And another day of debt ceiling bills, tapes of Trump discussing docs, the earth being ‘really quite sick now,’ plastics recycling being worse than we thought, the CEO and average worker pay gap, and businesses requiring teens to be chaperoned comes to a close:
"I don't want to pretend that I'm interested in what you're interested in, because I'm not." — Ed Bain
House OKs debt ceiling bill to avoid default, sends Biden-McCarthy deal to Senate. Veering away from a default crisis, the House approved a debt ceiling and budget cuts package late Wednesday, as President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy assembled a bipartisan coalition of centrist Democrats and Republicans against fierce conservative blowback and progressive dissent.
Reports: Prosecutors have tape of Trump discussing holding onto classified doc after leaving office. Justice Department prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of former President Donald Trump from after he left office in which he talks about holding onto a classified Pentagon document related to a potential attack on Iran, according to media reports.
Florida elections officials quietly made it easier for Ron DeSantis to fund his 2024 bid. Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has quietly changed state guidelines, essentially giving its blessing for a state-level political committee he previously ran to move millions of dollars to a super PAC helping his presidential campaign. For years, elections officials said such a transfer to federal super PACs would not be allowed. But in March — just months before DeSantis formally launched his bid for president — officials at the Florida State Department, the DeSantis administration entity that regulates state elections, changed its handbook to assert that such moves are allowed. The timing is notable because a state-level political committee DeSantis led for the past five years, known as Friends of Ron DeSantis, is widely expected to transfer $80 million to a federal super PAC called Never Back Down that is supporting his just-launched bid for president.
Jan. 6 rioters are raking in thousands in donations. Now the US is coming after their haul. Dozens of defendants have set up online fundraising appeals for help with legal fees, and prosecutors acknowledge there's nothing wrong with asking for help for attorney expenses. But the Justice Department has, in some cases, questioned where the money is really going because many of those charged have had government-funded legal representation.
Earth is ‘really quite sick now’ and in danger zone in nearly all ecological ways, study says. Earth has pushed past seven out of eight scientifically established safety limits and into “the danger zone,” not just for an overheating planet that’s losing its natural areas, but for the well-being of people living on it, according to a new study. The study looks not just at guardrails for the planetary ecosystem but for the first time it includes measures of “justice,” which is mostly about preventing harm for countries, ethnicities and genders.
Plastics Recycling Is Far Worse Than We Thought. The plastics industry has long hyped recycling, even though it is well aware that it’s been a failure. Worldwide, only 9 percent of plastic waste actually gets recycled. In the United States, the rate is now 5 percent. Most used plastic is landfilled, incinerated, or winds up drifting around the environment. Now, an alarming new study has found that even when plastic makes it to a recycling center, it can still end up splintering into smaller bits that contaminate the air and water…In other words, recyclers trying to solve the plastics crisis may in fact be accidentally exacerbating the microplastics crisis, which is coating every corner of the environment with synthetic particles. — Earth will soon get rid of us.
Asian Americans do not have access to abortion information, survey finds. Cultural stigmas against conversations about sexual and reproductive health and a lack of in-language information on abortion has stifled knowledge of abortion care among Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians, researchers found. In a survey of AANHPIs released on Tuesday, 47% of respondents said they did not know where to access medication abortion – commonly referred to as abortion “by the pill” – if they needed it...About a third of respondents had never heard of medication abortion, which accounts for the majority of abortions in the United States. That is higher than the national average: in an April survey, 21% of Americans said they had never heard of medication abortion, according to Pew.
Nevada Republican governor approves abortion protections in cross-party move. Nevada’s Joe Lombardo on Tuesday became one of the first Republican governors to enshrine protections for out-of-state abortion patients and in-state providers, adding the western swing state to the list of those passing new laws to solidify their status as safe havens for abortion patients.
CEOs got smaller raises. It would still take a typical worker two lifetimes to make their annual pay. The typical compensation package for chief executives who run S&P 500 companies rose just 0.9% last year, to a median of $14.8 million, according to data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar. That means half the CEOs in the survey made more and half made less. It was the smallest increase since 2015...The median pay for workers at companies included in the AP survey was $77,178, up 1.3% from $76,160 the previous year. That means it would take that worker 186 years to make what a CEO making the median pay earned just last year. At the same group of companies in 2021, it would have taken 190 years. -- Yeah, that’s where we are. Fucking bullshit.
Top AI executives warn of 'risk of extinction'. A collection of AI researchers, executives, experts, and other personalities put their names to a single-sentence statement published on Tuesday by the Center for AI Safety (CAIS) umbrella group. "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war," the statement said, in its entirety.
Sick workers tied to 40% of restaurant food poisoning outbreaks, CDC says. Although 85% of restaurants said they had policies restricting staff from working while sick, only about 16% of the policies were detailed enough to require workers to notify managers and to stay home if they had any of the five key symptoms — including vomiting, diarrhea, and sore throat with fever.
In Canada, each cigarette will get a warning label: ‘poison in every puff’. Canada will soon become the first country in the world where warning labels must appear on individual cigarettes...The warnings — in English and French — include “poison in every puff,” “tobacco smoke harms children” and “cigarettes cause impotence.” Health Canada said the strategy aims to reduce tobacco use below 5% by 2035. New regulations also strengthen health-related graphic images displayed on packages of tobacco. Bennett’s statement said tobacco use kills 48,000 Canadians every year.
Stop requiring college degrees for jobs that don’t need them. The moves are the result of a concerted effort, backed by staggering research and a multi-million-dollar advertising campaign, to educate employers on broken hiring practices that have needlessly locked two-thirds of the workforce out of higher-paying American jobs. For decades, more and more job postings have reflexively required college degrees. Now it’s finally being recognized this was a mistake…By analyzing over 51 million job postings dating back to 2014, the researchers found that between 2017 and 2019 roughly 46 percent of “middle-skill” and 37 percent of “high-skill” occupations no longer asked for a bachelor’s degree, and instead had job postings listing technical and social skills instead. The report concluded that based on the trends they were observing, an additional 1.4 million jobs could open to workers without college degrees in the next five years. “Jobs do not require four-year college degrees,” the report’s authors wrote. “Employers do.”
More businesses require teens to be chaperoned by adults, curbing their independence. Many praise chaperone policies as a way to reduce disruptions to business and create a safer shopping environment. But some critics say the new parental controls hurt teens’ independence and social development already curbed by pandemic-induced lockdowns.
Life Is About to Come With Subtitles. Automated live captions used to be terrible. But they’re becoming transformative for people who can’t hear.
Former first lady Rosalynn Carter has dementia, The Carter Center says. Carter, now 95, remains at home with former President Jimmy Carter, 98, who has been at home receiving hospice care since early this year.
The shape of your brain may strongly influence your thoughts and behavior, study finds. But a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature challenges that idea, suggesting instead that the shape of the brain — its size, curves and grooves — may exert a greater influence on how we think, feel and behave than the connections and signals between neurons...Pang said his research doesn't discount the significance of communication between neurons; rather, it suggests that the geometry of the brain plays a more essential role in brain function.
People have joined a waiting list to dine at a restaurant in Taipei that is serving a 14-legged giant isopod. The restaurant steams the isopod for 10 minutes before adding it to the top of a bowl of ramen with thick chicken and fish broth. Each bowl costs 1,480 Taiwan dollars ($48).
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
No comments:
Post a Comment