News gathered 2024-07-29
(date: 2024-07-29 07:22:16)
Retrial begins for man accused of starting 2021 Hopkins fire
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
A 23-year old man accused of setting a wildfire which burned about 50 structures near Ukiah in 2021, is being prosecuted in Marin because of a change-of-venue ruling.
Texas man held to answer on involuntary manslaughter of friend in downtown Santa Cruz
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
A judge ruled Friday that sufficient evidence exists to proceed to trial in the case of a Texas tourist charged with killing his best friend during a drunken downtown brawl.
Paris Olympics: Santa Cruz’s Haley Batten makes history for Team USA
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
With the pink and blue Olympics arch looming just 25 meters ahead, Haley Batten risked a look behind her. She needed to know if Jenny Rissveds of Sweden was closing in. She needed to know if the silver medal — the best Olympic result ever from an American mountain biker — could really be hers.
Managing Heat
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
Science in Space: July 2024 This time of year, managing heat is on everyone’s mind. Especially now, as May 2024 marked a full year of record-high monthly temperatures – an unprecedented streak, according to scientists from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. NASA experts analyze data from thousands of land-, sea-, and […]
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/managing-heat/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
President Biden Announces Bold Plan to Reform the Supreme Court and Ensure No President Is Above the Law.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Unread Now Available for Mac.
https://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/2024/07/unread-for-mac-available-now/
Intruders at HealthEquity rifled through storage, stole 4.3M people’s data
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
No mention of malware or ransomware – somewhat of a rarity these days
HealthEquity, a US fintech firm for the healthcare sector, admits that a “data security event” it discovered at the end of June hit the data of a substantial 4.3 million individuals. Stolen details include addresses, telephone numbers and payment data.…
Thoughts on politics and communities
date: 2024-07-29, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>Kev has written about the topic of <a href="https://kevquirk.com/blog/politics-and-communities">politics and communities</a> on his blog and it was related to his recently announced <a href="https://kevquirk.com/blog/introducing-500-social">500.social</a> project. In his post, he mentioned blog posts written by <a href="https://baty.net">Jack</a> and <a href="https://nice-marmot.net">Dave</a>. If you’re interested in the full discussion go read the various blog posts, they’re all relatively short.</p>I’m not interested in commenting on the opinions expressed in those blog posts but I am interested in the source of the discussion, and that was a bullet list item in the 500.social “Member expectations” section.
Posts about politics and religion should be avoided, if you strongly feel the urge to post about these topics, please put them behind a Content Warning Member expectations
Years ago, during the COVID era, the 37signals company got into hot water online because they announced in an internal communication that they were going to ban “societal and political discussions” on their internal work chat. The announcement is online if you’re interested in reading it.
People online reacted in all sorts of ways to that news and many, many opinion pieces got published. I remember talking about it with a few people privately and had some interesting conversations around that topic. As you can see, years later, positions on topics such as politics and religion are still controversial in the context of online spaces.
Personally, I think the issue is not with politics, religion or any other topic. The problem is a mixture of expectations and the tools we use. In his post, Dave wrote:
If there is a “public square” anymore, where we ought to be able to try to hash those things out, it seems to me that it’s in those “small social networks,” unless they’re intended to be bespoke bubbles where it’s all just happy talk and we never have difficult conversations.
I don’t disagree that small communities are the space where those conversations can happen which is why I think no topic should be banned or be off limits. At the same time though, I do think that having conversations means something very different than posting a reactionary tweet to comment on a piece of news. That’s why people like Kev end up with rules against politics and religion. Because if you dig deeper, people don’t want to have a conversation on social media. They want to vent.
I think social media platforms, like Mastodon, are not designed to have conversations. You can have them on there, sure, but the experience is going to be sub-par. Social media is designed to be reactionary and generating reactions is different than having a conversation. What would Mastodon look like if everyone was forced to post at least 500 words? What would Mastodon look like if you could only post once an hour? The reason why some people, like Kev, end up with rules like that is because social media is an imperfect tool. I don’t have a no politics rule attached to my email address. People can write to me and talk about whatever they want. If they write about something I don’t care about I can simply ignore that topic and don’t engage in conversation which is exactly what happens in real life.
What prompted me to consider joining 500.social was recalling the feeling I had when we learned that Biden had dropped out of the race. That’s the sort of event that evokes an immediate, emotional response because of its significance to a broad range of people, presumably my “community.”
This is the perfect example of why I think social media is a flawed tool. Can you imagine doing the same in the phone era? Can you imagine reading a piece of news and start calling hundreds, potentially thousands of people simply to share what you think about some news? And can you imagine doing that with people who don’t even live in your country and couldn’t care less about that specific news? Now can you imagine if everyone was doing the same for the news that evoked a strong reaction to them? You’d quickly put your phone on airplane mode because there are only so many random opinions on news you can bear to listen to. I can have a 3 hours discussion about politics, I can’t listen 3 hours of soundbites.
The problem with social media and politics is that way too many people are interested in sharing what they think about social media but very few are interested in having actual, real discussions. Because blasting out a tweet takes 10 seconds while having an actual conversation might take hours and span days.
I’d love to know what you think about this whole situation though. Do you think some topics should be banned on social platforms? If you have opinions get in touch or even better write a blog post!
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Oakland man wonders if hummingbirds ever crash into humans
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Bird and butterfly encounters and a mourning dove question – and thoughts on horse racing from a young animal lover.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/29/oakland-man-wonders-if-hummingbirds-ever-crash-into-humans/
Gaining Steam: Far-Right Radicalisation on Gaming Platforms
date: 2024-07-29, from: Ben Werdmuller’s blog
<div class="known-bookmark">
<div class="e-content">[Shiraz Shaikh on Global Network on Extremism & Technology]
“Video games and their associated platforms are vastly becoming hubs of radicalisation, extremism and recruitment by far-right extremist organisations. The development of bespoke games and modifications, often known as MODs, has given extremist organisations the ability to further spread their digital propaganda.”
This is both depressing and inevitable: games are incredibly popular and share social media’s ability to let people share with each other at scale. Unlike social media, some of the modes of communication directly have violent modes of expression.
Valve’s apparent under-investment in trust and safety, and protections against extremism, are also partially inevitable. How do you police voice communication across disparate games? But there’s more to it than that:
“In terms of the material and content available on these gaming platforms, there is evidence of far-right propaganda available in huge amounts. The materials include books, videos, documents, manifestos, memes and more. Even on other platforms apart from Steam, interviews of far-right leaders, such as Andrew Anglin, are available for users.”
This seems easier to police, and should be. That this material is available says a lot about Valve’s priorities.
<p>[<a href="https://gnet-research.org/2024/07/29/gaining-steam-far-right-radicalisation-on-gaming-platforms/">Link</a>]</p>
</div>
</div>https://werd.io/2024/gaining-steam-far-right-radicalisation-on-gaming-platforms
Wish You Were Here: Adventures among Italy’s Aeolian Islands
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
A historic, luxury windjammer swept this Saratoga couple off to the Aeolian Islands near Sicily.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/29/wish-you-were-here-adventures-among-italys-aeolian-islands/
Travel Troubleshooter: Medical records from Holland America are mysteriously held up
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
David Aronstein needs his medical records from Holland America. Without them, he can’t file an insurance claim for the treatment he received on a cruise. What’s the holdup?
NASA, JAXA Bounce Laser Beam Between Moon’s Surface and Lunar Orbit
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) has twice transmitted a laser pulse to a cookie-sized retroreflector aboard JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) SLIM lander on the Moon and received a return signal. As LRO passed 44 miles above SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) during two successive orbits on May 24, 2024, it pinged the lander […]
AI-backed autonomous robots monitor construction progress
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
The construction industry is finding new uses for artificial intelligence. In a multi-story building project in the northwestern U.S. city of Seattle, autonomous robots are tasked with documenting progress and detecting potential hazards. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya has the story.
https://www.voanews.com/a/ai-backed-autonomous-robots-monitor-construction-progress/7716947.html
Microsoft’s CrowdStrike post-mortem
date: 2024-07-29, from: OS News
Microsoft has published a post-mortem of the CrowdStrike incident, and goes into great depths to describe where, exactly, the error lies, and how it could lead to such massive problems. I can’t comment anything insightful on the technical details and code they show to illustrate all of this – I’ll leave that discussion up to you – but Microsoft also spends considerable amount of time explaining why security vendors are choosing to use kernel-mode drivers. Microsoft lists three major reasons why security vendors opt for using kernel modules, and none of them will come as a great surprise to OSNews readers: kernel drivers provide more visibility into the system than a userspace tool would, there are performance benefits, and they’re more resistant to tampering. The downsides are legion, too, of course, as any crash or similar issue in kernel mode has far-reaching consequences. The goal, then, according to Microsoft, is to balance the need for greater insight, performance, and tamper resistance with stability. And while the company doesn’t say it directly, this is clearly where CrowdStrike failed – and failed hard. While you would want a security tool like CrowdStrike to perform as little as possible in kernelspace, and conversely as much as possible in userspace, that’s not what CrowdStrike did. They are running a lot of stuff in kernelspace that really shouldn’t be there, such as the update mechanism and related tools. In total, CrowdStrike loads four kernel drivers, and much of their functionality can be run in userspace instead. It is possible today for security tools to balance security and reliability. For example, security vendors can use minimal sensors that run in kernel mode for data collection and enforcement limiting exposure to availability issues. The remainder of the key product functionality includes managing updates, parsing content, and other operations can occur isolated within user mode where recoverability is possible. This demonstrates the best practice of minimizing kernel usage while still maintaining a robust security posture and strong visibility. Windows provides several user mode protection approaches for anti-tampering, like Virtualization-based security (VBS) Enclaves and Protected Processes that vendors can use to protect their key security processes. Windows also provides ETW events and user-mode interfaces like Antimalware Scan Interface for event visibility. These robust mechanisms can be used to reduce the amount of kernel code needed to create a security solution, which balances security and robustness. ↫ David Weston, Vice President, Enterprise and OS Security at Microsoft In what is surely an unprecedented event, I agree with the CrowdStrike criticism bubbling under the surface of this post-mortem by Microsoft. Everything seems to point towards CrowdStrike stuffing way more things in kernelspace than is needed, and as such creating a far larger surface for things to go catastrophically wrong than needed. While Microsoft obviously isn’t going to openly and publicly throw CrowdStrike under the bus, it’s very clear what they’re hinting at here, and this is about as close to a public flogging we’re going to get. Microsoft’s post-portem further details a ton of work Microsoft has recently done, is doing, and will soon be doing to further strenghthen Windows’ security, to lessen the need for kernelspace security drivers even more, including adding support for Rust to the Windows kernel, which should also aid in mitigating some common problems present in other, older programming languages (while not being a silver bullet either, of course).
https://www.osnews.com/story/140356/microsofts-crowdstrike-post-mortem/
Trump running mate JD Vance to hold Silicon Valley fundraiser
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
Tickets for the Palo Alto fundraiser range from $3,300 to $50,000
Sinead O’Connor’s cause of death revealed a year after her death
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
O’Connor, 56, was found unresponsive at her London home on July 26, 2023, and declared dead of what the coroner’s office ruled in January were “natural causes,” but without providing details.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/29/sinead-oconnor-death-copd-asthma/
Google apologizes for breaking password manager for millions of Windows users with iffy Chrome update
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Happy Sysadmin Day
Google celebrated Sysadmin Day last week by apologizing for breaking its password manager for millions of Windows users – just as many Windows admins were still hard at work mitigating the impact of the faulty CrowdStrike update.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/google_password_manager_outage/
TasteFood: An indoor-outdoor summer recipe
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
This easy summer dish of feta, tomatoes and red peppers can be made in the oven or on the grill, then enjoyed with crusty bread to sop up the delicious sauce.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/29/tastefood-an-indoor-outdoor-summer-recipe/
This little convertible laptop has a 10.95 inch display, Intel Alder Lake-N processor, and sub-$300 starting price
date: 2024-07-29, from: Liliputing
Chinese PC maker SZBox is selling a small, cheap laptop with a 10.95 inch, 2000 x 1200 pixel touchscreen display and a 360-degree hinge, allowing you to use the computer in notebook or tablet modes. The notebook is powered by a 15-watt Intel N95 qaud-core Alder Lake-N processor and features 16GB of RAM, a 34.2 […]
The post This little convertible laptop has a 10.95 inch display, Intel Alder Lake-N processor, and sub-$300 starting price appeared first on Liliputing.
How the Bay Area will contribute to California’s new ‘hydrogen hub’
date: 2024-07-29, from: San Jose Mercury News
The hub’s 37 different projects will focus on long-haul trucking, heavy cargo shipping, power generation and aviation.
California’s Park Fire Is Blanketing the West in Smoke
date: 2024-07-29, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: A heat dome is bringing scorching temperatures to parts of the Great Plains and the American Southwest • Typhoon Gaemi triggered a mudslide in southeast China, killing at least 15 • It’s 70 degrees and humid in Caracas, where both Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his rivals have claimed victory in Sunday’s heavily disputed election.
THE TOP FIVE
- Northern California’s Park Fire still barely contained
The Park Fire has burned 360,000 acres since Wednesday, making it the largest active fire in the country and the seventh-largest in California’s history. Evacuation orders have now been issued for four nearby counties, with heavy smoke rolling into Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. Windy conditions and steep slopes allowed the blaze to expand rapidly, but cooler, wetter air on Sunday aided firefighters’ efforts. As of Sunday evening, the fire was only 12% contained.
Firefighters
work to contain the Park Fire’s eastern front in Chico, California.
Photo
by David McNew/Getty Images.
Climate change has made California’s summers hotter and dryer, increasing the frequency of large wildfires by an estimated 25%. Case in point: extreme heat this summer provided the Park Fire with lots of dry vegetation to consume.
When the Inflation Reduction Act made clean energy tax credits transferable, it set the conditions for a whole new market for those who earn the tax credits (clean energy developers and investors) and those who want them (anyone who wants relief from a large tax bill). In its mid-year market intelligence report, Crux, one of the leading platforms for tax credit transfers, projected that 2024 would see $20 billion to $25 billion such transactions in total, up from $7 billion to $9 billion last year.
Before the IRA, clean energy tax credits were restricted to the companies that earned them. That limited their usefulness, as some developers and investors didn’t pay enough taxes to claim the full benefit. Transferability has drawn a wider range of participants into the market, writes Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin. And expect much more in the years to come — investment bank Evercore is projecting that the market for tax credit trading could hit $100 billion by 2030.
- A novel housing solution at the Paris Olympics
The surfing competition at the 2024 Paris Olympics has been dogged by concerns over its impact on the environment and the local population of Tahiti, a French overseas territory known for its pristine beaches and vibrant coral reefs. Plans to construct new housing and a large observational tower aroused opposition, with locals voicing concern over how the new developments would disrupt the marine and terrestrial ecosystems.
The competition is now underway, though with a smaller footprint. Nearly 100% of on-land housing needs will be met by renting out existing structures, and the observational tower has been scaled down. And the athletes? They aresleeping on a 413-foot cruise ship anchored off the shore of the island. The changes have quieted some criticism, but concerns remain over the impact of the tower. As for the cruise ship solution, said French Polynesian President Moetai Brotherson, “It’s unusual, but they seem to like it.”
An
image of French athlete Joan Duru surfing at Teahupo’o, projected on a
wall in Paris’ Montmartre.
Photo
by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images.
- Yellen urges clean energy investment
United States Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen flew to Brazil this weekend for a meeting of G20 finance ministers. On Saturday, she delivered a speech touting a new partnership with the Brazilian Ministry of Finance to combat climate change and urging more global cooperation. The transition to a low-carbon economy is, she said, “the single greatest economic opportunity of the twenty-first century.” Yellen urged G20 leaders to invest in this transition, to the tune of $3 trillion in new capital — annually — between now and 2050.
The Department of the Treasury has been central to the Biden-Harris administration’s climate strategy, providing key guidance on the many tax provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act. In Brazil, Yellen encouraged her counterparts to “harness the power of markets” to speed up the energy transition.
- Another data point on congestion pricing
A year ago, London Mayor Sadiq Khan expanded the Ultra Low Emission Zone, a bounded area that uses fees to strictly limit vehicle traffic, to the entire city. According to newly released data, air pollutants like nitrogen oxide and particulate matter dropped dramatically in the six months that followed. Khan said the decision to expand the zone was “a difficult one, but the right one.” It’s a new piece of evidence about the effectiveness of congestion pricing, less than two months after New York Governor Hochul paused a similar policy in New York City.
THE KICKER
“We will be creating so much electricity that you’ll be saying, ‘Please, please, President, we don’t want any more electricity. We can’t stand it.’ You’ll be begging me, ‘No more electricity, sir. We have enough. We have enough.’” — Donald Trump, in a keynote speech at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference, perhaps obliquely referring to the need for new energy transmission and storage infrastructure.
https://heatmap.news/climate/california-park-fire-olympics
The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Fnding your code on the cutting room floor decades after the event
Ever thought you’d committed an elegant bit of code, only to find that somebody else decided to drop it because “that’s the way we’ve always done things”? If so, you aren’t alone. It happens to Microsoft engineers too.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/windows_start_menu_port/
Investors Are Betting Clean Energy Tax Credits Will Survive
date: 2024-07-29, from: Heatmap News
The Inflation Reduction Act will direct billions of dollars to subsidize clean energy in the form of tax credits. But those tax credits need to be bought and sold, requiring a whole industry to stand up between developers and corporate taxpayers looking to reduce their tax liabilities.
A key pillar of this emerging industry is Crux, which functions as a marketplace for these deals, which said Monday in its mid-year market intelligence report that it expects to see $20 billion to $25 billion worth of these transactions by the end of this year, with $9 billion to $11 billion having already occurred in the first half of the year, surpassing the $7 billion to $9 billion in total transactions Crux estimated for last year. Crux has been working to put itself quite literally at the center of this quickly growing industry, raising tens of millions of dollars from both technology venture capital investors as well as the renewables industry.
Clean energy tax credits that subsidize both investment and production of renewables are nothing new. What is new is that the Inflation Reduction Act made them “transferable,” meaning that the taxpayer who was able to reduce their tax liability didn’t have to be directly involved with the project in order to get the tax benefits, they could simply buy them.
This has drawn a wider range of participants into the market, Alfred Johnson, Crux’s co-founder and chief executive officer, told me. Transferability was written into the tax credits “in part to make up for the low demand that is inherent to the tax equity market” when only certain taxpayers can participate, he said. “So far, we have seen family offices, companies of all shapes and sizes. We’ve seen food and ag companies and retailers and different kinds of financial institutions and manufacturers.” The Financial Times even reported that cash-rich (and therefore tax liability-rich) oil and gas companies were buying tax credits from renewable developers.
In the past, the tax credits accrued to the actual investors and developers in projects, who often didn’t have enough taxable income to fully benefit from the available credits, so banks would then often be brought in to own some of the project and reap the tax benefits. This was a complicated system that would seize up if, for some reason, the taxable corporate income of banks disappeared, like during a global financial crisis. “Clean energy investment has long been constrained by the scarcity of tax equity investors relative to the addressable market,” the law firm White and Case wrote in a note to clients.
Now, with transferability, tax credits can be essentially sold for cash. But it’s not quite a dollar-for-dollar transfer. According to Crux’s data, pricing for these deals has improved slightly in the first half of the year, going up from 94 cents for a dollar of production tax credits in 2023 to 95 cents in 2024, and from 92 cents for investment tax credits to 92.5 cents. Deals have also gotten larger on average, although some of this is due to more tried-and-true projects coming to market earlier in the year, namely wind, solar, and storage, whereas last year saw a more diverse range of often smaller deals, including advanced manufacturing credits, which were newly introduced by the Inflation Reduction Act.
The investment bank Evercore estimates that the total addressable market for tax credit trading could get to $100 billion annually by 2030. And make no mistake: Those tax equity investors are doing it for the money. While some deals are struck as part of a company’s sustainability or climate change mandates, when Crux surveyed buyers and their advisors, 78% said they made these deals to reduce their effective tax rates, compared to 58% who said they supported clean energy development and 40% for other sustainability goals.
While many of the questions around the next year are around whether or the IRA and its tax credit regime will survive the outcome of the election in November — and dealmakers who work on this stuff every day seem confident that it will, for the most part — the shape of corporate liabilities could change in next year or beyond. Donald Trump has mused to Bloomberg about bringing down corporate tax rates to 15% from their current level of 21%. The Crux report notes that even debating such a bill can end up “stifling demand” for tax credits.
But looking forward, Johnson notes, the market appears to be confident that those who have tax liabilities in 2025 and even 2026 think tax equity will be there for them. “People are electing to commit on a production tax credit that goes well out into the future, or an investment tax credit that will be earned in 2025, or 2026,” Johnson said.
“I think that’s indicative of the market’s interpretation of risk, right? If the market thought that those 2026 credits would not be around, then you wouldn’t see as much as that,” Johnson said. He also noted that both the production and investment tax credits have typically been extended (although the uncertainty about extension can weigh on developers and tax equity investors) under just about every partisan configuration of Capitol Hill and the White House.
“You could certainly imagine scenarios, both from macroeconomic and a policy perspective, where the amount of taxes paid by companies went up or went down. But I think we are well covered right now in the market at the current volumes,” Johnson said.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/crux-tax-credit-report
Financial aid applications from undocumented California students plunged this year
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The LAist
As the deadline for undocumented community college students to apply for financial aid approaches, advocates are doubling down on their summer outreach.
https://laist.com/news/education/fafsa-california-dream-act-application-completion
Biden unveils plan for Supreme Court changes, says US stands at ‘breach’ as public confidence sinks
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
Washington — President Joe Biden is unveiling a long-awaited proposal for changes at the U.S. Supreme Court, calling on Congress to establish term limits and an ethics code for the court’s nine justices. He also is pressing lawmakers to ratify a constitutional amendment that would limit presidential immunity.
The White House on Monday detailed the contours of Biden’s court proposal, one that appears to have little chance of being approved by a closely divided Congress with just 99 days to go before Election Day.
Still, Democrats hope it will help to focus voters as they consider their choices in a tight election. The likely Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, has sought to frame her race against Republican former President Donald Trump as “a choice between freedom and chaos.”
The White House is looking to tap into the growing outrage among Democrats about the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, issuing opinions that overturned landmark decisions on abortion rights and federal regulatory powers that stood for decades.
Liberals also have expressed dismay over revelations about what they say are questionable relationships and decisions by some members of the conservative wing of the court that suggest their impartiality is compromised.
“I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers,” Biden argues in a Washington Post op-ed set to be published Monday. “What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.”
The president planned to speak about his proposal later Monday during an address at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
Biden is calling for doing away with lifetime appointments to the court. He says Congress should pass legislation to establish a system in which the sitting president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in service on the court. He argues term limits would help ensure that court membership changes with some regularity and adds a measure of predictability to the nomination process.
He also wants Congress to pass legislation establishing a code of ethics for justices that would require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.
Biden also is calling on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment reversing the Supreme Court’s recent landmark immunity ruling that determined former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.
The decision extended the delay in the Washington criminal case against Trump on charges he plotted to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss and all but ended prospects the former president could be tried before the November election.
The last time Congress ratified an amendment to the Constitution was 32 years ago. The 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, states that Congress can pass a bill changing the pay for members of the House and Senate, but such a change can’t take effect until after the next November elections are held for the House.
Trump has decried court reform as a desperate attempt by Democrats to “Play the Ref.”
“The Democrats are attempting to interfere in the Presidential Election, and destroy our Justice System, by attacking their Political Opponent, ME, and our Honorable Supreme Court. We have to fight for our Fair and Independent Courts, and protect our Country,” Trump posted on his Truth Social site earlier this month.
There have been increasing questions surrounding the ethics of the court after revelations about some of the justices, including that Clarence Thomas accepted luxury trips from a GOP megadonor.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was appointed during the Obama administration, has faced scrutiny after it surfaced that her staff often prodded public institutions that hosted her to buy copies of her memoir or children’s books.
Justice Samuel Alito rejected calls to step aside from Supreme Court cases involving Trump and Jan. 6 defendants despite a flap over provocative flags displayed at his home that some believe suggested sympathy to people facing charges over storming the U.S. Capitol to keep Trump in power. Alito says the flags were displayed by his wife.
Trump, at the time, congratulated Alito on his social media site for “showing the INTELLIGENCE, COURAGE, and ‘GUTS’” in refusing to step aside. “All U.S. Judges, Justices, and Leaders should have such GRIT.”
Democrats say the Biden effort will help put a bright spotlight on recent high court decisions, including the 2022 ruling stripping away women’s constitutional protections for abortion, by the conservative-majority court that includes three justices appointed by Trump.
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said in a Sunday interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” that Biden’s reform push is about reminding Americans that “when they vote in November, the Supreme Court is on the ballot.”
She added: “That is a good reason to vote for Kamala Harris and to vote for Democrats in both the Senate and the House.”
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina pushed back that Democrats didn’t complain when a more liberal-leaning court “was pumping out opinions they liked.”
“Only when we brought constitutional balance back from having a conservative court was the court a threat to the country,” Graham said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “What’s been a threat to the country is an out-of-control liberal court issuing opinions that basically take over every phase of American life based on nine people’s judgment.”
The announcement marks a remarkable evolution for Biden, who as a candidate had been wary of calls to reform the high court. But over the course of his presidency, he has become increasingly vocal about his belief that the court has abandoned mainstream constitutional interpretation.
Last week, he announced during an Oval Office speech that he would pursue Supreme Court reform during his final months in office, calling it “critical to our democracy.”
Harris, in her unsuccessful bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, had expressed being open to a conversation about expanding the nine-member court. The proposals unveiled on Monday do not include such an effort, which is something Biden as a candidate viewed skeptically.
As a vice presidential candidate, Harris notably dodged questions about her earlier stance on the issue during her October 2020 debate with Vice President Mike Pence.
The Harris campaign and aides to the vice president did not respond to queries about Harris’ involvement in shaping the Biden proposal and whether she would pursue any other court reform efforts should she be elected.
The White House in a statement said, “Biden and Vice President Harris look forward to working with Congress and empowering the American people to prevent the abuse of Presidential power, restore faith in the Supreme Court, and strengthen the guardrails of democracy.”
Earth to Gateway: Electric Field Tests Enhance Lunar Communication
date: 2024-07-29, from: NASA breaking news
Learn how engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center are using electric field testing to optimize communications for the Gateway space station that will support Artemis exploration of the Moon.
Say you want kids. Can you afford it?
date: 2024-07-29, from: Marketplace Morning Report
A new survey from the Pew Research Center finds that money is a major factor in the kids-or-no-kids decision. Among adults under 50 who say they’re unlikely to have children, 36% say they can’t afford them. Also on the show: We’ll examine an $80 million settlement involving banks and price-fixing of bonds, and hear about pollution-reducing projects in 30 states that will use $4.3 billion in EPA grants.
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/say-you-want-kids-can-you-afford-it
Inquiry reveals UK government misled MPs over Post Office IT scandal
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Former business minister Vince Cable testifies, highlighting misinformation and oversight failures
Officials at the government department responsible for the Post Office sent out misleading information to MPs about court cases relating to the Horizon IT system, an inquiry into one of the UK’s greatest miscarriage of justice has heard.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/post_office_horizon_inquiry/
Examining Venezuela’s disputed presidential election results
date: 2024-07-29, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been declared the winner of the county’s election — but the result has sparked accusations of fraud from the opposition, who claim their candidate actually won. Then, Japanese airports are cracking down on a novel and potentially hazardous way of traveling through endless airport corridors: electric passenger-carrying suitcases. And later, we look at why Australia’s minimum wage increase hasn’t got everyone’s support.
Linux Mint 22 ‘Wilma’ still the Bedrock choice for moving off Windows
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Outsmarting Ubuntu’s midlife crisis and dodging Flintstone-sized bugs
Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” debuted late last week and holds on to the crown as the most sensible choice if you’re looking to move across from Windows.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/linus_mint_22_wilma/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Biden's speech might turn out to be a Gettysburg type speech.
http://scripting.com/2024/07/25.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-29, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Just a week ago, it seems, a new America began.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-28-2024?r=17m9&triedRedirect=true
Rairii’s incredible port of ARC & Drivers for NT PowerPC to G3 Macintoshes
date: 2024-07-29, from: Tilde.news
Logitech Zone 305 is light on the ears and wallet, maybe a bit too light on quality?
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
A headset for workers who want to stride around the room bellowing
Review Logitech has released a lightweight headset aimed squarely at business users. While there are Bluetooth and connectivity options aplenty, the quality of the materials matches the headset’s low price.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/logitech_zone_305_review/
China rebukes US, Japan for ‘false accusations’ on maritime issues, military expansion
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
BEIJING — Joint statements between the United States and Japan “falsely accuse” China on maritime issues and point fingers at its normal military development and defense policy, China’s foreign ministry said on Monday.
The ministry’s comment followed the U.S. and Japan’s criticism of what they called Beijing’s “provocative” behavior in the South and East China Seas, joint military exercises with Russia and the rapid expansion of its nuclear weapons arsenal.
U.S. and Japan leaders on Sunday unveiled a new military structure that would be implemented in parallel with Tokyo’s own plans to establish a joint command for its forces by March 2025.
It would be among several measures taken to address what the countries said was an “evolving security environment,” noting various threats from China.
“They maliciously attacked and discredited China on maritime issues and made irresponsible remarks on China’s normal military development and national defense policy,” said Lin Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry during a regular press briefing.”
“China is strongly dissatisfied with the exaggeration of China’s threat and the malicious speculation of regional tensions,” Lin added.
The U.S. in annual reports on China’s military has called out the world’s second-largest economy for rapidly growing its military arsenal and nuclear warheads.
“China has always followed the path of peaceful development, firmly pursued a national defense policy that is defensive in nature, and its national defense construction and military activities are legitimate and reasonable,” Lin said.
He added that China “has always maintained its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security and does not pose a threat to any country.”
“We strongly urge the United States and Japan to immediately stop interfering with China’s internal affairs and stop creating imaginary enemies,” Lin said.
Arab American leaders listen as Harris tries to shore up swing-state support
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
DEARBORN, Mich — Osama Siblani’s phone won’t stop ringing.
Just days after President Joe Biden withdrew his bid for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination, top officials from both major political parties have been asking the publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab American News if Harris can regain the support of the nation’s largest Muslim population located in metro Detroit.
His response: “We are in listening mode.”
Harris, who is moving to seize the Democratic nomination after Biden stepped down, appears to be pivoting quickly to the task of convincing Arab American voters in Michigan, a state Democrats believe she can’t afford to lose in November, that she is a leader they can unite behind.
Community leaders have expressed a willingness to listen, and some have had initial conversations with Harris’ team. Many had grown exacerbated with Biden after they felt months of outreach had not yielded many results.
“The door is cracked open since Biden has stepped down,” said Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud. “There’s an opportunity for the Democratic nominee to coalesce the coalition that ushered in Biden’s presidency four years ago. But that responsibility will now fall on the vice president.”
Arab American leaders such as Hammoud and Siblani are watching closely for signals that Harris will be more vocal in pressing for a ceasefire. They’re excited by her candidacy but want to be sure she will be an advocate for peace and not an unequivocal supporter of Israel.
But Harris will need to walk a fine line not to publicly break with Biden’s position on the war in Gaza, where officials in his administration have been working diligently toward a ceasefire, mostly behind the scenes.
The divide within Harris’ own party was evident in Washington last week during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to address Congress. Some Democrats supported the visit, while others protested and refused to attend. Outside the Capitol, pro-Palestinian protesters were met with pepper spray and arrests.
Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress whose district includes Dearborn, held up a sign that read “war criminal” during Netanyahu’s remarks.
Harris did not attend.
Some Arab American leaders interpret her absence — she instead attended a campaign event in Indianapolis — as a sign of good faith with them, though they recognize her ongoing responsibilities as vice president, including a meeting Thursday with Netanyahu.
Her first test within the community will come when Harris chooses a running mate. One of the names on her short list, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, has been public in his criticism of pro-Palestinian protesters and is Jewish. Some Arab American leaders in Michigan say putting him on the ticket would ramp up their unease about the level of support they could expect from a Harris administration.
“Josh Shapiro was one of the first ones to criticize the students on campus. So it doesn’t differentiate Harris very much if she picks him. That just says I’m going to continue the same policies as Biden,” said Rima Meroueh, director of the National Network for Arab American Communities.
Arab Americans are betting that their vote holds enough electoral significance in pivotal swing states like Michigan to ensure that officials will listen to them. Michigan has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the nation, and the state’s majority-Muslim cities overwhelmingly supported Biden in 2020. He won Dearborn, for example, by a roughly 3-to-1 margin over former President Donald Trump.
In February, over 100,000 Michigan Democratic primary voters chose “uncommitted,” securing two delegates to protest the Biden administration’s unequivocal support for Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. Nationally, “uncommitted” garnered a total of 36 delegates in the primaries earlier this year.
The groups leading this effort have called for — at a minimum — an embargo on all weapons shipments to Israel and a permanent ceasefire.
“If Harris called for an arms embargo, I would work around the clock every day until the election to get her elected,” said Abbas Alawieh, an “uncommitted” Michigan delegate and national leader of the movement. “There’s a real opportunity right now to unite the coalition. It’s on her to deliver, but we are cautiously optimistic.”
Those divisions were on full display Wednesday night when the Michigan Democratic Party brought together over 100 delegates to pitch them on uniting behind Harris. During the meeting, Alawieh, one of three state delegates who did not commit to Harris, was speaking when another delegate interrupted him by unmuting and telling him to “shut up,” using an expletive, according to Alawieh.
The call could be a preview of tensions expected to surface again in August, when Democratic leaders, lawmakers, and delegates convene in Chicago for the party’s national convention. Mass protests are planned, and the “uncommitted” movement intends to ensure their voices are heard within the United Center, where the convention will be held.
Trump and his campaign, meanwhile, are keenly aware of the turmoil within the Democratic base and are actively seeking the support of Arab American voters. That effort has been complicated by Trump’s history of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy during his one term as president.
A meeting between over a dozen Arab American leaders from across the country and several of Trump’s surrogates was convened in Dearborn last week. Among the surrogates was Massad Boulos, a Lebanese-born businessman whose son married Tiffany Trump, the former president’s younger daughter, two years ago. Boulos is leveraging his connections to rally support for Trump.
Part of the pitch that Boulos and Bishara Bahbah, chairman of Arab Americans for Trump, made in Dearborn was that Trump has shown an openness to a two-state solution. He posted a letter on social media from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and pledged to work for peace in the Middle East.
“The three main points that were noted in the meeting were that Trump needs to state more clearly that he wants an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and that he supports the two-state solution, and that there is no such thing as a Muslim ban,” said Bahbah. “This is what the community wants to hear in a clear manner.”
Before a July 20 rally in Michigan, Trump also met with Bahbah, who pressed him about a two-state solution. According to Bahbah, Trump responded affirmatively, saying, “100%.”
But any apparent political opportunity for Trump may be limited by criticism from many Arab Americans about the former president’s ban on immigration from several majority Muslim countries and remarks they felt were insulting.
“I have not heard any individuals saying I’m now rushing to Donald Trump,” said Hammoud, Dearborn’s Democratic mayor. “I have yet to hear that in any of the conversations I’ve had. They all know what Donald Trump represents.”
Siblani, who organized Wednesday’s meeting with Trump surrogates, has spent months serving as an intermediary between his community and officials from all political parties and foreign dignitaries. Privately, he says, almost all express the need for a permanent ceasefire.
“Everybody wants our votes, but nobody wants to be seen as aligning with us publicly,” Siblani said.
Silicon, stars, and sulfur make Apollo’s unlikely legacy
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Neil stepped on a rock. We’re surfing an interstellar wave 9,000 light years long. Go us
Opinion Fifty-five years after Neil Armstrong’s one small step, and the future it promised has not come to pass. Nobody has gone back to the Moon since the end of the Apollo program, let alone out to Mars. As for Clarke and Kubrick’s oh-so-plausible 2001 trip to Jupiter with a hallucinating AI, well, one out of two isn’t bad. But while those futures didn’t happen, what we have instead is unimaginably better.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/opinion_column_space/
A farewell from HackSpace magazine
date: 2024-07-29, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
Starting next month, HackSpace will become part of The MagPi, the official Raspberry Pi magazine.
The post A farewell from HackSpace magazine appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/a-farewell-from-hackspace-magazine/
Never put off until tomorrow what someone could erase today
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
When even tape can’t save you, procrastination is a problem
Who, Me? Greetings once again, gentle reader, and welcome to another instalment of Who, Me? in which Reg readers like yourselves soften the start of the work week with reminders that we all sometimes make mistakes.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/who_me/
Today in SCV History (July 29)
date: 2024-07-29, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1983 – U.S. release of “National Lampoon’s Vacation;” Magic Mountain is Walley World. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-july-29/
Microsoft admits 8.5 million CrowdStruck machines estimate was lowballed
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Promises to discourage use of kernel drivers – so they don’t crash the world again
Microsoft has admitted that its estimate of 8.5 million machines crashed by CrowdStrike’s faulty software update was almost certainly too low, and vowed to reduce infosec vendors’ reliance on the kernel drivers at the heart of the issue.…
China ponders creating a national ‘cyberspace ID’
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Because clearly it’s better for Beijing to know who you are than for every ISP and social service to keep its own records
Beijing may soon issue “cyberspace IDs” to its citizens, after floating a proposal for the scheme last Friday.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/china_cyberspace_id_proposal/
US claims TikTok shipped personal data to China – very personal data
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Not even Oracle could stop it, claims DoJ
The US Department of Justice has alleged that TikTok shipped personal information to China and allowed profiling of the short video app’s users based on their attitudes to some ticklish topics.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/doj_tiktok_filing_china_data/
US, Japan, Australia and India announce efforts to boost maritime security
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/quad-foreign-ministers-meet-in-tokyo-with-eye-on-china/7716640.html
Group of 91 nations agree to continue not taxing cross-border data movement – for now
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Promote free use of government data, privacy, canning spam, and more
Five years of trade negotiations reached a milestone last Friday with 91 nations agreeing on new norms for e-commerce – among them extension of a moratorium on taxation of cross-border electronic transmissions.…
Secure Boot useless on hundreds of PCs from major vendors after key leak
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: More stalkerware exposure; a $16M TracFone fine; Ransomware victims don’t use MFA, and more
Infosec in brief Protecting computers’ BIOS and the boot process is essential for modern security – but knowing it’s important isn’t the same as actually taking steps to do it.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/infosec_roundup/
Apache Christ icon controversy sparks debate over Indigenous Catholic faith practices
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
MESCALERO, New Mexico — Anne Marie Brillante never imagined she would have to choose between being Apache and being Catholic.
To her, and many others in the Mescalero Apache tribe in New Mexico who are members of St. Joseph Apache Mission, their Indigenous culture had always been intertwined with faith. Both are sacred.
“Hearing we had to choose, that was a shock,” said a tearful Brillante, a member of the mission’s parish council.
The focus of this tense, unresolved episode is the 8-foot Apache Christ painting. For this close-knit community, it is a revered icon created by Franciscan friar Robert Lentz in 1989. It depicts Christ as a Mescalero medicine man and has hung behind the church’s altar for 35 years under a crucifix as a reminder of the holy union of their culture and faith.
On June 26, the church’s then-priest, Peter Chudy Sixtus Simeon-Aguinam, removed the icon and a smaller painting depicting a sacred Indigenous dancer. Also taken were ceramic chalices and baskets given by the Pueblo community for use during the Eucharist.
Brillante said the priest took them away while the region was reeling from wildfires that claimed two lives and burned more than 1,000 homes.
The Diocese of Las Cruces, which oversees the mission, did not respond to several emails, phone calls and an in-person visit by The Associated Press.
Parishioners, shocked to see the blank wall behind the altar when they arrived for Catechism class, initially believed the art objects had been stolen. But Brillante was informed by a diocesan official that the icon’s removal occurred under the authority of Bishop Peter Baldacchino and in the presence of a diocesan risk manager.
The diocese has returned the icons and other objects after the community’s outrage was covered by various media outlets, and the bishop replaced Simeon-Aguinam with another priest. But Brillante and others say it’s insufficient to heal the spiritual abuse they have endured.
Brillante said their former priest opened old wounds with his recent actions, suggesting he sought to cleanse them of their “pagan” ways, and it has derailed the reconciliation process initiated by Pope Francis in 2022. That year, Francis gave a historic apology for the Catholic Church’s role in Indigenous residential schools, forcing Native people to assimilate into Christian society, destroying their cultures and separating families.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declined comment on the Mescalero case. But last month, the conference overwhelmingly approved a pastoral framework for Indigenous ministry, which pointed to a “false choice” many Indigenous Catholics are faced with — to be Indigenous or Catholic:
“We assure you, as the Catholic bishops of the United States, that you do not have to be one or the other. You are both.”
Several of the mission’s former priests understood this, but Brillante believes Simeon-Aguinam’s recent demand to make that “false choice” violated the bishops’ new guidelines.
Larry Gosselin, a Franciscan who served St. Joseph from 1984 to 1996 and again from 2001 to 2003, said he sought the approval of 15 Mescalero leaders before Lentz began the painting that took three months to complete.
“He poured all of himself into that painting,” said Gosselin, explaining that Lentz sprinkled gold dust on himself and skipped showering, using his body oils to adhere the gold to the canvas. Then he gave the painting to the humble church.
Albert Braun, the priest who helped construct the church building in the 1920s, respected Mescalero Apache traditions in his ministry and was so beloved that he is buried inside the church, near the altar.
Church elders Glenda and Larry Brusuelas said to right this wrong and to repair this damage, the bishop must issue a public apology.
“You don’t call or send a letter,” Larry Brusuelas said. “You face the people you have offended and offer some guarantee that this is not going to happen again. That’s the Apache way.”
While Bishop Baldacchino held a two-hour meeting with the parish council in Mescalero after the items were returned, Brillante said he seemed more concerned about the icon being “hastily” reinstalled rather than acknowledging the harm or offering an apology.
Still, some are hopeful. Parish council member Pamela Cordova said she views the bishop appointing a new priest who was more familiar with the Apache community as a positive step.
“We need to give the bishop a chance to prove himself and let us know he is sincere and wants to make things right,” she said.
The concept of “inculturation,” the notion of people expressing their faith through their culture, has been encouraged by the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, said Chris Vecsey, professor of religion and Native American studies at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.
“It’s rather shocking to see a priest who has been assigned a parish with Native people acting in such a disrespectful way in 2024,” he said. “But it does reflect a long history of concern that blending these symbols might weaken, threaten or pollute the purity of the faith.”
Deacon Steven Morello, the Archdiocese of Detroit’s missionary to the American Indians, said the goal of the U.S. bishops’ new framework is to correct the ills of the past. He said Indigenous spirituality and Catholic faith have much in common, such as the burning of sage in Native American ceremonies and incense in a Catholic church.
“Both are meant to cleanse the heart and mind of all distractions,” he said. “The smoke goes up to God.”
Morello said Pope Francis’ encyclical on caring for the Earth and the environment titled “Laudato Si” addresses the sacredness of all creation — a core principle Indigenous people have lived by for millennia.
“There is no conflict, only commonality, between Indigenous and Catholic spirituality,” he said.
There are over 340 Native American parishes in the United States and many use Indigenous symbols and sacred objects in church. In every corner of the Mescalero church, Apache motifs seamlessly blend in with Catholic imagery.
The Apache Christ painting hangs as the focal point of the century-old Romanesque church whose rock walls soar as high as 90 feet. Artwork of teepees adorns the lectern. A mural at the altar shows the Last Supper with Christ and his apostles depicted as Apache men. Tall crowns worn by mountain dancers known as “gahe” in Apache, hang over small paintings showing Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.
For parishioner Sarah Kazhe, the Apache Christ painting conveys how Jesus appears to the people of Mescalero.
“Jesus meets you where you are and he appears to us in a way we understand,” she said. “Living my Apache way of life is no different than attending church. … The mindless, thoughtless act of removing a sacred icon sent a message that we didn’t matter.”
Parishioners believe the Creator in Apache lore is the same as their Christian God. On a recent Saturday night, community members gathered to bless two girls who had come of age. Kazhe and Donalyn Torres, one of the church elders who authorized Lentz to paint the Apache Christ, sat in lawn chairs with more than 100 others, watching crown dancers bring blessings on them.
Under a half-moon, the men wore body paint and tall crowns, dancing to drumbeats and song around a large fire. The women, including the two girls donning buckskin and jewelry, formed the outer circle, moving their feet in a quick, shuffling motion.
In the morning, many from the group attended Mass at their church, the Apache Christ restored to its place of honor.
The painting shows Christ as a Mescalero holy man, standing on the sacred Sierra Blanca, greeting the sun. A sun symbol is painted on his left palm; he holds a deer hoof rattle in his right hand. The inscription at the bottom is Apache for “giver of life,” one of their names for the Creator. Greek letters in the upper corners are abbreviations for “Jesus Christ.”
Gosselin, the mission’s former priest, said he was struck by the level of detail Lentz captured in that painting, particularly the eyes — which focus on a distance just as Apache people would when talking about spirituality. He believes the painting was “divinely inspired” because the people who received it feel a holy connection.
“This has resonated in the spirit and their hearts,” he said. “Now, 35 years later, the Apache people are fighting for it.”
Manipulated video shared by Musk mimics Harris’ voice, raising concerns about AI in politics
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
New York — A manipulated video that mimics the voice of Vice President Kamala Harris saying things she did not say is raising concerns about the power of artificial intelligence to mislead with Election Day about three months away.
The video gained attention after tech billionaire Elon Musk shared it on his social media platform X on Friday evening without explicitly noting it was originally released as parody.
The video uses many of the same visuals as a real ad that Harris, the likely Democratic president nominee, released last week launching her campaign. But the video swaps out the voice-over audio with another voice that convincingly impersonates Harris.
“I, Kamala Harris, am your Democrat candidate for president because Joe Biden finally exposed his senility at the debate,” the voice says in the video. It claims Harris is a “diversity hire” because she is a woman and a person of color, and it says she doesn’t know “the first thing about running the country.” The video retains “Harris for President” branding. It also adds in some authentic past clips of Harris.
Mia Ehrenberg, a Harris campaign spokesperson, said in an email to The Associated Press: “We believe the American people want the real freedom, opportunity and security Vice President Harris is offering; not the fake, manipulated lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.”
The widely shared video is an example of how lifelike AI-generated images, videos or audio clips have been utilized both to poke fun and to mislead about politics as the United States draws closer to the presidential election. It exposes how, as high-quality AI tools have become far more accessible, there remains a lack of significant federal action so far to regulate their use, leaving rules guiding AI in politics largely to states and social media platforms.
The video also raises questions about how to best handle content that blurs the lines of what is considered an appropriate use of AI, particularly if it falls into the category of satire.
The original user who posted the video, a YouTuber known as Mr Reagan, has disclosed both on YouTube and on X that the manipulated video is a parody. But Musk’s post, which has been viewed more than 123 million times, according to the platform, only includes the caption “This is amazing” with a laughing emoji.
X users who are familiar with the platform may know to click through Musk’s post to the original user’s post, where the disclosure is visible. Musk’s caption does not direct them to do so.
While some participants in X’s “community note” feature to add context to posts have suggested labeling Musk’s post, no such label had been added to it as of Sunday afternoon. Some users online questioned whether his post might violate X’s policies, which say users “may not share synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm.”
The policy has an exception for memes and satire as long as they do not cause “significant confusion about the authenticity of the media.”
Musk endorsed former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, earlier this month. Neither Mr Reagan nor Musk immediately responded to emailed requests for comment Sunday.
Two experts who specialize in AI-generated media reviewed the fake ad’s audio and confirmed that much of it was generated using AI technology.
One of them, University of California, Berkeley, digital forensics expert Hany Farid, said the video shows the power of generative AI and deepfakes.
“The AI-generated voice is very good,” he said in an email. “Even though most people won’t believe it is VP Harris’ voice, the video is that much more powerful when the words are in her voice.”
He said generative AI companies that make voice-cloning tools and other AI tools available to the public should do better to ensure their services are not used in ways that could harm people or democracy.
Rob Weissman, co-president of the advocacy group Public Citizen, disagreed with Farid, saying he thought many people would be fooled by the video.
“I don’t think that’s obviously a joke,” Weissman said in an interview. “I’m certain that most people looking at it don’t assume it’s a joke. The quality isn’t great, but it’s good enough. And precisely because it feeds into preexisting themes that have circulated around her, most people will believe it to be real.”
Weissman, whose organization has advocated for Congress, federal agencies and states to regulate generative AI, said the video is “the kind of thing that we’ve been warning about.”
Other generative AI deepfakes in both the U.S. and elsewhere would have tried to influence voters with misinformation, humor or both.
In Slovakia in 2023, fake audio clips impersonated a candidate discussing plans to rig an election and raise the price of beer days before the vote. In Louisiana in 2022, a political action committee’s satirical ad superimposed a Louisiana mayoral candidate’s face onto an actor portraying him as an underachieving high school student.
Congress has yet to pass legislation on AI in politics, and federal agencies have only taken limited steps, leaving most existing U.S. regulation to the states. More than one-third of states have created their own laws regulating the use of AI in campaigns and elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Beyond X, other social media companies also have created policies regarding synthetic and manipulated media shared on their platforms. Users on the video platform YouTube, for example, must reveal whether they have used generative artificial intelligence to create videos or face suspension.
Photos: Brass Roots Initiative at Summer Sunset Concerts Valencia Marketplace
date: 2024-07-29, from: The Signal
The Summer Sunset Concerts Valencia Marketplace series featured Brass Roots Initiative, who performed groovy tunes from classics dating back to the 1960’s to 1990’s on Friday evening at the Valencia […]
The post Photos: Brass Roots Initiative at Summer Sunset Concerts Valencia Marketplace appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
Open source AI helped China catch up to the world, researchers reckon
date: 2024-07-29, updated: 2024-07-29, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Plus: Grab drops cab merger, Kakao founder goes to the clink, Alibaba denies Jack Ma cronyism, and more
APAC in brief Chinese researchers have told The New York Times that open source software has helped them to accelerate AI development.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/asia_tech_news_roundup/
Frank Stewart photos captured culture of jazz, church and Black life in US
date: 2024-07-29, from: VOA News USA
CHADDS FORD, Pa. — At first glance, it looks like an aerial photo of a cemetery destroyed by war, with charred coffins ripped from broken concrete vaults and arched marble tombstones flattened by a bomb blast.
Then, the viewer begin to discern details: the coffins and vaults are actually parts of a keyboard. Instead of names and dates, the apparent tombstones are inscribed with words like “vibrato” and “third harmonic.”
“It looks like a graveyard,” photographer Frank Stewart said.
Stewart’s ghostly photograph of a New Orleans church organ ravaged by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina is part of a career retrospective of his decades documenting Black life in America and exploring African and Caribbean cultures.
“Frank Stewart’s Nexus: An American Photographer’s Journey, 1960s to the Present,” is on display at the Brandywine Museum of Art through Sept. 22. Brandywine is the fourth and final stop for the exhibition, which was organized by The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia.
“I wanted to talk about the Black church and what influence they had on the culture,” Stewart said of his post-Katrina work in New Orleans. “This organ, the music and everything corresponds. It all comes together. I just wanted to show the devastation of churches and the music and the culture.”
Music is elemental to Stewart’s practice. He was the long-time photographer for the Savannah Music Festival, and for 30 years he was the senior staff photographer for Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which paired him with artistic director and Grammy-winning musician Wynton Marsalis.
“He’s like my brother,” said Stewart, whose exhibition includes “Stomping the Blues,” a 1997 photograph of Marsalis leading his orchestra off the stage during a world tour of his Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz oratorio “Blood on the Fields.”
Stewart, who was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and Chicago, has his own ties to jazz and blues. His stepfather, Phineas Newborn Jr., was a pianist who worked with the likes of musicians Lionel Hampton, Charles Mingus and B.B. King.
Describing himself as a child of the “apartheid South,” Stewart has drawn inspiration from photographers such as Ernest Cole and Roy DeCarava, who was among Stewart’s instructors at New York’s Cooper Union, where Stewart received a bachelor of fine arts degree. DeCarava’s photographs of 1950s Harlem led to a collaboration with Langston Hughes on the 1955 book, “The Sweet Flypaper of Life.”
Cole, a South African photographer, achieved acclaim in 1967 with “House of Bondage,” the first book to inspire Stewart. It chronicled apartheid using photographs he smuggled out of the country. Cole was never able to replicate his early success and fell on hard times before dying at age 49 in New York City. A documentary about him, “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found,” premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
“He came to New York and he was homeless in New York, so I would see him on the street and we would talk,” said Stewart, who is quick to draw a distinction between his work and Cole’s.
“I consider myself an artist more than a documentarian,” explained Stewart, who attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before enrolling at Cooper Union and was a longtime friend and collaborator of artist Romare Bearden.
That’s not to say Stewart doesn’t have journalistic instincts in his blood. He recounts a work history that includes the Chicago Defender, the largest Black-owned daily in the country at the time, and stringing for Ebony, Essence and Black Enterprise magazines. He looks back less fondly on a short stint of large-format work photographing fine art for brochures and catalogs, an undertaking he described as “tedious.”
Through it all though, Stewart has maintained an artistic approach to his work, looking to combine pattern, color, tone and space in a visually appealing manner while not leaving the viewer searching for the message.
“It has to still be ‘X marks the spot,’” he explained. “It still has to be photographic. It can’t be just abstract.”
Or maybe it can. How else to explain the color and texture seen in “Blue Car, Havana” from 2002?
“It’s all about abstract painting,” Stewart said in wall text accompanying the photo.
The retrospective shines a light on how Stewart’s work has evolved over time, from early black-and-white photographs to his more recent prints, which feature more color.
“It’s two different languages,” he said. “English would be the black and white. French would be the color.”
“I worked in color the whole time, I just didn’t have the money to print them,” he added.
While photography can inform people about the world around them, Stewart has noted there is a gulf between the real world and a photograph.
“Reality is a fact, and a photograph is another fact,” he explained. “The map is not the territory. It’s just a map of the territory.”
Princess Leia bikini costume from ‘Star Wars’ movie set sells for $175K
date: 2024-07-28, from: VOA News USA
HOUSTON — The gold bikini-style costume that Carrie Fisher wore as Princess Leia while making “Return of the Jedi” in the “Star Wars” franchise has sold for $175,000, according to the auction house that handled the sale.
The costume was made famous when Fisher wore it at the start of the 1983 film when Leia was captured by Jabba the Hutt at his palace on Tatooine and forced to be a slave.
The costume, one of the most memorable in the ” Star Wars ” movies, was sold on Friday by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions.
Joe Maddalena, Heritage’s executive vice president, said the costume that was sold was one that was screen tested and worn by Fisher on the movie’s set but ultimately did not make it onto the final version of the film as it was switched out for one that was more comfortable.
The auction house said the costume sparked a bidding war among collectors.
Maddalena said he wasn’t surprised by the attention bidders gave to the costume as well as to a model of a Y-wing fighter that took on the Death Star in the original “Star Wars” film that sold for $1.55 million. He said “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” have very avid fan bases.
“The power of ‘Star Wars’ proves itself again. These movies are just so impactful,” Maddalena said.
In a November 2016 interview with NPR’s “Fresh Air,” Fisher said wearing the costume was not her choice.
“When (director George Lucas) showed me the outfit, I thought he was kidding and it made me very nervous. I had to sit very straight because I couldn’t have lines on my sides, like little creases. No creases were allowed, so I had to sit very, very rigid straight,” said Fisher, who died about a month after the interview.
Richard Miller, who created the costume, said in an interview that’s included in a “Star Wars” box set that he used soft material to build the costume so that Fisher could move around more freely.
“However, she still didn’t like it. I don’t blame her,” said Miller, who was the chief sculptor for Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects company founded by “Star Wars” creator George Lucas. “I did put leather on the back of it to help it feel better.”
The costume had its share of critics, who thought it sexualized Fisher for the franchise’s male fan base.
In “Interview” magazine in 2015, Fisher told actor Daisy Ridley, who starred in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “You’re going to have people have fantasies about you. That will make you uncomfortable, I’m guessing.” She pushed back against the idea of being a sex symbol and told Ridley to “fight for your outfit.”
Zambada’s attorney says cartel leader was kidnapped, brought to US
date: 2024-07-28, from: VOA News USA
Houston, Texas — The lawyer of a powerful Mexican drug cartel leader who is now in U.S. custody pushed back Sunday against claims that his client was tricked into flying into the country, saying he was “forcibly kidnapped” by the son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada had eluded authorities for decades and had never set foot in prison until a plane carrying him and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, a son of notorious drug kingpin “El Chapo,” landed at an airport in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, near El Paso, Texas, on Thursday. Both men, who face various U.S. drug charges, were arrested and remain jailed.
Frank Perez, Zambada’s attorney, said his client did not end up at the New Mexico airport of his own free will.
“My client neither surrendered nor negotiated any terms with the U.S. government,” Perez said in a statement. “Joaquin Guzmn Lopez forcibly kidnapped my client. He was ambushed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed by six men in military uniforms and Joaquin. His legs were tied, and a black bag was placed over his head.” Perez went on to say that Zambada, 76, was thrown in the back of a pickup truck, forced onto a plane and tied to the seat by Guzman Lopez.
Known as an astute operator skilled at corrupting officials, Zambada has a reputation for being able to negotiate with everyone, including rivals. He is charged in a number of U.S. cases, including in New York and California. Prosecutors brought a new indictment against him in New York in February, describing him as the “principal leader of the criminal enterprise responsible for importing enormous quantities of narcotics into the United States.”
Removing him from the criminal landscape could set off a turbulent internal war for control over the cartel, as has occurred with the arrest or killings of other kingpins. Experts say it could also open the door for a more violent, younger generation of Sinaloa traffickers to move up.
Perez declined to offer much more comment beyond his Sunday statement, saying only that his client had been traveling with a light security detail and was set up after being called to a meeting with Guzman Lopez.
Perez’s comments were first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Justice Department did not immediately return an email seeking comment Sunday on Perez’s claims. Court records did not list an attorney for Guzman Lopez, whose father is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.
According to a U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the matter, Zambada was duped into flying into the U.S.
The cartel leader got on an airplane believing he was going somewhere else, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. The official did not provide details such as who persuaded Zambada to get on the plane or where exactly he thought he was going.
Zambada appeared in federal court in El Paso on Friday morning, where a judge read the charges against him and informed him of his rights. He is being held without bond and has pleaded not guilty to various drug trafficking charges, court records show. His next court hearing is scheduled for Thursday, Perez said.
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-07-28, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Despite my best efforts this weekend, I have yet to watch every video on TikTok.
But I made a ton of progress.
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112866409882493642
Goleta’s New Sea Caves Now Teeming with Life
date: 2024-07-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Santa Barbara–based nonprofit Fish Reef Project’s kelp forest restoration off to a good start.
The post Goleta’s New Sea Caves Now Teeming with Life appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/28/goletas-new-sea-caves-now-teeming-with-life/
Breaking the Cycle: Against the Militarization of Neuroscience Research
date: 2024-07-28, from: Care
<p>“Adoption of a critical perspective on funding choices is possible—even for faculty previously connected to US military systems—but it is more labor intensive, entailing work that all too often lies outside of the research infrastructure universities provide.”</p>Tech Explainer: Brain–Computer Interfaces and Neural Prosthetics
date: 2024-07-28, from: Care
<p>“The brain is the ultimate site of an individual’s identity, and implanted devices not only have access to it, but the potential to alter it.”</p>Putin vows ‘mirror measures’ if US deploys missiles in Germany
date: 2024-07-28, from: VOA News USA
Russian President Vladimir Putin says his country may deploy new “strike weapons” in response to a U.S. plan to place missiles in Germany. Both the U.S. and Russia recently signaled a readiness to deploy intermediate-range weapons that were banned for decades under a Cold War-era treaty. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
https://www.voanews.com/a/putin-vows-mirror-measures-if-us-deploys-missiles-in-germany/7716218.html
Arson suspect arrested near Barnes and Noble
date: 2024-07-28, from: The Signal
A male suspect was arrested near the Barnes and Noble in Valencia Sunday on suspicion of arson, according to radio dispatch traffic. The incident was originally reported to the L.A. […]
The post Arson suspect arrested near Barnes and Noble appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/arson-suspect-arrested-near-barnes-and-noble/
NotMyFault: Microsoft’s tool to create BSoDs
date: 2024-07-28, from: OS News
Blue screens of death are not exactly in short supply on Windows machines lately, but what if you really want to cause your own kernel panic or complete system crash, just because you love that shade of crashy blue? Well, there’s a tool for that called NotMyFault, developed by Mark Russinovich as part of Sysinternals. NotMyFault is a tool that you can use to crash, hang, and cause kernel memory leaks on your Windows system. It’s useful for learning how to identify and diagnose device driver and hardware problems, and you can also use it to generate blue screen dump files on misbehaving systems. The download file includes 32-bit and 64-bit versions, as well as a command-line version that works on Nano Server. Chapter 7 in Windows Internals uses NotMyFault to demonstrate pool leak troubleshooting and Chapter 14 uses it for crash analysis examples. ↫ Mark Russinovich Using this tool, you can select exactly what kind of crash you want to cause, and after clicking the Crash button, your Windows computer will do exactly as it’s told and crash with a lovely blue screen of death. It comes in both a GUI and CLI version, and the latter also works on minimal Windows installations that don’t have the Windows shell installed. A tool like this may seem odd, but it can be particularly useful in situations where you’re trying to troubleshoot an issue, and to learn how to properly diagnose crashes. Or, you know, you can use it to create a panic at your workplace.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140353/notmyfault-microsofts-tool-to-create-bsods/
Managarm: microkernel-based OS with fully asynchronous I/O
date: 2024-07-28, from: OS News
Ah, another microkernel-based hobby operating system. The more, the merrier – and I mean this, without a hint of sarcasm. There’s definitely been a small resurgence in activity lately when it comes to small hobby and teaching operating systems, some of which are exploring some truly new ideas, and I’m definitely here for it. Today we have managarm. Some notable properties of managarm are: (i) managarm is based on a microkernel while common Desktop operating systems like Linux and Windows use monolithic kernels, (ii) managarm uses a completely asynchronous API for I/O and (iii) despite those internal differences, managarm provides good compatibility with Linux at the user space level. ↫ managarm GitHub page It’s a 64bit operating system with SMP support, an ACPI implementation, networking, USB3 support, and, as the quoted blurb details, a lot of support for Linux and POSIX. It can already run Weston, kmscon, and other things like Bash, the GNU Coreutils, and more. While not explicitly mentioned, I assume the best platform to run managarm on are most likely virtualisation tools, and there’s a detailed handbook to help you along during building and using this new operating system.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140347/managarm-microkernel-based-os-with-fully-asynchronous-i-o/
Thousands battle Western US wildfires as smoke puts millions under air quality alerts
date: 2024-07-28, from: VOA News USA
Forest Ranch, California — Wildfires across the western United States and Canada put millions of people under air quality alerts Sunday as thousands of firefighters battled the flames, including the largest wildfire in California this year.
The so-called Park Fire had scorched more than 1,430 square kilometers of land in inland Northern California as of Sunday morning, darkening the sky with smoke and haze and contributing to poor air quality in a large swath of the Northwestern U.S. and western Canada.
Although the sprawling blaze was only 12% contained as of Sunday, cooler temperatures and increased humidity could help crews battle the fire, which has drawn comparisons to the 2018 Camp Fire that tore through the nearby community of Paradise, killing 85 people and torching 11,000 homes. Paradise and several other Butte County communities were under an evacuation warning Sunday.
With the Park Fire, the initial effort by first responders was to save lives and property, but that has has shifted to confronting the fire head-on, Jay Tracy, a spokesperson at the Park Fire headquarters, told The Associated Press by phone Sunday. He said reinforcements would give much-needed rest to local firefighters, some of whom have been working nonstop since the fire started Wednesday.
“This fire is surprising a lot of people with its explosive growth,” he said. “It is kind of unparalleled.”
Although the area near the Park Fire is expecting cooler-than-average temperatures through the middle of this week, that doesn’t mean “that fires that are existing will go away,” said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
The Park Fire, which started Wednesday when authorities say a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico and then fled, has destroyed at least 134 structures, fire officials said. About 3,400 firefighters, aided by numerous helicopters and air tankers, are battling the blaze.
A Chico man accused of setting the fire was arrested Thursday and is due in court Monday.
The Park Fire was one of more than 100 blazes burning in the U.S. on Sunday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Some were sparked by the weather, with climate change increasing the frequency of lightning strikes as the Western U.S. endures blistering heat and bone-dry conditions.
Despite the improved fire weather in Northern California, conditions remained ripe for even more blazes to ignite, with the National Weather Service warning of “red flag” conditions on Sunday across wide swaths of Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, in addition to parts of California.
In Southern California, a fire in the Sequoia National Forest swept through the community of Havilah after burning more than 124 square kilometers in less than three days. The town of roughly 250 people had been under an evacuation order.
Fires were also burning across eastern Oregon and eastern Idaho, where officials were assessing damage from a group of blazes referred to as the Gwen Fire, which was estimated at 106 square kilometers in size as of Sunday.
Airfoil 5.12.2, Audio Hijack 4.4.3, Fission 2.8.6, and Piezo 1.9.3
date: 2024-07-28, from: TidBITS blog
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/airfoil-5-12-2/
Hip Hotel in the Heart of Solvang
date: 2024-07-28, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Spacious meets stylish in comfy new quarters.
The post Hip Hotel in the Heart of Solvang appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/28/hip-hotel-in-the-heart-of-solvang/
AlphaProof, AlphaGeometry, ChatGPT, and why the future of AI is neurosymbolic
date: 2024-07-28, from: Gary Marcus blog
What comes after chatbots?
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/alphaproof-alphageometry-chatgpt
Special Section: The Signal’s “Best of 2024”
date: 2024-07-28, from: The Signal
The post Special Section: The Signal’s “Best of 2024” appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/special-section-the-signals-best-of-2024/
A Guide to Becoming a Landlord
date: 2024-07-28, from: The Signal
People may pursue being a landlord as a means to ensure a steady source of income. Though that is a reality for most landlords, there are other benefits to owning […]
The post A Guide to Becoming a Landlord appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/a-guide-to-becoming-a-landlord/
Tips for Planning Your Next Road Trip
date: 2024-07-28, from: The Signal
Warmer weather provides a perfect opportunity to hop behind the wheel of your car and explore breathtaking scenery, cultural experiences and adventures waiting to be discovered both near and far. […]
The post Tips for Planning Your Next Road Trip appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/tips-for-planning-your-next-road-trip/
Don’t Suffer from the Summer Doldrums — Let’s Get Out of Here!
date: 2024-07-28, from: The Signal
It’s hot. It’s the middle of summer. It’s time to get on the road and visit people, places and things that bring joy and a sense of adventure. It’s time […]
The post Don’t Suffer from the Summer Doldrums — Let’s Get Out of Here! appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/dont-suffer-from-the-summer-doldrums-lets-get-out-of-here/
Huntington Beach U.S. Open of Surfing
date: 2024-07-28, from: The Signal
Doesn’t a day at the beach sound wonderful about now? Combine a day at the beach with one of the world’s most iconic competitions, the U.S. Open of Surfing at […]
The post Huntington Beach U.S. Open of Surfing appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/huntington-beach-u-s-open-of-surfing/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-07-28, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
Going with more Safari-esque tab bars, and some rounding for the text editor:
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112864932278640404
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-28, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Retro Recomendo: Podcast Listenables.
https://kk.org/cooltools/retro-recomendo-podcast-listenables/
oberon@gitlab.inf.ethz.ch pushed to project branch main at Felix Oliver Friedrich / Oberon A2
date: 2024-07-28, updated: 2024-07-28, from: Oberon A2 at CAS
oberon@gitlab.inf.ethz.ch (3e81eb63) at 28 Jul 16:54
a fix for conversions SYSTEM.VAL(FLOAT64, IntegerConstant) and SYST…
https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon/-/commit/3e81eb63099b7968539f969781ee824cd593c2c1
Can tech help solve the Los Angeles homeless crisis? Finding shelter may someday be a click away
date: 2024-07-28, from: VOA News USA
LOS ANGELES — Billions of dollars have been spent on efforts to get homeless people off the streets in California, but outdated computer systems with error-filled data are all too often unable to provide even basic information like where a shelter bed is open on any given night, inefficiencies that can lead to dire consequences.
The problem is especially acute in Los Angeles, where more than 45,000 people — many suffering from serious mental illness, substance addictions or both — live in litter-strewn encampments that have spread into virtually every neighborhood, and where rows of rusting RVs line entire blocks.
Even in the state that is home to Silicon Valley, technology has not kept up with the long-running crisis. In an age when anyone can book a hotel room or rent a car with a few strokes on a mobile phone, no system exists that provides a comprehensive listing of available shelter beds in Los Angeles County, home to more than 1 in 5 unhoused people in the U.S.
Mark Goldin, chief technology officer for Better Angels United, a nonprofit group, described L.A.’s technology as “systems that don’t talk to one another, lack of accurate data, nobody on the same page about what’s real and isn’t real.”
The systems can’t answer “exactly how many people are out there at any given time. Where are they?” he said.
The ramifications for people living on the streets could mean whether someone sleeps another night outside or not, a distinction that can be life-threatening.
“They are not getting the services to the people at the time that those people either need the service, or are mentally ready to accept the services,” said Adam Miller, a tech entrepreneur and CEO of Better Angels.
The problems were evident at a filthy encampment in the city’s Silver Lake neighborhood, where Sara Reyes, executive director of SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition, led volunteers distributing water, socks and food to homeless people, including one who appeared unconscious.
She gave out postcards with the address of a nearby church where the coalition provides hot food and services. A small dog bolted out of a tent, frantically barking, while a disheveled man wearing a jacket on a blistering hot day shuffled by a stained mattress.
At the end of the visit Reyes began typing notes into her mobile phone, which would later be retyped into a coalition spreadsheet and eventually copied again into a federal database.
“Anytime you move it from one medium to another, you can have data loss. We know we are not always getting the full picture,” Reyes said. The “victims are the people the system is supposed to serve.”
The technology has sputtered while the homeless population has soared. Some ask how can you combat a problem without reliable data to know what the scope is? An annual tally of homeless people in the city recently found a slight decline in the population, but some experts question the accuracy of the data, and tents and encampments can be seen just about everywhere.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has pinpointed shortcomings with technology as among the obstacles she faces in homelessness programs and has described the city’s efforts to slow the crisis as “building the plane while flying it.”
She said earlier this year that three to five homeless people die every day on the streets of L.A.
On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered state agencies to start removing homeless encampments on state land in his boldest action yet following a Supreme Court ruling allowing cities to enforce bans on sleeping outside in public spaces.
There is currently no uniform practice for caseworkers to collect and enter information into databases on the homeless people they interview, including notes taken on paper. The result: Information can be lost or recorded incorrectly, and it becomes quickly outdated with the lag time between interviews and when it’s entered into a database.
The main federal data system, known as the Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS, was designed as a desktop application, making it difficult to operate on a mobile phone.
“One of the reasons the data is so bad is because what the case managers do by necessity is they take notes, either on their phones or on scrap pieces of paper or they just try to remember it, and they don’t typically input it until they get back to their desk” hours, days, a week or even longer afterward, Miller said.
Every organization that coordinates services for homeless people uses an HMIS program to comply with data collection and reporting standards mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But the systems are not all compatible.
Sam Matonik, associate director of data at L.A.-based People Assisting the Homeless, a major service provider, said his organization is among those that must reenter data because Los Angeles County uses a proprietary data system that does not talk to the HMIS system.
“Once you’re manually double-entering things, it opens the door for all sorts of errors,” Matonik said. “Small numerical errors are the difference between somebody having shelter and not.”
Bevin Kuhn, acting deputy chief of analytics for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the agency that coordinates homeless housing and services in Los Angeles County, said work is underway to create a database of 23,000 beds by the end of the year as part of technology upgrades.
For case managers, “just seeing … the general bed availability is challenging,” Kuhn said.
Among other changes is a reboot of the HMIS system to make it more compatible with mobile apps and developing a way to measure if timely data is being entered by case workers, Kuhn said.
It’s not uncommon for a field worker to encounter a homeless person in crisis who needs immediate attention, which can create delays in collecting data. Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority aims for data to be entered in the system within 72 hours, but that benchmark is not always met.
In hopes of filling the void, Better Angels assembled a team experienced in building large-scale software applications. They are constructing a mobile-friendly prototype for outreach workers — to be donated to participating groups in Los Angeles County — that will be followed by systems for shelter operators and a comprehensive shelter bed database.
Since homeless people are transient and difficult to locate for follow-up services, one feature would create a map of places where an individual had been encountered, allowing case managers to narrow the search.
Services are often available, but the problem is linking them with a homeless person in real time. So, a data profile would show services the individual received in the past, medical issues and make it easy to contact health workers, if needed.
As a secondary benefit — if enough agencies and providers agree to participate — the software could produce analytical information and data visualizations, spotlighting where homeless people are moving around the county, or concentrations of where homeless people have gathered.
One key goal for the prototypes: ease of use even for workers with scant digital literacy. Information entered into the app would be immediately unloaded to the database, eliminating the need for redundant reentries while keeping information up to date.
Time is often critical. Once a shelter bed is located, there is a 48-hour window for the spot to be claimed, which Reyes says happens only about half the time. The technology is so inadequate, the coalition sometimes doesn’t learn a spot is open until it has expired.
She has been impressed with the speed of the Better Angels app, which is in testing, and believes it would cut down on the number of people who miss the housing window, as well as create more reliability for people trying to obtain services.
“I’m hoping Better Angels helps us put the human back into this whole situation,” Reyes said.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-28, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Stenography for liars isn’t journalism.
https://dangillmor.com/2024/07/28/again-folks-stenography-for-liars-isnt-journalism/
US upgrades military command in Japan, warns of China threats
date: 2024-07-28, from: VOA News USA
TOKYO — The United States announced plans Sunday for a major revamp of its military command in Japan to deepen coordination with its ally’s forces, as the two countries labeled China the “greatest strategic challenge” facing the region.
The announcement followed security talks in Tokyo between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and their respective Japanese counterparts, Yoko Kamikawa and Minoru Kihara.
“The United States will upgrade the U.S. Forces Japan to a joint force headquarters with expanded missions and operational responsibilities,” Austin told reporters after the so-called “2+2” talks.
“This will be the most significant change to U.S Forces Japan since its creation and one of the strongest improvements in our military ties with Japan in 70 years.”
The ministers said in a joint statement that the new command structure would be implemented in parallel with Tokyo’s own plans to establish a joint command for its forces by March 2025.
The overhaul is among several measures taken to address what the countries said was an “evolving security environment,” noting various threats from superpower China.
The statement criticized what it called Beijing’s “provocative” behavior in the South and East China Seas, joint military exercises with Russia and the rapid expansion of its nuclear weapons arsenal.
Beijing’s “foreign policy seeks to reshape the international order for its own benefit at the expense of others,” the ministers said in their statement.
“Such behavior is a serious concern to the alliance and the entire international community and represents the greatest strategic challenge in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.”
China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Austin told reporters the command upgrade was “not based on any threat from China” but reflected the allies’ desire to work more closely and effectively.
Japan provides a base for the U.S. to project military power in Asia, hosting 54,000 American troops, hundreds of U.S. aircraft and Washington’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier strike group.
Prompted by China’s growing military might and regular missile tests by nuclear-armed North Korea, Japan has in recent years shifted dramatically from decades of postwar pacifism. In 2022 it unveiled a plan to double defense spending to 2% of gross domestic product.
The new U.S. command in Japan will be headed by a three-star general, a U.S. official said, however Austin said the U.S. would not rule out appointing a four-star commander to Japan in the future as it has in neighboring South Korea.
Nuclear umbrella
For the first time, the ministers also discussed “extended deterrence,” a term used to describe the U.S. commitment to use its nuclear forces to deter attacks on allies.
It is sensitive subject in Japan, which has pushed for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and is the only country to have suffered atomic bomb attacks.
The countries discussed reinforcing extended deterrence to promote regional stability and deter the outbreak of conflict, according to an official readout that was scant in detail.
“Amidst increasingly severe nuclear threats in the vicinity of Japan, it is important to further strengthen extended deterrence. I welcome the continuously deepening discussion on this matter,” Japan’s Kamikawa told reporters at the outset of the talks.
The allies also expressed deep concern about Russia’s procurement of ballistic missiles from North Korea to aid its war in Ukraine and the potential for Moscow to transfer weapons of mass destruction or missile-related technology to Pyongyang.
North Korea has vowed to “totally destroy” its enemies in case of war, North Korean state media KCNA reported Sunday.
Austin and Kihara also met South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik, signing an agreement to “institutionalize” trilateral cooperation through efforts like real-time sharing of North Korean missile warning data and joint military exercises.
The Biden administration has been pushing for deeper cooperation between Tokyo and Seoul, whose strained relations date back to Japan’s 1910-1945 occupation of Korea.
“This memorandum strengthens the cooperation between Japan, the United States and South Korea, making our partnership unshakable, no matter how the international situation changes,” Japan’s Kihara told reporters after the trilateral meeting.
Washington also wants to tap Japanese industry to help ease pressure on U.S. weapons makers stretched by demand generated by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Tokyo and Washington are pursuing various collaborations in this field, including advancing missile co-production efforts as well as building supply chain resilience and facilitating ship and aircraft repair.
However, one flagship project — a plan to use Japanese factories to boost production of Patriot air defense missiles — is being delayed by a shortage of a critical component manufactured by Boeing, Reuters reported this month.
After leaving Tokyo, Blinken and Austin will hold security talks with another Asian ally, the Philippines, as the Biden administration seeks to counter an increasingly bold China.
Blinken met with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Laos on Saturday and repeated that Washington and its partners want to maintain a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” according to a U.S. readout of the meeting.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-28, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Repubs also regularly mangle the name of the Democratic Party.
https://jabberwocking.com/its-not-hard-to-say-kamala-harriss-name-right/
Putin warns US of Cold War-style missile crisis
date: 2024-07-28, from: VOA News USA
Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday warned the United States that if Washington deployed long-range missiles in Germany, then Russia would station similar missiles in striking distance of the West.
The United States said on July 10 that it would start deploying long-range missiles in Germany from 2026 in preparation for a longer-term deployment that will include SM-6, Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons.
In a speech to sailors from Russia, China, Algeria and India to mark Russian navy day in the former imperial capital of St. Petersburg, Putin warned the United States that it risked triggering a Cold War-style missile crisis with the move.
“The flight time to targets on our territory of such missiles, which in the future may be equipped with nuclear warheads, will be about 10 minutes,” Putin said.
“We will take mirror measures to deploy, taking into account the actions of the United States, its satellites in Europe and in other regions of the world.”
Watch related report by Arash Arabasadi:
Putin, who sent his army into Ukraine in 2022, casts the war as part of a historic struggle with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after Soviet Union fell in 1991 by encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence.
Ukraine and the West say Putin is engaged in an imperial-style land grab. They have vowed to defeat Russia, which currently controls about 18% of Ukraine, including Crimea, and parts of four regions in eastern Ukraine.
Russia says the lands, once part of the Russian empire, are now again part of Russia and that they will never be given back.
Cold War?
Russian and U.S. diplomats say their diplomatic relations are worse even that during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and both Moscow and Washington have urged de-escalation while both have made steps toward escalation.
Putin said that the United States was stoking tensions and had transferred Typhon missile systems to Denmark and the Philippines, and compared the U.S. plans to the NATO decision to deploy Pershing II launchers in Western Europe in 1979.
The Soviet leadership, including General Secretary Yuri Andropov, feared Pershing II deployments were part of an elaborate U.S.-led plan to decapitate the Soviet Union by taking out its political and military leadership.
“This situation is reminiscent of the events of the Cold War related to the deployment of American medium–range Pershing missiles in Europe,” Putin said.
The Pershing II, designed to deliver a variable-yield nuclear warhead, was deployed to West Germany in 1983.
In 1983, the ailing Andropov and the KGB interpreted a series of U.S. moves including the Pershing II deployment and a major NATO exercise as signs the West was about to launch a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union.
Putin repeated an earlier warning that Russia could resume production of intermediate and shorter range nuclear-capable missiles and then consider where to deploy them after the United States brought similar missiles to Europe and Asia.
David Hegg | In Pursuit of Ethical Language
date: 2024-07-28, from: The Signal
By David Hegg One of the basic foundations of civilization is language. People who speak a common language are also united by a common understanding of its words and grammar […]
The post David Hegg | In Pursuit of Ethical Language appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/david-hegg-in-pursuit-of-ethical-language/
Ron Perry | UN Must Do More Than Talk
date: 2024-07-28, from: The Signal
It is time for the United Nations to either fish or cut bait. It is time for the U.N. to do something other than talk. It is time for us […]
The post Ron Perry | UN Must Do More Than Talk appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/ron-perry-un-must-do-more-than-talk/
Today in SCV History (July 28)
date: 2024-07-28, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1938 – Newhall Tunnel cut away, replaced by Sierra Highway [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-july-28/
As Western US fires get ever bigger, experts look for answers
date: 2024-07-28, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/as-western-us-fires-get-ever-bigger-experts-look-for-answers/7715803.html
Naming
date: 2024-07-28, from: Ed Summers blog, Inkdroid
For Le Guin, the power of words is in their specificity and locality,
not as universals.
A Wizard of Earthsea, p. 51
https://inkdroid.org/2024/07/28/naming/
Cassingle Culture
date: 2024-07-28, from: Tedium feed
Why the single version of the cassette didn’t feel as worthy of a purchase as, say, a 45. Or, perhaps, even a digital download.
https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16754929/music-industry-cassette-single-cassingle-history
One person dead in Soledad traffic collision
date: 2024-07-28, from: The Signal
A fatal traffic collision occurred Saturday evening between Soledad Canyon Road and Agua Dulce Canyon Road, according to California Highway Patrol Officer Sean Lough. The solo collision was initially reported […]
The post One person dead in Soledad traffic collision appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/one-person-dead-in-soledad-traffic-collision/
VOA immigration weekly recap, July 21- 27
date: 2024-07-28, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/voa-immigration-weekly-recap-july-21--27-/7715777.html
Harris says she’s the underdog, touts her campaign as ‘people powered’
date: 2024-07-28, from: VOA News USA
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Vice President Kamala Harris used her first fundraiser since becoming the Democrats’ likely White House nominee to excoriate the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as determined to roll back Americans’ freedoms.
Harris traveled to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on Saturday where she was expected to raise more than $1.4 million, her campaign announced, from an audience of hundreds at the Colonial Theatre. That would be $1 million more than the original goal set for the event.
She told an excited group of supporters that she entered the race as an underdog, while expressing confidence that her surging campaign could defeat Trump.
“I will fight to move our nation forward,” Harris said. “Donald Trump intends to take our country backwards.”
Harris also poked at Trump, and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, for lobbing peculiar attacks at her and other Democrats. The vice president appeared to be referring to a 2021 interview with Vance in which he slammed some prominent Democrats without biological children, including Harris, as “childless cat ladies” with “no direct stake” in America.
“You may have noticed Donald Trump has been resorting to some wild lies about my record and some of what he and his running mate are saying, it is just plain weird,” Harris said. “I mean that’s the box you put that in, right?”
Harris’ branding the Republican ticket as “weird” appears to be part of a concerted effort by her campaign to spotlight some of Trump and Vance’s rhetoric as questionable. Earlier this week, the Harris campaign on the social media site X called Vance “weird and creepy” for some of his stances on women’s reproductive rights. Trump, meanwhile, has raised the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter from the film Silence of the Lambs in stump speeches.
“These guys are just weird,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who is on Harris’ shortlist for vice president, said in an MSNBC interview earlier this week. “They’re running for He-Man Women-Haters Club or something.”
Supporters for the fundraiser included musician James Taylor and many of the state’s Democratic heavyweights, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, former Gov. Deval Patrick and Rep. Richie Neal.
Harris took in more than $100 million in donations in the first 48 hours after Biden quit the race, a presidential record, and aides said she has continued to raise money at a steady clip.
“This is a people-powered campaign,” Harris said. “And we have momentum.”
Harris, a former prosecutor in her home state of California, also derided Trump for his legal troubles. She noted his recent conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York, a jury finding the former president of being liable for sexual abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, and a $25 million settlement paid to attendees of the now-defunct real estate seminar called Trump University.
“I’ve been dealing with people like him my entire career,” Harris said. She added, “So in this campaign, and I say in all seriousness, I will proudly put my record against his any day.”
Harris began her remarks with praise for Biden, who opted to end his reelection bid and endorse Harris last weekend after his campaign fell into a tailspin following his disastrous June 27 debate performance against Trump.
She called Biden’s legacy of accomplishment over the past three and a half years “unmatched in modern history.”
The vice president told the fundraiser crowd that her economic agenda would sharply contrast with Trump’s, who she claimed is squarely focused on lowering tax rates for wealthy Americans and improving the bottom lines of corporations.
“Building up the middle class will be the defining goal of my presidency,” Harris said. She added, “Let us make no mistake, this campaign is not just about us versus Donald Trump. Our campaign has always been about two very different visions for our nation.”
Blinken arrives in Japan for 2+2 security talks, Quad
date: 2024-07-28, from: VOA News USA
Tokyo — Japanese and U.S. defense chiefs and top diplomats will meet in Tokyo on Sunday for talks aimed at further bolstering their military cooperation, including by upgrading the command and control of U.S. forces and strengthening American-licensed missile production in Japan, amid a rising threat from China.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will join their Japanese counterparts, Yoko Kamikawa and Minoru Kihara, at the Japan-U.S. Security Consultative Committee, known as “2+2” security talks, to reaffirm their alliance following President Joe Biden ’s withdrawal from the November presidential race.
For the first time, the ministers will hold separate talks to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to “extended deterrence,” which includes atomic weapons — a shift from Japan’s earlier reluctance to openly discuss the sensitive issue in the world’s only country to have suffered nuclear attacks — amid growing nuclear threats from Russia and China.
The ministers are expected to discuss plans to upgrade command and control structures for U.S. forces in Japan by bringing in higher-ranked officers with commanding authority to create a U.S. counterpart for Japan’s unified command currently set for inauguration in March.
Japan is home to more than 50,000 U.S. troops, but a commander for the U.S. Forces Japan headquartered in Yokota in the western suburbs of Tokyo, tasked with managing their bases, has no commanding authority. Instead that comes from the Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii. The plan to upgrade USFJ’s command and control capability is designed to help smooth joint exercises and operations, officials say.
Ahead of the 2+2 talks, Kihara met with Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik for their first trilateral defense talks hosted by Tokyo and signed a memorandum based on their June agreement in Singapore that institutionalizes their regular high-level talks, joint exercises and other exchanges.
Defense officials said the memorandum serves as the basis for future defense cooperation among the three countries despite possible changes of leadership, while showcasing their unity.
“The signing of this memorandum makes our trilateral cooperation unwavering even under changing global environments,” Kihara told reporters.
Kihara also met Shin, who is the first South Korean defense chief to visit Japan in 15 years, and they agreed to take concrete steps to deepen their bilateral defense ties.
Japan has been accelerating its military buildup and has increased joint operations with the U.S., as well as with South Korea, while trying to strengthen its largely domestic defense industry.
Japan has significantly eased its arms export restrictions and in December accommodated a U.S. request for shipment of surface-to-air PAC-3 missile interceptors produced in Japan under an American license to replenish U.S. inventories, which have decreased due to its support for Ukraine.
The ministers are also expected to discuss increased Japanese production of PAC-3 interceptors for export to the United States.
Japan and the U.S. have been accelerating arms industry cooperation following an April agreement between Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Biden. The two sides have set up working groups for missile co-production and for the maintenance and repair of U.S. Navy ships and Air Force aircraft in the region.
While Japan’s role is largely designed to help U.S. weapons supply and keep its deterrence credible in the Indo-Pacific amid continuing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, Japanese officials say it will help strengthen the Japanese defense industry.
https://www.voanews.com/a/blinken-arrives-in-japan-for-2-2-security-talks-quad/7715772.html
US women’s basketball focused on Olympic gold, not program’s legacy
date: 2024-07-28, from: VOA News USA
paris — The friendly warmup games are over. Now the U.S. women’s basketball team must deal with the pressure of history.
Led by two-time WNBA MVPs A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart, the U.S. starts its quest at the Paris Games for an unprecedented eighth straight gold medal on a 55-game Olympic winning streak for a program that hasn’t lost since 1992 in Barcelona.
There also is 42-year-old Diana Taurasi, who will be going for a sixth gold medal. She isn’t focused on the big picture of what the U.S. has accomplished over the last three decades in the Olympics; her eyes are fixed solely on getting another gold in Paris.
“It doesn’t matter what the history is, it doesn’t affect this team or this Olympics,” she said. “We find a way to find our own identity as a team on and off the court. Those last eight don’t promise you anything going forward. That’s the mindset we’ve always taken.”
The team is trying to break a tie with the U.S. men’s basketball team for the most consecutive gold medals. The men won seven straight from 1936-68.
The women open play against Japan on Monday. The two teams met in the gold- medal game in Tokyo three years ago and the U.S. came away with a 90-75 victory. The U.S. also has Olympic newcomer Germany and Belgium in its group.
“There’s so many good teams and everyone’s level has raised in the last two or three Olympics,” Taurasi said. “You see the investment in women’s sports, and it pays off on the court. So that’s promising to see.”
The Americans won by an average of 16 points at the Tokyo Games. That was their smallest margin of victory since the gold-medal streak started at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
They have had little practice time since the team was put together in June. They had three days in Phoenix during WNBA All-Star weekend before heading to London for an exhibition game against Germany on Tuesday. They got to France on Thursday after a train ride from England.
The Americans weren’t sure of their exact travel plans going to and from the preliminary games in Lille after three major high-speed train lines were disrupted by acts of sabotage Friday.
“We’re not sure if we’ll [travel by] train or bus,” Taurasi said. “We have confidence in our security team; we’ll get there.”
They will have had only about 14 hours of practice together before their opening game against a Japan team that has been preparing for a year.
“We make the most of the time we have and just try to get better every day,” said Wilson, who is on her second Olympic team.
The advantage the U.S. has is its incredible depth. The team has been able to wear down opponents and has reserves that would be starting for every other country in the Olympics.
“We know we have an advantage because of our depth, so when we’re on the court we’re looking for the best shot and we can just bring in fresh players all the time,” Stewart said.
Coach Cheryl Reeve called the Americans’ depth their top strength, followed closely by their sheer size. That allows her not to overwork players during games while also being creative.
“Look what’s coming off our bench,” Reeve said. “I think that’s been real valuable. I’ve seen that. I was in London for the 2012 Olympics and just watching the way they used their second team. Felt it again in 2016, and so, yeah, I mean we would be a fool not to utilize our depth.”
Xecast Episode 1: Origins and Techaro
date: 2024-07-28, from: Ze Iaso’s blog