And another day of being pessimistic about democracy, absurd lengths, heat and more heat, home insurance in FL, ACL injuries, AI-written articles, ‘superagers,’ addictive endless scrolling is bad for your health, and UFOs comes to a close:
“Don’t trust the person who has broken faith once.” — William Shakespeare
Americans are widely pessimistic about democracy in the United States, an AP-NORC poll finds. Majorities of adults say U.S. laws and policies do a poor job of representing what most Americans want on issues ranging from the economy and government spending to gun policy, immigration and abortion. The poll shows 53% say Congress is doing a bad job of upholding democratic values, compared with just 16% who say it’s doing a good job...Overall, about half the country — 49% — say democracy is not working well in the United States, compared with 10% who say it’s working very or extremely well and 40% only somewhat well. About half also say each of the political parties is doing a bad job of upholding democracy, including 47% who say that about Democrats and even more — 56% — about Republicans...About 6 in 10 Republicans and independents feel like the government is not representing people like them well, compared with about 4 in 10 Democrats...And views are even more negative when it comes to specific issues: About two-thirds of adults say policies on immigration, government spending, abortion policy and gun policy are not representative of most Americans’ views, and nearly that many say the same about the economy as well as gender identity and LGBTQ+ issues. More than half also say policies poorly reflect what Americans want on health care and the environment.
[Texas] State investigating claim that DPS troopers were told to push migrants back into the Rio Grande and deny them water. The Office of the Inspector General is investigating the claims, which include pushing small children and women with nursing babies back into the river and turning away a 4-year-old girl who later passed out on the riverbank from the heat. The trooper also reported that razor wire deployed by troopers has injured people — including a woman who had a miscarriage while entangled in the wire.
Missouri Republicans Are Going to Absurd Lengths to Stop Voters from Having Their Say on Abortion. The Missouri government’s tactics come as ballot initiatives have emerged as one of the most promising strategies to restore abortion rights. As a form of direct democracy, they offer a path to circumvent state legislatures captured by Republican gerrymandering. Nationwide, abortion access is very popular—especially since the Dobbs decision. Over the last year, 15 states have banned virtually all abortions, with devastating consequences for maternal health, not to mention pregnant people’s autonomy. Perhaps as a result, in each of the seven states that considered abortion-related ballot measures last year, voters came down on the pro-choice side. That includes conservative Kentucky and Kansas, where voters rejected bids to put no-right-to-abortion clauses in their state constitutions. Next year, voters in an additional eight states could see an abortion-rights measure on their ballot...Republicans in the Missouri legislature have been trying to make it harder to pass ballot initiatives since at least 2018, when voters successfully used the process to repeal a right-to-work law, raise the minimum wage, and limit gerrymandering...“Our state leadership is scared of the people,” Schwarz says. “The only way they can further try to exercise power and control over Missourians is by putting up these unfounded, unconstitutional attacks on the ballot process.”
6 large donors fuel Ken Paxton’s post-impeachment campaign fundraising. Paxton raised $1.7 million over the period, a figure he announced Monday, hailing it as a triumph despite the impeachment...His report shows that $1.2 million of the $1.7 million came from six supporters who gave at least $100,000 each. -- Two of the six gave him a total of $750,000. -- All are common GOP megadonors, and Dunn is especially supportive of the far right in Texas...The House impeached Paxton in late May, accusing him of a yearslong pattern of lawbreaking and misconduct. He was immediately suspended from office and now faces a trial, set to begin Sept. 5, in the Senate on whether to permanently remove him.
Spain’s early election could put the far right in power for the first time since Franco. Spain’s general election on Sunday could make the country the latest European Union member swing to the populist right, a shift that would represent a major upheaval after five years under a left-wing government.
Heat is torching records and spreading across the U.S. and Europe. These punishing heat waves, many persisting for long stretches of time, are expected to become a fixture of a warming world. Studies have shown that climate change is making extreme heat events more frequent, more intense and longer lasting.
Heat index in Persian Gulf on Sunday neared the upper threshold of what humans can endure. The Persian Gulf International Airport weather station in southern Iran registered a heat index value — the apparent “feels like” temperature to the human body — of 152 degrees Fahrenheit (about 67 degrees Celsius) on Sunday...Heat indexes of 160 degrees Fahrenheit are widely considered the upper threshold of what humans can endure for any more than a few hours. As heat index values climb to these thresholds, the human body feels strain and can lose its ability to cool itself down.
Phoenix scorches at 110 for 19th straight day, breaking big U.S. city records in global heat wave. As human-caused climate change and a newly formed El Nino are combining to shatter heat records worldwide, the Phoenix region stands apart among major metropolitan areas in the U.S. No other major city – defined as the 25 most populous in the United States – has had any stretch of 110-degree days or 90-degree nights longer than Phoenix.
Tourists and residents warned to stay inside as deadly heat hits Europe during peak travel season. Officials warned residents and tourists packing Mediterranean destinations on Tuesday to stay indoors during the hottest hours as the second heat wave in as many weeks hits the region and Greece, Spain and Switzerland battled wildfires.
House Republicans propose planting a trillion trees as they move away from climate change denial. The idea — simple yet massively ambitious — revealed recent Republican thinking on how to address climate change. The party is no longer denying that global warming exists, yet is searching for a response to sweltering summers, weather disasters and rising sea levels that doesn’t involve abandoning their enthusiastic support for American-produced energy from burning oil, coal and gas. -- Their decades of public denial and kowtowing to big oil, coal, and gas has fucked us.
Florida rocked by home insurance crisis: ‘I may have to sell up and move’. Climate change is threatening the very existence of some parts of Florida. And the costs are already being felt by Floridians. At the end of 2022, average annual property insurance premiums had already risen to more than $4,200 in Florida – three times the national average.
Women’s World Cup 2023: Some of the game’s top players are absent. And it’s because of the same injury issue. According to a study published in the peer-reviewed British Journal of Sports Medicine, females are three to six times more likely to experience an ACL injury compared with males. Another study published by the medical journal Arthroscopy estimates that women’s soccer and basketball players are three times more likely to tear their ACL than their male counterparts...Why are female soccer players at a higher risk than their male counterparts? A number of academics, players and soccer medical experts have identified a common theme: a lack of sufficient funding for the women’s game...According to Kryger, the key factors behind the disparity in rates of ACL tears between women and men in soccer are not only controllable, but also gendered...But, as Kryger argued, the professionalization of women’s soccer is relatively recent compared to the men’s game and there is far less funding for women’s academies...Kyrger said the lack of football shoes specifically designed for women has also contributed to ACL ruptures...Considering the huge wealth that global soccer boasts, and the exploding popularity of the women’s game, Milner said there was no excuse to not properly fund women’s clubs – whether that be the club’s medical facilities, academies or the quality of their training grounds and pitches.
You’re going to see more AI-written articles whether you like it or not. But it’s easy to see a future where publishers looking at replacing humans increasingly rely on this tech. Or, if you’d like a less dystopian projection, a future where publishers use robots to churn out low-cost, low-value stuff while human journalists are reserved for more interesting work.
Study finds more clues as to why ‘SuperAgers’ have better brains. The study is good news for people in their 30s and 40s who may want to improve their health by incorporating more exercise, stress reduction and other healthy habits, said Dr. Jo Robertson, national screening and trials coordinator for the Australian Dementia Network at the University of Melbourne, in an email. “The take-home point here for people in midlife is that they need to be enthusiastically modifying lifestyle factors known to have an impact — increasing physical fitness, reducing cardiovascular risk, optimizing mental health and getting appropriate care for any mood disorders — to improve their long-term brain health,” said Robertson, who also was not involved in the study.
How addictive, endless scrolling is bad for your mental health. Lembke explains that social media has taken the work out of how we connect with other human beings, placing that effort online and adding three major ingredients: novelty, accessibility and quantity, making scrolling a very potent drug…More than 95 percent of people ages 13 to 17 in the country say they use a social media platform, and more than a third say they are "almost constantly" using one.
Mammals may have hunted down dinosaurs for dinner, rare fossil suggests. An unusual find in China suggests some early mammals may have hunted dinosaur for dinner. The fossil shows a badgerlike creature chomping down on a small, beaked dinosaur, their skeletons intertwined. The find comes from a site known as “China’s Pompeii,” where mud and debris from long-ago volcanoes buried creatures in their tracks.
‘Non-human intelligence’: Schumer proposes stunning new UFO legislation. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), along with a bipartisan group of five other senators, introduced extraordinary legislation on July 13, suggesting that the U.S. government or private contractors may secretly possess recovered UFOs and “biological evidence of living or deceased non-human intelligence.” According to the legislation, “non-human intelligence” is defined as “any sentient intelligent non-human lifeform, regardless of nature or ultimate origin which may be presumed responsible for” UFOs...According to Schumer, “the sheer number and variety” of UFO-related claims “led some in Congress to believe that the [U.S. government] was concealing important information regarding UAPs over broad periods of time.” Moreover, as noted in the legislation, “credible evidence and testimony indicates that Federal Government [UFO] records exist that have not been declassified” as required by law. To that end, Schumer’s legislation establishes an independent nine-member agency to collect, review and declassify UAP records. If passed in its current form, the law would mandate that all government UFO documents “carry a presumption of immediate [public] disclosure.” The proposed legislation follows explosive allegations by a former intelligence official, David Grusch, that secret UFO retrieval and reverse-engineering programs were illegally hidden from Congress.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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