The cycles of nature remind us that good things do not happen all at once. Everything we see now is a result of billions of years of step-by-step changes. Our ancestors invented good and evil, which Nature knows nothing of. But we use the processes of nature to overcome evil, including our own, all the time.
We call that karma. It’s coming around again.
Regular Good News
Texas Lists Two Critical Pollinator Flowers as Endangered Species, Practically Guaranteeing Milkweed Recovery
The bracted twistflower has been diminishing due to Texas’ urban sprawl for years, but now 1,600 acres in the four counties of Uvalde, Medina, Bexar, and Travis, have been designated critical habitat and therefore untouchable.
Found in the hill country, now only in two areas, the twistflower needs a mix of shade and sun provided by the natural mix of trees there such as live oaks and junipers. It is a common food source for Texas bee species.
They did the same for prostrate milkweed earlier. This program has a 99% success rate.
TED2023 Kicks Off with Good News
Good News This Week: Mushrooms, Beer, & Free Haircuts - April 15 2023
Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Location intelligence shines a light on disinformation
However, today’s disinformation actors use social media to amplify disinformation that users knowingly or, more often, unknowingly perpetuate. Such disinformation spreads quickly, threatening public health and safety. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic and recent global elections have given the world a front-row seat to this form of modern warfare.
A group at ORNL now studies such threats thanks to the evolution at the lab of location intelligence, or research that uses open data to understand places and the factors that influence human activity in them. In the past, location intelligence has informed emergency response, urban planning, transportation planning, energy conservation and policy decisions. Now, location intelligence at ORNL also helps identify disinformation, or shared information that is intentionally misleading, and its impacts.
Pressley, Markey reintroduce bill to end qualified immunity
The Ending Qualified Immunity Act would restore Americans’ ability to obtain relief when state and local officials, including police officers, violate citizens’ legal and constitutional rights by explicitly stating that the police officers that violate these rights are not protected from civil liability.
The act was originally introduced in June 2020 Pressley and former Rep. Justin Amash (L-Mich.) following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
The qualified immunity doctrine, which the Supreme Court passed [ruled on] in 1967, disallows police officers from being put on trial for unlawful conduct, including the use of excessive or deadly force, unless the person suing proves both that the conduct was unlawful, and the officers knew they were violating “clearly established” law.
But the doctrine contradicts the Ku Klux Klan Act, enacted by Congress in 1871, which was passed to allow lawsuits against state and local authorities who refused to protect African Americans from or participated in lynchings and other acts of racial violence.
Thus cops could, and still can to some extent, continue to carry out lynchings under color of law.
Fear, Rage, and Hate
With bogus moral panics. As ever, whatever they scream about loudest we can do more of, and we can name names and GOTV, too.
Abortion in Congress
Senate GOP fails to block abortion care at VA hospitals
Chyron on All in with Chris Hayes, and The Hill headline.
Abortion in the Courts
The current SCOTUS stay on the Texas and Fifth Circuit rulings on mifepristone runs out tomorrow. I make no predictions on what comes next.
Supreme Court extends access to abortion drug until Friday
The U.S. Supreme Court originally planned to weigh in on the abortion pill case by Wednesday night, but extended the hold on the Amarillo ruling until Friday at midnight.
Why Woke Beer Now
Anheuser-Busch Has Been Woke Longer Than You Think
Anheuser-Busch has been promoting LGBTQ pride for decades. So what is the fuss—the bogus moral panic—about trans-friendly Bud Light beer? Well, that’s all the haters have left.
Clydesdale. My grandfather drove a horse-drawn beer truck in New Haven CT, and went to a night school taught by Yale professors. In WW I he was assigned to take care of cavalry horses in Hawaii.
Beer Is Transgender Now, Because The Money Is In Transgender Beer
This Is Capitalism At Work
🎩 Daily Kos Morning Roundup
To be very clear, the Anheuser–Busch companies do not give a single damn about LGBTQ rights. That is, sure, maybe some of the executives personally care about these civil rights matters as part of their personal consciousnesses, but the corporate entity that sells Budweiser does not give a single damn.
You can tell from their political donations, which overwhelmingly go to Wrong-Wingers.
!!Moar Gunz Moar!!
I will pass over the daily outrages of mass shootings, shootings of young people, ringing the wrong doorbell while Black, or approaching the wrong car (and getting shot while apologizing) even while White, and on and on and on. The incendiary rhetoric at the obscene NRA annual meeting has been and gone, and has been duly excoriated.
WFYI, PBS Indianapolis: NRA in Indianapolis: updates from protests, Trump, Pence and more
I will likewise pass over the near-daily outrages of laws for permitless carry, arming teachers in classrooms, and the rest of that line of moral idiocy.
But see the new book, Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America, by Ryan Busse. He is on a book tour that included appearing on The Reidout yesterday. Busse was formerly a firearms industry executive, Vice President of Sales for Kimber.
Legal News
Dominion Settlement
Dominion got cash, but no on-air apologies. They have more lawsuits pending.
NYT, paywalled: Victory or Defeat? For Some Fox Critics, Defamation Case Was a Split Decision.
The $787.5 million settlement was among the highest for a defamation lawsuit, roughly two-thirds of the Fox Corporation's net annual income. But some wanted to see Rupert Murdoch face a stiffer penalty.
The election technology company has several more defamation lawsuits pending against public figures and news outlets.
The usual suspects, of course.
Smartmatic
NPR: Fired Fox News producer says she'd testify against the network in $1.6 billion suit
NBC: Ex-Fox News producer Abby Grossberg has been subpoenaed by Smartmatic in its lawsuit against Fox
Smartmatic’s only involvement in the 2020 presidential election was to provide voting technology and software to Los Angeles County.
The voting machine company has filed a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox for its coverage of baseless election fraud charges in the 2020 election.
According to a subpoena dated Monday, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, Smartmatic Inc. directs Abby Grossberg to produce extensive documentation and records of communications regarding the claims aired on Fox regarding the 2020 presidential election. The subpoena specifically cites potential evidence and correspondence related to Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, as well as the Trump Campaign and the Trump Organization.
Allies of former President Donald Trump — like Giuliani — alleged on Fox News that Dominion and Smartmatic were linked and involved in potential election fraud, even though they are two separate companies with no partnerships.
Allegations against Dominion and Smartmatic have been repeatedly debunked and shown to be without basis in fact. Smartmatic’s only involvement in the 2020 presidential election was to provide voting technology and software to Los Angeles County.
Former Fox producer Abby Grossberg speaks out over Dominion lawsuit
Grossberg's attorney Parisis Filippatos told NBC News that his client intends to comply fully with the Smartmatic subpoena, and said it directs Grossberg “to produce documentary evidence regarding the alleged malice of Fox News, which is in her possession.” Her attorneys also noted that though Grossberg had already provided documents and communications to Fox News while she was still employed there, they do “not appear to have been provided to the Delaware Superior Court prior to its decision on March 31.”
Naughty, naughty.
Rape/Defamation Cases
Trial in one of E. Jean Carroll’s rape defamation cases against Trump is delayed
The first of two defamation trials scheduled for next month regarding E. Jean Carroll’s claim that Donald Trump raped her will be delayed indefinitely, a federal judge said Monday.
The second trial – for battery and defamation based on statements the former president made about Carroll after he left office – will begin April 25 in New York.
In a joint court filing Friday, lawyers said they wanted to hold one trial on both suits, saying it would reduce confusion and save money, a request District Judge Lewis Kaplan denied.
34 Charges in NY Indictment
Old news now, but worth repeating.
Read the full Trump indictment charging him with 34 felony counts
Bragg v Jordan
Truth Sandwiches: Bragg Goes Full Contact on "Gymmy" Jordan
Jordan responded by lying about crime in NYC, and holding a bogus hearing in NYC, to much pointing and laughing.
Bragg argued in his filing that the subpoena to Pomerantz is
invalid, unenforceable, unconstitutional, and ultra vires because it has no legitimate legislative purpose.
No, “ultra vires” does not mean “super manly”, but “beyond their authority”.
Fani Willis
Fulton County DA says fake Trump electors are incriminating one another and wants lawyer disqualified
The district attorney’s office is requesting that attorney Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow be disqualified from representing a group of 10 Republicans who served as electors for the former president in Georgia – a state Trump lost to President Joe Biden. The DA’s office also accused the lawyer of failing to present an immunity deal to her clients last year, according to the filing.
The new filing offers the latest indication that immunity offers could still be in the works months after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis suggested charging decisions were “imminent.”
Motion to disqualify lawyer for fake electors
The statement of some of her clients that directly implicate another client in additional crimes shows that Ms. Debrow’s continued participation in this matter is fraught with conflicts of interest that rise to the level of her being disqualified from this case in its entirety.
Jack Smith
NYT, paywalled: Boris Epshteyn, Trump Legal Adviser, Is to Be Interviewed by Special Counsel
The interview is the latest example of the focus by the special counsel, Jack Smith, on the role of lawyers working for former President Donald Trump.
MSNBC Deadline: Legal Blog: Why Jack Smith's reported wire fraud probe into Trump campaign could be a big deal
Wire fraud cases are common and can be fairly straightforward. That’s bad news for alleged grifters.
And much, much more to come from all of them.
Animals! Science! Weirdness!
Chronological List of All James Webb Space Telescope Discoveries since the release of first images in July, 2022
- 04-17-2023 - James Webb Space Telescope Captures Stunning Image of Arp 220. Full article here
Countering a denialist hashtag.
NASA: NGC 6302
The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects. Though its wingspan covers over 3 light-years, NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the dying central star of this particular planetary nebula has become exceptionally hot, shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust.
This sharp and colorful close-up of the dying star's nebula was recorded in 2009 by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3, installed during the final shuttle servicing mission. Cutting across a bright cavity of ionized gas, the dust torus surrounding the central star is near the center of this view, almost edge-on to the line-of-sight. Molecular hydrogen has been detected in the hot star's dusty cosmic shroud. NGC 6302 lies about 4,000 light-years away in the arachnologically correct constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius).
CD19- and B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)–directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells have enabled unprecedented responses in a subset of refractory patients with B-cell and plasma cell malignancies, leading to their approval by the FDA for the treatment of leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma. These “living drugs” can become part of a synthetic immune system, persisting at least a decade in some patients. However, despite this tremendous impact, significant unmet treatment needs remain for patients with hematologic malignancies and solid cancers. In this perspective, we highlight recent innovations that advance the field toward production of a more potent and universal cellular immunotherapy of the future. Next-generation CAR T cells will incorporate advances in gene engineering and synthetic biology to enhance functionality and persistence, and reduce treatment-associated toxicities.
Trial Skin Cancer Vaccine Dramatically Reduced Melanoma Relapse in Patients Receiving Immunotherapy
A personalized skin cancer vaccine has almost halved the risk of death or relapse in patients with the deadliest form of melanoma.
The trial involved men and women who had surgery to remove melanoma from lymph nodes or other organs and were at high risk of the disease returning.
About 1.3 million Americans are currently diagnosed with melanomas, and scientists predict skin cancer will become the second most common type in the US by 2040.
Funny or Cry
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