and the ailing property sector sank deeper into crisis.
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date: 2023-12-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Ridge Route Preservation Organization is looking for volunteers to help fill and distribute sandbags to an at-risk section of the Old Ridge Route on Saturday, Dec. 16 at noon
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date: 2023-12-16, from: VOA News USA
washington — Two Palestinian American families have sued the Biden administration, saying the government has not done as much to evacuate their U.S. relatives stuck in Gaza as it did for Israeli dual nationals.
In the days after Hamas’ October 7 assault in southern Israel, the U.S. government organized charter flights from Tel Aviv to Europe to help Americans leave Israel after many airlines canceled service to the country.
The State Department says it has helped around 1,300 U.S. Palestinians leave Gaza and escape Israel’s retaliatory bombardment — in part by coordinating their exit to neighboring Egypt with Israeli and Egyptian authorities.
But the United States has not taken steps to organize dedicated flights or otherwise help secure the exit of an estimated 900 U.S. citizens, residents and family members who remain trapped in Gaza, the American families suing the government say.
They say this violates their constitutional rights.
“There is more that the U.S. government can do, and they are choosing not to do it for Palestinians,” Yasmeen Elagha, who has family stuck in Gaza and helped organize the lawsuit, said in an interview.
The State Department declined to comment on pending litigation, but a spokesperson said the department is working to get more Americans and family members out of Gaza. The White House referred questions on the lawsuit to the Justice Department, which did not immediately comment.
Hamas militants killed 1,200 people in Israeli border communities with Gaza and took 240 hostages during their October 7 assault, according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israeli bombardment has killed nearly 19,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. According to U.N. estimates, up to 85% of the 2.3 million people in the densely populated enclave have been displaced from their homes.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis, accuses the federal government of failing to protect U.S. citizens in an active war zone and denying equal protection to Palestinian Americans, a right under the U.S. Constitution.
The suit seeks to force the government to begin evacuation efforts and secure the safety of its citizens “on equal terms to other noncombatants in the same war zone.”
Two of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Elagha’s cousins, Borak Alagha and Hashem Alagha, U.S. citizens who were studying engineering in the Palestinian coastal enclave.
Americans listed by the United States as wanting to leave Gaza at the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing must be approved by both Israel and Egypt.
The three Americans cited in the lawsuit have not been cleared to leave, said Elagha, who lives near Chicago.
Maria Kari, a lawyer with the Arab American Civil Rights League who represents the plaintiffs, said her organization filed about 40 lawsuits in the first month of the conflict on behalf of Palestinian dual nationals.
“We’re simply asking the Biden administration to do something it already did for a class of citizens in the same war,” she said.
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date: 2023-12-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Are you a part of a local non-profit serving Goleta residents or know someone who is? If so, the City
The post Attention Non-Profits: Applications Being Accepted for Grant Funds 2024-25 Beginning December 15 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
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date: 2023-12-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
By Todd Shea2023 PresidentSanta Barbara Association of Realtors Wow, a busy year moves by fast! Here we are in December.
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date: 2023-12-16, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The 2023 California School Dashboard is now online with data showing statewide improvements in student outcomes in several areas. The Dashboard is a key component of the state’s school accountability system, which includes the latest data on graduation rates, suspension rates, test scores, English Learner progress, the college/career indicator, chronic absenteeism and local indicators.
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date: 2023-12-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
New teahouse offers an authentic, health-conscious experience.
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date: 2023-12-16, updated: 2023-12-16, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Cryptocurrency wallet maker Ledger says someone slipped malicious code into one of its JavaScript libraries to steal more than half a million dollars from victims.…
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date: 2023-12-16, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
You can tell how long someone’s been in Santa Barbara by how they refer to our favorite local beachfront resort
The post The Home Page | Sandy Beaches and Spirits Aglow appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
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