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Post by mhbruin on Dec 26, 2022 9:36:09 GMT -8
An alcoholic tired to become a lawyer, but couldn't pass the bar.
The First 100 Days
A hundred days after they began, the longest running anti-government protests in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution have shaken the regime, but at a heavy cost to the people.
More than 500 protesters, including 69 children, have been killed, according to the Human Rights Activists' News Agency (HRANA). Two protesters have been executed and at least 26 others face the same fate, after what Amnesty International calls "sham trials".
Although nationwide demonstrations have swept Iran before - once in 2017 lasting until early 2018, and another in November 2019 - the current protests are unique, as they involve people from across society and women are taking a lead role under the slogan "Woman, Life, Freedom".
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 26, 2022 9:37:43 GMT -8
From Russia With Love
Right-wing Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) won a significant new fan — Kremlin state TV — for refusing to stand and applaud Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he spoke to Congress in Washington, D.C., last Wednesday.
It hailed her as “brave” for failing to honor Zelensky, who has led his nation against a bloody, brutal invasion by Russia. The broadcast also gave shout outs to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) and far-right Fox News host Tucker Carlson for dissing the leader considered a hero by his country.
To Russia With No Love
Three Russian military personnel have been killed from the debris of a Ukrainian drone that was shot down and fell on a military base deep inside Russia, the country’s defence ministry has said.
“On December 26, at about 01:35 Moscow time, a Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle was shot down at low altitude while approaching the Engels military airfield in the Saratov region,” the Russian Defence Ministry said on Monday.
“As a result of the fall of the wreckage of the drone, three Russian servicemen of the technical staff who were at the airfield were fatally wounded.”
The ministry added that aviation equipment was not damaged. Earlier on Monday, Roman Busargin, the governor of the Saratov region, said that civil infrastructure facilities were not damaged in the incident either.
The airbase, near the city of Saratov, sits about 730 kilometres (450 miles) southeast of Moscow, far from the front line of Russia’s war with Ukraine. But it was also hit on December 5 in what Moscow said was a attack by Ukrainian drones on two Russian air bases that day.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 26, 2022 9:39:12 GMT -8
The QOP Doesn't Want to Hear From You (Unless You Are Giving Money)
Republican-led legislatures are mounting an increasingly fierce battle to curb the ability of citizens and other lawmakers to place ballot measures — a move progressive groups say is explicitly aimed at making it difficult to give voters in red and purple states direct say over major issues such as abortion rights.
During legislative sessions in 2022, 109 bills were filed in state legislatures to alter the citizen-led ballot initiative process; 58 would explicitly have made the process more difficult, according to a review by the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which works with progressive organizations to help advance ballot measures. Republican legislators seeking to restrain the placement of such ballot initiatives — including ones that would amend state constitutions — have already pre-filed at least 11 such measures in at least three states ahead of 2023 legislative sessions that kick off in January and February, according to a review by NBC News.
Progressive groups — including organizations that advocate for reproductive rights, as well as the ballot initiative groups those organizations regularly work with — say the efforts are a direct response to the success of progressive ballot initiatives on issues like expanding Medicaid and raising the minimum wage.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 26, 2022 9:40:54 GMT -8
It's Not Our Imagination. SCOTUS Is Getting Suckier
As Republican nominees of archconservative Supreme Court yank back precedents of the last hundred years in an attempt to scrub American society of any rights that old-timey English witch-hunters or Colonial-era slaveholders would find distasteful, we've landed ourselves in a place where nobody's quite sure what is or isn't covered by United States law because court conservatives have been increasingly unwilling to bother with explaining it to us. Or, rather more urgently, to the lower courts who have been trying to piece together their rulings into a consistency that Justice Blackout Drunk or Justice Papal Seance haven't bothered to themselves provide.
It's nice to see judicial experts and reporters alike putting some real numbers to the problem, and The New York Times has a genuinely good(!) examination of the court's eagerness to change even their own internal processes in order to more efficiently arrive at the preferred conservative outcomes without argument or, increasingly, without waiting for lower court decisions in the first place.
The end result is not a deference to the executive branch, to Congress, to states, or to lower courts, the Times quotes from a Harvard Law Review examination of the record, "withdrawing power from all of them at once."
Some of the most useful data from the piece:
• The Roberts court has sided with the executive branch "just 35 percent of the time" in high-profile cases, "a rate more than 20 percentage points lower than the historical average."
• The Supreme Court is making a regular habit of plucking cases before federal appeals courts to be presented for arguments before the appeals courts have made rulings to begin with. "Before 2019, the court had not used the procedure for 15 years;" since 2019, the Roberts court has done it 19 times.
• "More than any other court in history," a new study finds, the Roberts court "uses its docket-setting discretion to select cases that allow it to revisit and overrule precedent."
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 26, 2022 9:45:47 GMT -8
It Was a Barry Good YearThere were other positive developments in 2022: ▪ Millions of Americans on social media realized — it took them a while, but they finally got there — that nobody wants to know how they did on “Wordle.” ▪ For the 13th consecutive year, the New York Yankees failed to even get into the World Series. ▪ Best of all, the looming apocalyptic threat of catastrophic global climate change was finally eliminated thanks to the breakthrough discovery that the solution — it has been staring us in the face all this time — was to throw food at art. Dave Barry Year in Review: 2022 was the opposite of good. But it had some positives
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 26, 2022 9:51:44 GMT -8
Pick a Side
Barack Obama wished his followers a very happy holiday Tuesday in a sweet post on Instagram.
“Enjoy the holiday season with the ones you love. Michelle and I wish you a very Merry Christmas!” he captioned the picture.
The photo showed the former president kissing a smiling Michelle Obama under the mistletoe.
No Photo of Previous Guy Kissing Previous Lady?
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 26, 2022 9:57:14 GMT -8
I want a new drug
One that won't make me sick
One that won't make me crash my car
Or make me feel three feet thickScientists have developed a drug that potently neutralizes SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 coronavirus, and is equally effective against the Omicron variant and every other tested variant. The drug is designed in such a way that natural selection to maintain infectiousness of the virus should also maintain the drug’s activity against future variants. The investigational drug was developed by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. As described in a report published on December 7 in the journal Science Advances, the drug is not an antibody, but a related molecule known as an ACE2 receptor decoy. Unlike antibodies, the ACE2 decoy is far more difficult for the SARS-CoV-2 virus to evade because mutations in the virus that would enable it to avoid the drug would also reduce the virus’s ability to infect cells. The Dana-Farber scientists found a way to make this type of drug neutralize coronaviruses more potently in animals infected with COVID-19 and to make it safe to give to patients. This report comes at a time when antibody drugs used to treat COVID-19 have lost their effectiveness because the viral spike protein has mutated to escape being targeted by the antibodies. Receptor “Decoy” Drug Neutralizes COVID-19 Virus Including Omicron and Other Variants
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 26, 2022 10:00:13 GMT -8
Here Comes Satan Claus
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 26, 2022 10:02:13 GMT -8
No Room At the Inn
Busloads of migrants were dropped over Christmas weekend near Vice President Kamala Harris' residence in Washington amid freezing temperatures, having traveled from the southwest border in Texas, immigrant aid groups said on Sunday.
Approximately 110-130 of the migrants seeking asylum in the United States, many of them families with children, were placed on buses by Texas officials, said Tatiana Laborde, managing director of SAMU First Response, a relief agency working with the city of Washington, D.C.
She said by phone that aid groups had been informed of their journey and awaited their arrival late on Saturday to hand out blankets and then transport them to a church in the city's Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Aides to Texas Governor Greg Abbott were not available to comment on whether the state coordinated their transportation.
What's Reflects the Christmas Spirit (or Tzedakah) Like Turning Away the Needy?
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 26, 2022 10:05:47 GMT -8
Toothless Joe Gets All His Dental Advice from TikTok
Dental DIY content has become so pervasive on TikTok in recent years that it has begotten a generation of dentist-influencers who built followings by reacting to botched dental care. The tag #DIYdentist has over 3 million views on the app.
The polished nature of social media can amplify viewers’ insecurities, especially if they don’t have access to affordable dental care. TikTok and YouTube are brimming with tutorials that promise the perfect smile, without the exorbitant cost of visiting a dentist without insurance. Many licensed dentists, orthodontists and oral surgeons, however, have expressed concern over the popularity of dental DIY content. Tutorials for unsafe bodily alterations abound online, and those involving teeth can result in permanent damage. Dental enamel doesn’t regenerate, so attempts to meet an already unattainable beauty standard can have lifelong consequences.
Dental DIY content is especially popular on TikTok. Many videos are relatively innocuous, like at-home teeth whitening “hacks” that are mild enough for people with sensitive teeth. Creators with technical backgrounds have posted about making their own dental gear, from an artist who made her own night guards to a creator who 3D-printed his own Invisalign. Other DIY practices that have gone viral include shaving down teeth with a nail file to make them appear straighter, wrapping office supply rubber bands around teeth to close gaps and removing braces at home with a spoon.
Tutorials for composite veneers, which use resin to cover and change the shape of teeth, are also popular. TikTok users have posted about taking two-day courses to learn how to apply veneers, without any other formal dental schooling.
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