2025-03-11
lunar eclipse, eugenics by any other name, Musk mischief, school waste, WaPo fuss, new homes cost big, loans to kids, "rule out" recession?, fuel tanker fire, Romania democracy safe, power we aint got
Cool
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What You Need To Know About the March 2025 Total Lunar Eclipse - NASA Science
The Moon will pass into Earth’s shadow and appear to turn red on the night of March 13 or early in the morning on March 14, depending on time zone. Here’s what you need to know about the total lunar eclipse.
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Horseshit
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CEO Ben Lamm says humanity has a 'moral obligation' to pursue de-extinction tech
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Francis Galton had the good fortune to die before people started misusing his ideas, allowing us to hope he would have opposed such developments. Ehrlich is still very much alive. When asked in 2015 if he still agreed with everything in his book, he said that “I do not think my language was too apocalyptic in The Population Bomb. My language would be even more apocalyptic today. The idea that every woman should have as many babies as she wants is, to me, exactly the same kind of idea as everybody oughta be permitted to throw as much of their garbage into their neighbor’s backyard as they want.” Luckily for Ehrlich, no one cares. He remains a professor emeritus at Stanford, and president of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology. He has won practically every environmental award imaginable, including from the Sierra Club, the World Wildlife Fund, and the United Nations (all > 10 years after the Indian sterilization campaign he endorsed). He won the MacArthur “Genius” Prize ($800,000) in 1990, the Crafoord Prize ($700,000, presented by the King of Sweden) that same year, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2012. He was recently interviewed on 60 Minutes about the importance of sustainability; the mass sterilization campaign never came up. He is about as honored and beloved as it’s possible for a public intellectual to get.
(meanwhile, in 2020 the University College of London, to worldwide acclaim, announed that they were “denaming” a building previously named for Galton to show their repugnance for his eugenic theories). Francis Galton’s ideas led - without his support or consent - to several hundred thousand forced sterilizations. Paul Ehrlich’s ideas - with his full support and consent - led to several million forced sterilizations.
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The ick: Disgust sensitivity, narcissism, and perfectionism in mate choice
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Is Daylight-Saving Time Worth It? Experts Still Debating the Pros and Cons
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Twins Rivals Clones Hollywood is doubling down on dual roles
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Rise of touchscreens pushed buttons out of vogue. But they're making a comeback
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Door Handles – The Latest Car Technology Is Starting to Drive People Nuts
celebrity gossip
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
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Steve Wozniak says Tesla 'is the worst in the world' at improving its technology
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SpaceX Urges FCC to Block Globalstar's Cellular Satellite Plans
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What's gone wrong at Musk's Tesla? Share price has plunged, could fall further
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Elon Musk seeks Italian presidential meeting to salvage Starlink deal
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Doge chief Musk says he's running his businesses 'with great difficulty'
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X down: Twitter not working amid major outage
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Elon Musk claims X being targeted in 'massive cyberattack' as service goes down
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Elon Musk's X hit by waves of outages, what he claims is 'a cyberattack'
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Elon Musk says X hit by 'massive cyber attack' as users unable to log in
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Elon Musk claims cyber attack on social network X came from ‘Ukraine area’
Musk has claimed a cyber attack on his social media platform X on Monday was orchestrated by “IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area”, the latest in a series of recent troubles for his business interests after he joined US President Donald Trump’s administration. The billionaire, who has morphed into a fierce critic of the Ukrainian government and its war against Russia, provided no evidence for the allegation, made in an interview with Fox Business on Monday, nor did he claim that state actors were necessarily involved. Earlier in the day, Musk posted that “either a large, co-ordinated group and/or a country” was responsible for the attack on X, which led to broad outages across the US and elsewhere.
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Elon Musk claims 'massive cyberattack' on X originated from the 'Ukraine area'
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X outage: Hacker group claims it took down former Twitter platform (Archive)
Newsweek reports a hacking group known as Dark Storm Team claimed responsibility for a DDoS attack on X. The hackers formed as a pro-Palestinian collective in 2023 and have reportedly targeted government websites of NATO countries, Israel, and nations supporting Israel.
The hacking group Dark Storm Team has reportedly claimed responsibility for a DDoS attack on the platform, according to a public Telegram post. Check Point Research (CPR), a cyber threat research team, has told Newsweek that The Dark Storm Team, a pro-Palestinian cyberattack group known for launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, has resurfaced after a period of inactivity. The group primarily targets Western entities, including those in the United States, Ukraine, the UAE, and Israel. Over the past month, the Dark Storm Team has successfully attacked critical infrastructure, including Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Haifa Port in Israel, and the UAE's Ministry of Defense. In a statement, CPR highlighted the group's role in destabilizing digital platforms, including the recent assault on X, underscoring the need for enhanced cybersecurity for social media platforms, which are vital to global communication.
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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Columbia Expelled Student Protesters For the First Time in Over 50 Years
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The responsibilities of intellectuals and the rise of BS jobs in universities
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Charter school superintendent makes $870k. For district with 1k students
Over the last three years, the head of a small charter school network that serves fewer than 1,000 students has taken home up to $870,000 annually, a startling amount that appears to be the highest for any public school superintendent in the state and among the top in the nation. Valere Public Schools Superintendent Salvador Cavazos’ compensation to run three campuses in Austin, Corpus Christi and Brownsville exceeds the less than $450,000 that New York City’s chancellor makes to run the largest school system in the country. But Cavazos’ salary looks far more modest in publicly posted records that are supposed to provide transparency to taxpayers. That’s because Valere excludes most of his bonuses from its reports to the state and on its own website, instead only sharing his base pay of about $300,000. Texas lawmakers have filed legislation that would cap public school superintendents’ annual salaries, but most bills would not restrict bonuses. Those bills also don’t apply to private schools that stand to receive an influx of taxpayer dollars if lawmakers pass legislation this session approving education savings accounts, a type of voucher program.
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Wealthy Colleges Fight to Protect Their Riches from Taxation
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Boys widen gap over girls in maths and science in England, study reveals
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Spotify's biggest sin? Its algos pushed artists to make joyless, toothless music
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Trump says US talking to four different groups on sale of TikTok
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Contra Chrome: How Google's browser became a threat to privacy and democracy
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What are smartphones stealing from us? When mine was taken away, I found out
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Author Terry Brooks retiring, passes Shannara series to Delilah S. Dawson
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Or not, as the flaws are accessible only to those with full access already: Top Bluetooth chip security flaw could put a billion devices at risk worldwide
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WB axes Shadow of Mordor maker in setback for clever, sadly patented game system
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Top 'Washington Post' columnist resigns, accusing publisher of killing piece : NPR
A top political columnist for The Washington Post resigned today, accusing Post chief executive and publisher Will Lewis of killing her column that criticized owner Jeff Bezos's drive to overhaul the opinion pages to focus on his libertarian priorities. Post columnist and Associate Editor Ruth Marcus, who has worked at the paper for four decades, says she can no longer stay there.
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Developer Convicted of Criminal Sabotage for Kill Switch When Fired
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
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$16B health dept managed finances with single Excel sheet. It hasn't gone well
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MrBeast has been talking with investors about raising $200M in a funding round
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The True Cost of Building a Home Today
construction costs made up 64 percent of the price of a new home built in 2024, averaging $428,215 per house. The rest of the sales price is made up of overhead, general expenses and other financial aspects like financing, marketing costs and the sales commission.
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$1.57T wiped off value of the Magnificent Seven so far this year
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Rocket Companies to buy real estate firm Redfin in $1.75B deal
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Wall Street sell-off turns 'ugly' as US recession fears grow
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Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz announces retirement, stock plummets 25%
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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DOGE Makes Another Bombshell Discovery – PJ Media
During 2020-2021, the Small Business Administration handed out 5,593 loans totaling $312 million to "business owners" who were 11 years old or younger. That's right — while our kids were stuck in Zoom school, we’re supposed to believe that a bunch of their classmates were apparently running multimillion-dollar enterprises. Even better, these pint-sized entrepreneurs all used Social Security numbers that didn't match their names. Totally legit, right? Remember, this was during the pandemic, and, according to Fox News Digital, it is “unclear what they were used for.” But wait; there's more! The SBA wasn't content just funding kindergarten startups — they also approved 3,095 loans worth $333 million to borrowers over 115 years old. One particularly industrious 157-year-old scored a cool $36,000.
Trump
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Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on recession risk and tariffs
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Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness
As President of the United States, I have a duty to protect, preserve, and defend the Constitution and our national security, which includes ending the subsidization of illegal activities, including illegal immigration, human smuggling, child trafficking, pervasive damage to public property, and disruption of the public order, which threaten the security and stability of the United States. Accordingly, it is the policy of my Administration that individuals employed by organizations whose activities have a substantial illegal purpose shall not be eligible for public service loan forgiveness.
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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the father of nine children, released an undated memo saying the department will act on “sound economic principles” while maximizing benefits for families, representing a new direction for the agency and a new way of thinking about federal projects. Duffy’s memo indicates that environmental concerns will be given less emphasis, which was expected given the switch from a Democratic to a Republican administration, but the eyebrow-raising line spells out that places with more marriages and babies will get a leg up when applying for DOT projects. DOT will “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average,” the memo reads, a 14-word phrase that set off alarms across Washington, D.C.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called it “deeply frightening” and something the Chinese Communist Party might do, while Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) dubbed it “disturbingly dystopian,” according to the Associated Press. Kevin DeGood, a housing and infrastructure policy expert at the Center for American Progress, said the move was “bizarre and a little creepy.”
Left Angst
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Musk Calls Polish Foreign Minister "Small Man", Rubio Demands "Thank You"
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Pope condemns Trump's mass deportations as unchristian and unconscionable
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U.S. stock futures fall as Trump won't rule out recession
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Trump Declines to Rule Out Recession as Tariffs Begin to Bite
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Is Trump Trying To Push The US Into A Recession? | ZeroHedge
Bessent also explained why the economy had been doing so "great" during Biden's last years - he basically echoed what we said two years ago in "Here Is The $1 Trillion "Stealth Stimulus" Behind Bidenomics", in which we explained that the only reason the US economy hadn't collapsed is because the government was issuing $1 trillion in debt every 100 days, or as Bessent put it, "the market and the economy have become hooked, become addicted, to excessive government spending and there’s going to be a detox period.”
the clearest indication that Trump is now eager to push the US economy into a recession - one which he can correctly blame on Biden's drunken-sailor spending ways - came from the president himself when in another interview over the weekend with Maria Bartiromo, the president was oddly defensive, and saying “I hate to predict things like that,” when asked if he expected a recession this year. “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing. And there are always periods of — it takes a little time. It takes a little time. But I think it should be great for us. I mean, I think it should be great.”
even before US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the US economy was weaker than many appreciated. I outlined why in an opinion column in August and in an earlier edition of this newsletter, “Debunking American exceptionalism”. Second, “Trumponomics” has damped the outlook further by introducing stagflationary forces and financial market risks. That is the focus of today’s newsletter. Let’s begin with consumers. A reminder: high spending has been propped up by debt and expenditure on essentials such as food, housing and healthcare. Serious delinquencies on credit card balances hit a 13-year high at the end of last year, with steep interest rates increasingly squeezing households. The White House’s agenda will add insult to injury by lumping taxes on top. The proposed duties on Mexico and Canada (now on pause), plus those already on China, will raise the US effective tariff rate to its highest since 1943, according to the Budget Lab at Yale. It reckons higher price levels could cost households up to $2,000. This is only a taster; further tariffs are expected. And though the president has a knack for pushing back deadlines, the impact on sentiment is already stark. Confidence has plunged. Consumers’ inflation and unemployment expectations have spiked. That is an ominous trifecta. Households are still trying to stomach a 20 per cent, post-pandemic rise in the price level. Notably, real consumption fell in January for the first time in nearly two years. Cautious spending behaviour is now more likely.
- consumer debt and high spending on essentials was a sign that Bidenomics was working great, just months ago.
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NIH will eliminate many peer review panels, lay off scientists overseeing them
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How Silicon Valley's Corrupted Libertarianism Is Dismantling American Democracy
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Unregulated tech tests: Thiel, Altman and co want Freedom Cities
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Turmoil in DOGE spills into public view as Musk's group confronts a PR crisis
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USAid cuts could create untreatable TB bug 'resistant to everything we have'
Dangerous new forms of tuberculosis (TB) for which there is no treatment could emerge as a result of US aid cuts, a top doctor has warned. Dr Lucica Ditiu, who heads the Stop TB Partnership, said she feared that interruptions to people’s treatment would allow the airborne bug to mutate into a new, untreatable form. Moreover, a lack of diagnostic services, which have also been badly affected by the Trump administration’s aid cuts, would allow TB to spread more easily, she said.
The US has historically provided between $200m (£155m) and $250m a year in bilateral funding to poorer countries for their work on TB, the World Health Organization said last week, warning that “abrupt funding cuts” would “cripple TB prevention and treatment efforts, reverse decades of progress, and endanger millions of lives”. The WHO and UN have set targets of eradicating the disease by 2030, but even before the US aid decision, there was an $11bn shortfall in the global response.
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Trump must invade Canada. Forget drug war, start a real one! | Opinion
My dearest Martha: I write to you today from the outskirts of Montreal, where our beloved President Donald Trump’s war on Canadian aggression has come to a standstill amid heavy moose-launched missile fire. I hope this note finds you and the children well and safe from any accidental exposure to hockey propaganda. I am alive and continuing the fight, though I miss you all terribly and grow weary of the sickly sweet smell of maple-syrup traps, which at times seem to outnumber the brigades of attack-beavers these damn northerners unleash daily upon our ranks.
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The strange political philosophy motivating Musk
one of the weirdest and most disturbing developments is the rise of the “neo-reactionary movement” (NRx), also called Dark Enlightenment. The name alone is spooky and intriguing. NRx is an ideology founded by the British philosopher Nick Land and the American software developer Curtis Yarvin (who was recently interviewed in the New York Times). The philosophy argues that democracy inherently leads to social decline, because of the development of deep state bureaucracies that are unable to control oligarchic forces, and that societies should be run like corporations, with a kind of CEO Monarch in charge. As Yarvin has said, “If Americans want to change their government, they need to get rid of dictator phobia . . . One way of dealing with that is . . . hire two executives and make sure they work together and there is really no other solution . . . ” Are Trump and Musk those people? Some think so. Between Trump’s 19th century-style tax, tariff and territorial-seizure threats, and Musk’s attempted takeover of the plumbing of the federal government (see my column today on why his Treasury meddling, which has been temporarily thwarted by a federal judge in the US, is so worrisome), it feels like there is a kind of self-coup happening in America right now. And some people I’ve spoken to in both political and technology circles feel that it’s been driven by the Dark Enlightenment crowd, which includes many of the people — from Peter Thiel to Marc Andreessen to Musk himself — who stand to benefit most from it. As Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir (which has seen its stock price surge off the back of a raft of expected government contracts) said recently: “This is a revolution . . . some people will get their heads cut off.”
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NASA closes offices, lays off staff, prepares for larger workforce reductions
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US exits fund that compensates poorer countries for global heating
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Musk Calls Entitlements the 'Big One' to Cut, Countering Trump
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What the EPA's "endangerment finding" is and why it's being challenged
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Secret Service Shoot Man Near White House After ‘Armed Confrontation’
“Earlier on Saturday, local police shared information about a suicidal individual who may be traveling to Washington DC from Indiana,” the Secret Service said in a statement. “Around midnight, members of the Secret Service encountered the individual’s parked vehicle near 17th and F Streets NW. They also saw an individual on foot matching the description nearby.” “As officers approached, the individual brandished a firearm and an armed confrontation ensued, during which shots were fired by our personnel.”
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US Green-Card Holder and Columbia Student Arrested by ICE for Protest
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
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F-35 'kill switch' could allow Trump to disable European Air Force
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US Merchant Marine Oil Tanker In Flames Off UK
the U.S.-flagged oil tanker MV Stena Immaculate loaded with jet fuel, a ship designated critical to US national security in the Department of Transportation’s Tanker Security Program (TSP), was struck while at anchor by the Portuguese-flagged containership MV Solong. The collision has set both vessels ablaze, triggering extensive search and rescue operations. The crews have abandoned both ships. While initial reports suggest all U.S. Merchant Mariners are reportedly safe in lifeboats, one crew member from the Solong remains unaccounted for. “It appears that Solong did not slow down or maneuver. It rammed straight into the side of Stena Immaculate,” said maritime historian Sal Mercogliano in a video analyzing the AIS ship tracks. The Stena Immaculate is one of only ten vessels enrolled in the DOT’s TSP, which provides essential ships for the Department of Defense.
The scarcity of U.S.-flagged tankers underscores the vulnerability of the nation’s strategic maritime assets. This was likely an accident but with global oil tanker incidents resulting in spills reduced to fewer than ten per year, the likelihood of such a catastrophic event involving a TSP vessel is alarmingly low, making this incident suspicious.?
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Ontario Raises Electricity Price by 25% for Minnesota, Michigan and New York
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Dad of detained tourist urges care on US visa rules
Becky Burke, 28, has spent 10 days in a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing centre in Washington State and was also denied entry into Canada, over a "visa mix-up", said Paul Burke. He said Ms Burke got free accommodation for helping host families "around the house", which he believes authorities may have suspected broke the terms of her tourist visa.
World
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Mark Carney wins race to replace Trudeau as Canada's prime minister
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Longest road and rail tunnel is being built under the Baltic Sea
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Romania Bars Ultranationalist Candidate From Presidential Race - The New York Times
The country’s electoral commission ruled on Sunday that Calin Georgescu, an outspoken critic of Ukraine and NATO, could not compete in the do-over election. The Central Electoral Bureau issued a statement late Sunday saying that it had ruled against registering the candidacy of Mr. Georgescu, an outspoken critic of Ukraine and NATO who has voiced sympathy for Russia and Romania’s fascist leadership during World War II. The bureau also said it had rejected three other would-be candidates. It gave no explanation for the decision, which came less than two weeks after Romanian prosecutors opened a criminal case against Mr. Georgescu for “incitement to actions against the constitutional order,” the “communication of false information” and involvement in the establishment of an organization “with a fascist, racist or xenophobic character.”
The BEC cited a missing signature on an annex of Georgescu’s declaration of wealth as the reason for his disqualification. Former Constitutional Court judge Tudorel Toader clarified that the annexes are a mandatory component of the documentation and that both substantive and procedural requirements must be met. Despite the setback, Georgescu retains the option to challenge the decision at the Constitutional Court. If he secures a favorable ruling, he could regain his candidacy, making the upcoming days crucial for his political future. It is understood that Georgescu has 24 hours to appeal, and any final decision must be made within 48 hours.
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The NHS security culture problem is a crisis years in the making
Health / Medicine
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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Rice fields of India host valuable, but disappearing, wild edibles
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Spatio-temporal dynamics of future carbon stocks in natural forests of China
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Ancient Cave Discovery Reveals That 8k Years Ago, the Sahara Was Green
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The cheapest way to supercharge America’s power grid | MIT Technology Review
Fortunately, there are some shortcuts that could expand the capacity of the existing system without requiring completely new infrastructure: a suite of hardware and software tools known as advanced transmission technologies (ATTs), which can increase both the capacity and the efficiency of the power sector. ATTs have the potential to radically reduce timelines for grid upgrades, avoid tricky permitting issues, and yield billions in annual savings for US consumers. They could help us quickly bring online a significant portion of the nearly 2,600 gigawatts of backlogged generation and storage projects awaiting pathways to connect to the electric grid.
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Dryers in the US consume \~3% of residential energy budget, 6x washing machines
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Trump withdraws new pipeline rules based on CO2 leaks in Mississippi, Louisiana
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Field trials suggest overuse of rootworm-resistant corn reduces farmers' profits