Just passing along some neuroscience, FWIW

Article link.

Dendrites are the traffic lights of our nervous system. If an action potential is significant enough, it can be passed on to other nerves, which can block or pass on the message.

This is the logical underpinnings of our brain – ripples of voltage that can be communicated collectively in two forms: either an AND message (if x and y are triggered, the message is passed on); or an OR message (if x or y is triggered, the message is passed on).

In addition to the logical AND and OR-type functions, these individual neurons could act as 'exclusive' OR (XOR) intersections, which only permit a signal when another signal is graded in a particular fashion.

"Traditionally, the XOR operation has been thought to require a network solution," the researchers wrote.

Exactly how this new logic tool squeezed into a single nerve cell translates into higher functions is a question for future researchers to answer.

 Now I don't know what all this means exactly, but it sounds important. 👍

Vicious satire about DJT, the TTPK and the border “crisis”

This video was posted in a recent comment here. I went back and forth about whether to post it alone or at all. On the one hand it treats rank and file (R&F) TTKP voters with demeaning, brutal insults, e.g., racist, ignorant, gullible, stupid, disinformed. On the other hand, it directly calls out and nails the brutal, insulting, bad faith, cynical rhetoric that DJT and his elite TTKP defenders, supporters and enablers operate with to trap the minds of the loyal R&F. 

TTKP: Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party, formerly the Republican Party

One thing is clear from this vicious screed. This video, more than anything I have seen so far, makes clear (at least to me) that there is a huge gulf in understanding between most of the TTKP R&F and the elites who run it in “bad faith.” That is what tipped me to post this. The end of the speech, is a chant of exactly what is on the elite’s minds and what really motivates them to embrace authoritarianism: 

WEALTH & POWER!!  WEALTH & POWER!! WEALTH & POWER!!  

I assume that most of the TTKP R&F, maybe about 75%, have been deceived, manipulated and betrayed by dark free speech the corrupt authoritarian elites constantly spew. That is where the gulf in mindsets lies. Those elites have used decades of cynical, divisive dark free speech to prey on the innate base instincts that most people have but had kept in check before kleptocratic authoritarianism rose to take control of the TTKP and its mendacious (morally rotted), authoritarian messaging Leviathan.

Radical right lies about immigration

A major false argument that TTKP politicians and the American authoritarian radical right propaganda Leviathan, e.gf., Faux News, constantly assert is that immigrants cause crime. The messages are (1) we are not safe in our homes or on the streets, and to dehumanize the culprits, (2) filthy, savage (non-White, non-European) immigrants are to blame. This will be a major issue in the Nov. 2024 elections. If DJT wins, this will be one of the issues necessary to put him back in the White House. The WaPo writes (not behind a paywall):

Never mind that violent crime rates, especially for homicide in large cities, have fallen sharply during Biden’s presidency, after a surge during the pandemic. Trump, as he often did during his presidency, is using anecdotal evidence to make an emotional case against undocumented immigrants.

Trump is drawing on a long history of anti-immigrant rhetoric.

A 2020 study, published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed 200,000 congressional speeches and 5,000 presidential communications on immigration since 1880, when a wave of Chinese immigrants led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that barred Chinese laborers. When lawmakers spoke about immigration, their speeches were twice as likely as their speeches on other topics to mention words related to crime.

Moreover, the study found “stark differences” in how lawmakers discussed European and non-European groups, with “more implicitly dehumanizing metaphors” used to describe Chinese, Mexicans and other non-Europeans. “There is also a striking similarity in the use of explicit frames, with a greater emphasis on ‘crime,’ ‘labor,’ and ‘legality’ for the non-Europeans and less on ‘family,’ ‘contributions,’ ‘victims,’ and ‘culture,’” the study said.

Since the late 1970s, the study found a significant shift in the way Republicans talk about immigration; it is now as negative as it was in the 1920s, an era of strict immigration quotas. As for Trump, he was the first president whose immigration language was more negative than that of the average member of his own party.

But here’s the rub: There is little evidence that immigrants — or even undocumented immigrants — cause more crime. Still, there is enough ambiguity in the data — or so little hard data — that it’s difficult to point to conclusive findings that would change opinions.

There is strong evidence that all immigrants — in the United States legally or otherwise — are more law-abiding than native-born American citizens. Most immigrants are motivated to do well in their new country, especially if they bring skills that can enhance local economies, and so there is little incentive to break the law.

So when the TTKP falsely claims immigrants cause lots of crime, rest assured they are lying and slandering as usual. We will hear this slanderous lie over and over and over before the elections. Afterwards, the volume of the lie will quiet down a lot.

TTKP: the Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party, formerly the Republican Party

A Western rationale for supporting the Ukraine war

A deeply troubling article the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft published gets right to the point: 

Ukraine’s tragedies: A ‘good deal’ for some war supporters

It’s a cynical calculus for many in the West: Keep pumping money into the conflict as long as Ukrainians are the ones dying

For a conflict discussed in starkly moralistic terms, the ways the Ukraine war is talked about by its most enthusiastic Western supporters can be remarkably cynical about the human carnage involved.

“Aiding Ukraine, giving the money to Ukraine is the cheapest possible way for the U.S. to enhance its security,” Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of the Economist, recently told the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart. “The fighting is being done by the Ukrainians, they’re the people who are being killed.”

This view is not unique to Beddoes. It’s been widely expressed by those most in favor of an open-ended, prolonged war and most against the kind of peace negotiations that would shorten it.

“Four months into this thing, I like the structural path we're on here. As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person,” said Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) early into the war, accidentally voicing what the war’s critics have often said about the war — that the U.S. will fight it “to the last Ukrainian.” Later, Graham called it the “best money we’ve ever spent.”

“It is a relatively modest amount that we are contributing without being asked to risk life and limb,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Associated Press last year. “The Ukrainians are willing to fight the fight for us if the West will give them the provisions. It’s a pretty good deal.”

“I call that a bargain,” North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum has said about the war funding, pointing to the damage Ukrainian forces had inflicted on the Russian military.

“No Americans are getting killed in Ukraine. We’re rebuilding our industrial base. The Ukrainians are destroying the army of one of our biggest rivals. I have a hard time finding anything wrong with that,” U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) remarked.

Americans “should be satisfied that we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment,” wrote Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), because “for less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half,” and “all without a single American service woman or man injured or lost.”

But politicians aren’t the only armchair warriors who look at the enormous death and destruction suffered by Ukraine by prolonging the war as akin to a brilliant business decision. Hawkish think tanks have made similar arguments.

“When viewed from a bang-per-buck perspective, U.S. and Western support for Ukraine is an incredibly cost-effective investment,” Timothy Garten Ashe wrote for the weapons maker-funded Center for European Policy Analysis. “Support for Ukraine remains a bargain for American national security,” wrote Hudson Institute Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia Peter Rough. “For about 5 percent of total U.S. defense spending over the past 20 months, Ukraine has badly degraded Russia, one of the United States’ top adversaries, without shedding a single drop of American blood.”  

And major U.S. newspapers have likewise published similar perspectives. “We have a determined partner in Ukraine that is willing to bear the consequences of war so that we do not have to do so ourselves in the future,” former top George W. Bush officials Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates celebrated in the pages of the Washington Post.

“For all the aid we’ve given Ukraine, we are the true beneficiaries in the relationship, and they the true benefactors,” wrote Bret Stephens at the New York Times, pointing to the fact that NATO is paying in only money, while “Ukrainians are counting their costs in lives and limbs lost.”

Q: Are the assessments by elites that the war is a good deal for us because Russia weakens, Ukrainians die and we don’t the mark of responsible statecraft, brutal cynicism, or something else? 

News bits: USSC & DJT's immunity case; Powerful demagogue defends demagoguery; Gaza’s misery

Most or all major sources are reporting that the USSC has agreed to hear DJT’s ridiculous arguments that he is immune from prosecution. He is not. This is a win for DJT because it further delays his prosecutions and that further increases his chances of getting out of everything. Maddow on MSNBC commented:

“This is B.S.—you were doing this as a dilatory tactic to help your political friend,” says Rachel Maddow on the Supreme Court agreeing to hear the Trump immunity argument, delaying his coup trial. “And for you to say that this is something that the Court needs to decide because it’s something that’s unclear in the law is just flagrant, flagrant bullpucky.”

I expect the USSC to decide that DJT can be prosecuted for all crimes before (~80% confident), during and after his time in office. But the delay nonetheless significantly strengthens his legal and political positions. It gives the radical right authoritarian propagandists time to demagogue the issue into something it is not.

I interpret this move by the USSC as an intentional overt, political act made in bad faith to protect DJT as much as possible. Even if the USSC decides as I believe they should, that does not wipe away or in any way negate the deep moral rot of political partisanship that gave rise to this unjustifiable move in the first place. 

The court waited almost two weeks to issue its ruling on how it would proceed. That suggests there is some support for protecting DJT. The USSC says it will expedite the case. They do that by holding oral arguments on April 22. That fits my conception of delaying, not expediting. 

To make this clear, if the USSC had decided not to hear that case, it would have been a precedential decision that upholds the appeals court decision that DJT is not immune. Current prosecutions could then proceed without further delay. By taking up the case, the USSC could signal that there is something wrong with the appeals court holdings that needs to be corrected. Hence my 20% level of uncertainty about the outcome of this lawsuit.

But if the USSC does decide even a little in DJT’s favor, we are probably in immediate, deadly serious trouble with no way out short of a civil war or something pretty close to it. Biden is incapable of rising to the occasion here, even if he did have the power to do something meaningful. I am not sure that he has any power to do anything, alone. TTKP members in congress will defend DJT to the death, so bipartisanship on this is close to impossible and highly unlikely. We will face our corrupt Christian nationalist, plutocratic fate mostly undefended. 

TTKP: the Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party, formerly the Republican Party

_________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________

TechCrunch writes about social media platform X suing a research organization that studies online misinformation and hate speech: 

X goes to court in Elon Musk’s war against an anti-hate research org

Elon Musk’s crusade against the extremism research organization the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) will have its day in court on Thursday.

Elon Musk’s X sued the CCDH last year, accusing it of “actively working to assert false and misleading claims about X.” The nonprofit, formed in 2018, conducts research on social media platforms to track hate speech, extremism and misinformation. Its reports are regularly picked up by news organizations, TechCrunch included.

After Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the CCDH published reports about rising hate speech on X and how unbanned accounts, including neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, stood to make the company millions in ad revenue.

On Thursday, the CCDH will make a case for why X’s lawsuit is frivolous and runs afoul of the state’s anti-SLAPP law, which was created to kill litigation intended to intimidate or silence critics. X will defend the validity of its lawsuit, which also accuses the CCDH of illegally scraping data and violating its terms of service through Brandwatch, a social media monitoring tool.

This is an important case. If Musk wins, demagoguery, lies, hate and crackpottery win, while democracy, civil liberties and truth lose.

_________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________

A NYT opinion comments (not behind paywall): 

Standing over a tiny bundle wrapped in a sheet on a hospital bed, a young father drapes his hand across his face in despair. Mousa Salem, a Gaza photographer who videotaped this sad tableau and sent it to me, said the sheet swaddled 2-month-old Mohamed al-Zayegh, who died on Friday in Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza City. “Nutrition? What nutrition?” a staff member in scrubs says in the video. “The mother gave birth to him during the war.”

“The health of the mother affects the health of the baby,” he added. “This is very well known in the science of medicine and health. And all of this piled on the child and he got sick, he has a weak immune system. “

Another infant, 2-month-old Mahmoud Fattouh, died of malnutrition on Friday at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, according to Al Jazeera, which cited a news agency thought to be close to Hamas. “The baby has not been fed any milk for days,” a paramedic who took the child to the hospital said in a video verified by Al Jazeera.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the head of the pediatric department of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said this month he was seeing a number of deaths among children, especially newborns. “Signs of weakness and paleness are apparent on newborns because the mother is malnourished,” he said.

Reports of death by starvation are difficult to verify from a distance. The hunger in Gaza is caused but also partly hidden by a pitiless war that has obliterated hospitals, flooded morgues and damaged communication networks, leaving us to cobble together what’s happening from scraps of information.

That speaks for itself. Also, the death toll in Gaza passed 30,000. That is reported to be a conservative body count. 

Sources for news

 Quick question:

My last wise and thoughtful thread

https://dispol.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-wheels-of-justice-turn-slowly.html

Linked stories to....

https://lawandcrime.com/

I also have often spoken about getting some of my news and opinions on the radio from.....

https://www.siriusxm.ca/channels/potus-politics/

AND I know some (not going to mention any names) get their news and opinions from Leftist publications like NY Times and Wapo.  

😏

That brings to mind, YOUR sources. Where do you PREFER to get your news from? WHERE out of the MSM do YOU go to get differing views? And wise and thoughtful suggestions?