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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Indivisible has a pretty thorough compilation of resistance efforts that are coming up. Would you like this kept in the Evening Shade header for awhile?
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New York Times (paywall) has a great article detailing how Trump’s tariffs will hit his own voters the hardest. Green areas are Harris voters, pink Trump. (Sorry about the fuzzy graphic, but you get the idea.)
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That makes this Raw Story article particularly apt. Although there’s a temptation to tell Trump voters, “You made your bed. Now you can lie in it!” Democrats can do a lot more good for the country if they invite Trump voters to join us. We weren’t on the same side in November but many are realizing that we have a lot more in common now.
Journalist Anand Giridharadas told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday that progressives are fortunate that President Donald Trump's attempted authoritarian takeover of the American government is producing unpopular chaos. ...”It is actually an opportunity to organize people because people don't like their stock portfolios diving," he said. "People don't like our allies being slapped in the face. People don't like $2,000 per household tariff tax on Americans. So there's an organizing opportunity."
He then pointed to the tour that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is undertaking at the moment to listen to Americans' economic struggles and to convince them that right-wing economic policies are to blame for their problems.
"What he's doing in these rallies that I think a lot of people across the pro-democracy movement could be doing is helping people connect."
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It’s not about DEI, no matter what Trump/Musk may say. It’s not about simply opposing programs that offered disadvantaged minorities a boost toward equality. It’s about erasing civil justice, and while Trump is at it, erasing memories of the contributions of minorities altogether.
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The pages featured short biographies about the people buried in the cemetery, including Gen. Colin L. Powell, the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Hector Santa Anna, a B-17 bomber pilot, Berlin Airlift pilot, and members of the Tuskegee Airmen
wapo.st/4isEBv8
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— JJ in DC (@jjindc.bsky.social) March 14, 2025 at 5:03 PM
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It’s unreal - the DOD deleted its page for Charles Calvin Rodgers, a Medal of Honor recipient who was wounded three times while defending against three assaults on his base in Vietnam. Now the URL includes “DEI Medal of Honor.” There’s something about Rodgers I don’t even have to tell you
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— Will Stancil (@whstancil.bsky.social) March 15, 2025 at 7:33 PM
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Turn those planes around! Now!
(In later news, the DOJ did not comply and took at least one plane load of migrants outside the US.)
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U.S. District Judge Boasberg has issued a 14-day injunction blocking Trump invocation of the Alien Enemies Act from taking effect and ordered planes already in the air carrying noncitizens under the proclamation to be turned around.
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— MeidasTouch (@meidastouch.com) March 15, 2025 at 5:11 PM
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Hit the American right wingers where it hurts:
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Sunday Science
Take part in the environmental resistance! More and more environmental studies are taking their data from the observations of “citizen scientists” who record observations they make in their back yards or on their walks in programs like eBird and iNaturalist. This study used eBird data to find that a third of American birds need conservation attention.
The findings are grim, but Rodewald notes that the report offers a more detailed view of
how birds are faring than has ever been possible, thanks to its use of crowdsourced naturalist programs such as eBird. Just as those data highlight where birds are declining, they also show where birds remain, as well as where conservation programs are working. “We do have more opportunity than ever to make really strategic and effective decisions with conservation, and that’s because we have more information than we’ve ever had before,” Rodewald says. (Scientific American)
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The latest advances in quantum computing offer the hope of incredibly fast processing, which could solve some of humanity’s big problems and possibly present even bigger ones.
Achieving a genuine and practical quantum advantage has enormous implications, from designing better pharmaceuticals and electronics to overturning the encryption schemes upon which national defense and the global financial system depend. It’s something so disruptive that it could confer almost incalculable wealth and power to whoever does it first—so naturally the competition is fierce.
...Even though the science itself may be sound, the market-driven temptation to overhype results is almost irresistible—with potentially disastrous results for the health of the field if or when confusing disputes over claims cause financial bubbles from qubit-enamored investors to finally pop. (Scientific American)
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Red tape in ancient Mesopotamia was recorded in cuneiform on clay tablets. The file cabinets were very heavy back then.
Hundreds of administrative tablets – the earliest physical evidence of the first empire in recorded history – have been discovered by archaeologists from the British Museum and Iraq. These texts detail the minutiae of government and reveal a complex bureaucracy – the red tape of an ancient civilisation.
These were the state archives of the ancient Sumerian site of Girsu, modern-day Tello, while the city was under the control of the Akkad dynasty from 2300 to 2150BC. (The Guardian)
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Brain pacemakers may help to control alcohol and drug abuse.
Surgeons are to put implants into the brains of alcoholics and opioid addicts in a trial aimed at testing the use of electrical impulses to combat drink and drug cravings.
The technique is already used to help patients control some of the effects of Parkinson’s disease, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Now a group of doctors and researchers – from Cambridge and Oxford universities and King’s College London – are preparing to use deep brain stimulation to try to decrease addicts’ yearnings and to boost their self-control.
“Deep brain stimulation acts like a pacemaker,” the project’s chief investigator Prof Valerie Voon, of Cambridge University’s psychiatry department, told the Observer. (The Guardian)
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It’s National Freedom Of Information Day. If you haven’t sent your Freedom of Information request to DOGE, it’s easy. Print it, fill in a few blanks, send. You might find out what they know about you. At the very least you can try to keep DOGE busy and out of mischief.
