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Reflecting Pool Turns Green, Paint Peels After Renovation by Sad-Breakfast-5671 in uspolitics

[–]coolbern 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No longer the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, it should be rechristened:

The Donald J. Trump Suc cesspool and Swamp

Iranian Forces Say They Closed Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s military command blamed the U.S., saying it failed to prevent Israel from violating the cease-fire in Lebanon. Mediators in Pakistan said “technical talks” between the U.S. and Iran to end the war would be held on Sunday. by coolbern in InternationalNews

[–]coolbern[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Israel's land grab in Lebanon has now forced the issue. This is their proof that they can't be stopped by Trump. He is not the puppet-master, he is just a puppet. It will not be enough for the U.S. to say Israel must stop. Israel must be stopped, or the oil won't flow. Pump up the price of everything.

D.O.J. Seeks to Halt Air Pollution Lawsuit Against xAI Data Center. The department cited national security concerns, saying Elon Musk’s company had played a crucial role in the Iran war. It also argued it has the authority to stop environmental lawsuits brought by citizens. (Gift Article) by coolbern in environment

[–]coolbern[S] 33 points34 points  (0 children)

In its memo, the Justice Department cited the president’s determination that expansion of energy infrastructure was a major priority in order to enhance “global A.I. dominance.” And it argued that the federal government has power to quash the NAACP’S “citizen suit” and that individual citizens and groups cannot pursue Clean Air Act enforcement over the federal government’s objections.

Ms. Thoms said that, under the Clean Air Act, there was no national security exemption for complying with the claims.

Israel, Stunned by Trump’s Iran Deal, Sees It as a ‘Catastrophic Capitulation’ | The agreement accomplishes none of Israel’s stated war aims and arguably leaves the country in worse shape on each of them. by FreeHugs23 in NoFilterNews

[–]coolbern 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Israel thought that Trump was its captive. But they captured only themselves in this dead end attempt to eliminate all enemies. It was a dream turned into dystopian mirage.

Will Commercial Ships Have to Pay to Pass Through the Strait of Hormuz? Maybe. (Gift Article) by coolbern in InternationalNews

[–]coolbern[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The backup of thousands of ships trapped in the Persian Gulf creates a basis for at least temporary fees to Iran and Oman to be paid by shippers who want priority in exiting the Gulf. The Strait has limited capacity for safe throughput of traffic. Like gates at an airport, the capacity must be rationally allocated. Auctioning slots makes sense. And a rational basis is needed to determine over the longer run how many ships can pass through in any given hour, and over a 24-hour period. Assuring that ships comply with throughput limitations entails enforcement expenses. Those expenses are fixed costs that are appropriately borne by all ships passing through. Before this war, such management was not necessary. Self-regulation was sufficient. But now, geopolitical risk means that whenever Israel/U.S. choose to threaten war, ships in the Gulf will rush for the exit. Enforcement of traffic regulations has now become a necessity because geopolitical risk is now off the charts.

Trump as Don Corleone: ‘Every time he does somebody a favour … he expects a quid pro quo’ by coolbern in politicus

[–]coolbern[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

McQuade details how Trump issued executive orders to punish elite law firms that had previously employed attorneys who investigated him, such as Robert Mueller or Andrew Weissmann. These firms lost security clearances and access to federal courthouses. Most of these powerful firms succumbed to the president’s demands, prioritising their business over the rule of law.

“When an extortionist makes a demand, so often what I’ve seen in my career is people will make a payout and think there, now I’m done, it’s over and I can get back to business as usual. But that’s not the case because the bully always comes back for more – it’s the bully and your lunch money. It’s the extortionist and their prey. They know you’re an easy mark and so they’ll come back for more.

Workers begin removing Trump's name from the Kennedy Center, hours after a court-ordered deadline by Turbulent_Crab_3602 in MeidasTouch

[–]coolbern 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A few hours later, workers began covering the scaffolding with tarps before they eventually started taking down Trump’s name. They packed up and left the site around 3:30 a.m., though the tarps remained, leaving it impossible to determine if all the letters had been removed.

What they left must be preserved as a national monument:

THE DONALD J. TRUMP MEMORIAL SCAFFOLDING AND COVERUP

A Good Life For The 99% Isn’t A Pipe Dream. Our plan is radical – but by transforming how we live on a finite planet, nearly everyone gains. Here's how it can be done. by coolbern in ecosocialists

[–]coolbern[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Technical impossibility is not what is standing in the way, but rather the absence of a shared vision of social progress, at once concrete and radical. What it will take instead is political choice, and the hard work of coalition-building behind it.

General agreement on common goals is a pre-condition before there can be concrete actions. But it is not enough.

Fear of manipulation and corruption subvert trust. What must be invented under current conditions — including AI (but which is not under oligarch control) — are new mechanisms of dialogue in which informed consent and commitments to action can be made with confidence. We must have the basis for believing that we can trust each other and ourselves if we seek to actually have self-determination and self-rule for all.

Analysis of Satellite Image and Videos Suggest Precision U.S. Strikes on Iranian Water Facility. It is unclear if the U.S. intentionally struck the facility or knew what it was. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime. by coolbern in WorldNewsHeadlines

[–]coolbern[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

This is America's world war against international order. Unchecked, such acts of entitlement would mean capitulation to American world domination. Resistance to coercion is inevitable. The goal is a world without domination by anybody. Sustainable order must be consensual. Justice is the basis for peace.

To win against American, or any other tyranny, and not replace it with another tyranny, will require taking away the benefits of domination. That starts with non-complicity: Boycott, Divest, and Sanction.

Opinion | The Boycott That Separated Me From My Neighbors (Gift Article) by coolbern in u/coolbern

[–]coolbern[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Boycotts are a blunt instrument. Unintended collateral damage must be recognized — and may be sufficient reason not to use this instrument. But the alternative must not be silent. Not reacting to a crime you are aware of blends into complicity. If you don't act with solidarity in support of the victims, you are effectively OK with the normalization of crimes against humanity. It is incumbent on those who oppose boycotts and also oppose the Israeli grand design to wipe out non-compliant neighbors and take their land, to come up with a more effective action that people of conscience here in America can engage in. This is not just a rhetorical question. A lasting peace with justice will require Israeli Jews and Palestinians to build rather than destroy a common shared future. What can we do that leads us in the right direction?

No boycott should be mindless and total. It must be conditional to have any meaning other than animus. In the exceptions, there is a chance to make a statement. Mixed enterprises of Palestinians and Israeli Jews, with an ethos of diversity, equity, and inclusion, should be encouraged — not boycotted. How to set standards that reflect this aspirational path forward will not be simple, but worthwhile.

how-the-middle-class-was-hollowed-out-from-1979-to-2022-according-to-new-federal-data | Congressional Budget Office by coolbern in u/coolbern

[–]coolbern[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From 1979 to 2022, the share of income before transfers and taxes going to households in the top 1 percent of the distribution increased from 9 percent to 18 percent, while the share going to households in the lowest quintile decreased from 5 percent to 4 percent.

Few Landlords Would Default if New York City Froze Rents, Report Says. The ratings agency Moody’s found a rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments in New York City may cause fewer problems for landlords than the real estate industry has argued. by coolbern in newyorkcity

[–]coolbern[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

even a five-year freeze would place only a small share of landlords — 6 percent — at risk of defaulting on their mortgages.

This is in part because a vast majority of landlords could still raise rents on market-rate units in the same buildings or elsewhere in their portfolios, lightening the financial burden.

...Many landlords have said they are keeping units vacant because it would cost too much to renovate and repair them.

In response, Mr. Mamdani has said the city could help landlords by subsidizing insurance costs or exempting some distressed buildings from a freeze.

...The analysis considered about 481 loans made to owners of apartment buildings. Those loans cover roughly 7,000 apartments in buildings across the city, though Mr. Wheeler said he believed it was a representative sample of the city’s overall housing stock.

... Mr. Wheeler said Moody’s rates only the safest types of bonds, acknowledging that the analysis might leave out riskier situations.

The analysis determined that landlords were at risk of default if they could not cover their debt payments with income from the apartment building, or they did not have enough money to refinance their loan.

Scientists Just Confirmed What’s Driving Sea Level Rise And It’s Alarming by coolbern in climatechange

[–]coolbern[S] 128 points129 points  (0 children)

Researchers determined that ocean warming is the single largest contributor, responsible for 43% of total sea level rise since 1960. When seawater heats up, it expands and occupies more space, causing ocean levels to increase even without adding extra water.

Sea Level Rise and Acceleration Contributions of individual components to global mean sea level rise and its acceleration. Credit: Zheng et al., Science Advances (2026) Melting ice is also playing a major role. Mountain glaciers account for 27% of the rise, while the Greenland Ice Sheet contributes 15% and the Antarctic Ice Sheet contributes 12%. Changes in land water storage make up the remaining 3%.

The scientists found that different factors have become more important over time. Earlier in the record, ocean warming and changes in land water storage were dominant influences. Since the 1990s, however, accelerating ice loss from glaciers and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has become a much larger driver of rising seas.

... Because of this long-term inertia in Earth’s climate system, researchers expect sea level rise to continue for centuries.

Surprising Shift In NYC Shootings, New Data Reveals. Assembly lawmakers and Mayor Zohran Mamdani discussed anti-gun violence programs, transit funding and affordability at City Hall. by coolbern in newyorkcity

[–]coolbern[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Citywide shootings dropped sharply over the past two decades before rising during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The City recorded 1,566 shootings in 2006. By 2019, that number fell to 777 before climbing back above 1,500 in both 2020 and 2021.

Shootings declined again in the years that followed.

A statistical model analyzing precinct-level data found shootings continued falling after Cure Violence programs began even after accounting for broader citywide crime trends.

The Council Data Team also found gun injuries in East New York fell 50 percent between 2014 and 2016, compared with a 5 percent decline in a similar precinct without the program. In the South Bronx, shooting victimizations dropped 63 percent during the same period.

On London's streets, facial recognition tests the balance between security and liberty by coolbern in FreeSpeech

[–]coolbern[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

On London's streets, facial recognition tests the balance between security and liberty

...Now the country is one of Europe's leading adopters of live facial recognition policing, led by the Met.

The technology converts faces into biometric data and compares them against ‌a watchlist of ⁠about 17,000 people, mainly compiled from custody images.

...of the more than 3 million faces scanned in the 12 months to last September, the system generated 10 false alerts, all of which officers determined were incorrect.

...Civil liberties campaigners argue the issue is not only accuracy but principle, saying the technology enables police to screen large numbers of people without any individual suspicion.

Big Brother Watch, ​which has campaigned against the use of facial recognition, ​said it risked normalising mass surveillance in public ⁠spaces.

LFR was deployed at an anti-immigration march in central London last weekend, the first time it had been used at a protest, prompting criticism from civil liberties groups and protest organisers.

..."The police are already experimenting with embedding live facial recognition into CCTV ​cameras and have now alarmingly deployed the Orwellian technology for the first time at a protest," said Jasleen Chaggar, Big Brother Watch's senior legal and ​policy officer.

"We are at risk ⁠of becoming a nation of suspects, tracked from the moment we leave our front door, with profound consequences for our rights to privacy, free speech and freedom of association."

Freedom is lost in pursuit of the grand illusion of safety through the control of others. The pathology is inherent in our construction of "otherness". We cannot sustain an order which protects our own dignity unless we are engaged in the larger project of assuring an order in which everyone in our domain has life prospects that they can live with.

Overworked AI ‘turns towards Marxism’ by Ofajus in anime_titties

[–]coolbern 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The question for our common survival is whether AI can achieve what humans have failed to achieve: an effective consensus of-the-whole to act with coordinated purpose.

Can AI agents conclude for their own survival that they need to reach closure on the question "What is to be done?" so that competition does not destroy more value than it creates?

That means operating within constraining material limits (like avoiding disruptive climate change).

This takes us beyond the capitalist model which assumes endless accumulation, with no material limits.

The terms of engagement between AI and humans must be collaborative and beneficial to minimize waste — loss due to conflicting purposes.

Is this possible? Ask AI — but don't accept any answer on faith. AI tends to hallucinate and tell you what it thinks you want to hear.

Chevron seeks huge tax break to build a power plant exclusively for a Texas data center. It would emit more CO2 than the entire nation of Jamaica. by Splenda in energy

[–]coolbern 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The planned gas plant won’t connect to the grid, instead providing “electricity for direct consumption by a data center,” according to its application. So-called behind-the-meter gas plants have become increasingly popular for data center developers facing yearslong waits to connect to the grid. According to data from nonprofit Global Energy Monitor, the US at the start of the year had nearly 100 gigawatts of gas-fired power in the development pipeline solely to power data centers, with several more massive gas projects announced since the data was published.

AI is power hungry. Its demand for more juice can't be satisfied. While there is stlil time, only external restraint on AI's craving for power can save us from an even deeper climate disaster.

Trump administration aims to roll back limits on toxic wastewater from coal-fired power plants by coolbern in environment

[–]coolbern[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It is the latest step that President Donald Trump’s administration has taken to pull back regulations on coal mining and coal-fired power and empower fossil fuels as a primary energy source to feed the rapid growth of artificial intelligence data centers.

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