Gee, Ya Think?

A study from Michigan State University concluded that premature ending of school mask mandates during the pandemic resulted in 22,000 deaths.

So much for, "Kids don't get Covid." 

Someday we Americans may stop quarreling over our response to the COVID-19 pandemic — lockdown orders, social distancing and so forth — but one category of debate may never become immune to second-guessing.

That’s the impact of anti-pandemic measures on schools and schoolchildren. According to popular opinion, these were almost entirely mistaken or ineffective.

A newly published study from data scientists at Michigan State University knocks one pillar out from under this claim. It finds that the abrupt removal in 2022 of mandates that children wear masks in school contributed to an estimated 21,800 COVID deaths that year — a shocking 9% of the total COVID deaths in the U.S. that year.

It should be noted here that while many of the deaths involved children, a lot of them were people like teachers, school janitors, etc.

………

In February 2022, about 50% of public school children, or more than 20 million pupils, were in districts with mask mandates; then, over a period of six weeks, almost all those districts rescinded their mandates. “You can see how that would create a pretty substantial surge in infections.” 

Most of the surge, [Michigan State University Professor Scott] Imberman told me, was a “spillover effect” in the communities outside the schools themselves.

The Michigan State finding undermines several myths and misrepresentations about COVID spread by the right wing. These include the claim that children are virtually impervious to COVID, which has been refuted by the injury and death toll among children. 

A related misrepresentation was that children can’t pass on the infection to adults. In fact, because many children didn’t show symptoms of the infection or had only mild, flu-like symptoms, they functioned almost like an undetected fifth column in spreading the virus to adults.

The rush to set aside Covid precautions, and note that this was done by the Biden Administration, and I would argue that this was their worst mistake.  (maybe 2nd worst mistake when one looks at the 2024 campaign) 

In shutting down public health emergency mitigations to soon, they extended the duration and incrased the duration of the public health emergency.

The Fed Punts

Economists and financiers can deal with risk.  What they cannot deal with is uncertainty.

The former gives you at least a rough percentage chance of what might happen, while the latter case means that you have no idea what would happen.

An example of uncertainty would be a if we had an impulsive, petulant, narcissistic, and possibly senile person running US trade policy, for example.

It's a good thing that we don't have THAT in the United States, otherwise, the Federal Reserve might look at this uncertainty and hold off on rate cuts. 

Oh, wait, the Fed did look at this uncertainty and hold off on rate cuts. 

Funny, innit? 

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell projected confidence when he insisted the central bank was in a good position to handle whatever the economy does next—all while repeatedly acknowledging the Fed has little idea what’s actually coming.

The Fed is trying to see how the dust will settle from the aftereffects of President Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” tariff announcements, among other policy changes. Most economists expect tariffs to lift prices over the coming months, and that is a worry for the Fed because officials still don’t feel as if they completely vanquished inflation after a three-year-long fight.

“We haven’t been through a situation like this, and I think we have to be humble about our ability to forecast it,” Powell said.

Inflation has eased recently, but tariff effects loom. The job market shows hints of softness, though unemployment remains low at 4.2%.

We are f%$#ed.

More of This

I am not sure if this would make it past the Supreme Court's expansive view of corporate free speech, but the proposal by Senators Bernie Sanders and Angus King to ban direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising is still a good thing.

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Angus King (I., Maine) introduced a bill Thursday that would ban pharmaceutical manufacturers from using direct-to-consumer advertising, including social media, to promote their products. 

The bill would prohibit any promotional communications targeting consumers, including through television, radio, print, digital platforms and social media. It will apply to all prescription drug advertisements. 

“The American people don’t want to see misleading and deceptive prescription drug ads on television,” Sanders said in a statement. “They want us to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and ban these bogus ads.”

The bill comes after repeated calls from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to end prescription drug advertising. 

The fact that Sanders, King, and Kennedy are on the same page about ANYTHING is a complete mind-f%$#.

So Classy

Donald Trump won't call Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to offer condolences over the assassination of a Minnesota state lawmakerby one of his MAGAt supporters, because Trump is a miserable excuse for a human being.

OK, the actual reason he gave was that he thought it was, "A waste of time."

President Trump said early Tuesday that he would not call Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) after two Democratic lawmakers in his state were shot at their homes in a “politically motivated” shooting spree over the weekend.

“I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I’m not calling,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way back from the Group of Seven (G7) summit. “Why would I call him?”

“The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess. So, you know, I could be nice and call, but why waste time?” the president added.

Not only is this narcissistic and cruel, it is narcissistic and cruel and STUPID.

It makes Trump look like a psychopath, which, oddly enough, might be the most genuine and honest thing that Trump has said in about a decade. 

When Oracle Comes a Knocking, Run Away

Oracle has a new program to "Help" small companies that want to get Pentagon contracts. 

I do not know anything about the specifics of this program, but among software companies that are absolutely abusive toward their customers, 

They are the Hotel California of businesses.

You can check out any time you'd like, but you can NEVER leave.

Do not touch:

Oracle said vendors participating in its Oracle Defense Ecosystem program will have access to the software giant’s office spaces and be able to tap its expertise on navigating the Pentagon’s procurement processes. Photo: Scott Coleman/ZUMA Press

Oracle is unveiling a program that it says will help vendors more easily sell technology, including artificial intelligence, to the Department of Defense.

The program, called the Oracle Defense Ecosystem, is structured to help smaller companies break through the challenges they typically face in selling tech to the Defense Department, said Rand Waldron, Oracle’s vice president of sovereign cloud.

“It is far too hard to serve the American defense enterprise,” Waldron said. “We can provide an easy path for these companies to better get access to the defense market.”

Oracle said vendors participating in its program will have access to Oracle’s office spaces and be able to tap its expertise on navigating the Pentagon’s procurement processes. Participants also will receive a discount to data-mining company Palantir Technologies’ cloud and AI platform, as well as Oracle’s NetSuite business software.

Oracle and Palantir.  Now THERE is an unholy witches' brew.

This is about system lock-in.  The licensing terms will make it almost impossible to terminate the contract, and every year, the costs will keep rising.

The stories about Oracle are legion.

There are literally hundreds of companies that are maintaining Oracle licenses that they no longer use for tens of thousands of dollars a year, because failing to dot or cross a t on termination can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties and potential lawsuits.

Mike Lee (R-UT) Should Have Been Drowned At Birth

 He's already making public jokes and baseless accusations about the assassination in Minnesota.

Not a good look for a human being, much less for a US Senator. 

To Quote Joseph Welch, "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency??: 

Light Blogging for the Next Few Days

 Working on an SCA project.

Speaking of Things Getting Worse

Over the past few years I have pointed out issues with the most used models for anthropogenic climate change.

When compared to the actual climate data, the predictions of the models always seem to be too conservative.

It's worse than the models predict.

Well, we now have a potential explanation for this, that the models underestimate the water content and temperature of polar clouds:

The Arctic is one of the coldest regions on Earth, but in recent decades it has been warming rapidly, three to four times faster than the global average. Yet current climate models have struggled to explain this accelerated warming.

Now, researchers from Kyushu University—graduate student Momoka Nakanishi of the Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Engineering Sciences and her adviser, Associate Professor Takuro Michibata of the Research Institute for Applied Mechanics—have suggested that clouds may be the key factor. Their findings were published in the journal Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Research.

Heat-trapping properties of mixed-phase clouds

The most common clouds in the Arctic are mixed-phase clouds, which contain both ice crystals and supercooled liquid water droplets. During the Arctic summer, when sunlight is constant, these clouds reflect sunlight back into space like a parasol, helping to cool the region. In contrast, during the long, dark Arctic winter, when there is no sunlight to reflect, the same clouds behave like a blanket, trapping heat radiated from the Earth’s surface and sending it back down to the ground.

“However, how well these mixed-phase clouds trap heat depends on their ratio of ice to liquid,” explains Nakanishi. “The more liquid water the clouds contain, the better they are at trapping heat. But many climate models have a large bias in representing this ratio, causing incorrect predictions.”

Satellite comparison reveals model bias

In this study, Nakanishi and Michibata analyzed 30 climate models and compared them to satellite observations of clouds in the Arctic during winter over the last decade. They found that 21 of the 30 models significantly overestimated the fraction of ice to liquid in wintertime Arctic clouds.

“These ice-dominant models are not properly accounting for the present-day warming potential of the clouds during the winter,” says Nakanishi. “That’s why they cannot account for the rapid warming we are currently seeing.”

Yeah, it's a lot worse than we thought.

Not Good

So, today we had massive "No Kings" protests, and Trump's birthday parade was a fizzle. and neither was the story of the day.

Instead the story of the day was right wing political violence. in Minnesota, we had the assassination of a Minnesota State Representative and the attempted assassination of a Minnesota State Senator:

Last night, a gunman impersonating a police officer and wearing body armor, murdered Minnesota State Congresswoman Melissa Hortman and her husband, traveled to State Senator John Hoffman’s house and shot him and his wife. Both politicians are Democrats.

After the first shooting, MN State Police did a proactive check on Hoffman’s house and saw the suspect come out the front door and flee on foot.

Both Hortman and Hoffman are members of an extremely divided Minnesota Congress. By taking out a member of each house, the gunman effectively flipped the state from Blue to Red.

The suspect, Vance Luther Boelter, is the owner of a private security company in Minnesota called “Praetorian Guards” which he runs with his wife.

………

The gunman had nearly 70 targets on a list to murder including a number of abortion providers, and numerous other Democrats including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Challenging the narrative of this event is the fact that in 2019 Tim Walz appointed Vance Luther Boelter to the bipartisan Minnesota Workforce Development Board, which Walz’s predecessor had also done in 2016. This perfunctory nomination by Walz is being spun by right-wing media into some sinister connection between the killer and Walz. Given that Walz was on a list to be murdered, it’s preposterous.

We have the resume of the alleged gunman here.

He definitely had ties to right wing Evangelical Christian groups, and in speeches he gave, he echoes the rhetoric of the Christo-Fascist New Apostolic Reformation cult.

Meanwhile, in Virginia and California, drivers deliberately drove into crowds at the "No King" protests, though in this case there were no deaths.

This sort of political violence is being aggressively fomented by Trump and his allies, though you cannot find any direct links.  

They are exhorting their followers to political violence, knowing that there is a statistical certainty that they will get their violence without direct ties pointingng back to them.

This is deliberate stochastic terrorism. 

Gee, What a Surprise

23andMe is going through bankruptcy, and as a part of the process, it will be selling off DNA data of its customers.

Even if a company promises to be good with your personal data, in bankruptcy, you are f%$#ed.

Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia have sued the genetic-testing company 23andMe to oppose the sale of DNA data from its customers without their direct consent.

The suit, filed on Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of Missouri, argues that 23andMe needs to have permission from each and every customer before their data is potentially sold. The company had entered an agreement to sell itself and its assets in bankruptcy court.

The information for sale “comprises an unprecedented compilation of highly sensitive and immutable personal data of consumers,” according to the lawsuit.

“This isn’t just data — it’s your DNA. It’s personal, permanent and deeply private,” Dan Rayfield, the Oregon attorney general, said in a statement. “People did not submit their personal data to 23andMe thinking their genetic blueprint would later be sold off to the highest bidder.”

 We don't need to just fix federal privacy laws, we need to fix federal corporate bankruptcy laws as well.

LoL

Donald Trump showed up to the Kennedy Center to see Les Miserables and got booed.

This is not surprising, since he took a wrecking ball to the institution. 

Good.

Boeing Can't Catch a Break

I am not sure if Boeing deserves to catch a break, but whether it is the fault of Boeing, or the airline, or a flock of birds, the first fatal crash of a B787 is yet another bump in the already pothole infested road that is Boeing.

Officials have revealed few clues that would explain why a London-bound Air India Boeing 787 went down about 30 sec. after liftoff from Ahmedabad airport, making a seemingly controlled descent into a residential area after failing to maintain altitude.

Air India Flight 171 (AI 171) was airborne for less than 30 sec., surveillance video from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport’ shows. The aircraft rotates near the end of Runway 23 and climbs for about 12 sec. It then levels off for a moment before entering a sudden but steady descent into a nearby area about 1 nm from the runway end. Its landing gear remained down throughout the entire flight sequence.

The pilots issued a mayday call to air traffic control immediately after liftoff “but thereafter no response was given by the aircraft to the calls made by ATC,” India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said. Several news outlets in India said the mayday message included a description of “no thrust,” but Aviation Week could not independently verify the reports.

There were fatalities on the ground, and one survivor on the aircraft, who reported hearing a bang before the crash.

We should get more information over the next few weeks. 

Not a Surprise

The entire Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board has resigned in response to political interference in the grants that they make.

The board of the Fulbright Program, the international educational exchange initiative sponsored by the US government, has resigned in protest at what it has described as the Trump administration’s political interference in its operations.

In a statement the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board said the government had been meddling in its selection process, which it states is “based on merit, not ideology”, and has traditionally been insulated from political interference. It said the integrity of that process was “now undermined”.

Political appointees at the state department had cancelled Fulbright scholarships for dozens of academics and students, mainly on the basis of their research topics, according to people familiar with the matter. 

………

People familiar with the matter said the Fulbright awards were being cancelled in many instances by Darren Beattie, acting under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs. He worked as a speechwriter for Trump during his first term but left his post in 2018 after it was reported that he had spoken at a conference attended by white nationalists. 

So, not just a political hack, it's a literal Nazi who is doing this.

Ours is the worst, and stupidest, timeline. 

Support Your Local Police

Is it any surprise that, " Almost Every NYPD Cop Charged with Excessive Force During the George Floyd Protests Escaped Serious Punishment?"

The state of policing in the United States is that the cops corrupting their own is the rule, and not the exception: 

Ten minutes after the city’s emergency curfew kicked in on a sunny evening five years ago, NYPD detective Jason Ragoo stood over a female protester he had just taken to the ground on West Street in Lower Manhattan.

As the woman covered her head and bent her knees in a fetal position, Ragoo gripped his baton like a battering ram, swung his arms back, and jabbed the end of the nightstick into her ribs, video of the incident newly obtained by THE CITY shows.

It was one of scores of incidents involving local police and demonstrators at the height of protests prompted by George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police that prompted more than a thousand complaints of excessive force to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates police misconduct. 

The outcome of the case involving Ragoo is reflective of a pattern in which the most serious uses of force by police officers during the protests — even those that sparked outrage and calls for “defunding” the police — were often met with little to no discipline from the NYPD.

In the aftermath, Ragoo was issued “instructions” by the department on proper procedures, a low level of discipline that’s mirrored across dozens of similar cases.

Of the 1,052 excessive force complaints fielded by CCRB investigators during the 2020 protests, the board concluded that 66 involved force that was improper, excessive or unnecessary enough for the NYPD to administer the most severe level of discipline, which at minimum calls for the loss of 11 vacation days.

 So, is this typical?

Yes it is:

………

The stiffest penalty in the 66 cases was issued to Officer Brian Mahon, who the CCRB found had in one incident improperly shoved two protesters and hit two others with a baton, and then gave misleading statements about it to board investigators. In a plea deal reached under former NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell, Mahon agreed to a year’s probation and the loss of 40 vacation days.

Last year, as soon as his probationary period ended, Mahon was promoted to detective. He couldn’t be reached for comment and no one responded to a voicemail left with his union. 

………

But the aggressiveness of the police response spurred three investigations by government entities, dozens of civil lawsuits that cost the city tens of millions of dollars in settlements, and a finding by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch that, during the NYPD’s mass arrest of protesters in The Bronx, the department had violated international human rights laws.

There needs to be a way to fix the problem that police often more like a criminal gang covering for each other than they do peace officers. 

AOC 2028

If just because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez scares the bejesus out of Republicans:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) got a Republican lawmaker to strike his comments after she accused him of trying to intimidate Democratic governors during an immigration-focused hearing. 

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D), Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) went before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Thursday, where Republican lawmakers railed against their states’ “sanctuary” laws.

………

“You are engaged in operations against federal government attempts to enforce federal law that I think now constitutes a threat to our national security, and you’re in violation of federal law,” Palmer said.

“That’s 100% false,” Hochul pushed back.

“And charges should be — for obstruction — should be brought against each one of you for doing this. I’ll leave that up to the Department of Justice,” Palmer said.

………

“Mr. Chair, point of order, point of order. That was a form of intimidation of the witness,” Ocasio-Cortez told Comer.

“Do you have a point of inquiry?” Comer asked.

“Yes, I have a point of inquiry,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

“State your point,” Comer said.

“Raising the prospect of charges against witnesses is a form of intimidation, is it not?” the congresswoman asked.

Palmer can be heard off-mic saying he “strikes” his statement, leading Ocasio-Cortez to withdraw her question.

Making nice to Republicans is a losing proposition.  We need a fighter to run in 2028 for President.

When Your Own Lawyers Imply That You Are Senile

That's what the DoJ implied to a judge Kilmar Abrego Garcia deportation case.

They were arguing that Trump says all sorts of deranged sh%$:

A lawyer for Donald Trump’s Justice Department recently argued in court that sometimes the president just says stuff — and it doesn’t matter if what Trump says is or isn’t accurate, because his comments aren’t necessarily reflective of the government’s position on a given matter.

During an April 30 court hearing related to the government’s unlawful imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, Judge Paula Xinis asked attorneys representing the Trump administration why they were saying they had no ability to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. when Trump had publicly acknowledged he “could” compel the man’s return if he wanted to. Elsewhere, she noted, Trump said he was leaving the matter up to his lawyers.

Jonathan Guynn, a Justice Department attorney, responded: “President Trump is a master messenger in many ways, but he also doesn’t speak with precision about things sometimes. And I think that this might be one of those situations where perhaps his comments were based on what he was recalling may have been the state of play previously.” 

This is about as explicit a statement on Trump's mental facilities, or lack thereof that one could expect from in  such a court proceeding.

So, the Balloon Has Gone Up

So, Israel has launched massive airstrikes against Iran, and Iran is retaliating.

The obvious question is, "Why Now?" but in this case the answer is easy

Heredi parties were threatening to leave the coalition, and bring down the government over the extension of conscription to Orthodox Jews in Israel

This left Benjamin Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) with no choice but to launch the attack, because if the government falls, Bibi's corrupt ass will end up in jail.

This was not about an imminent threat, this was about Netanyahu clinging to power.

The Trump administration probably gave its assent, but it the primary driver is the Israeli PM's current amorality and corruption.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Initial Claims and Separations
Continuing Claims and 4-Week Moving Average 

Not good news.

Initial claims were unchanged, and remain at an 8-month high, while continuing claims hit a 3½ year high and the 4-week moving average hit a 2 year high.

Recurring applications for US unemployment benefits rose to the highest since the end of 2021, adding to evidence that it is taking unemployed Americans longer to find a new job.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, advanced to 1.96 million in the week ended May 31, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. That was above all estimates in a Bloomberg survey.

Meanwhile, a measure of new filings that smooths volatility climbed to the highest since August 2023. 

The spike in recurring claims coincides with a slowdown in hiring, suggesting that out-of-work people are struggling to find employment. However, the report covers periods that included Memorial Day and the start of summer school breaks in some states, which tends to make the data more volatile. 

At least the inflation numbers are good for now:

………

In a separate report Thursday, US producer price inflation remained muted in May across the board, another sign that higher levies have yet to result in higher prices for consumers and businesses. Treasury yields and the dollar fell after the economic data. 

Not good. 

Gee, What Could it Be?

Over at The New York Post, they are wondering why so many young people are having strokes lately.

They are wondering if it's excess caffeine consumption, like that hasn't been the case for about 400 years, or maybe hormonal birth control (70 years), or Adderall abuse (30 or 60 years depending on how you count).  

Why has there been a spike in strokes among younger people, "With a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealing that between 2020 and 2022, there was a 14.6% increase of strokes among people aged 18 to 44."

2020? What happened in 2020? Do you remember anything happening 2020? I know that I remember something.

Well, if you click through to the article, something that I recommend that you do NOT do, you will note that there is a word missing.  It does not appear once in the article.  That word?

Covid!

Yeah, what could Possibly have happened in 2020 that led to a spike in strokes?

Maybe a disease that is known to attack the epithelial cells lining the circulatory system causing clots might have something to do with this.

Morons. 

F%$# No

It appears that the usual suspects in the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are determined to make a play for Elon Musk's approval and money.

The man is a narcissist racist, as sexist, a junkie, a pathological liar, a ferociously virulent anti-labor union employer, and f%$#ing insane, at least in the eyes of this non-psychologist.

Attempting to rehabilitate him is nuts.  Attempting to do so without any indication that he has made even a perfunctory effort to change borders on criminal incompetence.

Add to that the fact that this guy is more widely loathed than Ted "I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz" Cruz, and this becomes what Tallyrand did not say, "Worse than a crime, it is a mistake."

Elon Musk has been the Democratic Party’s boogeyman since shortly after President Donald Trump deputized him as a top adviser. Their bitter breakup could complicate that.

After Musk called the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” a “disgusting abomination” and threatened to “fire all politicians” who backed it, the president mused on Thursday that he didn’t know if the two would still have a “great relationship.” Musk responded on his powerful platform X, “Without me, Trump would have lost,” adding “Such ingratitude.”

The split is giving some Democrats pause in their portrayal of Musk as a chainsaw-wielding, bureaucracy-breaking villain — with some saying they should give him another chance. After all, the billionaire tech mogul said he voted for former President Joe Biden in 2020 and gave a tour of SpaceX to then-President Barack Obama.

The Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ has shown us who he is, and it is that he is a miserable and pathetic excuse as a human being.  (This was obvious for years before his turn on Ecch [Twitter], but his cunning as a sales weasel seemed to confuse a lot of people)

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who represents Silicon Valley and has known Musk for over a decade, said Democrats should “be in a dialogue” with Musk, given their shared opposition to the GOP’s megabill.

………

Other Democrats are warming back up to Musk as he leaves the White House and starts to break with his former boss in ways that could benefit the opposition.

“I’m a believer in redemption, and he is telling the truth about the legislation,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.). But, he added, Musk has “done an enormous amount of damage” and “there are Democrats who see his decimation of the federal workforce and the federal government as an unforgivable sin.”

Liam Kerr, co-founder of the group behind the centrist Democrats’ WelcomeFest meeting this week in Washington, said “of course” Democrats should open the door if Musk wants back into the party.

Yeah, WelcomeFest, where "Democrats" were on stage complaining that labor unions are just so inconvenient.

“You don’t want anyone wildly distorting your politics, which he has a unique capability to do. But it’s a zero-sum game,” Kerr said. “Anything that he does that moves more toward Democrats hurts Republicans.”

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), the chair of the New Democrat Coalition who earlier this year supported the party’s targeting of Musk as the Department of Government Efficiency slashed through federal agencies, said that with his departure from Washington, Democrats shouldn’t make Musk their focus. “We should be talking about what we’re doing for the American people,” he said.

What you should be doing for the American people is fighting against people like Elon Musk.

It's only amoral careerists, like, for example, the chair of the New Democrat Coalition, who only care about their careers and where they are getting their next campaign donation from, who think that this is a good idea.

To quote Robert Graves on Germanic tribes, Elon Musk, "Must be struck into the dust, struck down again as they rise. Struck again while they lie groaning, while their wounds still pain them; they will respect the hand that dealt them."

He is not just a cancer on society, he is the avatar of what is wrong with our society. 

Good On Missoula Montana

In response to a law recently passed in Montana which forbids, "The display of flags or banners on government property to the United States flag, an official flag of the state, other municipality or special district, tribal nations, foreign nations, as well as certain historical, military, law enforcement and school district or mascot flags," the Missoula city council adopted the pride flag as their city flag.

This not only allows Missoula to fly the pride flag, but it allows the pride flag to be flown on government property throughout the state.

The law that was passed was intended to ban the pride flag.

Good work:

The Missoula City Council on Monday recognized the LGBTQ Pride flag as an official flag of the city in response to a new state law restricting the display of the flag on government property, including in public schools. 

House Bill 819 limits the display of flags or banners on government property to the United States flag, an official flag of the state, other municipality or special district, tribal nations, foreign nations, as well as certain historical, military, law enforcement and school district or mascot flags. The measure does not apply to personal clothing, jewelry or accessories worn by government employees outside of dress codes. Gov. Greg Gianforte signed the bill into law on May 13. 

Missoula City Attorney Ryan Sudbury said that, as he interprets the bill, the city has one official flag. It did not have a previously adopted flag, and if the council wanted to adopt a new flag, it would have to repeal the old one, Sudbury said. 

………

Missoula’s adoption of the Pride flag allows it to be displayed in government buildings statewide, as the bill does not limit where a municipality’s flag can be displayed, Sudbury told Montana Free Press.

The cities of Salt Lake City and Boise adopted similar measures last month in response to state laws banning traditional rainbow Pride flags at schools and government buildings, the Associated Press reported.

Council Member Jennifer Savage said during the council meeting Monday that she proposed the measure after receiving emails from parents, students and other community members concerned about Pride flags being removed from classrooms last month.  

Good.

Not one step back.  Make the fascists choke on it. 

Not Enough Bullets

Investor Roberto Faller is suing UnitedHealth because they have stopped cheating their customers in the aftermath of the assassination of their president.

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

A health care industry giant’s Wall Street overlords just admitted that the company’s sky-high health insurance coverage denial rates reaped them enormous profits — and to keep the money flowing, they’re suing to stop the insurer from approving more patient care.

UnitedHealth Group has been facing growing discontent from its investors, a battle that — as the corporation faces mounting public scrutiny over its care denials — could shape the future of health insurance for 29 million people.

A May 7 lawsuit brought by a small-time investor in UnitedHealth Group is one of the latest chapters in the battle, arguing that the company’s tanking stock performance this spring had cost its investors unfairly. Some corporate media reports framed the suit as investors taking on the company for its “aggressive, anti-consumer tactics.”

But in reality, court documents reveal, some of UnitedHealth Group’s investors are concerned that the company’s changing “corporate practices” have been too consumer-friendly. And they suggest that these practices are a driving force behind UnitedHealth Group’s disastrous first quarter of 2025, which saw cratering stock value and the departure of longtime CEO Andrew Witty.

………

The investor lawsuit has now been consolidated into a larger ongoing shareholder suit against UnitedHealth Group. In its annual shareholder meeting this week, the company tried its best to quell the growing discontent among investors, who are increasingly shaken by the company’s tanking stock value and poor financial outlook.

As UnitedHealth Group’s investors revolt, the admissions in the lawsuit serve as a reminder that Wall Street greed is one of the reasons for its tendency to deny patients care.

I hope that Mr. Faller lives a long and painful life, and that his health insurance f%$#s him like a drunk sorority girl.

I would not piss on this man if he were on fire.

Real Profile in Courage Here

This is true as turnips is. It was as true as taxes is. And nothing's truer than them.ABC has fired Terry Moran because he called Trump aide a hater.

I understand that his (since deleted) post is not the most decorous thing, but it's the truth, which (of course) counts for nothing at ABC, because they just paid a bribe to Trump. (They pretended that it was a, "Settlement.")

The management at ABC can best be described as scumbag weasels. 

ABC News is cutting ties with the correspondent Terry Moran after he wrote derisive comments on social media that attacked President Trump and Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, referring to both men with the term “world-class hater.”

The network said on Tuesday that it had decided not to renew Mr. Moran’s contract. He had worked at ABC News for 28 years.

“We are at the end of our agreement with Terry Moran, and based on his recent post — which was a clear violation of ABC News policies — we have made the decision to not renew,” a network spokesman said in a statement. “At ABC News, we hold all of our reporters to the highest standards of objectivity, fairness and professionalism, and we remain committed to delivering straightforward, trusted journalism.”

Mr. Moran’s contract is set to expire on Friday, according to a person with knowledge of his deal who requested anonymity to disclose sensitive details. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

I'm not sure what made Moran get to the, "F%$# it all," stage of truth-telling, but I approve, and I wish that more journalists would do the same.

Yeah, About Los Angeles

"You sent your troops here without fuel, food, water or a place to sleep. Here they are-being forced to sleep on the floor, piled on top of one another. If anyone is treating our troops disrespectfully, it is you @realDonaldTrump." @GavinNewsom https://t.co/ggBuk2WaLK pic.twitter.com/IWcpFF6zkH

— Mary Rose G. B. (Striving Ethnologist) (@mare_se) June 10, 2025

F%$# them for making Newsom a heroic figure

I think that the current protests and violence in Los Angeles are the result of a deliberate provocation by ICE at the direction of the Trump administration.

Donald Trump’s administration promised to crush opposition in Los Angeles.

Late on Saturday night, the US president deployed national guard soldiers in LA following protests against immigration raids in the city – a stunning escalation in the administration’s promise of “mass deportations”. His administration has promised to quell protests, and warned local leaders to brace for at least 30 days of ramped-up immigration enforcement.

But the overwhelming show of force may have awoken something else. The city is responding with a roaring backlash.

………

Fueling the fury was the brutality with which federal agents had approached their targets, including a clothing manufacturer in Los Angeles’s garment district, and Home Depot in the Westlake district and a warehouse in South Los Angeles. The arrests were carried out without judicial warrants, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) – advocates say that more than 200 people were taken.

Lawyers reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been holding detained families in the basements of federal immigration facilities, separating children and mothers from their fathers. Agents have refused access to attorneys and family members, according to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef).

As masked immigration officers ripped workers away from their jobs, other agents in riot gear attacked protesters with teargas and flash-bang grenades, escalating a handful of isolated demonstrations into a clash that roiled the city and spurred several hundred to join the protest.

Among the protesters arrested was the union leader David Huerta, president of SEIU-USWW and SEIU California. The images of a middle-aged man in a plaid button-down shirt who was shoved down to the ground have angered millions of union workers across the US, wrote the LA Times columnist Anita Chabria. “The battleground has been redrawn in ways we don’t fully yet appreciate,” she wrote.

We have, of course, seen the random condemnations from the Republican never-Trumpers, like David Frum at The Atlantic, but that and $15.54 will get you a Venti as Starbucks.  It really does not matter.

What DOES matter is that it's pretty clear that Trump and his Evil Minions™ are attempting to create a situation where he can declare something akin to martial law.

I think that the goal is to allow Trump to take direct control of the 2026 elections and engage in mass arrests of his opponents.

Kristi Noem is asking the Secretary of Defense to use the military to arrest, "Lawbreakers," which appears to me to be a attempt to create conditions to justify the military intervention in civilian governance.

One day before the Trump administration deployed U.S. Marines to confront protesters in Los Angeles, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to direct the military to detain or arrest “lawbreakers,” a move one expert called “a grave escalation.”

A letter sent Sunday from Noem to Hegseth, obtained by the Chronicle, requested that the Pentagon give “Direction to DoD forces to either detain, just as they would at any federal facility guarded by military, lawbreakers under Title 18 until they can be arrested and processed by federal law enforcement, or arrest them.”

The military is generally barred under federal laws from taking part in domestic law enforcement. Granting Noem’s request would likely require the administration to sidestep those laws by invoking the Insurrection Act, two legal experts said in interviews.

Yeah, I'm worried about a 7 Days in May scenario.

Quote of the Day

A Libertarian These Days Is Usually Just a Republican Who Thinks the Government Shouldn’t Force Their Girlfriend to Use a Car Seat

I'm really not sure where it came from.

I have seen dozens of permutations of this in various comment sections, particularly on Reddit, but I do not know who came up with this.

They deserve a Nobel Prize of some sort for this. 

Gee, You Mean That the Name “Bondi” Doesn’t Get Lawyer Votes?

I never thought that I would be writing about elections at the Washington, DC Bar, but the fact that Attorney General Pam Bondi's was trounced in his run for Bar president in an election that about 5x the normal turnout.

Same happened for Alicia Long, who ran for Bar treasurer, who is best known as being the evil minion of former nominee for DC US Attorney Ed Martin

Martin, if you are unfamiliar with him, threatened members of Congress, law firms, Wikipedia,  The New England Journal of Medicine, and retaliated against lawyers in the DC US Attorney's office, and admitted that his pardon recommendations were explicitly partisan.

Lawyers casting a secret ballot did not approve of these mooks:

Brad Bondi, the brother of Attorney General Pam Bondi, overwhelmingly lost his bid to lead the D.C. Bar Association in a race with record turnout, the organization announced Monday.

Bondi, who is global co-chair of the law firm Paul Hastings’s investigations and white-collar defense practice, earned just 3,490 votes, or 9.1 percent, in the D.C. Bar’s presidential election. His opponent, employment lawyer Diane Seltzer, won 34,982 votes, or 90.9 percent.

More than 10:1.  Sweet.

………

The D.C. Bar is the largest unified bar in the country, with roughly 121,000 members. As concern about his effort to lead the group mounted, Bondi vowed to ensure the group would remain nonpartisan. 

In the past, Bondi represented billionaire Elon Musk and Tesla, the Trump Media & Technology Group and a group linked to YouTuber MrBeast in its bid to purchase TikTok. 

Bondi is now publicly rending his clothes, claiming that "Rabid partisans lurched this election into the political gutter."

That doesn't sound like someone who was committed to nonpartisan fairness.

And then there was  

………

Alicia Long, a top deputy to interim U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, also lost her bid for treasurer, earning 8,854 votes, or 25.1 percent of ballots cast. Cybersecurity lawyer Amanda Molina won that race with 26,380 votes, or 74.9 percent.

D.C. Bar CEO Robert Spagnoletti said on a press call Monday afternoon that the election saw record engagement from D.C. Bar members.

Over the past 50 years, the average number of ballots cast in an election was 7,444. This year, some 38,646 votes were cast in the race, or 43.26 percent of all eligible voters, he said.

Guess what, they hate you.  Both of you.

I approve. 

Well, This Explains Doge

As a result of Musk's earlier support of Donald Trump, the SEC has routinely invalidated shareholder initiatives for Musk's companies.

That ain't a bad return on investment: 

As Tesla sales slump amid CEO Elon Musk’s divisive work at the White House, the Trump administration just allowed the electric vehicle company to block nearly all shareholder proposals issued by its investors ahead of its annual meeting. The blocked proposals would have demanded that Tesla not interfere with union efforts and meet global climate goals, among other initiatives.

Tesla’s regulatory win comes amid companies increasingly blocking shareholder resolutions across the board, thanks to new corporate-friendly legal guidance from President Donald Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allowing businesses to crack down on stakeholder participation.

In early May, the SEC allowed Tesla to omit six out of eight shareholder proposals from its upcoming proxy statement — a corporate document issued to shareholders that allows them to vote on proposals asking the company to operate in certain ways.

The blocked proposals asked Tesla to develop sustainable tires, once again avoid interfering with potential union organizing efforts, align business operations with the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, issue a moratorium on deep-sea mineral mining, disclose its Veteran hiring efforts, and use artificial intelligence “in ways that accelerates the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”

………

Musk, Trump’s largest campaign donor, has scored a number of regulatory wins for his business empire since Trump took office. Trump appointed Musk to a crucial oversight role leading the new Department of Government Efficiency, which he’s used to slash nearly 2,300 government contracts while obtaining lucrative contracts for his own companies. At the same time, more than 40 federal agencies have curtailed regulatory actions against Musk’s companies, including Tesla, satellite company Starlink, rocket manufacturer SpaceX, and social media company X. ………

Shareholder proposals are a cornerstone of the investment world. These proposals allow investors, both large and small, to have a say in how publicly owned companies operate, and any shareholder who owns a minimum number of shares can issue proposals to be voted on during annual shareholder meetings.

However, companies can ask the SEC, which regulates the stock market and other investments, to allow them to block proposals that are too vague, overly broad, or would interrupt standard business operations — a tool corporations have increasingly deployed to silence investors.

According to a recent study by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, the number of blocked shareholder proposals granted by the SEC has “increased dramatically” in the first quarter of 2025.

Gee, corruption much? 

Save the URL

There is n organization called Psst which is looking to be a one stop shop for whistle-blowers.

………

Then, while working at a media outlet that connects whistleblowers with journalists, she noticed parallels in the coercive tactics used by groups trying to suppress information. “There is a sort of playbook that powerful entities seem to use over and over again,” she says. “You expose something about the powerful, they try to discredit you, people in your community may ostracize you.”

In September 2024, [Amber] Scorah cofounded Psst, a nonprofit that helps people in the tech industry or the government share information of public interest with extra protections—with lots of options for specifying how the information gets used and how anonymous a person stays.

Psst’s main offering is a “digital safe”—which users access through an anonymous end-to-end encrypted text box hosted on Psst.org, [← This Is The Link To Save] where they can enter a description of their concerns. (It accepts text entries only and not document uploads, to make it harder for organizations to find the source of leaks.)

What makes Psst unique is something it calls its “information escrow” system—users have the option to keep their submission private until someone else shares similar concerns about the same company or organization.

As the organization was preparing to launch, members of Psst’s team helped a group of Microsoft employees who were unhappy with how the company was marketing its AI products to fossil-fuel companies. Only one employee was willing to speak publicly, but others provided supporting documents anonymously. With help from Psst’s team of lawyers, the workers filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission against the company and aired their concerns in a story published by The Atlantic.

We really need better whistle-blowing support in our society.

Must Watch

This video is a bit long, almost an hour, but it is a remarkable look into the mind of a military drone designer. 

The drone make in question is Russian, and much of his observations come from experience in the Ukraine war, though the interview is largely free of  geopolitical content.

It's just a weapons maker talking about his craft and the realities of its deployment. 

Not Enough Bullets

Cheaper than bullets

The folks at the Vampire Squid, aka Goldman Sachs, is wondering if, "'Curing patients a sustainable business model?"

You see, if you cure a disease, you only get paid once.  Thus you should only work on lifelong treatments.

These people should have been drowned at birth: 

Goldman Sachs analysts attempted to address a touchy subject for biotech companies, especially those involved in the pioneering "gene therapy" treatment: cures could be bad for business in the long run.

"Is curing patients a sustainable business model?" analysts ask in an April 10 report entitled "The Genome Revolution."

"The potential to deliver 'one shot cures' is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies," analyst Salveen Richter wrote in the note to clients Tuesday. "While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow."

Richter cited Gilead Sciences' treatments for hepatitis C, which achieved cure rates of more than 90 percent. The company's U.S. sales for these hepatitis C treatments peaked at $12.5 billion in 2015, but have been falling ever since. Goldman estimates the U.S. sales for these treatments will be less than $4 billion this year, according to a table in the report.

"GILD is a case in point, where the success of its hepatitis C franchise has gradually exhausted the available pool of treatable patients," the analyst wrote. "In the case of infectious diseases such as hepatitis C, curing existing patients also decreases the number of carriers able to transmit the virus to new patients, thus the incident pool also declines … Where an incident pool remains stable (eg, in cancer) the potential for a cure poses less risk to the sustainability of a franchise."

 Why we need socialized medicine and pharma price controls..

How to Get Artificial Intelligence to Work

You don't.  You just have 700 Indian engineers pretending to be AI.

Yeah, Microflaccid bankrolled them, much to their chagrin: 

Builder.ai, once touted as a revolutionary AI startup backed by Microsoft, has collapsed into insolvency after revelations that its flagship no-code development platform was powered not by artificial intelligence—but by 700 human engineers in India.

The company marketed its platform as being driven by an AI assistant named “Natasha,” which could supposedly assemble software applications like Lego bricks. But recent reports and commentary have revealed that behind the scenes, customer requests were manually fulfilled by developers, not machines. 

Commenting on the unraveling, Ebern Finance founder Bernhard Engelbrecht described it in a widely circulated post on X: “Customer requests were sent to the Indian office, where 700 Indians wrote code instead of AI,” adding that the end products were often buggy, dysfunctional, and difficult to maintain. “Everything was like real artificial intelligence — except that none of it was.” 

I am profoundly amused. 

Headline of the Day

Jared Moskowitz Asks Who Gets ‘Big Balls’ in Trump-Musk Divorce

—The Hill

I'm not going to explain this one beyond noting that Jared Moskowitz is a Democratic representative from the state of Florida.

If you know what this headline means, you should be amused.

If you do not know what this headline means, you are better off not knowing.

This is like the, "Goatse," of politics.

If you do not know what, "Goatse," is, you are better off not knowing.  (Seriously, do not Google it)

18 Years?

I Feel Old.

On this day 18 years ago, Keyboard Cat was uploaded to YouTube. pic.twitter.com/NkN3jZr5Fc

— Know Your Meme (@knowyourmeme) June 7, 2025

Why Are They Not in the Dock?

The criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™ and Yandex are hacking into people's phones to associate people's browsing habits with their identities.

Why prosecutors are not up these companies' asses?

Tracking code that Meta and Russia-based Yandex embed into millions of websites is de-anonymizing visitors by abusing legitimate Internet protocols, causing Chrome and other browsers to surreptitiously send unique identifiers to native apps installed on a device, researchers have discovered. Google says it's investigating the abuse, which allows Meta and Yandex to convert ephemeral web identifiers into persistent mobile app user identities.

The covert tracking—implemented in the Meta Pixel and Yandex Metrica trackers—allows Meta and Yandex to bypass core security and privacy protections provided by both the Android operating system and browsers that run on it. Android sandboxing, for instance, isolates processes to prevent them from interacting with the OS and any other app installed on the device, cutting off access to sensitive data or privileged system resources. Defenses such as state partitioning and storage partitioning, which are built into all major browsers, store site cookies and other data associated with a website in containers that are unique to every top-level website domain to ensure they're off-limits for every other site. 

A blatant violation

“One of the fundamental security principles that exists in the web, as well as the mobile system, is called sandboxing,” Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez, one of the researchers behind the discovery, said in an interview. “You run everything in a sandbox, and there is no interaction within different elements running on it. What this attack vector allows is to break the sandbox that exists between the mobile context and the web context. The channel that exists allowed the Android system to communicate what happens in the browser with the identity running in the mobile app.”

The bypass—which Yandex began in 2017 and Meta started last September—allows the companies to pass cookies or other identifiers from Firefox and Chromium-based browsers to native Android apps for Facebook, Instagram, and various Yandex apps. The companies can then tie that vast browsing history to the account holder logged into the app.

 We need real privacy legislation and prosecutions of senior executives who violate these laws.

No

Over at Asterisk they ask the question, "Can We Trust Social Science Yet?"

This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.

Given the current state of evidence production in the social sciences, I believe that many — perhaps most — attempts to use social scientific evidence to inform policy will not lead to better outcomes. This is not because of politics or the challenges of scaling small programs. The problem is more immediate. Much of social science research is of poor quality, and sorting the trustworthy work from bad work is difficult, costly, and time-consuming.

Also, social sciences are more vulnerable bias because the experimental design and analysis techniques are far more subjective. 

First Friday of the Month

Not much has changed, though there are indications of trouble ahead, with a slight decrease in job creation, and the unemployment rate unchanged. 

The U.S. labor market showed signs of resilience in May, with employers adding 139,000 jobs amid economic uncertainty that has caused some employers to pause hiring.

The unemployment rate held steady at 4.2 percent, remaining near longtime lows, according to a jobs report released Friday by the Labor Department. 

The May labor market data beat forecasters’ expectations of 125,000 job gains and was relatively similar to April’s revised figures. The report offered a sound snapshot of an economy facing headwinds, as consumer spending has slowed.

It does seem a bit less positive when you get down into the weeds. 

………

But the previous two months showed weaker growth than previously thought, with a combined 95,000 in downward job revisions. 

Quick math means that the monthly job growth after the revisions for the past two months is in the 90,000 range, which is rather anemic.

There is a bit of good news though, unless you are a sociopath or an economist.  (But I repeat myself)

………

Average hourly wages accelerated, rising by 0.4 percent over the month, to $36.24 in May, as earnings continue to beat inflation in a boost to workers’ spending power. 

But more bad news follows: 

………

At the same time, the labor market lost 625,000 people, with the share of adults working or searching for jobs dropping by 0.2 percent, in a sign of weakening labor supply. The decline partially reflects the exit of immigrants from the labor market. More than a million foreign-born workers have exited the workforce since March.

The bulk of job gains in May stemmed from a handful of service-based industries. Health care added some 62,000 jobs in May. Job creation also sped up in leisure and hospitality, with restaurants and bars adding 30,000 new jobs. Social assistance, which includes services for families, added 16,000 jobs.

Job growth was sluggish elsewhere. Some sectors showed signs of weakness that could be a response to higher trade levies. Manufacturing, retail, construction, transportation and warehousing lost or barely added jobs.

The federal government shed 22,000 jobs, a reflection of the Trump administration’s cuts, which have amounted to nearly 60,000 since January. The full scope of the cuts is still to be seen as many exiting employees remain on paid leave or severance, and are not yet counted as unemployment. State payrolls barely budged. 

Unemployment would likely have gone up .1% or .2% but for people leaving the labor force.

This is not going to turn out well. 

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

The Ukrainians have a great word for that. https://t.co/YKcvZPiMy7 pic.twitter.com/yDvn149fMN

— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein) June 6, 2025

The fact that this is not a German word is a refreshing change. 

Apparently, I Am Not Sufficiently Cynical

I knew that part of the remit of the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ and his evil DOGE minions was to break down walls between all government databases in order to create a panopticon, but I did not expect them to outsource the data analysis to literal vampire Peter Thiel.  (I mean literal.  He has been involved with efforts to consume the blood of young people to extend his own life)

Once again, reality has outdone the worst than I can imagine:

In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.

Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.

The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)

Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions.

The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.

Un-dirtyword-believable. 

Skeet of the Day

The context here is that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ and Donald Trump are now in a pissing contest, with Donald Trump suggesting that Elon Musk's government contracts should be reviewed with an eye toward termination, and Elon threatening to shut down flights of astronauts to the International Space Station (and quickly walking it back), stating that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files, and re-Ecched (Retweeted) a post calling for Trump's impeachment.

I'm hoping that this beef is real, and not just kayfabe.  

I'd love to see the two of them destroy each other. 

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So we have a new unemployment numbers, and it ain't pretty, though the Memorial Day weekend might have f%$#ed with the data.

Initial claims were up  8,000 to 247,000, while the less volatile 4-week moving average increased to 235,000, with continuing claims falling slightly to 1.9 million.

Applications for US unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week to the highest since October, adding to signs that the job market is cooling.

Initial claims increased by 8,000 to 247,000 in the week ended May 31, a period that included Memorial Day. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 235,000 applications.

Weekly claims tend to be volatile and fluctuate even more around holidays. However, recent data and surveys pointed to a slowdown in economic activity and sustained gains in benefit filings in the coming weeks could be a sign that layoffs are on the rise.

The four-week moving average of new applications, a metric that helps smooth out volatility, rose to 235,000, also the highest since October.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, fell slightly to 1.9 million in the previous week, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. They remain elevated compared with last year, a sign it is taking longer for out-of-work people to find a job.

We also had news on imports, with what appears to be an end to frantic attempts to stock up imports, likely a sort of TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) trade.

……… 

Separate data Thursday showed that the US trade deficit narrowed in April by the most on record on the largest-ever plunge in imports, illustrating an abrupt end to the massive front-loading of goods by some companies ahead of higher tariffs.

We should be getting the monthly jobs report tomorrow.

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night.

A Good Start

The European Union is backing a public search index of web sites.

This is not s search engine.  Instead it is an index that can be used by search engines.

As such, it has an interest in being as extensive and accurate as possible, which in turn would mean that it will become more difficult for search engines, whether or not they use this index, to enshittify their product.

As search engines are intentionally made worse, and software grows ever bigger and more complex, a possibly unexpected ally emerges: the European Union.

If you ever get the impression that search engines are getting worse, or that alternatives are not all they seem, it's not just you. It's what journalist Cory Doctorow calls "enshitiffication." Many alternatives use Microsoft's Bing for search, so when Bing goes down so does DuckDuckGo, for instance.

But there are efforts to foster truly independent search engines that don't piggy-back on the existing giants. One such project is the EU-backed OpenWebSearch initiative. Its web presence reflects that this is a research effort; it doesn't have anything to sell you, so there's no elevator pitch here, although its FAQ page is a bit more helpful.

FOSS Force summarizes it as "Europe's Search for a More Localized and Relevant Search Experience." It's important to note what this isn't, though. It's not a new search engine. Rather, the project is building a web index, the idea being to make it easier for others to build search engines that can use the OpenWebSearch database as their index. The OpenWebSearch database is built using existing FOSS tooling, and it's not a static, monolithic snapshot – tools to keep the petabyte-scale index up to date are part of the effort.

Maintaining an up to date index of the web is difficult and expensive.

By creating one that any search engine can use, they have lowered the barriers to entry, and made competition between search engines easier. 

Read the article.  It also includes a number of techniques to remove Google AI spam from search results. 

Best Healthcare in the World

A man committed suicide after he was unable to get mental health care, and his mother is suing the insurance company because their directory of providers was completely inaccurate.

She are claiming that the company was falsely claiming that there were in-network mental health professionals when there were none.

This is a very common thing for insurance companies to do:

The mother of an Arizona man who died after being unable to find mental health treatment is suing his health insurer, saying it broke the law by publishing false information that misled its customers.

Ravi Coutinho, a 36-year-old entrepreneur, bought insurance from Ambetter, the most popular plan on HealthCare.gov, because it seemed to offer plenty of mental health and addiction treatment options near his home in Phoenix. But after struggling for months in early 2023 to find in-network care covered by his plan, he wasn’t able to find a therapist. In May 2023, after 21 calls with the insurer without getting the treatment he sought, he was found dead in his apartment. His death was ruled an accident, likely due to complications from excessive drinking.

Coutinho was the subject of a September 2024 investigation by ProPublica that showed how he was trapped in what’s commonly known as a “ghost network.” Many of the mental health providers that Ambetter listed as accepting its insurance were not actually able to see him. ProPublica’s investigation also revealed how customer service representatives and care managers repeatedly failed to connect Coutinho to the care he needed after he and his mother asked for help. The story was part of a yearlong series, “America’s Mental Barrier,” that investigated the ways insurers employed practices that interfered with their customers’ ability to access mental health care.

The lawsuit, filed on May 23 in Maricopa County by Coutinho’s mother, Barbara Webber, accused the insurer Centene, along with the subsidiary that oversaw her son’s plan, Health Net of Arizona, of publishing an “inaccurate and misleading” provider directory. The suit also accused the companies of breaking state and federal laws, including ones that require directories to be kept accurate.

In case you are unaware, it works like this:  The insurance company lists hundreds of mental health professionals in their directory, but most (all?) of them are either not taking new patients, or they have left the network.

……… 

The lawsuit also describes how Arizona insurance regulators had previously informed Health Net of Arizona that it had failed to maintain accurate provider directories. Health Net of Arizona promised to correct the errors. Regulators did not fine the insurer and declined to answer ProPublica’s questions about whether the Centene subsidiary addressed their concerns. 

………

One of the 25 largest companies in America, Centene and its subsidiaries have been accused in past lawsuits of purposefully misrepresenting the number of in-network providers by publishing inaccurate directories. Centene lawyers have previously denied such claims in two of the bigger cases, in Illinois and California. Both cases are ongoing. 

The top trade group for the industry, AHIP, has told lawmakers that companies contact in-network providers to ensure the listings are accurate. AHIP also stated that the companies could correct inaccuracies faster if providers did a better job updating their listings. Providers have told ProPublica, however, that insurers don’t always remove their names from insurer lists when they officially request to leave their networks. 

The insurers have no incentive to keep their directories accurate.  If they had to list the practices that had closed to new patients and remove the listings for companies that have told them to pound sand, it would be clear to people shopping for insurance that their coverage sucks, and people would not buy their insurance and pay their premiums.

Their solution, rather unsurprisingly, is to defraud their customers.

We need to start prosecuting this sort of bullsh%$. 

Linkage

• Viking DNA helps reveal when HIV-fighting gene mutation emerged: 9,000 years ago near the Black Sea (Live Science) This raises the obvious question:  What was its advantage?  HIV is only about 100 years old.
• “Roman Engineering Lives On”: 1,700-Year-Old Wooden Water Pipe Unearthed in Belgium Stuns Archaeologists With Pristine Detail (Sustainability Times) Man, those Romans could build stuff to last.
• Scientists May Have Found a Massive Ocean of Water Deep Beneath Mars’ Surface (Sci Tech Daily) Send Elon to Mars to check it out.  Leave him there.
• How Mark Zuckerberg Endangered U.S. Security in Pursuit of Profit (The American Prospect) Of course he did.  His modus operandi has been criminal since day 1. 
• War and International Politics | International Security | MIT Press (John Mersheimer) "My bottom line is that great power wars tend to escalate, sometimes in ways that are at odds with policymakers' preferences. Given the destructiveness of modern war, especially regarding nuclear weapons, it is imperative that political leaders understand escalation dynamics and be able to control them."
• The reckoning that wasn’t - by Anand Giridharadas (The.Ink) The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) has done nothing to fix their problems because them and theirs would necessarily be held accountable for their incompetence.
• Long COVID Brain Fog “Very Well Explained” By Altered Levels Of 2 Key Biomarkers (IFLScience) Hopefully we will see treatments
• The decline of key Atlantic currents is underway, and it's been flooding parts of the US for 20 years (Live Science) This would be the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation).  If it stops we are f%$#ed.
• Decades-long mystery of ginger cats revealed (BBC) Just the genetics behind the color, not why so many ginger cats are dumb as a post.

This is a very bad day at the office: