Online privacy for Chrome and other browsers

Google has recently implemented a gigantic scam to harvest personal information and monetize it. The chances are recent and touted by Google as for privacy, even thought it is for loss of privacy. The Register writes:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has urged folks to switch off several Privacy Sandbox settings in Google Chrome to mask their online habits, or to consider switching to Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari.

Chrome's Privacy Sandbox is neither private – preventing one from being observed – nor a sandbox – an environment in which code can be executed in isolation. Rather it's a suite of advertising, analytics, anti-spam, and anti-tracking technologies. The goal for some of these is to replace third-party cookies.

Third-party cookies, because they harm privacy by permitting people to be tracked online, are scheduled to be phased out next year in Chrome. But the online advertising industry isn't entirely sold on Google's replacement technology, and it may be that antitrust cases or other regulatory pressure will lead websites away from Privacy Sandbox and toward industry-backed ad tech like IAB's Seller Defined Audiences.

Google says its Privacy Sandbox has five major goals: fighting spam and fraud on the web; showing relevant ads and content; measuring digital ads; strengthening cross-site privacy boundaries; and limiting covert tracking.

"Topics is a response to pushback against Google’s proposed Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which we called 'a terrible idea' because it gave Google even more control over advertising in its browser while not truly protecting user privacy," said Thorin Klosowski, EFF security and privacy activist, in a web essay.

Mozilla and Apple have rejected Topics in Firefox and Safari respectively due to privacy concerns. And earlier this year, the Technical Architecture Group (TAG) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the web's technical body, panned Topics for being opaque and diminishing user control.

"Google referring to any of this as 'privacy' is deceiving," said the foundation's Klosowski.

"Even if it's better than third-party cookies, the Privacy Sandbox is still tracking, it's just done by one company instead of dozens. Instead of waffling between different tracking methods, even with mild improvements, we should work towards a world without behavioral ads."

Klosowski explains that for those who won't give up Chrome there's a way to opt out of Topics, of ad retargeting, and of giving advertisers storage space in your browser for ad performance data. Doing so requires navigating through Chrome's three-dot icon to the ad privacy settings page: (⋮) > Settings > Privacy & Security > Ad Privacy. Or copy this URL chrome://settings/adPrivacy into the address bar and press enter.

Once there, he advises disabling Ad topics, Site-suggested ads, and Ad measurement.  

The EFF also makes Privacy Badger, a browser extension for blocking tracking scripts that was just recently updated to remove tracking links. 

A related story discusses the EFF's Privacy Badger:

We released a new version of Privacy Badger that updates how we fight “link tracking” across a number of Google products. With this update Privacy Badger removes tracking from links in Google Docs, Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Images results. Privacy Badger now also removes tracking from links added after scrolling through Google Search results.

Link tracking is a creepy surveillance tactic that allows a company to follow you whenever you click on a link to leave its website. As we wrote in our original announcement of Google link tracking protection, Google uses different techniques in different browsers. The techniques also vary across Google products. One common link tracking approach surreptitiously redirects the outgoing request through the tracker’s own servers. There is virtually no benefit 1 for you when this happens. The added complexity mostly just helps Google learn more about your browsing.

It's been a few years since our original release of Google link tracking protection. Things have changed in the meantime. For example, Google Search now dynamically adds results as you scroll the page ("infinite scroll" has mostly replaced distinct pages of results). Google Hangouts no longer exists! This made it a good time for us to update Privacy Badger’s first party tracking protections.

Privacy Badger is downloadable here. The commentary at that site: 

Privacy Badger automatically learns to block invisible trackers. Instead of keeping lists of what to block, Privacy Badger automatically discovers trackers based on their behavior. Privacy Badger sends the Global Privacy Control signal to opt you out of data sharing and selling, and the Do Not Track signal to tell companies not to track you. If trackers ignore your wishes, Privacy Badger will learn to block them. 

 Besides automatic tracker blocking, Privacy Badger replaces potentially useful trackers (video players, comments widgets, etc.) with click-to-activate placeholders, and removes outgoing link click tracking on Facebook and Google, with more privacy protections on the way. To learn more, see our FAQ at https://privacybadger.org/#faq

An interesting water desalination advance

The boffins at MIT have come up with a desalination device that runs on sunlight and the laws physics. No electricity is required, so this thing operates completely off the grid.  They have designed a box a square meter in size (~10.8 sq ft) that can produce 5 liters of drinkable water per hour from seawater. The system can operate for several years without maintenance. The price for the water is less than the average US price for tap water. The system should be scalable to very large sizes.

A tilted ten-stage prototype floating in a salt water container -- the

tilt is needed to passively create water circulation which

prevents salt from accumulating and clogging the system

MIT News writes:

In a paper appearing today in the journal Joule, the team outlines the design for a new solar desalination system that takes in saltwater and heats it with natural sunlight.

The configuration of the device allows water to circulate in swirling eddies, in a manner similar to the much larger “thermohaline” circulation of the ocean. This circulation, combined with the sun’s heat, drives water to evaporate, leaving salt behind. The resulting water vapor can then be condensed and collected as pure, drinkable water. In the meantime, the leftover salt continues to circulate through and out of the device, rather than accumulating and clogging the system. 

The new system has a higher water-production rate and a higher salt-rejection rate than all other passive solar desalination concepts currently being tested.

The researchers estimate that if the system is scaled up to the size of a small suitcase, it could produce about 4 to 6 liters of drinking water per hour and last several years before requiring replacement parts. At this scale and performance, the system could produce drinking water at a rate and price that is cheaper than tap water.  

The small circulations generated in the team’s new system is similar to the “thermohaline” convection in the ocean — a phenomenon that drives the movement of water around the world, based on differences in sea temperature (“thermo”) and salinity (“haline”).

“When seawater is exposed to air, sunlight drives water to evaporate. Once water leaves the surface, salt remains. And the higher the salt concentration, the denser the liquid, and this heavier water wants to flow downward,” Zhang explains. “By mimicking this kilometer-wide phenomena in small box, we can take advantage of this feature to reject salt.”

The research paper is here (behind a paywall). A figure from the paper shows more clearly how the device works. The paper comments:

Using a confined saline layer as an evaporator, we initiate strong thermohaline convection to mitigate salt accumulation and enhance heat transfer. With a ten-stage device, we achieve record-high solar-to-water efficiencies of 322%–121% in the salinity range of 0–20 wt % under one-sun illumination. More importantly, we demonstrate an extreme resistance to salt accumulation with 180-h continuous desalination of 20 wt % concentrated seawater. With high freshwater production and extreme salt endurance, our device significantly reduces the water production cost, paving a pathway toward the practical adoption of passive solar desalination for sustainable water economy.

I believe the following to be true.........

 I would say I have noticed a noticeable decline in political engagements amongst my friends, associates, family over the last few years. So the following doesn't surprise me.............

Cato national survey finds that self‐​censorship is on the rise in the United States. Nearly two-thirds—62%—of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive. The share of Americans who self‐​censor has risen several points since 2017 when 58% of Americans agreed with this statement.

These fears cross partisan lines. Majorities of Democrats (52%), independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share.

https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/poll-62-americans-say-they-have-political-views-theyre-afraid-share

Granted, the above is from 2020 but I could not find more recent data. I still believe it to be true. People I used to kibitz with on politics don't want to express their views as openly any more, especially in politically mixed company.

Has your experience been the same OR are you surrounded by political debaters?

MORE:

Implications

Taking these results together indicates that a significant majority of Americans with diverse political views and backgrounds self‐​censor their political opinions. This large number from across demographic groups suggests withheld opinions may not simply be radical or fringe perspectives in the process of being socially marginalized. Instead many of these opinions may be shared by a large number of people. Opinions so widely shared are likely shaping how people think about salient policy issues and ultimately impacting how they vote. But if people feel they cannot discuss these important policy matters, such views will not have an opportunity to be scrutinized, understood, or reformed.

Tina again: No, I don't know why

Computer speakers are worthless crap. Put on your head phones and set your equalizer to do this right, or just blow it off.

Barcelona 1990

A church house, gin house

A school house, outhouse

On Highway Number Nineteen

The people keep the city clean

They call it Nutbush

Oh, Nutbush

Call it Nutbush city limits

Nutbush city limits

Twenty-five was the speed limit

Motorcycle not allowed in it

You go t'the store on Fridays

You go to church on Sundays

They call it Nutbush, little old town

Oh, Nutbush

They call it Nutbush city limits

Nutbush city limits

You go t'the field on week days

And have a picnic on Labor Day

You go to town on Saturdays

But go to church ev'ry Sunday

They call it Nutbush

Oh, Nutbush

They call it Nutbush city limits

Nutbush city limits

Oh

No whiskey for sale

You get caught, no bail

Salt pork and molasses

Is all you get in jail

They call it Nutbush (little old place) 

Oh, Nutbush

Nutbush city limits

Nutbush city limits

Yeah, they call it Nutbush city

Nutbush city limits

Little old town in Tennessee

It's called a quiet, little old community

A one-horse town

You have to watch

What you're puttin' down in old Nutbush

They call it Nutbush

Young Tina raw & white hot alive in1973 -- this is the one one I grew up with & it's about as real as music can get short of . . . . something big:

Of course, as usual, that's just my humble opinion.

News bits: Prenup renegotiated into a postnup?; Government shutdown update; Anger biology

A source called Page Six (presumably not a satire site?) reports that Malaria has quietly renegotiated her prenuptial agreement with her deranged fornicating husband DJT and turned it into a postnup. Page Six reports:

Sources tell Page Six that Melania Trump has “quietly” renegotiated her prenuptial agreement with Donald Trump in advance of his potentially serving a second term in the White House.

An insider told us of the agreement between the couple who married in 2005, “Over the last year, Melania and her team have been quietly negotiating a new ‘postnup’ agreement between herself and Donald Trump.”

The source further said, “This is at least the third time Melania has renegotiated the terms of her marital agreement,” but the source added that it’s not because the former first lady is going anywhere.

“Melania is most concerned about maintaining and increasing a substantial trust for their son, Barron,” 17, the same source familiar with Melania, 53, told Page Six.

The new agreement also provides for Melania, and spans money and property, according to the source.

Well, if this is for real, and it just might be, this changes everything. Malaria will be dutifully campaigning in public and spreading the good news of the Gospel of Trump. You know the Gospel, lots of praise for tyranny, plenty of defense of corruption, lies and slanders, all of which is heavily larded with crackpot conspiracies and Looney Toons reasoning from the Book of Looney. 

The loving family

Look at Barron, all growed up

He'll take after his toss 'em under the bus dad and 

make a fine businessman and US president

😮☠️

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Welp chaos fans, looks like we're very likely headed for a govt. shutdown. WaPo writes:

Hard-liners plot to replace McCarthy with a deputy as shutdown looms

A contingent of far-right House Republicans is plotting an attempt to remove Kevin McCarthy as House speaker as early as next week, a move that would throw the chamber into further disarray in the middle of a potential government shutdown, according to four people familiar with the effort who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.

Some members of the far-right faction of the party are coalescing around nominating a member of McCarthy’s leadership team, Rep. Tom Emmer (Minn.), to be the next speaker if they can successfully oust McCarthy, according to those people. The members think Emmer is more attuned to their concerns and will better deliver conservative results.

By referring to far-right Repubs, the WaPo inches toward calling the GOP what it actually is, deeply corrupt and radical right authoritarian. WaPo's not quite there yet, but maybe awareness of what the ARRRP has degenerated into will sink in sometime before its too late. I guess this counts as a little bit of progress.

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The WaPo writes about anger science by a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst:

Our emotional brain goes into overdrive, and our thinking brain becomes less active. Managing anger requires us to bring our thinking brain back online.

• the amygdala, which encodes the quality — such as positive or negative feelings — and intensity of our emotional reactions; and

• the insula, which creates a brain map of how our body feels during situations, including what we call “gut feelings.”

The degree of activity in the amygdala and the insula is controlled, in part, by two areas of the thinking brain:

• the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which helps us weigh the consequences of our behaviors before acting on them; and

• the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which helps us empathize with others.

The more we use our thinking brain to evaluate our behaviors, including how they might affect others, the more we can guide decisions in balanced ways.

Strategies to respond differently when anger starts to take over:

• Pause. Find a space where the ability to think can be recovered. Step away, remain silent, ask for time. Hard as it is to consider in the heat of the moment, acting aggressively — as cathartic as it might feel — is often not worth it. Map out the progression of your anger by identifying cues in the body, mind and environment signaling it’s time to step back before things worsen.

• Breathe. The only vital sign over which we have more immediate control is breathing. High emotions can push us to have quick, shallow breaths, feeding into our distress. Try slowing your breathing down, with long in-breaths and out-breaths (timing each helps maintain a rhythm and sense of stillness). Controlled breathing can limit respiratory rate, improve mood, lower stress hormone levels, decrease physical unease and help us think more calmly, improving recruitment of brain areas that process emotions.

• See anger as communication. There is often a context to anger, whether directed at ourselves, another person or a situation. For instance, we might feel pressured, exposed, belittled, anxious or powerless, and anger can cover up these unpleasant states, giving us a sense of power — fragile as it may be. Thinking about what lies behind anger can help us feel less at its mercy and provide insight as to what other emotions we may be trying to avoid. When feeling angry at someone, it is useful to consider why that particular dynamic generates such unpleasantness. As much as we’re overtaken by the righteousness of our mind-set, anger can blind us to different ways others view the same situation.

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Is Biden waking up to the ARRRP threat? Seems that maybe he is finally starting to get it. WaPo writes:

President Biden on Thursday sharply rebuked former president Donald Trump and his supporters for continued attempts to undermine American democracy, delivering one of his most explicit warnings that Trump poses a threat to democratic principles and institutions.

In a marked shift, Biden hit Trump head-on, disposing of his usual pattern of oblique references to his predecessor, .... Biden called Trump out by name before detailing what he described as his anti-democratic behavior: relentless attacks on the press, praise for the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attackers, plans to consolidate power in the executive branch and a desire to fire civil servants who are not sufficiently loyal to him.

“There’s something dangerous happening in America now,” Biden said. “There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy.” He added, “We should all remember: Democracies don’t have to die at the end of a rifle. They can die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up or condemn the threats to democracy.”

If Biden is waking up, that's probably a good thing compared to his minimizing the urgency of the threat until now.

News bits: Judge denies DJT's recusal demand; Radical right violence watch; Radical right corruption watch

DJT filed a motion to get D.C. federal judge Tanya Chutkan off his case in hopes of getting a friendlier judge. Chutkan rejected the recusal motion and is staying on his case. That's solidly good news.

It is amazing that DJT's attorneys keep making stuff up and submitting it to the court. Here's a couple of fiddly bits from Chutkan's 20 page memorandum and order:

I.     BACKGROUND

Before the court is Defendant’s Motion for Recusal of District Judge Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 455(a). ECF No. 50 (“Motion”). For the reasons set forth below, recusal is not warranted in this case and the court will DENY the Motion.

II.     LEGAL STANDARD 

A “judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” 28 U.S.C. § 455(a). As Defendant has done here, a litigant may move for a judge’s recusal under that provision. See S.E.C. v. Loving Spirit Found. Inc., 392 F.3d 486, 493 (D.C. Cir. 2004). “[T]he moving party must demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that a judge has conducted himself in a manner supporting disqualification.” United States v. Nixon, 267 F. Supp. 3d 140, 147 (D.D.C. 2017).

But justice also demands that judges not recuse without cause. “In the wrong hands, a disqualification motion is a procedural weapon to harass opponents and delay proceedings. If supported only by rumor, speculation, or innuendo, it is also a means to tarnish the reputation of a federal judge.” Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d at 108. Motions for recusal could also be wrongfully deployed as a form of “judge shopping,” Alberti v. Gen. Motors Corp., 600 F. Supp. 1024, 1025 (D.D.C. 1984), permitting “litigants or third parties to exercise a negative veto over the assignment of judges,” In re United States, 666 F.2d 690, 694 (1st Cir. 1981). There is, accordingly, as much “obligation upon a judge not to recuse himself when there is no occasion as there is for him to do so when there is.” United States v. Mitchell, 377 F. Supp. 1312, 1325 (D.D.C. 1974) (quotation omitted), aff’d sub nom. United States v. Haldeman, 559 F.2d 31 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (en banc), cert. denied sub nom. Ehrlichman v. U.S., 431 U.S. 933, 97 (1977), reh’g denied sub nom. Mitchell v. United States, 433 U.S. 916 (1977).

III.     DISCUSSION 

A. Source of statements 

The statements at issue here were based on intrajudicial sources.* They arose not, as the defense speculates, from watching the news, Reply in Supp. of Mot. for Recusal, ECF No. 58 at 4 (“Reply”), but from the sentencing proceedings in United States v. Palmer .... [see, crooked DJT lied about where the statements came from and his crooked attorneys lied too] The statements directly reflected facts proffered and arguments made by those defendants. And the court specifically identified the intrajudicial sources that informed its statements.

* The statements DJT refer to are from prosecution of two of the 1/6 traitors who participated in DJT's 1/6 coup attempt. In those cases Chutkan commented in court (not to the press or media) about the possible liability of people who had not yet been charged in the 1/6 insurrection. DJT argues that those statements prove by clear & convincing evidence that she is biased against Trump.

Even if the statements at issue lacked an intrajudicial foundation, however, they would not provide a reasonable basis to question the court’s impartiality from “the perspective of a fully informed third-party observer who understands all the relevant facts and has examined the record and the law.” Cordova, 806 F.3d at 1092 (internal quotation marks omitted). And the statements certainly do not manifest a deep-seated prejudice that would make fair judgment impossible—the standard for recusal based on statements with intrajudicial origins.

At the outset, it bears noting that the court has never taken the position the defense ascribes to it: that former “President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned.” [again, crooked DJT is lying to the court]Motion at 1. And the defense does not cite any instance of the court ever uttering those words or anything similar. Instead, the defense interprets the court’s verbal reiteration of Palmer and Priola’s arguments about their relative culpability as “suggest[ing]” a secret “core view” about Defendant’s criminality.

Even on their face, the court’s statements fall short of manifesting “clear and convincing evidence”** that the court has conducted itself “in a manner supporting disqualification.” 

** The three main evidence standards are (i) preponderance of the evidence (more likely than not) used to find liability in civil lawsuits, (ii) clear and convincing evidence (more than a preponderance of evidence but less than beyond a reasonable doubt) used for proof of fraud and in some other situations like this one, and (iii) evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, needed for criminal guilt.

IV.     CONCLUSION 

For these reasons, Defendant’s Motion for Recusal of District Judge Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 455(a), ECF No. 50, is hereby DENIED. 

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The Huffpo writes about Milley: "Mark Milley Taking ‘Safety Precautions’ After Trump Suggested He Deserves Execution. After the ex-president accused him of treason, the outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman said he 'will never turn my back on the Constitution.'"

Milley is acting to protect himself and his family to try to prevent some deranged, enraged MAGA maggot with a gun from killing him or is family. That's what authoritarian radical right Republican politics has degenerated into. DJT always was and still is a vicious, authoritarian radical right demagogue.

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A WaPo opinion comments about rich people cheating on their taxes and the ARRRP (authoritarian radical right Repub Party) staunchly supporting massive tax cheating:

Republicans have been amplifying the claim lately that their party has undergone a “populist” makeover, rendering it both anti-elite and pro-working class. One way Republicans purport to illustrate this is by attacking President Biden’s expanded funding for the Internal Revenue Service, insisting that it empowers a strike force of bureaucrats to prey on ordinary Americans.

But new data on tax avoidance by the ultrarich badly undermines GOP claims to being an anti-elite, pro-worker party. It shows that if Republicans get their way with regard to the IRS, a nontrivial number of very rich Americans would continue to underpay taxes they owe, effectively making out like bandits — some literally so.

.... the 2,000 people who represent the highest-income non-filers in one or more of those years owe a total of more than $900 million in federal taxes, the data shows.

“These are people who essentially blow raspberries at the IRS,” Wyden told me. “They’re sophisticated people. They know this is wrong, wrong, wrong. And they do it anyway.”

The data underscores that when the IRS is underfunded, wealthy tax cheats benefit in a big way. An underfunded IRS is what Republicans are advocating for.

Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, signed last year, included $80 billion in additional IRS funding. Biden sought it specifically to bring in more revenue by targeting wealthy tax cheats.

But House Republicans voted this year to repeal that funding. Many GOP presidential candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, have attacked it.  

Starving the IRS has been a longtime Republican project. Indeed, GOP efforts to cut agency funding had some success in creating precisely the state of affairs that Wyden’s data illustrates.

The ARRRP openly supports wealthy tax cheats because it hates government and non-rich people. The irony is that it claims to be anti-elite and pro-working class while it's actually pro-elite and anti-working class (and anti-environment, anti-climate science, anti-abortion, anti-inconvenient truth, bigoted, racist, kleptocratic, etc.). That's the staggering power of MAGA dark free speech for 'ya. 

Note, that most salaried and hourly people can't cheat much on their taxes. Taxes are withheld and for the most part that's that. But rich people? They have all kinds of ways to lie, cheat and steal. Wealthy cheaters is what the ARRRP staunchly supports, not the little people.

The 400 wealthiest U.S. families paid an average income tax rate of 8.2% from 2010 to 2018, while others looked like this:

News bits: Biden's achievements; QAnon crackpottery; McCarthy flip-flop; Dementia research update

Biden has done some good stuff. Here's some of it.

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Pink News reports about a crackpot fake technology that is probably going to land a jackass in jail:

New Mexico man Michael David Fox was charged based on concerning threats he made against a cis-gender Texas Congressperson because he believed that she was transgender, Satanic, and a pedophile.

When confronted by the FBI on 26 May, Fox immediately confirmed that he had made the phone call, but didn’t recall the specific details of what he had said. However, after hearing back a recording of the call, Fox admitted to making the threats, Advocate  reports.

The [QAnon] group, which originated on 4Chan in 2017, is centered around the belief that there is a society of Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic pedophiles that run the world. 

Fox told authorities that he and other followers believe that transgender people are secretly running the government and major corporations and, after running the unnamed US Rep’s skull features through forensic analysis, he believed that she was transgender. 

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The Huffpo reports that two words, George Santos, got Kevin McCarthy to flip-flop on whether crooked Bob Menendez should resign:

Kevin McCarthy Wanted Bob Menendez To Resign 

Until Someone Mentioned George Santos

The House speaker wanted the New Jersey senator to resign, but he changed his mind after someone asked why he hadn't asked Santos to do the same

Menendez was indicted last week on bribery charges. On Saturday, McCarthy called for the senator’s resignation, saying that the indictment was “very damaging” and that the evidence presented by prosecutors “seems pretty black and white.”

What's surprising is that McCarthy flipped and now says that crooked Bob should have his day in court. He could have just said that the evidence against crooked George is weak and a partisan witch hunt, unlike the evidence against crooked Bob. Will wonders never cease?

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The WaPo reports on new dementia research:

Sitting all day increases dementia risk — even if you exercise

The study, which involved 49,841 men and women aged 60 or older, “supports the idea that more time spent in sedentary behaviors increases one’s risk of dementia,” said Andrew Budson, a professor of neurology at Boston University ....

If the men and women sat for at least 10 hours a day, which many of them did, their risk of developing dementia within the next seven years was 8 percent higher than if they sat for fewer than 10 hours.

The risks ballooned from there, reaching a 63-percent greater risk of dementia for people who spent at least 12 hours chair-bound.

Surprisingly, the researchers found little benefit from exercise.

People who worked out but then plopped into chairs for 10 hours or more were as prone to dementia as people who hadn’t exercised much at all.

The same was true for walking and other short breaks. After adjusting for other factors, the researchers noted few improvements among people who interrupted their sitting time with breaks. If they got up and walked around, but still managed to sit for 10 or more hours a day, their risk didn’t change much. What ultimately mattered was how many hours, in total, a person spent in a chair most days.

The best way to reduce dementia risk, Raichlen said, is to find ways to sit less overall. “People in our study who were sedentary for 9.5 hours a day didn’t have any increased risk,” he said.

Dang, now I've gotta get a standing desk. Crud. I thought exercise would do the trick. 

Trump found liable for fraud

The AP reports:

A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House.

Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.

Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee the Trump Organization’s operations.

Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron found.

Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said, rejecting Trump’s contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.

“In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote in his 35-page ruling. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”

The judge fined five of Trump's lawyers $7,500 each for repeating claims that the judge had already rejected. 

Judge obliterates Trump's ridiculous standing defense

Judge obliterates Trump's attempt to protect 

his assts and profits

News bits: DJT policy update; GOP violence watch update; Election subversion update

The New Republic reports on DJT's publicly stated plans if he is re-elected:

Trump Goes Full Deranged, Suggests Charging 

People He Doesn’t Like With Treason

Donald Trump went over the edge over the weekend and began calling for his detractors to be prosecuted or even put to death.

“They are almost all dishonest and corrupt, but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC, often and correctly referred to as MSDNC (Democrat National Committee!), should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason,’” he wrote on Truth Social Sunday night.

“I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States … the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events,” he said. “They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!”

MSN commented:

Professor of global politics and political scientist Brian Klass at The Atlantic wrote on Monday that General Milley’s phone call to China “was, in fact, explicitly authorized by Trump-administration officials.”

“And yet,” Klass noted, “none of the nation’s front pages blared ‘Trump Suggests That Top General Deserves Execution’ or ‘Former President Accuses General of Treason.’ Instead, the post barely made the news. Most Americans who don’t follow Trump on social media probably don’t even know it happened.”

“Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous, not just because it is the exact sort that incites violence against public officials but also because it shows just how numb the country has grown toward threats more typical of broken, authoritarian regimes. The United States is not just careening toward a significant risk of political violence around the 2024 presidential election. It’s also mostly oblivious to where it’s headed.”

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LGBQT Nation reports:

GOP congressman calls for execution of “sodomy-promoting” US Army general

Rep. Paul Gosar said that the "homosexual-promoting" general "would be hung" in a better society

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) called for the execution of General Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a homophobic tirade this weekend.

In his newsletter this weekend – published to his Congressional website – Gosar accused Milley of being a “homosexual-promoting-BLM-activist” who delayed the military’s response to the January 6 riot. An election denier, Gosar has in the past claimed that he “started the revolution,” referring to the insurrection.  

“In a better society, quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung,” Gosar wrote. “He had one boss: President Trump, and instead he was secretly meeting with Pelosi and coordinating with her to hurt Trump. That is, when he wasn’t also secretly coordinating and sharing intelligence with the Chinese military.”

Since the GOP is silent on Gosar's threat, the Republican Party supports Gosar's call for executing Milley.

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Ohio Capitol Journal reports:

In Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers are threatening to impeach both the state’s election administrator, who is highly regarded nationally, and a state Supreme Court justice despite a ruling by the state’s judicial commission that the justice had done nothing wrong — effectively nullifying a recent statewide election she won, Democrats say.

In North Carolina, a bill that would give the legislature control of state and local election boards — potentially allowing lawmakers to overturn results — could soon become law.

Alabama continues to defy the U.S. Supreme Court by refusing to draw a new congressional district with a Black majority.

And after forcing voters to cast ballots in unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts in 2022, Ohio Republicans have recently proposed new maps that retain their gerrymandered supermajority control over the legislature, after enacting one of the most restrictive voter laws in the country earlier this year, and spending the summer campaigning to roll back the constitutional power of Ohio voters.

Other states are seeing efforts by politicians to gain a political advantage by curtailing the power of voters.  

Wisconsin’s legislative maps are among the most heavily gerrymandered in the country — a 2020 Harvard study ranked them as the worst, on par with Jordan, Bahrain, and the Congo. They’ve consistently given the GOP large majorities — currently 22-11 in the Senate and 64-35 in the House — despite the state tilting slightly Democratic in most recent statewide races.  

In Ohio, the Supreme Court has ruled five times that the state’s current legislative maps are unconstitutional gerrymanders favoring Republicans. But the bipartisan commission that’s supposed to draw fair maps waited 16 months before reconvening last week.

It has made almost no progress, because GOP legislative leaders spent the first week infighting over who would co-chair the committee. When they finally did name one this week, the commission met and Republicans used their 5-2 advantage on the commission to establish a proposed working map that could lead to more Republican seats and fewer competitive districts.

Authoritarian radical right Republican efforts to subvert the 2024 elections continue to be a wild card. Biden could win the election but for the effects of those laws. Republicans have tried to suppress non-Republican voters and rig or openly reject election results that the radical right authoritarians dislike. 

I am not aware of any analysis that predicts the likely effects of radical Republican anti-election, pro-tyranny laws in any state. Maybe it's time to start doing some searching to see if I can find anything. 🤨

News bits

The Lever points out why Bob Menendez and other politicians who engage in blatant corruption have a good chance of getting away with it:

But if the alleged facts in the indictment prove true, the big question is: Why would any politician think he could get away with something so brazen? Perhaps because Menendez knows that to secure a conviction, prosecutors will have to prove that it was illegal for him to accept the gifts in exchange for a “performance of an official act,” as the indictment says. And like every American politician, Menendez almost certainly knows that while that may seem straightforward, the corruption-plagued Supreme Court has deliberately made it anything but.  

“Our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts at the time. “It is instead with the broader legal implications of the government’s boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute… Setting up a meeting, calling another public official, or hosting an event does not, standing alone, qualify as an ‘official act.’”  

The problem is that Supreme Court justices have for years been legalizing — and personally engaging in — similar kinds of corruption. At the same time, top Democrats are constantly assuring justices that no matter how repugnant their behavior, there will be no serious challenge to their power.

A bribe has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be in exchange for “performance of an official act.” In essence, that cannot be proven unless the briber or bribee is an idiot and leaves tangible evidence for prosecutors to argue criminal intent. Menendez describes his situation where he as a victim of a “smear campaign” by those who “simply cannot accept that a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings could rise to be a U.S. Senator and serve with honor and distinction.”  

With the ‘official act’ shield, the odds of convicting Menendez seem to be low.

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The Guardian reports some commentary on the MSM: 

US news organizations have turned Biden’s age into a scandal and continue to cover Trump as an entertaining side show

Christiane Amanpour has reported all over the world, so she recognizes a democracy on the brink when she sees one.

Last week, as she celebrated her 40 years at CNN, she issued a challenge to her fellow journalists in the US by describing how she would cover US politics as a foreign correspondent.

“We have to be truthful, not neutral,” she urged. “I would make sure that you don’t just give a platform … to those who want to crash down the constitution and democracy.”

It’s an important call to action. But so far, the American press is failing to meet its responsibility to adequately emphasize the stakes of the coming election.

That speaks for itself.

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The radical right teaching children traditional family values

Look closely, you'll see the traditional 

family value being expressed

Freaks

OK, I gotta admit I stole this idea from another site but there were some hilarious rebuttals and some very heated ones as well. So let's try this out here and see how it goes.

NOT including Biden or Trump, who do YOU think is the biggest freak in American politics?

No Biden or Trump votes, thanks, that would be WAY TOO EASY.

Surely each one of us has someone else in mind that they think is a freak. So - what's your vote?

AND YES, I am asking for you to explain your choice.

This ought to be fun.

Bits: GOP attacks on the rule of law; GOP attacks on inconvenient truth

As commented on here before, authoritarian radical right Republican (ARR) politicians in Georgia want to get rid of the prosecutor in Trump's election subversion case in that state. That amounts to a direct attack on the rule of law. Another major avenue of attack is coming from ARR Republicans in congress. The Messenger reports:

Trump’s Government Shutdown Push to Starve His 

Criminal Cases Has a Fundamental Flaw

Trump is openly goading his congressional loyalists to shut down the federal government at the end of next week for the explicit purpose of sabotaging his criminal cases.

“Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government that refuses to close the Border, and treats half the Country as Enemies of the State,” the former president and 2024 Republican frontrunner wrote on his website Truth Social on Thursday morning. “This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots.”

In the event of a shutdown, the U.S. court system will remain fully funded for up to three weeks. And even after that, the judicial branch of the federal government can tap into “carryover” funds from previous years and fees like the ones charged by Pacer, the online court documents database that costs the public 10 cents a page for downloads.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, whose team works for the Justice Department, has an additional cushion provided by a “permanent, indefinite appropriation,” which will continue to finance the already-charged cases against Trump. The scheduled start dates for the trials in the two federal Trump cases also aren’t scheduled until March and May of 2024 respectively, well beyond the time window that any shutdown is expected to last.  

Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Trump supporter from Georgia, proposed an amendment that would target funding of state and federal prosecutions of the former president, but the special counsel’s office is already funded. There is no evidence that Trump’s criminal prosecutions in New York and Georgia have received any substantial federal financing.

Despite the alleged “fundamental flaw”, one can expect ARR Republicans in congress to do their best to try to protect the traitor Trump from as much prosecution as they can. This is open war on the rule of law by the radicalized, authoritarian Republican Party.

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Remember the successful ARR attack on federal funding for gun violence research that was imposed in 1996 (my 2021 post is here)? That funding ban was triggered by this 1993 research paper that showed that gun ownership was a risk factor for domestic homicide. 27 years later that ban still hampers gun violence research in the US.  As I discussed here in 2015, the ARR has fought against all research that could generate truth that is inconvenient to ARR dogma, wealth and/or power. The ARR tactic of killing inconvenient research is not new.

The ARR Republican Party in congress is now doing the same thing to federally funded research on the effects of online misinformation and lies. The WaPo writes:

Misinformation research is buckling under GOP legal attacks

An escalating campaign, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans, has cast a pall over programs that study political disinformation and the quality of medical information online

Academics, universities and government agencies are overhauling or ending research programs designed to counter the spread of online misinformation amid a legal campaign from conservative politicians and activists who accuse them of colluding with tech companies to censor right-wing views.

Facing litigation, Stanford University officials are discussing how they can continue tracking election-related misinformation through the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a prominent consortium that flagged social media conspiracies about voting in 2020 and 2022, several participants told The Washington Post. The coalition of disinformation researchers may shrink and also may stop communicating with X and Facebook about their findings.

The National Institutes of Health froze a $150 million program intended to advance the communication of medical information, citing regulatory and legal threats.  

“If the question relates in any way to misinformation or disinformation, please do not respond,” read the guidance email, sent in July after a Louisiana judge blocked many federal agencies from communicating with social media companies.  

“In the name of protecting free speech, the scientific community is not allowed to speak,” said Dean Schillinger, a health communication scientist who planned to apply to the NIH program to collaborate with a Tagalog-language newspaper to share accurate health information with Filipinos. “Science is being halted in its tracks.”  

Academics and government scientists say the campaign also is successfully throttling the years-long effort to study online falsehoods, which grew after Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election caught both social media sites and politicians unawares.

Once again, we clearly see blatant, direct attacks by elite radical Republican Party authoritarians on inconvenient truth and science, and on the public interest. To establish their corrupt dictatorship, Republican politicians attack and subvert the same thing that all or nearly all other dictators, theocrats, plutocrats and kleptocrats target, prominently political opposition, pluralism-tolerance (to have scapegoat groups to attack and fearmonger about), democracy, civil liberties, especially voting rights and elections, and sources of inconvenient truth. None of these tactics are new. Same dictator lies, deceit, slanders, crackpottery. It's just a different day in a different country, now the US.

Note that some government scientists say the Republican dictators' campaign is throttling research on online falsehoods. If Trump or another Republican dictator wannabe is elected president in 2024, those scientists would be searched out and fired as communist deep state enemies. They would replaced by thugs who will deny that online lies are of any consequence, assuming any even exist in view of the reality of post-truth and alt-facts.

Global warming propaganda tactics update

A Vox article discusses the propaganda tactics, some of which were discussed several times here before, that pro-pollution companies like ExxonMobil are using to fight against doing anything about global warming. Since it's too hard to deny global warming and climate change any more, industry propaganda tactics now mostly focus on dividing, delaying, downplaying, deflecting and what I call demotivating. Vox writes:

What do you call it if it’s not climate denialism anymore? What are we facing now?

So there are other D-words. There’s delay. There’s division. Get climate advocates fighting with each other about, like, whether they’re vegans or not or whether they drive a car or not. Get climate advocates fighting with each other so you divide and conquer the movement. That’s division. Delay: “Oh, look, we can fix the problem with geoengineering, with carbon capture down the road. Trust us, we’ll be able to fix it.” So “let us continue to burn fossil fuels now. We will fix it later.” Delay. And that’s what they want. They want people disengaged on the sidelines rather than on the front lines. We see these tactics literally playing out today.

There’s an article that just recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal detailing how Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, who had been lauded as the next generation of Exxon leadership — he was not a climate denier. He accepted that climate change is real — there was a real effort by Tillerson and ExxonMobil at that time to present this public face of climate acceptance — because it had already become difficult to deny it was happening. People understood it was happening. It wasn’t credible to deny it. And so it was, “Yes, we accept the science,” but the D-word here is downplaying. And in the article, the Wall Street Journal makes it very clear, based on internal documents that show a different side of ExxonMobil and Rex Tillerson, that they were actively campaigning to downplay the detrimental impacts of the climate crisis while playing up techno fixes like geoengineering. 

And a lot of that would have to be on the individual because obviously, if individuals want to burn fossil fuels, this is a country where they’re going to find someone willing to help them do so. How much of the climate delayism is being pushed on the individual at this moment?

It’s a great point. And actually I would even classify that with a different D-word, what I call deflection, which is to say there’s been an effort by the same bad actors to deflect the conversation away from regulation and the needed policies which will hurt their bottom line — carbon pricing, cap and trade, what have you — to redirect the conversation against those systemic changes and policies that will hurt them financially and turn attention instead to individuals.

In the early 2000s, the very first widely used and publicized individual carbon footprint calculator, where you could calculate your carbon footprint and figure out how to change your lifestyle to make it smaller, was created and publicized by British Petroleum. British Petroleum wanted you so focused on your individual carbon footprint that you failed to note theirs.

That’s why we need policies, because individuals can’t put a price on carbon themselves. They can’t block the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure. These are all things that only our politicians can do. And so that’s where we are today. Deflection remains one of the key tactics.

I want to ask you about another D-word that I think is related to the lack of policies that are going to make enough of a difference to save this planet. And that, of course, is doom. Climate doomerism. [One can call it demotivating]

Yeah. And doomism has actually been weaponized by bad actors to convince even environmentalists that, “Hey, it’s too late to do anything anyway, so you might as well just give up trying to solve the climate crisis.” People who are ostensible climate advocates and environmentalists insist that it’s too late, and we just have to accept our fate. There are events, like mass extinction events in the past, that some of these doomists will point to and say, “Look what happened to the dinosaurs, what happened during the so-called Great Dying 250 million years ago when 90 percent of all species died out because of a massive release of carbon into the atmosphere through an episode of massive volcanism, that’s happening today.” There are prominent actors in the climate space who are literally making this claim. And they’re doing so by misrepresenting what the record of Earth history actually tells us about those events. We are at a fragile moment. We’re not yet past the point of no return. But if we don’t take substantial action and do so immediately, then we are due for some of those potential worst-case scenarios. So it is still up to us.

20 Best Countries for Americans Who Want to Live Abroad

 Considering a life abroad?

You know, because of Trumpism, Christofascism, political and social turmoil, all kinds of reasons, are you........

Considering a life abroad?

Here are 20 of the best countries for expats to help you get started and practical steps to make your dreams a reality.

https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-tips/best-countries-for-american-expats

Not sure about THAT list, Canada comes in ONLY at #4 ?

AND Ghana is listed as a preferred destination????

This West African nation's diverse expat community continues to grow each year thanks to the friendly locals and the laid-back culture.

Well, ok then! 

BUT, regardless of what lists say which countries are preferred destinations for Americans who want to get out of Dodge, your list might be different.

Easy for me, I already live in my preferred destination. New Zealand would by #2.

BUT just for fun, if you were to leave the U.S. - which countries would YOU chose?