Major neuroscience update: Zeroing in on ways to measure and characterize cognition

A new research paper discusses an absolutely amazing aspect of cognition in the brain. In essence, when engaged in significant cognitive effort, like listening to a story, the brain compresses a huge amount of information into a small set of electrical signals. 

One author described the stunning degree of data compression like this: “If human language was similarly efficient, I’d be able to tell you the details of every Wikipedia article just by speaking a dozen or so words.” That has to be either a gross exaggeration, or the high degree of compression is incomprehensible to me. I do not see how this can be remotely possible.

If this research holds up on replication, it is mind-blowing.  PsyPost reports:

A new neuroimaging study reveals that when we engage in more complex cognitive tasks, our brain activity becomes not only richer in detail but also more streamlined. The findings suggest that the brain adjusts its patterns of activity to match the demands of the task, allowing for more efficient processing during mentally challenging activities.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was driven by a desire to understand how the brain manages different cognitive demands. Previous research by the same team had revealed the brain’s remarkable ability to reconstruct missing data from minimal measurements, raising questions about why the brain can generate such detailed and efficient activity patterns with limited input.

“Several years ago, my co-author and graduate student at the time, Lucy Owen, and I came out with a precursor to this study, where we found something very surprising,” explained study author Jeremy Manning, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth College and director of the Contextual Dynamics Lab.

“At the time, we were working with neurosurgical patients who had electrodes implanted in their brains to monitor for seizure activity. A challenge with working with those recordings is that our brains contain roughly a hundred billion neurons, but we can only safely implant around a few hundred wires into someone’s brain. So there is a massive undersampling problem: for every measurement we take, we miss roughly a billion others! We wanted to understand how much of that ‘missing’ data we could reliably and accurately reconstruct using statistical ‘hacks.'”

“We were very surprised to find that just a few hundred measurements from an essentially random sampling of locations throughout someone’s brain could give us enough information to fill in an accurate guess about activity patterns throughout their entire brain, at millimeter-scale resolutions (roughly on par with the best fMRI available today), but at millisecond-scale sampling rates (roughly 1000 times faster than fMRI),” Manning said. “If human language was similarly efficient, I’d be able to tell you the details of every Wikipedia article just by speaking a dozen or so words.”

To assess the informativeness and compressibility of brain activity, the researchers used advanced computational techniques. They measured informativeness by analyzing how much specific information about the task was reflected in participants’ brain activity. Compressibility, on the other hand, was evaluated by examining how efficiently the brain’s activity patterns could be represented using fewer components or data points. A highly compressible brain pattern is one in which fewer pieces of information are needed to reconstruct the full activity.

“In the world of machine learning, the ability to reconstitute a detailed pattern from its parts is called ‘compression,'” Manning told PsyPost. “Highly compressible patterns can be accurately rebuilt from just a tiny sliver, like reconstructing the complete text of a novel from just a single word. Another related property is called ‘informativeness.’ This refers to how ‘expressive’ a sequence of patterns is– akin to the length of a novel.”

The researchers uncovered two key findings. First, brain activity was more informative and compressible when participants engaged in the more demanding task of listening to a coherent story compared to the scrambled story or resting conditions. This suggests that during higher-level cognitive tasks, the brain produces detailed, information-rich activity that is also organized efficiently. In simpler tasks, or during rest, the brain’s activity is less organized and contains less specific information.

Second, the study found that these brain patterns became more informative and compressible over time as participants continued to listen to the coherent story. As the narrative unfolded, the brain seemed to adapt by refining and optimizing its activity patterns. This pattern was less pronounced in the scrambled conditions, where the lack of a coherent structure in the story likely led to less mental engagement and, consequently, less organization in the brain’s activity.

“Going into this study, we would have guessed that ‘compression’ and ‘informativeness’ would have changed in opposite directions,” Manning said. “That would be analogous to either being able to reconstruct short novels from just a few words (perhaps under certain cognitive circumstances — representing high compressibility but low informativeness), or being able to reconstruct longer novels from more words (perhaps under different circumstances — representing low compressibility and high informativeness). Finding that compression and informativeness change in the same direction helped us to understand that these two aspects of how our brains respond can vary independently from each other.” 

“We looked at data from a little over 100 participants, using one set of experimental conditions, and using one method for measuring brain activity,” Manning noted. “Although it is tempting to generalize to ‘all humans and circumstances,’ the true test of these findings, as with any study, will be in how well they replicate and generalize.”  

“We are deeply curious about understanding fundamental questions about how our brains work, and what makes us ‘us.’ This line of work is a tiny part of a much broader literature aimed at uncovering the neural basis of thought,” Manning said. “My website is www.context-lab.com. It has links to all of my lab’s publications, data, and software, along with some open courses that could be of interest to people who want to learn more about this stuff.”

In their research paper (behind a paywall), the authors describe the significance of their research like this:

How our brains respond to ongoing experiences depends on what we are doing and thinking about, among other factors. We examined two fundamental aspects of brain activity under different cognitive circumstances: informativeness and compressibility. Informativeness refers to how specific the brain activity we measure at a given moment is to whatever was being done in that particular moment. Compressibility is a measure of how redundant the activity patterns are. We found that when people were engaged in higher-level cognitive tasks, their brain activity was both more informative and more compressible than when they were engaged in lower-level tasks. Our findings suggest that our brains flexibly reconfigure themselves to optimize different aspects of how they function according to ongoing cognitive demands. 

So, this paper is saying that during high-level cognition (high cognitive load), the brain dynamically, i.e., cognitive load-sensing, produces detailed, information-rich activity that is organized and compressed with astounding efficiently. The effect was more pronounced in higher-order brain networks associated with complex functions like decision-making and memory. 

As participants continued engaging in a complex task like listening to a coherent story, brain patterns became more informative and compressible over time. That suggests the brain adapts and optimizes data process while engaging in a significantly cognitive loaded task. In essence, the brain's data compression ability seems to become more efficient and effective during complex, engaging cognitive tasks, allowing for rich information processing while maintaining compressible, organized activity patterns.

This research challenges the researchers' initial hypothesis that informativeness and compressibility would trade off against each other. Instead, they both change in the same direction during complex cognitive tasks. That is counterintuitive, at least to me. That alone ought to prompt real quick testing in other labs this to see if these results replicate and get either verified or debunked.

Germaine mental status: Mind blown

One of the tyrant things tyrant-kleptocrat DJT will do if he gets re-elected: Pervert justice

 The NYT reports (not paywalled) about what DJT tried to do to his enemies while he was in office. We can reasonably expect he will do the same again if re-elected, but this time with a lot less restraints and an even more enraged vengeance:  

As President, Trump Demanded Investigations of Foes. 

He Often Got Them.

He has threatened to target his perceived enemies if elected again. A look at his time in the White House shows how readily he could do so.

It was the spring of 2018 and President Donald J. Trump, faced with an accelerating inquiry into his campaign’s ties to Russia, was furious that the Justice Department was reluctant to strike back at those he saw as his enemies.

In an Oval Office meeting, Mr. Trump told startled aides that if Attorney General Jeff Sessions would not order the department to go after Hillary Clinton and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, Mr. Trump would prosecute them himself.

Recognizing the extraordinary dangers of a president seeking not just to weaponize the criminal justice system for political ends but trying as well to assume personal control over who should be investigated and charged, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, sought to stall.

“How about I do this?” Mr. McGahn told Mr. Trump, according to an account verified by witnesses. “I’m going to write you a memo explaining to you what the law is and how it works, and I’ll give that memo to you and you can decide what you want to do.”

The episode marked the start of a more aggressive effort by Mr. Trump to deploy his power against his perceived enemies despite warnings not to do so by top aides. And a look back at the cases of 10 individuals brings a pattern into clearer focus: After Mr. Trump made repeated public or private demands for them to be targeted by the government, they faced federal pressure of one kind or another.

The broad outlines of those episodes have been previously reported. But a closer examination reveals the degree of concern and pushback against Mr. Trump’s demands inside the White House.

And it highlights how closely his expressed desires to go after people who had drawn his ire were sometimes followed by the Justice Department, F.B.I. or other agencies. Even without his direct order, his indirect influence could serve his ends and leave those in his sights facing expensive, time-consuming legal proceedings or other high-stress inquiries.

Nearly four years after Mr. Trump left office, a more complete picture of how Mr. Trump’s critics and rivals came to be scrutinized by the government is emerging from interviews and court records.

Mr. Trump sought to use the government to go after four broad categories of perceived enemies and critics.

One was F.B.I. officials, whom he sought to portray as biased or corrupt as they investigated him. Another was political rivals, whom he sought to tar with allegations of the same kind of wrongdoing, like collusion with foreign countries, that he was under investigation for.

He also wanted government power deployed against news organizations that produced coverage he did not like, as well as against people from his personal and business life he felt had betrayed him.

The NYT article is long and has some examples of DJT's authoritarian moral rot. Two points for consideration:

• Most of the MAGA rank and file (my guess, about 99.5%) will either (i) never become aware of information like this and thus it will have no impact on their votes in November, or (ii) become aware of what DJT did but will reject that reality as communist Dem/liberal/MSM lies, or rationalize it into less importance compared to how evil and tyrannical Harris and the Dems would be.

• This information, coupled with everything else, will lead very few or no MAGA elites (mostly corrupt authoritarians) to change their vote for DJT -- most MAGA elites already know all about all the nasty business that DJT did. They heartily approve and are looking with hopeful anticipation of a lot of purging and jailing of opponents to come. 👍 

Elite MAGA thugs

Hm, Matt Gaetz, naughty newt, proud sex pervert and 

prominent, MAGA respected & approved thug MAGA elite

MAGA seal of approval

Matt Gaetz accused in new court filings of attending drug-fueled sex party with teen -- The sworn affidavits contain details that previously only existed as rumors, according to a new report

Even the Hindus are shocked 😮: 

Matt Gaetz attended drug-fueled sex party with 17-yr-old girl, court docs claim

As expected, Gaetz denies the charges as all good MAGA elites do when accused of lawbreaking, 

corrupt sleaze, lying, pedophilia, murder, fornication, tax evasion, wife beating, etc.

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Reporting about DJT and other fun-filled MAGA-approved/inspired activities:

A dramatic rise in pregnant women dying in Texas after abortion ban

Trump’s Electoral College Power Play in Nebraska Is a Troubling Sign of Things to Come | He’s already pressuring lawmakers to change the rules in his favor. Imagine if he loses.

Trump to women: Stop ‘thinking about abortion.’ You’re broke and depressed, but I can make you happy (😱)

New Docs Reveal Horrific Extent of Matt Gaetz’s Creepy Sex Scandal

Mark Cuban says Trump's billionaire backers know they can manipulate him because he's 'so transactional, and so devoid of core values'

Is Donald Trump a fascist?

Election-Deniers' Georgia Scheme Is Going Exactly According To Plan | The MAGA fanatics who hijacked the election board just passed a ballot-counting measure that could royally f*ck things up.

Donald “Blame the Jews” Trump Is Truly Losing His Sh*t Now

Etc.

A MAGA storm is 

coming

Personal musings about essentially contested concepts and rationality

In my opinion, "rationality" in politics is an essentially contested concept . If so, at least as applied to politics, a definition will never be universally agreed on. The Google definition, the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic, itself is circular/flawed. My new friend Perplexity agrees with me that "rationality" is an essentially contested concept (ECC). For politics, "reason" is also an ECC. So are concepts like reasonable, open-mindedness, fairness, true truths, the rule of law and lots of other concepts common in politics, sometimes including, "constitutional", as in that is (or isn't) constitutional.

In view of the human messiness, my personal definition of rationality constitutes a description of an ideal to strive for. Specifically, my definition of rationality for politics is, more or less (and subject to revision or correction), that it is a state of mind consisting of (i) some non-trivial degree of self-awareness of human cognitive biology and social behavior such as unconscious biases and personal moral beliefs, (ii) a reasonable degree of open-mindedness and acceptance of (all three are essentially contested) toward inconvenient facts (not essentially contested among rational people -- see the circularity in that?), true truths (essentially contested) and sound reasoning (essentially contested), and (iii) reasonable adherence (contested) to a personal moral framework. 

See how messy that is? That, coupled with personal agendas among the elites, is mostly why politics is so damned messy.  ECCs shoot through about all or nearly all of politics. It is a freaking human plague. ECCs arise from the human brain-mind that came from evolution. Disagreements over ECCs lead to or underpins the "rationality" of wars, savagery, good things, stupid things and just about all other kinds of human behavior and disagreement.

In time, I came to understand and internalize what an ECC is and what it does to people, and their minds and politics. That understanding significantly changed how I viewed politics, individual humans acting alone and humans acting in various groups, e.g., families, clans, tribes, cults, and nations. My understanding of ECCs also made me aware of how powerful and effective dark free speech is in the hands of a talented demagogue. Demagoguery relies heavily on appeal to ECCs that the demagogue defines in ways that serve the demagogue's personal agenda, usually ideological supremacy and/or crass personal lust for lots of wealth and power. A demagogue's appeals are usually irrational and/or based on false information. 

For me, stumbling across the concept of the ECC was a major personal epiphany. Applying it to rationality was fun.

How philosophy wonks define

"bounded rationality"

As we all know, Herbert Simon introduced the term ‘bounded rationality’ (Simon 1957b: 198; see also Klaes & Sent 2005) as a shorthand for his brief against neoclassical economics and his call to replace the perfect rationality assumptions of homo economicus with a conception of rationality tailored to cognitively limited agents.

Hey!! Is that yahoo calling me a cognitively limited agent??

Them's fightin' words!

If the Dems really want to win the election........

 They just have to post the following comments on every social media outlet, on every billboard, put it into every ad, and make NO commentary about the following comments, because they speak for  themselves. 

Thoughts about ill-will in American politics

Rhetoric from MAGA (America's authoritarian radical right) consists almost completely of ill-will toward its opposition.[1] There is a lot of evidence to support that assertion. In view of the evidence, one can see that as being a fact, not mere opinion. For example, JD Vance recently publicly said that he will lie to the public as a means to draw attention to all the horrible things being done to the Americans people. He did not specify what the horrible things are or why lies were necessary to get the job done, when facts and reason work just fine for sane people.* He used that "reasoning" to justify vicious lies about falsely alleged illegal Haitian immigrants (they are not illegal) eating house pets (none have been eaten). That clearly consists of both lies and Great Replacement Theory racism. 

* One can reasonably believe that Vance sees himself, DJT and the MAGA movement generally as populated by sane people. If asked, that is what he will say.

In malicious mendacity like that, where is the good ill or good faith? There is none as far as I can tell. There is cynical ill-will for sure, but where is the good will? 

The same argument can be leveled at the MAGA rank and file. Many or most of them have been argued to joyfully revel in the discomfort and pain their arrogant lies, racism, bigotry and slanders inflict on innocent targets. From my blog post yesterday:

MAGA likes inflicting pain on its political enemies. It likes and enjoys creating these ridiculous and absurd memes. It loves to provoke people who are on the outside. It’s part of the joy of this MAGA movement that can include this extreme aggression online. The people who are in on the joke [Haitians eating dogs and cats in Springfield Ohio], the core MAGA people who are pushing the memes out, look, if it’s true, great. If it’s not true, who cares? They’re having a good time.

From what I can tell, there is a lot of truth in that argument. Much of the MAGA rank and file seems to be having a darned good time, or at least they act that way. Listen to them talk. They like pissing off attacked and slandered people and groups.

In response to all the ill-will, joyful or not, what reactions among the lied to, slandered, attacked and crackpotted upon are fair and reasonable? From what I can tell from science and personal experience, emotional and moral impulses give rise to most of the reactions among groups and individuals that MAGA attacks, insults, lies and slanders. As usual, the range of responses is quite broad, probably ranging from boredom and/or indifference to seething outrage and/or intense fear.

Some argue that the center and left are not sufficiently empathetic toward MAGA compared to other groups. Well, isn't that to be expected? Sure it is. Most attacked and/or insulted people will tend to emotionally distance themselves from attackers in emotional/moral self-defense. In those situations, negative feelings like anger and resentment toward abusers will override empathy for many or most people. In these moral assessments, one needs to be cognizant of who is the attacker and who is the attacked. 

I have experienced exactly that kind of self-defense and democracy defense response. Early on, e.g., 2016 to about 2018, I had some empathy for the rank and file. I accorded the MAGA rank and file less moral responsibility for supporting DJT, because I saw them as deceived, manipulated and betrayed by MAGA dark free speech. I accorded MAGA elites ~85% of the blame and ~15% to the rank and file back then. But now after years of accumulating evidence proving that DJT is extremely dangerous and thoroughly morally rotted (and a convicted felon), I accord the rank and file 45% of the blame and the elites 55%. Although blame assessment in politics for things like this is mostly a subjective assessment, maybe I should nudge the blame estimate to ~50:50.

When it comes to the MAGA rank and file, I lost my empathy. In my opinion, mostly amounts to just being a sane human being under attack.

Q: Is it reasonable or morally justifiable to lose empathy for all of MAGA, elites and rank and file, in the face of a perceived deadly MAGA attack that is grounded mostly in ill-will, was unprovoked and is implacably opposed to my core moral values?***

*** My core moral political values: support for and belief in pluralistic, secular democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, fact, true truth, sound reasoning, etc.

Footnote:

1. What about ill-will from the left aimed at the right and center? Yes, some liberals express ill-will toward conservatives and/or the very different MAGA wealth and power movement.* Examples include, stereotyping and insulting language, e.g., "idiot[s] out on the farm", uneducated, racist, homophobic. How prevalent that is in the non-MAGA world is unclear. But the prevalence of ill-will is shown by overwhelming rank and file MAGA support for DJT. That is quantified by opinion polls. One cannot rationally, or in good faith, argue that support for Harris and Dem politicians amounts too a mindset as about equally driven by ill-will as minds that support MAGA.

* Real pro-democracy conservatives are not MAGA -- they have left the GOP or been RINO hunted out by some combination of the elites and the rank and file. The rank and file, not the elites, voted Liz Cheney out of power.

Is liberal ill-will qualitatively and quantitatively about the same as MAGA ill-will? From what I can tell, most conservatives do not convey nearly the same level of ill will and mendacity that MAGA does. Fact-checkers provide significant evidence of ill-will in the MAGA movement. In my firm opinion, lies** and slanders are direct evidence of ill-will. And to me, lies are direct evidence of moral rot, ranging from mild immorality to flat out evil. Political lies aimed at political opposition tend to, probably usually do, attack and/or insult the target. 

** Lies are intentional and knowing, unlike honest mistakes that are unknowingly based on false information, insufficient information (ignorance), or unintentionally flawed reasoning. 

My emotional and moral assessment:

Lies = ill-will and ranging from immoral to evil

Honest mistakes = good will and moral

One commentator about the joy of being MAGA; Miscellaneous

NYT columnist David French opines (not paywalled) on how he currently sees the enormous appeal of DJT to the MAGA rank and file. French lives in rural Tennessee, surrounded by MAGA people, so he has a metric buttload (50 butt-tons) of relevant personal experience. He writes:

To understand MAGA, we have to understand the joy and sense of belonging that the movement bestows upon its adherents. .... The lie that Haitian immigrants are eating pets — appeal to his followers’ “sense of gleeful transgression.”

If you’re on the outside, your experience with MAGA is all of the anger projected outward. So you see MAGA as almost entirely an angry movement.

MAGA likes inflicting pain on its political enemies. It likes and enjoys creating these ridiculous and absurd memes. It loves to provoke people who are on the outside. It’s part of the joy of this MAGA movement that can include this extreme aggression online.

The people who are in on the joke [Haitians eating dogs and cats in Springfield Ohio], the core MAGA people who are pushing the memes out, look, if it’s true, great. If it’s not true, who cares? They’re having a good time.

Clip of TikTok: I don’t know about you, but I’m Voting Donald Trump, baby.

Clip of Donald Trump Jr.: “You know, honestly, I’m waiting for Merrick Garland to indict my father for being part of an assassination. You know, that’s what’s next.”

Jesse Watters: “It’s a conspiracy.”

They’re trashing our body politic. They’re wrecking, in many ways, the G.O.P., but they are having a good time and hey, the people they’re making mad, they don’t like them anyway.

And you might think for a minute that, well, wait, this can’t go on forever. Surely, surely the majority of Republicans, when they know they’ve been had, when they know these are lies, will stop paying attention to these memes. They’ll reject this method.

And the really sad answer is that the Republican response to Jan. 6 and the Big Lie showed us the tolerance that Republicans have for dishonesty and for lying if it is directed against their hated Democratic enemies. (emphasis added)

The opinion touches on two other joyful MAGA crackpot memes, one of which is exuberant fun with non-existent election fraud now that early voting has started in some places.

So, there we have it from one commentator: MAGA folks are just having fun and don't care about truth. Since they don't like the rest of us anyway, so why should they give a fig about truth or lies? It's all just good clean fun at our expense. C'mon people, lighten up!

French: They’re wrecking, in many ways, the G.O.P. 

Response: What?? The GOP has been wrecked in many ways at least since 2016. Wrecked puts it waaay too mildly. Blown to smithereens is closer to the mark.

Once again an uncontrollable compulsion to ask about moral responsibility for adult American citizens bubbles up from the bowels of my unconsciousness.  

Q: If what French writes is mostly correct, and most of the MAGA rank and file (i) really is having joyous fun at our expense and at the expense of targeted groups, e.g., falsely accused Haitian immigrants who are allegedly illegal immigrants eating people's dogs and cats, (ii) does not like us, (ii) does not care about truth or lies, and (iv) will vote for the lying, fornicating, pussy-grabbing, kleptocratic dictator-thug and convicted felon DJT, are these MAGA folks just good, honest people and patriots who deserve our respect and good will? Or, it is time to call a spade a spade, and openly speak the actual truth that most of the MAGA rank and file is bigoted, pro-dictator and a dangerous but joyful enemy of American democracy, and people like you and me who oppose DJT and his radical kleptocratic authoritarianism? 

Q: Once again, is Germaine off his rocker, over the top, insanely deluded by identity politics, hoodwinked by pragmatic rationalist hyper-partisanship, or otherwise beguiled and missing the mark?

Darned Germaine and his double darned pragmatic rationalism . . . . grumble, grumble . . . . . darn it.

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A peanut from the gallery commenting on the faux horror of dogs and cats being eaten in Ohio: The campaign seems to have stumbled into a strange unintended message: “Let’s go to war with Taylor Swift to stop Haitians from eating dogs.” At least that's less worrisome than their other stated goals. (good point, peanut)

WaPO: Why Big Tobacco is betting on Trump -- As the industry fights a ban on menthol cigarettes, a Reynolds American subsidiary has become the largest corporate donor to the main pro-Trump super PAC  (good 'ole brass knuckles capitalism -- it supports a dictator-kleptocrat as long as its profits are protected and to hell with public health, honest government, democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, the environment, etc.)

WaPo: Hezbollah leader says device attacks are an ‘act of war,’ as Israeli warplanes fly over Beirut -- In his first remarks since thousands of electronic devices exploded across the country, Hasan Nasrallah said that Hezbollah suffered “a major blow,” but that his forces would not stop attacking Israel as long as the war in Gaza continued -- “The enemy transgressed all boundaries and redlines,” Nasrallah said in a widely anticipated speech Thursday evening local time about the attacks, which killed at least 37 people and injured nearly 3,000 when pagers, walkie-talkies and other devices exploded simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday across Lebanon. The attacks were “a major assault on Lebanon, its security and sovereignty, a war crime — an act of war,” he added, and they dealt an “unprecedented blow” to Hezbollah and Lebanon. (Hm, the stench of another new war is in the air . . . . Hezbollah complaining about transgressing all boundaries and redlines? Ha, that's the pot calling the kettle black -- leaders in the Middle East are all stupid, spoiled, corrupt monsters)

WaPo on demagogic dictatorship: Putin wants Russia’s youth to become ultranationalist patriots. Many are all in. -- Young Russians are embracing Kremlin propaganda, reshaping the Ukraine war narrative with ultranationalist views and seeing themselves as patriotic truth defenders.  (Hm, the stench of fascism is in the air . . . . Putin is turning Russian children into vicious monsters -- once again, witness the power of dark free speech)

Enthusiastic little Russian patriots training

to genocide (the verb) the Ukrainians to death

The Independent: Trump claims audience ‘went crazy’ for him at his debate with Harris – but there was no audience -- Donald Trump appeared on Fox News show Gutfeld! to talk about his September 10 debate with Kamala Harris -- Trump referred to the nonexistent audience. “And the audience was absolutely– they went crazy,” he said.
 (good 'ole Faux News, always a reliable source of bullshit, lies, slanders, crackpottery and more lies and slanders, just like DJT is a good source for the same)

Salon: Georgia's abortion ban killed a young mother. The Christian right now blames the victim -- Anti-choice activists argue that if Amber Nicole Thurman had submitted to forced childbirth, she'd still be alive -- Republicans and Christian right activists don't want to take responsibility for the loss of this healthy young mother of a 6-year-old boy. Instead, they're casting blame on everyone else: the doctors in the Georgia hospital, abortion providers in North Carolina, and, though they will deny doing so, they're blaming Thurman herself. Thurman chose abortion. They're blaming her choice for her death. (I bet that forced birth supporters knew this day was coming and had their response to blame the dead woman planned in advance -- they knew the day would come when they would need to try to get ahead of criticism of their brutal forced birth laws -- good  'ole Christian nationalism, its as cruel and brutal as it is kleptocratic)

LGBQT Nation writes about the authoritarian MAGA wealth and power movement going from He did not say what he said, to Us MAGA politicians did not do what we just did: GOP senator rages at CNN host because she correctly said his party blocked the IVF protection bill -- He claimed that the IVF bill would give fertility treatments to trans women in his bizarre and angry rant x (Good grief! Treating trans women? The horror, the horror . . . . .)

Memory lane: Those were simpler,

happier times

Happy days: A supreme court 

nominee hearing in the US senate