Sunday, March 26, 2023

And another day of hoping someday I’ll be less busy and be able to get back to paying closer attention to current events comes to a close:

“If anyone ever belonged in prison, TFG belongs in prison. If he is not held accountable our laws and our systems are worthless.” — John Pavlovitz

“Donald Trump could've picked any location and any date for his first 2024 rally. He picked Waco,Texas in the midst of the 30th anniversary of the FBI's siege of Waco for a reason. He's recruiting followers who will commit violence for him.” — Dean Obeidallah

Mass protests erupt after Netanyahu fires defense chief. Tens of thousands of Israelis poured into the streets of cities across the country on Sunday night in a spontaneous outburst of anger after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly fired his defense minister for challenging the Israeli leader’s judicial overhaul plan.

How Cigna Saves Millions by Having Its Doctors Reject Claims Without Reading Them. Internal documents and former company executives reveal how Cigna doctors reject patients’ claims without opening their files. “We literally click and submit,” one former company doctor said. Our health should never fucking be a commodity. Healthcare is a right, not a fucking privilege.

DeSantis’, other officials’ travel records would be secret under Florida bill. Citing an increase in public records requests for the governor’s travel schedule, Florida legislators are advancing a bill that would shield from the public any information about how and where Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials go. The bill would impose the first-ever public records exemption for the transportation records held by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the agency that handles the governor’s security. The exemption would take effect retroactively, prohibiting anyone from scrutinizing how DeSantis has used his state travel in the past and as he prepares for a likely campaign for the Republican nomination for president. — Power hungry DeFascist doesn’t want you to know where he’s going or who he’s talking with.

Don’t say “period”: How Florida Republicans are taking aim at basic sex education. A bill wants to restrict when students can discuss “human sexuality” at school. If passed, the law would require that teachers get approval for materials used in sexual health classes, which can only be taught in grades six through 12 under the law. It would also require that schools teach a specific definition of “sex” and “reproductive roles.”

Scientists Deliver “Final Warning” on Climate: Act Now or It’s Too Late. Monday’s final installment, called the synthesis report, is almost certain to be the last such assessment while the world still has a chance of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, the threshold beyond which our damage to the climate will rapidly become irreversible.

Georgia law will ban most transgender care for kids under 18. It’s part of a nationwide effort by conservatives to restrict transgender athletes, gender-affirming care and drag shows. Governors in Mississippi, Utah and South Dakota have signed similar bills.

Idaho Republicans Call Free Tampons In Schools Too ‘Woke’ — And Block Them. The one-page House Bill 313, introduced on March 13, would have required that public and public charter schools provide students with free tampons, sanitary napkins and other menstrual products. Dissenting Republicans decried the bill as “woke” and overly generous…The cost of the products was calculated at about $3.50 per student for 85,825 female students. — Apparently, the number of decent and caring Republicans in the US is zero.

An Idaho College Censored Their Reproductive Health Care Art, But These Artists Won’t be Silenced. That’s what happened in Idaho when the Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts and History removed six pieces of art depicting abortion and reproductive health care from an exhibition titled “Unconditional Care: Listening to People’s Health Needs.” The college based its decision on the state’s No Public Funds for Abortion Act (NPFAA), which prohibits the use of public funds for abortion, including in relation to speech that would “promote abortion” or “counsel in favor of abortion.”

Idaho governor signs legislation allowing execution by firing squad. Four other states — Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and South Carolina — have legalized firing squads, spurred on by the drug shortage. South Carolina’s law allowing them has been paused amid a court battle over its constitutionality.

Black children much more likely to be strip-searched in England and Wales than white peers. An official report accuses police of abusing their power to strip-search children, with black children much more likely than white children to be selected by officers for the ordeal…The youngest child strip-searched was eight, and about a quarter were 10-15, the report will say…The children commissioner’s study found police not following the rules in more than half of strip-searches, amounting to widespread non-compliance. In more than half of cases there was no appropriate adult present.. A small number of strip-searches of children took place in public view, the report says, and some were conducted with an officer present of a different gender to the child being stripped.

Bills call for Texas teachers to be trained to administer lifesaving overdose drugs to students. Texas is attempting to address the fentanyl crisis gripping schools by having staff learn how to administer lifesaving medication. Several bills call for educators and school staff at public, charter and private schools, as well as those at colleges and universities, to know how to reverse deadly opioid overdoses with Narcan and other overdose medications known as “opioid antagonists.”

Daunting recovery underway in tornado-devastated Mississippi. Help began pouring into one of the poorest regions of the U.S. after a deadly tornado tore a path of destruction for more than an hour across a long swath of Mississippi, even as furious new storms Sunday struck across the Deep South.

You were right — traffic noise is indeed pushing up your blood pressure. Most of us are familiar with road rage — aggressive driving that’s caused by stress or anger behind the wheel. But the honking of horns and revving of engines doesn’t just affect those in the vehicle — it can also raise the blood pressure of people living near the road.

Bing vs. Bard: The ultimate AI chatbot showdown. Welcome to the AI Thunderdome. Google's AI chatbot Bard is now available, which means it's time for Bard and Bing to dance.

Twitter says parts of its source code has leaked online. Some parts of Twitter’s source code — the fundamental computer code on which the social network runs — were leaked online, the social media company said in a legal filing on Sunday.

Utah became the first US state to pass a law seeking parental consent for social media for children and teenagers. Utah Governor Spencer Cox on Thursday signed two laws intended to restrict social media use by minors, becoming the first U.S. state to require parental permission for anyone under 18 to use such platforms as Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. The two bills, passed earlier this month by Utah's Republican-controlled legislature, are also meant to make it easier to sue social media companies for damages.

Utah’s social media for kids law could be coming to a state near you. Utah’s strict new social media laws have some scary implications for the whole country. Combined, the new laws call for social media platforms to verify all users’ ages. Those under 18 will have special rules for their online activity, including curfews; more privacy from advertisers but less from their parents or guardians; and the ability to sue platforms over certain harms, including addiction…But opponents of such laws say they will have unintended consequences for the free speech and privacy of people of all ages…So even if you don’t live in Utah, you should prepare yourself for the possibility that the state you do live in — or even the federal government — will pass something similar. That seems especially likely if Utah’s law survives the inevitable court challenges. There is also a chance that some of these platforms apply Utah’s rules to the entire country, as the borderless nature of the internet makes it difficult to set rules for just one state.

To help new students adapt, some colleges are eliminating grades. Called "un-grading," the idea is meant to ease the transition to higher education — especially for freshmen who are the first in their families to go to college or who weren't well prepared for college-level work in high school and need more time to master it. But advocates say the most important reason to adopt un-grading is that students have become so preoccupied with grades, they aren't actually learning.

US teens say they have new proof for 2,000-year-old mathematical theorem. Johnson and Jackson’s abstract adds that the book with the largest known collection of proofs for the theorem – Elisha Loomis’s The Pythagorean Proposition – “flatly states that ‘there are no trigonometric proofs because all the fundamental formulae of trigonometry are themselves based upon the truth of the Pythagorean theorem’.” But, the abstract counters, “that isn’t quite true”. The pair asserts: “We present a new proof of Pythagoras’s Theorem which is based on a fundamental result in trigonometry – the Law of Sines – and we show that the proof is independent of the Pythagorean trig identity sin2x+cos2x=1.” In short, they could prove the theorem using trigonometry and without resorting to circular reasoning.

Asteroid discovery suggests ingredients for life on Earth came from space. Scientists said on Tuesday they detected uracil and niacin in rocks obtained by the Japanese Space Agency's Hayabusa2 spacecraft from two sites on Ryugu in 2019. Uracil is one of the chemical building blocks for RNA, a molecule carrying directions for building and operating living organisms. Niacin, also called Vitamin B3 or nicotinic acid, is vital for their metabolism.

Planets on parade: 5 will be lined up in night sky this week. Keep an eye to the sky this week for a chance to see a planetary hangout. Five planets — Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus and Mars — will line up near the moon.

Chinese firm invents lockdown-inspired kissing machine for remote lovers. A Chinese start-up inspired by lockdown isolation has invented a long-distance kissing machine that transmits users' kiss data collected through motion sensors hidden in silicon lips, which simultaneously move when replaying kisses received.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.