Eid is a Palestinian human rights activist. He lives in the West Bank.
Take DJT. He doesn’t learn from his mistakes. He wants revenge (“I am your retribution. I am your retribution.”) for anything (any mistakes) he’s made or that went wrong in his life.
The perfect example is the latest E. Jean Carroll case. That repeated mistake will cost him over $83 million. Will he learn from that mistake and not do it again? Or will there be a third Carroll “mistake?” Talk about the jury’s decision in the latest E. Jean Carroll trial.
How about you? Do you learn from your mistakes, or do you get revenge for your mistakes? How do you deal with mistakes you’ve made in your life?
Microsoft CEO calls for tech industry to ‘act’after AI photos of Taylor Swift
Satya Nadella spoke to Lester Holt about artificial intelligence and its ability to create deepfake images of others. After pictures of Taylor Swift circulated, he called for actionsMicrosoft CEO Satya Nadella has called on the tech industry to take action after viral AI pornographic photos of Taylor Swift circulated.
The tech leader expressed grave concern and urgency to do something now. He told Lester Holt in an interview set to air on NBC News Tuesday: "We have to act, and quite frankly all of us in the tech platform, irrespective of what your standing on any particular issue is - I think we all benefit when the online world is a safe world.”
Sometimes a single mutation in our genetic make-up is enough to cause disease. This is also the case with the autoimmune disease lupus. Lupus causes severe inflammation throughout the body and can have a serious impact on the lives of those affected. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin have now discovered a mechanism that can trigger lupus in children. This mechanism regulates the amount of a specific immune receptor that normally recognizes the genetic material of pathogens. If this mechanism is disrupted, receptors accumulate in the immune cells leading to the recognition of the body’s own genetic material. As a result, the immune system turns against its own body and causes the systemic inflammation of lupus. In collaboration with physicians from the Hospital of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the researchers were able to identify a lupus patient in whom this mechanism is disrupted by a single mutation.In order for the immune system to react quickly, a certain number of these receptors must be present in the immune cells. Cells maintain this balance by constantly producing and degrading receptors. “We wanted to understand what happens when this balance is disturbed,” explains group leader Olivia Majer.
During their work, Majers’ team became interested in a protein complex called BORC. The researchers were able to show that BORC is required to degrade Toll-like receptor 7 within the cell. In addition, BORC needs another protein, UNC93B1, to carry out the degradation process correctly. If there is an error in this process, the receptor is not degraded and accumulates in the immune cells. “From earlier experiments in mice carried out a few years ago at the University of Berkeley in California, we already knew that too many of these receptors are a problem,” explains Majer. A greater amount of receptor biases towards recognizing the body’s own genetic material. This leads to an immune response against self, a trigger for the autoimmune disease lupus. So far, however, neither BORC nor UNC93B1 have been associated with lupus in humans.
Testing for mutations in UNC93B1 could quickly become part of lupus treatment, opening up new approaches to therapy. In the past, doctors have mainly focused on suppressing inflammation with drugs. By targeting the mechanism that has now been discovered, it may be possible to prevent the inflammation from developing in the first place—and thus significantly reduce the disease burden for those affected.
Late last month, the Southern Baptist Convention settled a sex abuse lawsuit brought against a man named Paul Pressler for an undisclosed sum. The lawsuit was filed in 2017 and alleged that Pressler had raped a man named Duane Rollins for decades, with the rapes beginning when Rollins was only 14 years old.Pressler is one of the most important American religious figures of the 20th century. He and his friend Paige Patterson, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, are two of the key architects of the so-called conservative resurgence within the S.B.C.Both men are now disgraced. In 2018, the board of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary fired Patterson after it found that he’d grossly mishandled rape allegations ....Both were powerful men so brazen about their misconduct that it was an “open secret” in their respective worlds. Yet they were also so powerful that an army of enablers coalesced around them, protecting them from the consequences of their actions. A single individual can be a predator, but it takes a village to protect him from exposure and punishment.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Thursday took aim at former President Trump for pushing Republican lawmakers to oppose a border deal so that he could use the issue to campaign against President Biden in the 2024 presidential election.“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney said. “And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”
“But the reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border, and someone running for president ought to try to get the problem solved as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later,’” Romney continued.
Conservative Christians rage at “unnatural”TurboTax ad showing a loving gay couple“TurboTax is glorifying sin, and no sin should be honored,” the hate group wrote of the cute 30-second adThe anti-LGBTQ+ organization One Million Moms (OMM) has condemned a new, humorous 30-second advertisement from the income tax preparation software company TurboTax. OMM claims the ad, which features a male same-sex couple, tries to “push the gay lifestyle and redefine ‘family.'”
The ad features Doug and Andre, a mixed-race male couple who say they “navigated a turbulent housing market” by buying a “boater home,” a playful word for a houseboat that sounds similar to the word “motor home.”
OMM, which only has 108,000 social media followers on Facebook and X, has a habit of throwing a fit anytime any company anywhere publicly acknowledges the existence of queer people.
Their past moral outrage has been directed at Parents magazine for featuring a same-sex couple, an anti-smoking ad that mentioned erectile dysfunction, Highlights magazine for acknowledging gay people, Scholastic books for featuring LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books, the Roseanne reboot for featuring a non-binary child, a Disney cartoon series for its brief scene of two men kissing, a Zales jewelry commercial for featuring a lesbian couple, the fairy tale drama series Once Upon a Time for showing a lesbian kiss, a 30-second TV ad for featuring an affectionate male same-sex couple, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for featuring trans and nonbinary performers, and an ad showing a lesbian couple playing with their laundry.
And when it comes to his varied legal expenses — of which there are many — he tries to avoid spending his own money at all. Mr. Trump has tapped his political action committee’s coffers to pay for his own legal fees and other expenses stemming from his criminal indictments and civil trials. Yet $83.3 million eclipses the amount in his political accounts. The verdict on Friday will require Mr. Trump to reach into his own pocket.
Why You Were Not Invited to DavosOnce again, my invitation to the big shindig in Davos never arrived. Davos is the posh resort village in the Swiss Alps where some 3,000 global power elites gather every January for a weeklong, corporate-funded Schmooze-and-Booze-Fest to solve the world’s problems.
You and I are never invited to this confab, grandiosely titled “World Economic Forum.” That’s because (1) we’re not corporate or governmental VIPs, and (2) we might raise rude questions like, “Who the hell elected you plutocratic know-nothings and screw-ups to solve world problems – which you largely created?” See? We the People can’t be trusted to be polite.Indeed, the theme of this year’s forum is, “How Can We Rebuild Trust?” By “we,” they mean the Davos clique itself – the Wall Street bankers, Silicon Valley speculators, various oligarchs, industrial barons, billionaire campaign donors, labor abusers, war mongers, mass polluters, high-tech futurists, and other architects of… well, the mess we’re in.
In our country, only about 10 percent say democracy is working for most Americans today, with the Powers That Be not even trying to serve what the majority believes in, wants, and needs. Economic fairness, social justice, and equal opportunity – our society’s fundamental, unifying values – are being trampled by the greed of moneyed elites and the fear and hatred of small-minded ideological extremists. They squabble over even keeping our government operating and fritter away their time and credibility on crap that undermines public trust.
This is Jim Hightower saying… So, no, Davos crowd, you cannot “rebuild trust,” for no one can trust you. You could gain a real measure of credibility if your elite forum would do something truly significant for democracy, like taking corporate money out of our politics. That would make Davos historic. Otherwise, you’re just partying… and stroking your egos.
A renegade federal appeals court — one dominated by MAGA-aligned judges who routinely read the law in ways that even the current, very conservative Supreme Court finds untenable — has spent the last half-decade harassing DeRay Mckesson, a prominent civil rights activist and an organizer within the Black Lives Matter movement
As part of this crusade, two of the Fifth Circuit’s judges effectively eliminated the First Amendment right to organize a protest in a case known as Doe v. Mckesson.
Mckesson’s case has already been up to the Supreme Court once, and the justices strongly hinted in a 2020 opinion that the Fifth Circuit’s attacks on Mckesson’s First Amendment rights should end — labeling this case “fraught with implications for First Amendment rights.” But the Fifth Circuit did not take the hint, issuing a new opinion last July reaffirming its attack on First Amendment-protected political protests.
Now the case is before the Supreme Court again, and Mckesson’s lawyers want the justices to restore the First Amendment as fast as they possibly can.
The Oligarch Exemption For New Business Disclosure Rules
After a multimillion-dollar lobbying blitz, Wall Street firms got themselves exempted from anti-money-laundering requirements being imposed on small businessesAs of Jan. 1, small businesses must report who owns and controls the company to financial regulators or face stiff penalties. The disclosure is required under a new anti-money laundering law designed to curb tax fraud and terrorism financing.
But while mom-and-pop cafes and hardware store owners are now busy filling out the disclosure paperwork, many investment vehicles flagged by law enforcement agencies are exempted from those same disclosure rules after Wall Street firms spent millions lobbying on the matter.
Early versions of what became the Corporate Transparency Act did not include the special carve-out. But the final legislation had a line exempting pooled investment vehicles. That means venture capital funds, hedge funds and private equity funds are not required to report their ownership information, even though the FBI has said such opaque entities are among those used in criminal money laundering.
This loophole undermines “anticorruption, counterproliferation, and counterterrorism programs,” Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote in a 2022 letter to the Treasury Department and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is responsible for regulating the securities markets and protecting investors.
According to lobbying records, the American Investment Council (AIC), an advocacy organization for private equity firms, spent $22 million trying to influence legislators over the past decade. In the two years leading up to the passage of the Corporate Transparency Act — and its inclusion of the loophole — the group lobbied directly on the legislation and related matters. AIC later boasted that it “worked with Members of Congress and their staffs to help craft these exemptions.”
