AND EVEN MORE CRITTERS
THE PERSON who MAKES the FIRST COMMENT WILL GET TWO CRITTERS
EVERY PERSON WHO COMMENTS WILL GET A CRITTER
RULES IN THE DIARY
WHEN YOU FIND SOMETHING in the DIARY that you LIKE
YOU CAN REPOST IT AS COMMENT in the DIARY
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PostingADiary
CritterHerding
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Stephen Miller had an oops this week.
In an interview on Monday, CNN’s Boris Sanchez asked Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, whether Donald Trump intended to abide by federal judge Karin Immergut’s order blocking the deployment of the national guard in Oregon.
Miller said neither yes nor no. But the implication was no… Miller continued: “Under Title 10 of the US Code, the president has plenary authority, has–”
There he abruptly stopped. The man whose entire head looks as if it’s covered by a stocking mask seemed to betray a feeling. Maybe regret, maybe embarrassment. Maybe: Oh shit, I just gave away the game. (The Guardian)
The Guardian article goes on to explain why this powerful man bears watching.
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Because this man is losing it.
The guy with plenary power, or who at least has Congress and the Supreme Court in his pocket, shouts cartoonishly at no one in particular “DO SOMETHING!!!” over his fantasy version of an incident now almost five years past. Besides, it wasn’t Biden’s FBI that day.
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Trump may not be long for this office. Would Miller still have power if JD Vance took Trump’s place? Ghost suggested Friday that Peter Theil might be the power behind a President Vance. Coincidentally the Guardian also did an interesting piece on Thiel’s lectures on the Antichrist.
Over the past month, Thiel has hosted a series of four lectures on the downtown waterfront of San Francisco philosophizing about who the antichrist could be and warning that Armageddon is coming. Thiel, who describes himself as a “small-o orthodox Christian”, believes the harbinger of the end of the world could already be in our midst and that things such as international agencies, environmentalism and guardrails on technology could quicken its rise. (The Guardian)
If the antichrist is among us, think: who could it possibly be? Did you guess Greta Thunberg? Thiel did.
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Pope Leo quotes Hannah Arendt:
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."
www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...
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— Bill Kristol (@billkristolbulwark.bsky.social) October 12, 2025 at 7:00 AM
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This week the Times interviewed lower court judges on their views about the Supreme Court. This flutter has a gift link so you can see all the results.
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"Forty-two judges went so far as to say that the Supreme Court’s emergency orders had caused 'some' or 'major' harm to the public’s perception of the judiciary[,] [including] nearly half of the Republican-nominated judges."
gift link 👉 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...
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— George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway.bsky.social) October 11, 2025 at 3:39 PM
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Never mind what happened to that $50,000 in a bag that Homan supposedly accepted in an FBI sting. There’s news of a potential new grift and a reminder that detained immigrants mean big money.
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At least half a dozen companies vying for some of the $45B allocated for immigration detention work hired a friend of border czar Tom Homan because that friend (who previously had Homan on his payroll) led them to believe his connections to Homan would help their chances of scoring a contract.
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— Chris Morran (@themorrancave.bsky.social) October 12, 2025 at 6:20 AM
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On Friday Blue Sky was alight with posts about Vought’s shutdown RIFs firing the CDC staff that maintains a watch against communicable diseases. Never mind: they’re back. NYT confirms it.
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Here’s a great update on the Republican shutdown from a stellar group of Democrats led by Bernie Sanders.
And another view of how Trump voters will be most harmed by Republican health care changes, with a Times shared article.
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Sometimes humor makes the point best. Newsom’s team does it best.
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Peaceful protests continue. I resist the temptation to post another Portland frog photo, though I did like the one captioned “Cry havoc and let slip the frogs of war.”
Protesters are singing and dancing in Chicago. However you might define “insurrection,” this ain’t it.
Portland protesters played Yakkety Sax as comic theme music for Kristi Noem.
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It’s our turn next. October 18 is the No Kings rally. Are you going?
Hate America rally? Wrong! Bernie sets MiQe straight.
Robert DeNiro supports the rally with a historic perspective.
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"The original #NoKings protest was 250 years ago. We've had democracy since then. Now we have a would-be king who wants to take it away—King Donald the First. Fuck that. Stand up and be counted in the nationwide No Kings protest on October 18."
👉👉 nokings.org
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— George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway.bsky.social) October 11, 2025 at 1:52 PM
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In case you missed it: bilboteach just posted a diary about the New Jersey election. chloris creator hosted Friday’s GNR. theghostofjohndewey hosted yesterday’s What’s For Dinner. Earlier this week DebtorsPrison posted a new nonfiction diary. (Did I miss any other great articles?)
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Sunday Science
In news of scientists who did win the Nobel Prize this week are three chemists who developed a material with almost magical storage capability.
The trio found ways to combine metal ions and organic molecules into highly porous structures through which liquids and gases could flow. Tens of thousands of such materials have since been made for applications ranging from storing hydrogen to removing forever chemicals from water and recovering valuable rare earth metals from waste.
The scientists were honoured “for the development of metal-organic frameworks”, or MOFs, which have such potential that they have been called the material of the 21st century…
“A small amount of such material can be almost like Hermione’s handbag in Harry Potter. It can store huge amounts of gas in a tiny volume.” (The Guardian)
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Methane-eating bacteria may help slow climate change. (NYT shared article.)
Fifty miles off the Tuscan coast, in a sparkling blue expanse broken only by rocky, forbidding islets, including the real-life Island of Montecristo, ancient creatures are roosting beneath the waves.
They spend their days feasting on an unlikely source of nourishment: methane, a potent greenhouse gas that leaks out of cracks in the seafloor.
Lately, researchers have been trying to put these microorganisms to work on an urgent task. If their appetites can be redirected to other sources of their favorite gas — namely, the hundreds of millions of tons of planet-warming methane emitted each year from oil and gas sites, livestock and wetlands — then they might just help slow climate change. (NYT)
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How do AI developers assure that their product won’t yield dangerous results? They send in the AI equivalent of hackers to ask dangerous questions and see what happens. This NYT shared article is a fascinating look at what’s being done to keep AI safe. It’s not clear whether it will be enough to save us.
The A.I. pioneer Yoshua Bengio, a computer science professor at the Université de Montréal, is the most-cited researcher alive, in any discipline. When I spoke with him in 2024, Dr. Bengio told me that he had trouble sleeping while thinking of the future. Specifically, he was worried that an A.I. would engineer a lethal pathogen — some sort of super-coronavirus — to eliminate humanity. “I don’t think there’s anything close in terms of the scale of danger,” he said.
Contrast Dr. Bengio’s view with that of his frequent collaborator Yann LeCun, who heads A.I. research at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. Like Dr. Bengio, Dr. LeCun is one of the world’s most-cited scientists. He thinks that A.I. will usher in a new era of prosperity and that discussions of existential risk are ridiculous. (The Guardian)
Read on for details about testers and their questions.
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A conference of half nutrition and obesity researchers and half addiction researchers tries to decide whether ultraprocessed foods are or are not addictive.
I thought I had a pretty good handle on what food is. But it turns out that my handful of cheese puffs doesn’t really count, according to Ashley Gearhardt, a psychologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“This stuff isn’t food. It’s a hedonically optimized substance created through processing to make corporations a lot of money,” she says. “We shouldn’t give [ultraprocessed foods] a pass just because they have calories.”
55 percent: Average calories consumed in the United States from ultraprocessed foods from 2021 to 2023. (Science News)
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Today is the birthday of Lyman Trumbull (1813-1896), U.S. Senator who co-authored the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery. Also Elmer Ambrose Sperry (1860-1930) - Inventor of the gyrocompass. It’s the birth date of Anthony F. DePalma (1904-2005), orthopedic surgeon known as a pioneer and total hip and knee replacements. (Yay!) You may not know “Harmonica" Frank Floyd (1908-1984), blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player but you probably know his Ballad of Davy Crockett. Today is the birth date of Doris Miller (1919-1943), Naval cook and soldier who downed one plane during the attack on Pearl Harbor, resulting in the first Black soldier to receive the Navy Cross. Also Jean Nidetch (1923-2015), co-founder of Weight Watchers. And Scott O'Grady (1965-Still Living), Air force pilot shot down over Bosnia, whose story was the inspiration for the movie Behind Enemy Lines.
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On this day in 1773 the first insane asylum (Eastern Lunatic Asylum) opened in Williamsburg, Virginia. In 1871 President Grant signed into law the Ku Klux Klan Act. In 1892 Students in public schools began saying The Pledge of Allegiance each morning. In 1900 The first submarine was commissioned by the U.S. Navy. In 1901 President Theodore Roosevelt renamed the "Executive Mansion" to the White House. In 1915 Henry Ford manufactured the 1 millionth car in Detroit, Michigan. In 1928 The iron lung respirator was used for the first time at Boston Children’s Hospital. In 1933 the U.S. government converted the military Alcatraz Citadel into the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. In 1950 CBS debuted The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. In 1970 The U.S. announced they will withdraw 40,000 additional troops from Vietnam. In 1979 Rookie Larry Bird made his debut with the Boston Celtics and Rookie Magic Johnson made his for the Los Angeles Lakers.
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It’s National Farmer’s Day!
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It’s National Gumbo Day! Gumbo consists primarily of a strongly flavored stock, meat or shellfish (or sometimes both), a thickener, and the Creole "holy trinity": celery, bell peppers, and onions. Gumbo is often categorized by the type of thickener used, whether okra or filé powder (dried and ground sassafras leaves). Gumbo can be made with or without okra or filé powder. (Wikipedia) How not to make gumbo:
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It’s National Savings Day!
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Also National Vermont Day!
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It’s National Freethought Day! National Freethought Day is an annual observance that champions the use of reason, logic, science, and evidence as the primary tools for forming our own opinions and understanding the world.
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It’s Clergy Appreciation Day!
Amen! How’s your Sunday?
