@jeffjarvis

Once again a headline writer gets it all wrong: As vaccination rates fall, measles cases rise."

There, fixed it for them.

According to the latest CDC COVID-19 wastewater data, we are currently in the second-biggest surge of the pandemic.

It will peak in the next week, with ~2 million infections per day. During this surge, ~100 million people total (~1 in 3 people in the US) will likely get COVID.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/COVID19-nationaltrend.html

But don’t call them fascists because that would be partisan and rude.

"Trump’s most fanatical followers have created a situation where...elected officials who dare defy the former president face serious threats...

"As a result, the threat of violence is now a part of the American political system, to the point where Republican officials are — by their own admissions — changing the way they behave because they fear it." #fascism #maga #trump

https://www.vox.com/23899688/2024-election-republican-primary-death-threats-trump

The NYT, which decorously refuses to publish language it deems offensive, felt compelled to change Cory Doctorow's great neologism "enshittification" to, eh, "enjunkification" ... an increasingly jarring mid-century Hays Code style filter the Times imposes on the world to protect readers' delicate sensibilities https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/opinion/internet-aging-gen-z.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

Paul Petrovich is a fucking nightmare and no local government should have anything to do with him, part 523. #Sacramento

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article283031313.html

@gruber important context for your musings on campus policies: universities face zero reckoning, either by congress or by fundraisers, when they explicitly give a platform and support to people calling for genocide or denying the holocaust, if the people doing so are on the right. For example: ahead of the murderous United the Right rally, UVA's president described the Klan members and Nazis as "tourists". https://www.chronicle.com/article/inside-the-u-of-virginias-response-to-a-chaotic-white-supremacist-rally/ An innocent woman was murdered, and the bill does *not* come due.

No, no, no. In my youth I was a NY Times copy editor. I would not have permitted this—no one would. We’re not inside the heads of Trump’s lawyers. They SAY they believe the judge is biased, but that doesn’t mean they really do.

This is Nazi language shit.

If we forced gun owners to insure their weapons for liability, the insurance industry would explain - in dollars and cents - how dangerous having a gun in your house is versus NOT having a gun.

If every gun purchaser had to also purchase liability insurance for their death machine (that's what guns literally are), far fewer of them would purchase guns - because they couldn't afford the insurance bite.

I wonder if that's why we've never forced the owners of a device designed to KILL people to take FINANCIAL responsibility for their possession. Cars kill people BY ACCIDENT yet we're all forced - by law - to insure ourselves in case something UNEXPECTED happens.

The gun industry has bamboozled America to literal death.

Dimitry Shumsky in Israeli paper, Haaretz,
1/10
"Netanyahu developed and advanced a destructive, warped political doctrine that held that strengthening Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority would be good for Israel.
The purpose of the doctrine was to ... preserve the diplomatic paralysis and forever remove the “danger” of negotiations with the Palestinians over the partition of Israel into two states – on the argument that the PA doesn’t represent all the Palestinians.

Wrapping up updates for tomorrow's demography class: In 2022 the gap between birth rates for women 15-19 and those 40-44 fell to just 1 per 1000. Historic crossover next year!
#demography #nowyouknow

A reminder that the Murdoch family's Fox "News" has injected more poison into our public sphere than any other entity in media -- and continues to do so, relentlessly, for power and money. (Promoting a U.S. civil war in this example.)

If you subscribe to cable or satellite TV (or online equivalent), you are sending money to this evil company every month. Please cancel.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/06/fox-news-gutfeld-war/

Interesting in the wake of the Capital Public Radio financial train wreck to see the #sacbee and #Sacramento State discover that students don't benefit from the KXJZ license or participate in the station in any meaningful way.

Here's a story I did... 20 years ago (?!) about just that very thing.

https://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/content/radio-control/29527/

Much has changed since then. That was before CapRadio launched "Insight" and lots of other good stuff. But much is the same, especially the building of expensive new buildings and leaving students out of the picture.

My suggestion? There's a new #LPFM window opening next month.

https://www.prometheusradio.org/new-lpfm-stations-application-window-november

CSUS/CapRadio should try for a license for KSSU and also do a "KSSU on CapRadio" show. Also bring back Hey Listen, KZAP (on CapRadio) and Blues Party. And stop building new buildings and mismanaging funds, obvs.

Further reading, "10 Reasons Why college radio stations should apply for LPFM licenses."

https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2013/09/10-reasons-why-college-radio-stations-should-apply-for-lpfm-licenses/

#LPFM #collegeradio #publicradio #capradio #npr

The number of kids killed by gunfire in the US rose 50% in two years. 2021, the most recent year with available data, had the highest recorded count of kids killed by gunfire since at least 1999, when the CDC began making this data available.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/06/gun-deaths-among-us-kids-rose-50-percent-in-two-years/

Incredible case of police overreach: raiding/seizing an entire newspaper – over a story that was never published, with extremely minute local stakes https://kansasreflector.com/2023/08/11/police-stage-chilling-raid-on-marion-county-newspaper-seizing-computers-records-and-cellphones/

Mike Pence referring to a “gaggle of crackpot lawyers” is rude, unprofessional, dehumanizing, and unbecoming a presidential candidate.

The preferred terminology is “The Federalist Society.”

Glenn Greenwald Thinks Abiding By Treaty Requirements Is A Deep State Conspiracy But Maybe It's Not
https://popehat.substack.com/p/is-following-an-extradition-treaty

Actual quote from Justice Alito: “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.”

Other things not in the Constitution:
-judicial review
-the federal court system
-the number of justices on SCOTUS

Given the attack on the judiciary by the legislature in Israel, I certainly wouldn’t want Congress to have too much power over SCOTUS. But it’s hard to argue that applying a code of ethics, which all other federal judges already have, is an unconstitutional overreach.

The key thing Hamilton was concerned about (in Federalist No. 78) with legislative overreach into the Court was maintaining the independence of judges. That’s part of why they have lifetime tenure.

Thus if the justices are compromising their own independence, as they clearly have in accepting financial gifts from people with business before the Court, it seems like it’s Congress’s duty to act.

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed78.asp

#NotALawyer #SupremeCourt #SCOTUS #Histodons

"Enslavers sought and purchased people coming from specific African societies based on skills common in those societies." Note to Florida and DeSantis: Enslaved Africans were already skilled https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/07/24/florida-slavery-history-ron-desantis/

At COMCAST we believe in COMMUNITY

(immediately proceeds to sue the shit out of some tiny town for daring to try and build better internet access for a long-neglected school)