Dissident Politics: News & science: Deepfake political non-profits; Immigration gridlock

The NYT writes about some of those annoying robocalls we all get bombarded with from The people claiming to be working for American Police Officer's Alliance, the National Police Support Fund and other groups allegedly supporting firefighters and veterans:

A group of conservative operatives using sophisticated robocalls raised millions of dollars from donors using pro-police and pro-veteran messages. But instead of using the money to promote issues and candidates, an analysis by The New York Times shows, nearly all the money went to pay the firms making the calls and the operatives themselves, highlighting a flaw in the regulation of political nonprofits.

Amount raised and spent since 2014

The target who picks up the phone hears this sincere sounding robocall:

“This is Frank Wallace calling for the American Police Officers Alliance. Very quickly, we’re mailing out the envelopes to help fight for our officers who protect our nation’s citizens, just like yourself. Once you receive your card in the mail, you can send back whatever you think is fair this time. That’s all.”

This is not a policeman. This is not even a human. This is a computer, making thousands of robocalls with the same folksy voice.

About 90 percent of the money the groups raised was simply sent back to their fund-raising contractors, to feed a self-consuming loop where donations went to find more donors to give money to find more donors. They had no significant operations other than fund-raising, and along the way became one of America’s biggest sources of robocalls.

Killing robocalls is an issue that congress should be working on, but it can't because it is broken as intended by Republican government and regulations haters. Caveat emptor people!

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The NYT writes about why American immigration law and policy is a mess and has been for years:

For nearly a quarter century, as successive waves of migrants have tried to enter and work in the United States, presidents have appealed to Congress to address gaps in an immigration system nearly everyone agrees is broken.

Yet year after year, congressional efforts to strike a wide-ranging bipartisan deal — one that would strengthen border security measures while expanding avenues for people to immigrate to the United States in an orderly and lawful way — have fractured under the strain of political forces.

Immigration has proved to be a potent political messaging tool, particularly for Republicans, who have rallied voters behind campaigns to close the border with Mexico — and denounced anything other than stringent security proposals as amnesty. And Democrats have long resisted border security initiatives without measures to grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants residing in the United States and to expand immigration in the future.

While many lawmakers have tried to bridge the gap, not once in the 21st century has Congress managed to send a comprehensive immigration bill to the president’s desk.

The NYT points out that in 2006 the McCain-Kennedy bill passed the Senate, but died in the Republican House. In 2007 after congressional Republicans suffered defeats in the 2006 midterms, new Democratic majorities in the Senate and House tried to fix immigration again. The 2007 bill failed to clear procedural hurdles in the Senate in June 2007 and never received a final vote in either chamber. In December of 2010, Democratic congressional leaders held votes on the DREAM Act that provided an opportunity to gain legal status for immigrant children who grew up here and stayed out of legal trouble. Not surprisingly, Democrat-led Senate fell five votes short of breaking a filibuster blocking it from a vote. Again in 2013, the Democrats managed to get a filibuster-proof bill passed in the Senate, but House Republicans blocked it and the bill died. In 2018 another bill died in congress because Republicans and some Democrats opposed it. (the Dems opposed because of harsh measures in the bill)

So there we have it. Again and again, bigoted and racist Republican politicians refuse to reasonably compromise and that's the end of it. All we get is finger pointing and toxic dark free speech. This issue plays into the Republican hands. They demagogue the hell out if it and foment fear of the Great Replacement and rage at messes at the border. The GOP is incentivized to leave immigration a stinking mess so they can whine and complain about immigration being a stinking mess.

Q: Should Democrats compromise by caving in to what the bigots and racists want, such as no citizenship pathway, or is that not a meaningful compromise?

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Science: Researchers have discovered that in addition to electrical imbalances across cell membranes, electrical imbalances are present in and around cell structures called biological condensates (BCs). A BC is akin to a drop of vegetable oil floating on water. BCs form spontaneously inside cells.

Cell membranes are used maintain an electrical charge imbalance to

drive chemical reactions -- neurons use this to communicate information

with other neurons

Science Daily writes:

The human body relies heavily on electrical charges. Lightning-like pulses of energy fly through the brain and nerves and most biological processes depend on electrical ions traveling across the membranes of each cell in our body.

These electrical signals are possible, in part, because of an imbalance in electrical charges that exists on either side of a cellular membrane. Until recently, researchers believed the membrane was an essential component to creating this imbalance. .... Like oil droplets floating in water, these structures [biological condensates] exist because of differences in density. They form compartments inside the cell without needing the physical boundary of a membrane.

"In a prebiotic environment without enzymes to catalyze reactions, where would the energy come from?" asked Yifan Dai, a Duke postdoctoral researcher working in the laboratory of Ashutosh Chilkoti, the Alan L. Kaganov Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Lingchong You, the James L. Meriam Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering.

"This discovery provides a plausible explanation of where the reaction energy could have come from, just as the potential energy that is imparted on a point charge placed in an electric field," Dai said.

After combining the right formula of building blocks to create minuscule condensates .... they added a dye to the system that glows in the presence of reactive oxygen species.

Their hunch was right. When the environmental conditions were right, a solid glow started from the edges of the condensates, confirming that a previously unknown phenomenon was at work. Dai next talked with Richard Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Chemistry at Stanford, whose group established the electric behavior of water droplets. Zare was excited to hear about the new behavior in biological systems, and started to work with the group on the underlying mechanism.

"Inspired by previous work on water droplets, my graduate student, Christian Chamberlayne, and I thought that the same physical principles might apply and promote redox chemistry, such as the formation of hydrogen peroxide molecules," Zare said. "These findings suggest why condensates are so important in the functioning of cells."

"Most previous work on biomolecular condensates has focused on their innards," Chilkoti said. "Yifan's discovery that biomolecular condensates appear to be universally redox-active suggests that condensates did not simply evolve to carry out specific biological functions as is commonly understood, but that they are also endowed with a critical chemical function that is essential to cells."

One of the mysteries, arguably a God of the Gaps thing, is how life could arise and evolve without cell membranes and the electrical imbalance needed to drive chemical reactions needed to create and sustain life. The energy needed to run biological chemistry requires energy. Despite lightening bolts, thermal hots springs and etc., until now there was no plausible source of that energy for life and cells to arise.

These BCs could be the answer to the energy problem. If that turns out to be the case, this knowledge could close a major gap in our understanding of how life on Earth as we know it evolved from non-life either here on Earth or anywhere else.