JMA-PSOS

Back in 2007, a story started circulating about a 25-year old NYC gold digger and the caustic response she got on craigslist to her transactional ad. The response:

I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament.

Firstly, I'm not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here's how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here's why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here's the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity ... in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won't be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you're 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold... hence the rub... marriage. It doesn't make good business sense to "buy you" (which is what you're asking) so I'd rather lease. In case you think I'm being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It's as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So, I wonder why a girl as "articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful" as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K hasn't found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn't need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you're going about it the right way. Classic "pump and dump."

I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of lease, let me know.

Ms Shiner is not holding back on Netanyahu and US media’s own distorted coverage of the conflict and antisemitism accusations it sometimes throws about unchecked and without correction.

She mentions two recent incidents: CBS grilling and heavy innuendo about Ta-Nehisi Coates “antisemitism” in his latest The Message book about Palestine and CNN’s fabrications about Tlaib’s statements during their interview with Gov Whitmer. She contrasts these two incidents with the underwhelming media coverage when “Trump preemptively blamed “the Jews” for his potential loss in November”.

Here is her warning to America:

I am not afraid of the discomfort that will inevitably come when we allow Palestinians to be seen and grapple with our complicity in dehumanizing them. Instead, I am afraid that those who have championed Israel at all costs will soon get to live at home in the kind of theocracy they covet abroad.

PBS Frontline has a two-hour documentary on Harris vs Trump (transcript, credits). Here are the people that spoke or got replayed (in decreasing order of mentions):

99 NARRATOR
55 DONALD TRUMP
51 KAMALA HARRIS
34 MALE NEWSREADER
34 FEMALE NEWSREADER
19 MARC FISHER
15 JAMILAH KING
11 JOE GAROFOLI
11 ALAN MARCUS
10 NOAH BIERMAN
9 PETER BAKER
8 ROGER STONE
8 PAULA WHITE
8 MICHAEL D’ANTONIO
8 CAROL LEONNIG
8 NEWT GINGRICH
7 MARY TRUMP
7 MALE VOICE
7 MALE REPORTER
7 GWENDA BLAIR
6 STACEY JOHNSON-BATISTE
6 SCOTT SHAFER
6 RONA BARRETT
6 COURTNEY SUBRAMANIAN
5 TIMOTHY O’BRIEN
5 TAL KOPAN
5 SUSAN GLASSER
5 MARIE BRENNER
5 DEBBIE MESLOH
5 CROWD
5 BARACK OBAMA
5 ASHLEY ETIENNE
4 WANDA KAGAN
4 TONY SCHWARTZ
4 LESTER HOLT
4 JILL LOUIS
4 FEMALE REPORTER
4 ELAINA PLOTT CALABRO
4 DAVID MARCUS
4 BRAD PARSCALE
4 ANDREA DEW STEELE
4 BRIAN BROKAW
3 WILLIAM BARR
3 MALE RADIO REPORTER
3 JOE BIDEN
3 JEFF SESSIONS
3 CAROLE PORTER
3 BRETT KAVANAUGH
3 BARBARA WALTERS
2 OPRAH WINFREY
2 OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN
2 MALE EVANGELICAL PASTOR
2 LOUISE SUNSHINE
2 KEN AULETTA
2 KAREN GIBBS
2 JONATHAN KARL
2 JOHN BOLTON
2 JIM DOWD
2 JANE MAYER
2 GIL DURAN
2 EUGENE ROBINSON
2 DAN MORAIN
2 BRIAN NELSON
2 ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI
2 ANDERSON COOPER
2 ACE SMITH
2 LAPHONZA BUTLER
1 WILLIE BROWN
1 WHOOPI GOLDBERG
1 WESLEY LOWERY
1 TERRENCE HALLINAN
1 TARINI PARTI
1 SUPREME COURT JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR
1 ROY COHN
1 ROHINI KOSOGLU
1 NIKKI HASKELL
1 MICHAEL KRANISH
1 MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
1 MALE TALK SHOW HOST
1 MALE SPEAKER
1 MALE RALLY ANNOUNCER
1 MALE DEBATE MODERATOR
1 MALE CAMPAIGN ATTENDEE
1 MALE APPRENTICE CONTESTANT
1 LATEEFAH SIMON
1 KELLYANNE CONWAY
1 HEATHER FONG
1 GWEN IFILL
1 GRAYDON CARTER
1 FOX NEWS GUEST
1 FOX NEWS ANCHOR
1 FEMALE VOICE
1 FEMALE INTERVIEWER
1 FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER
1 DAN BALZ
1 CHRISTINA GREER
1 CHARLOTTESVILLE ALT-RIGHT PROTESTERS
1 BILL O’REILLY
1 BARBARA RES
1 ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN

It is projected that data center power consumption will increase by orders or magnitude in the near future. It is also very unlikely that this growing power consumption will be slowed down due to climate change concerns because a lot of the power is needed in the newest arm race (I.e. AI-driven cutting edge military tech) between the world’s top superpowers.

Some may find the upcoming US-China war as futile and self-destructive on so many levels (or as an inevitable showdown between the leading philosophies: ouroboros crapitalism and authoritarianism) and probably worse than previous world wars, yet, if humans are really good at something is at repeating history again and again with abandon, a self-imposed nihilistic Sisyphianism of sorts.

The irony in this latest sequel is that all the energy wasted in developing, growing and honing the latest killing machines and/or profit makers (although not dissimilar from past efforts) is conceptually not very different from all the energy wasted across millennia in developing, growing and honing power structures around (seemingly) different primitive cosmogonies and golden calves that claim primacy and their syncretic permutation (more often than not) as the unique truth about human nature and purpose.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

OpenDemocracy.net published in August the best explainer I read so far on Kamala Harris' Israel-Palestine position. The interesting thing is that it acknowledges that her position to the left of Biden is trying to appease the wavering/bleeding leftmost progressive flank support, but it does not really mention that her shift presents the danger of leaking support on its more conservative rightmost flank, especially with its Zionist and protestant Christian strong Israel supporters.

By talking more progressive and doing Zionist things is at best threading a very narrow winning path different enough but not too different from Biden's and Trump's Zionist positions and at worst, effectively having her cake (now) and eating it too (later) by appearing progressive enough before the election and then staying the usual US course on Israel after (e.g. its #1 and often sole enabler diplomatically, militarily and economically as it has been for half+ century).

I will give Kamala (a very slim) benefit of the doubt, but I put the chance of a fair two-state solution and rapid Israel war deescalation (to some pre-October 7 normalcy or at the very least a near-complete detachment of the US war and diplomatic machine from the Palestinian genocide) within Harris' first term at around 15%. I will be happy if I am proven wrong, and ecstatic if very wrong.

Caitlin Johnstone has a cautionary tale about talking politics at the dinner table (audio). Here is the transcript:

Don’t Talk About Politics At The Dinner Table

Everything was going fine until Grandma brought out the roast Palestinian child for dinner.

“Who’s hungry?” she chirped, a small honey-glazed human corpse on a platter in her arms.

“I am!” said Grandpa.

“Oh boy!” said Tommy.

“OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK??” Susan shrieked.

“Jesus, Sue, my ears,” said Ellen.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Grandma asked, frozen in shock.

“That’s a dead kid! Why the fuck is there a dead kid on that plate??” Susan yelled.

“Hey, you can’t talk to your grandmother like that,” Grandpa warned.

“Yeah, Sue, watch your mouth,” said Stanley, covering his daughter’s ears.

“It’s — oh my God! It’s a dead kid! Why is everyone acting like this is fine?? What the fuck is happening??”

“Oh, Susan, sweetie, are you a vegetarian? I’m sorry, I didn’t know!” said Grandma.

“Did — did you kill this kid??” Susan asked, struggling to catch her breath.

“Oh Christ, no!” said Grandpa. “Is that what this is about? No, it’s some Arab kid that got killed in that Israeli war. They started selling them by the pound at Costco last month.”

“YOU MEAN THE GENOCIDE IN GAZA??” Susan bellowed, falling to her knees and sobbing.

“Oh, here we go,” Tommy sighed.

“Can we please not get all political at the dinner table?” said Stanley.

“Yeah, no politics!” said Grandpa. “We’re all here together as a family, let’s just try to have a nice time.”

“Politics??” Susan screamed. “I’m staring at a dead Palestinian kid right in front of me and it freaks me out! How the fuck is that political??”

“I mean, calling it a ‘genocide’, Sue?” said Ellen.

“Look, we can sit here arguing about the war and who started it and whether Israel has a right to defend itself and whether Jews have a right to exist in their homeland, or we can all just take a deep breath, and relax, and enjoy this delicious meal Grandma spent hours in the kitchen preparing,” said Grandpa, reaching for the carving knife.

“I swear to God if any of you so much as touches that kid I will never speak to you for the rest of my life,” said Susan.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said Tommy.

“Tom!” said Stanley, putting down the knife to again cover his daughter’s ears.

“God, Sue why do you always gotta be such a hysterical drama queen?” said Ellen. “We’re just trying to have a nice meal together and you gotta come in playing Woke Police on everyone.”

“It’s a victim of genocide! You want to eat a human child who was killed in a genocide!” screamed Susan.

“You say it’s a genocide victim, I say it’s dinner,” said Tommy. “But nobody can be right except you, right Sue? Only Saint Susan gets to decide which opinions are valid.”

“I think we just need to have respect for one another’s different political opinions, Susan” said Grandma. “We’re not all going to agree on everything, and we need to be able to set that aside and get along together. This is a complicated issue. Who’s to say who’s right?”

“But this isn’t political!” wailed Susan. “How can you guys not see that?? There’s a DEAD KID on the dinner table! A dead kid!”

“I think they’re right, Aunt Susan,” said Morgan, taking off her headphones. “I didn’t want to say anything but a lot of the stuff you’ve been saying online about the war is really problematic and antisemitic, and actually kind of borderline fascist-adjacent. The kinds of things you’ve been saying about President Biden and Vice President Harris are going to land Trump back in the White House.”

“Alright, alright, what did we just say about politics at the dinner table?” said Grandpa. “This is what it leads to. A bunch of hurtful words and hurt feelings.”

“Fuck. Your. Feelings,” said Susan.

“Okay, well, dinner’s ruined,” said Stanley. “Morgan, Louise, come on, we’re getting McDonald’s. Thanks a lot, Sue.”

“Yeah, Sue,” said Tommy. “Selfish bitch.”

Everyone left, leaving Grandpa and Grandma alone with Susan — who was still crying on the floor.

“Susan,” said Grandpa. “Someday you’re going to have to learn that other people have feelings just like you, and that we all deserve to be treated as human beings, just like you do.”

“Really, sweetie, you’ve just got to learn to have a little compassion,” said Grandma, picking up the platter with the Palestinian child on it and carrying it into the kitchen.

“I guess we can use all these leftovers for sandwiches later,” she mumbled, shaking her head sadly.

Back in 2019, Rosta_CZ created a map of fastest trains in EU and posted it in r/europe (using only connections from biggest city to top 5 biggest cities, the raw data for which is partially available):

1. 2020 Voter turnout by age provided by the US Census can be found in table 5: 18-24: 48% of 28.6M voted, 25-44: 55% of 86.4M voted, 45-64: 65.5% of 81.9M voted, 65-74: 73% of 32.9M voted, 75+: 70.2% of 22.3M voted.
2. Sienna/New York Times Sept 8 poll included: 16% of 18-29 year olds, 24% of 30-44 yo, 31% of 45-64 yo, 25% of 65+ yo and 4% who did not reveal age.

Conclusion: Of those 44 and under, roughly 61M voted in 2020 and of those 45 and over, about 93M voted which is a ratio of 65.6 to 100. In Sienna poll, 40% of respondents were 44 and under and 56% were 45 and over which is a ratio of 71.4 to 100 (so younger than 45 voters were overrepresented compared to 2020 voter demographics).

Notes:
1. Sienna/NY Times polls only use phones to contact about 1000 people for their sample which is then corrected for many sampling factors. Ipsos/ABC polls use sample corrections, phone, online and face-to-face as modes of contact and a 1600 sample size (based on many sampling factors).
2. 2016 election postmortems: ipsos, Sienna accuracy in 2016
3. Polls ratings: 538, reddit discussion on late 2023 Sienna poll

A few nights ago, I had a nightmare involving two friends (let's call them J and S). My friends were being harassed by a tall imposing man (TIM) who tried to snatch a golf club from one of them which provoked a physical altercation. S managed to get behind TIM and in the course of wrestling back his golf club, with an expressionless face, he managed to separate TIM's spine from his body with the club like one would string a green bean before cooking.

A lot of non-Americans are upset at ordinary Americans (99+% of all of them) because of US foreign policy, military and CIA involvement in just about every corner of this Earth (with a few small exceptions). So, let me start by clarifying that ordinary Americans have exactly ZERO say in those matters. At most they are pawns used to pull the trigger while the mastermind puppet masters are counting their blood stained gold bars, sipping martinis on their megayachts or at some posh galas or hunting big game on some Safari.

The US Democratic process (I.e. elections, consultations, town halls, sausage making) is a mere rubber stamp on preselected candidates by the moneyed elites, candidates that push their sponsors agenda every single time when the rubber hits the road, and that holds from US president down to the state level representatives.

How can I say this with certainty? It’s easy: follow the money that sponsor those candidates and the laws and decisions they make after election. Let’s talk about the main parties who managed to split public opinion into the lesser of two evils false dichotomy (since they are both corrupt in different ways):

* DEMOCRATS: They talk a good game but ever since 1992 at least, they are just GOP-lite that plays the good cop in this ridiculous game. Their economic justice accomplishments since 1992:
** raise the minimum wage (for some people only) to a level of subsistence, and
** Obamacare (which merely takes money from middle/upper middle class to pay for a risible healthcare insurance scheme for the poor).
On everything else of substance (corporate largesse, immigration, tough on crime, military industrial complex, foreign interference, global wars, crass human rights violations at home and abroad) they are almost indistinguishable from the GOP which brings us to:

* REPUBLICANS (aka GOP, a Reagan cult after 1980, a Tea Party cult bolted on top after 1994, and an additional cryptofascist Gilead-like MAGA cult since 2016): They are the bad cop and all the above plus: autocratic, xenophobic, overt union busting, overtly racist and misogynistic, they wrap themselves in the flag and thump the Bible. They care more about the right to own arsenals of assault automatic rifles and pistols than their own kids lives, will cut their nose to spite their face, rich people bootlickers, give two shits about the bottom 99% economically (despite having a strong support of around 40% of the voting adults), so their entire base is built on cultural overblown divisive issues since their entire fiscal policy is a dumpster fire of selfcontradictions that flares up whenever the US fed govt’s borrowing limit needs raised again over the very loud and mostly performative protests of its Tea Party roots and long-gone fiscal conservatism.

There have been numerous studies that show how US has been busy
* downgrading its social net on every front (economic, pensions, universal and financially-reasonable access to healthcare, universal and state sponsored education, legal protections for minorities, individual rights, freedom of association, protection from moneyed interests and its own govt’s propaganda )
* shifting into a plutocratic oligarchy and
* the chances of its transition into an autocratic state are higher every year as the oligarchs are capturing more and more the levers of power (political, judicial, executive, media corporate consolidation) and keep pushing their self-destructing “Let them eat cake” nationalist agenda.

mRNA vaccine history:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/the-long-history-of-mrna-vaccines
https://cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/52424.html

Safety:
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/covid-vaccine-came-out-super-quickly-heres-why-its-safe

Stage 3 trials:
https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-conclude-phase-3-study-covid-19-vaccine

Short COVID vaccine history in Romanian:
https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/coronavirus-response/safe-covid-19-vaccines-europeans/how-are-vaccines-developed-authorised-and-put-market_ro

Similarities and dissimilarities between COVID-19 virus and previous corona viruses:
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-micro-110520-023212

mRNA vaccine technology:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41573-021-00283-5
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10384963/
https://jbiomedsci.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12929-023-00977-5

Pharmacovigilance:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9589581/
https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8247/17/6/807
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8662238/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10043970/

Misinformation:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9858741/

GBS and COVID vaccines:
https://www.jwatch.org/na56706/2023/11/20/covid-19-and-vaccines-risk-factors-guillain-barr-syndrome
"[...] cohort of 3,193,951 patients [...] 76 patients diagnosed with GBS [...] Adenovirus-vectored vaccines showed a 2.4 times increased risk of GBS that was about seven times higher compared with mRNA-based vaccines."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10896967
"We included 17 cohorts from 13 studies, collecting 1450 GBS cases over a total of 1,058,927,070 administered vaccine doses. The random-effects model yielded 1.25 GBS cases per million vaccine doses (95%CI 0.21; 2.83). [...] The GBS rate for adenovirus-vectored vaccines was five times higher than for mRNA vaccines."

Mandates: Many countries have introduced mandates for COVID vaccines (as of mid 2023: 55 countries as an occupational mandate and only 10 countries as a national mandate: Italy, Greece, Austria, Costa Rica, Turkmenistan, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Tajikistan, and South Sudan). Many countries have mandated vaccines for travel.
* Specifically, in Romania, vaccines were never mandated by the government. As of July 2021, four different vaccines were available (2 mRNA and 2 non-mRNA vaccines) for those that wished to take them voluntarily. Not surprisingly, Romania ranks #16 in the world at COVID deaths per capita with a death rate triple the world average and double the world average at COVID cases per capita. Also, Romanians considerably lagged the world in COVID vaccination rates (about 0.88 vs 1.7 vaccines per capita) and effectively stopped vaccinating against COVID in early 2022 (long before the rest of the world as it continued vaccinating until late 2023). As of April 2024, Romanians are still not obliged to vaccinate against COVID (per insp@gov.ro).

mRNA vaccines: There are studies that show that mRNA vaccines are no more dangerous than non-mRNA vaccines despite the rumors. What I find fascinating is that some people think that an mRNA vaccine is a lot more dangerous because it targets specifically the immune system, as it introduces foreign mRNA into our bloodstream thus creating undesired autoimmune reactions. Newsflash: non-MRNA vaccines also target the immune system and MAY create undesired autoimmune reactions just like common viral and bacterial infections do. As of mid-2024, according to a study published in NEJM, in the long run, COVID vaccines appear to have helped against long COVID. Here is an explainer from CDC about the adverse effects from the vaccination.

Back in 2009 while Obama's healthcare proposal was still being discussed, including the non-profit (e.g. single payer) option, I wrote an article about the healthcare debate which got published online by an independent source. I even wrote a letter to the editors of the New York Review of Books which got published along with a defensive and typical CYA response from the authors of the article I wrote the letter about (i.e. their shallow coverage of the non-profit option).

Alas, Sen Lieberman (D) blocked the public option and ACA/ObamaCare was enacted without it. This single ommission is probably the primary reason medical bankruptcies have continued to rise and far outpace other OECD nations on a per capita base. Given that medical bankruptcies constitute a whopping 66% of all US bankruptcies (while the nearest comparable country Canada has just under 20% medical bankruptcy rate), you can see why one man, Sen Lieberman, has singlehandedly ruined millions of lives in the past 15 years and many more in the future.

Thank you Sen Lieberman for a gift that keeps on giving! On the positive side, Americans can emigrate to any number of countries to get superior and affordable universal healthcare that doesn't ruin their lives or just do some medical tourism if moving permanently to another country seems too drastic and they prefer expensive healthcare, expensive education (that can incur loans that can't be discharged through bankruptcy) and/or want to keep their guns.

Notes:
1. While some claim that only 17% of US bankruptcies are due to medical costs, they are playing fast and loose with the truth which is that over 65% of US bankruptcies are directly or indirectly connected to medical costs.
2. Others have estimated that only 10% of Canadian bankruptcies are due to medical costs (despite the universal healthcare system which BTW does not cover all medical problems).

I just learned today that Alice Munro was involved in a sexual scandal involving her own daughter and her second husband:

The news made landfall in an essay for the Toronto Star in July, less than two months after Munro’s death. In the piece, Andrea Robin Skinner, Munro’s youngest daughter, revealed that in the summer of 1976, when she was 9 years old, she was sexually assaulted by her mother’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin, then in his early 50s.

What followed was a series of failures that are, or should be, impossible to rationalize. Munro’s three children lived with their father, James Munro, in Victoria, British Columbia, for the school year, spending summers with their mother and stepfather in Clinton, a small town in southern Ontario. This is a region Canadians sometimes call “Alice Munro Country,” the setting of many of her stories.

Upon returning to her father’s home, Skinner told her stepbrother what had been done to her. He encouraged her to tell his mother, who told Skinner’s father, who did next to nothing. Alice Munro was not told at the time. The children continued to visit their mother, the older ones now burdened with the instruction not to leave their little sister alone with Fremlin.

Fremlin did not touch Skinner again, but he continued to abuse her for years. Until she became a teenager and his interest evaporated, he would expose himself to his stepdaughter, sometimes masturbating, and proposition her for sex.

Skinner was 25 before she told her mother her “secret” about what Fremlin had done to her in a letter. Munro left Fremlin, but only briefly—leaving her daughter’s letter behind for him to see. Fremlin in turn wrote letters of his own to his estranged wife.

It’s this bleak epistolary exchange that stops this from being a she said-he said story of the kind that’s easy for apologists to dismiss and makes it a she said-he wrote a letter in which he confessed to being an active pedophile story.

Here are excerpts from Skinner's original expose in The Toronto Star:

I was relieved at first that my father didn’t tell her what had happened to me. She had told me that Fremlin liked me better than her, and I thought she would blame me if she ever found out. I thought she might die. As relieved as I was, my father’s inability to take swift and decisive action to protect me also left me feeling that I no longer truly belonged in either home. I was alone.

When I was 11, former friends of Fremlin’s told my mother he’d exposed himself to their 14-year-old daughter. He denied it, and when my mother asked about me, he “reassured” her that I was not his type. In front of my mother, he told me that many cultures in the past weren’t as “prudish” as ours, and it used to be considered normal for children to learn about sex by engaging in sex with adults. My mother said nothing. I looked at the floor, afraid she might see my face turning red.

By the time I was a teenager, I was at war with myself, suffering from bulimia, insomnia and migraines. I was a high-achieving high school student with a strong wish to help others. But my private pain was taking a toll. In university, my grades plummeted as bulimia took over my life. I dropped out of an international development program at the University of Toronto and gave up my dream of working abroad. By the time I was 25, I couldn’t picture a future for myself.

One day, during that period, while I was visiting my mother, she told me about a short story she had just read. In the piece, a girl dies by suicide after her stepfather sexually abuses her. “Why didn’t she tell her mother?” she asked me. A month later, inspired by her reaction to the story, I wrote her a letter finally telling her what had happened to me.

Ușurel, ușurel cu iz de beizadea caiafa,
Stau p-oliță și gem și mă scot mangafa.
Nu am nici-un gând, și îmi vine un vânt,
Dar eu știu că cândva voi scorni eu ceva.
Totuși până atunci îmi pun mâna pe fălci,
Le desprind ușurel și clămpănesc puțintel.
Ușurel, ușurel...


— cu scuze Adei Milea

Apparently, there is a lot of research around the RDE concept with Mach 5+ (and a Chinese research team claiming Mach 16 for their design). Exciting times ahead.

It is very telling that a simple edit revealed the character of a nation that still has not lived up to that first rough draft. So, "We hold these Truths to be self evident; that all Men are created equal and independent" lost that last word in the final version and it still has not made up for it despite multiple attempts to undo that initial injustice.

Apparently, Shapiro volunteered in high school for five weeks in IDF working on a kibbutz farm and fishery? It sounds a little fishy to me, but he is pro-two-state solution and criticized Bibi vehemently. Walz has his own Israel problem, as he refused to heed call to divest MN from Israel.

David Popovici took gold at 200m men's freestyle by 0.02s. He will be 20 in September but he already holds 3 of the top 10 world records in both 200m freestyle and 100m freestyle. I hope he has a long uninterrupted career in swimming and reaches the podium again at this Olympics.

* Tim Walz (w): MN governor, 24-years in National Guard, former teacher, gun owner from rural area
* Josh Shapiro: PA governor. "As attorney general, he released the findings of a statewide grand jury report that revealed the abuse of children by priests and coverup by church leaders; he also helped negotiate $1 billion for Pennsylvania as part of a national opioid settlement."
* Mark Kelly: a former NASA astronaut, US Senator from Arizona, served in Gulf War as pilot

Yesterday, Trump declared at Turning Point, FL, that if he gets elected, this is the last time people will need to vote in a US election (shortly before admitting to a Christian audience that he is not a Christian). What's sad is the contortions the CNN interviewee went through to explain away the cynicism and absolute darkness of that "promise".

So, Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris. Democrats will likely have a very tough time getting their candidate's name on the ballot in Ohio (problem being the DNC late date, a problem that existed before Biden dropped out):

There are ways to resolve this problem, as two other states with early deadlines have already done. Washington state officials said they will accept a provisional certification of Biden’s nomination before the convention. And Alabama’s Legislature shortened its deadline so that Biden could qualify for the ballot there.

Neither solution seems likely in Ohio, where Republicans may be seeking to make life harder for the Democrats’ presidential nominee. The attorney general says the state can’t accept a provisional certification. And the Legislature couldn’t come up with a timely fix to the law.

Ohio laws generally take effect 90 days after passage. So a change to the deadline had to pass by May 9, but the Legislature wound up doing nothing.

ICJ issued an advisory opinion today which ruled that "State of Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful" amongst a few more rulings. It only took 57 years to get here. Let's hope the redress and reparations don't take another 50+ years.

The interesting bits to me are the opinions and votes on pages 78-79 (included below):
* Romanian judge (Bogdan Aurescu) and the French-Jewish judge (Ronny Abraham) voted against in 5 of 9 decisions, but not as much as
* Ugandan judge Julia Sebutinde who voted against 8 out of 9. The only other dissenter of the 14 judges was
* Slovakian judge Peter Tomka who voted against 2 of the 9 decisions.
* The other judges voted in favor of all 9 decisions (i.e. USA, China, India, Germany, Australia, Japan, South Africa, Lebanon, Somalia, Brazil, Mexico). The Belgian judge Gautier did not vote.

THE COURT,
(1) Unanimously, Finds that it has jurisdiction to give the advisory opinion requested;
(2) By fourteen votes to one, Decides to comply with the request for an advisory opinion;
IN FAVOUR: President Salam; Judges Tomka, Abraham, Yusuf, Xue, Bhandari, Iwasawa, Nolte, Charlesworth, Brant, Gómez Robledo, Cleveland, Aurescu, Tladi;
AGAINST: Vice-President Sebutinde;
(3) By eleven votes to four, Is of the opinion that the State of Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful;
IN FAVOUR: President Salam; Judges Yusuf, Xue, Bhandari, Iwasawa, Nolte, Charlesworth, Brant, Gómez Robledo, Cleveland, Tladi;
AGAINST: Vice-President Sebutinde; Judges Tomka, Abraham, Aurescu;
(4) By eleven votes to four, Is of the opinion that the State of Israel is under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible;
IN FAVOUR: President Salam; Judges Yusuf, Xue, Bhandari, Iwasawa, Nolte, Charlesworth, Brant, Gómez Robledo, Cleveland, Tladi;
AGAINST: Vice-President Sebutinde; Judges Tomka, Abraham, Aurescu;
(5) By fourteen votes to one, Is of the opinion that the State of Israel is under an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities, and to evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory;
IN FAVOUR: President Salam; Judges Tomka, Abraham, Yusuf, Xue, Bhandari, Iwasawa, Nolte, Charlesworth, Brant, Gómez Robledo, Cleveland, Aurescu, Tladi;
AGAINST: Vice-President Sebutinde;
(6) By fourteen votes to one, Is of the opinion that the State of Israel has the obligation to make reparation for the damage caused to all the natural or legal persons concerned in the Occupied Palestinian Territory;
IN FAVOUR: President Salam; Judges Tomka, Abraham, Yusuf, Xue, Bhandari, Iwasawa, Nolte, Charlesworth, Brant, Gómez Robledo, Cleveland, Aurescu, Tladi;
AGAINST: Vice-President Sebutinde;
(7) By twelve votes to three, Is of the opinion that all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the continued presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory;
IN FAVOUR: President Salam; Judges Tomka, Yusuf, Xue, Bhandari, Iwasawa, Nolte, Charlesworth, Brant, Gómez Robledo, Cleveland, Tladi;
AGAINST: Vice-President Sebutinde; Judges Abraham, Aurescu;
(8) By twelve votes to three, Is of the opinion that international organizations, including the United Nations, are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory;
IN FAVOUR: President Salam; Judges Tomka, Yusuf, Xue, Bhandari, Iwasawa, Nolte, Charlesworth, Brant, Gómez Robledo, Cleveland, Tladi;
AGAINST: Vice-President Sebutinde; Judges Abraham, Aurescu;
(9) By twelve votes to three, Is of the opinion that the United Nations, and especially the General Assembly, which requested this opinion, and the Security Council, should consider the precise modalities and further action required to bring to an end as rapidly as possible the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
IN FAVOUR: President Salam; Judges Tomka, Yusuf, Xue, Bhandari, Iwasawa, Nolte, Charlesworth, Brant, Gómez Robledo, Cleveland, Tladi;
AGAINST: Vice-President Sebutinde; Judges Abraham, Aurescu.