Eric J. Korpela @SETIEric@qoto.org

Jay Hartzell, President of the University of Texas at Austin, yesterday broke the single most important compact that academics have with each other and their institutions: do not intentionally hurt students.

The TX governor, for his own political purposes, sent state trooperst o campus before a student protest even began. Hartzell both let these outside law enforcement agencies in, and provided cover for the violence they inflicted on dozens of peaceful, unarmed UT students.

#UTAustin

USC went from cancelling their valedictorian’s commencement speech on a made up claim of safety, to canceling all commencement speakers, to canceling commencement altogether—all to prevent the student USC educated on genocide studies from applying her USC education at USC.😑

What a complete failure in leadership.

Via Emptywheel:

Here's a question Alito should be asked today:

If a female President got an abortion during her term, could Idaho arrest her? #SCOTUS

@festal @pluralistic I've been saying for a couple of years now, corporations are the inhuman competing species we've been afraid AI would become.

We are both dray animals and livestock to this predator and it's winning the evolutionary arms race against us.

Am I supposed to rage against Florence too? I don't know if I have time for that.

#DonaldTrump

Michigan Fake Elector Case

Trump, Giuliani, Meadows are unindicted co-conspirators in Michigan fake elector case

"Former President Donald Trump, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Rudy Giuliani are unindicted co-conspirators in the Michigan attorney general's case against the state's so-called "fake electors" in the 2020 election, a state investigator revealed in court on Wednesday."

https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-giuliani-meadows-unindicted-conspirators-michigan-fake-elector/story?id=109578220

Money quote:

"If you're currently subject to a noncompete, it will no longer be enforceable for most U.S. workers starting on the rule's effective date, which is 120 days after publication in the Federal Register."

Yuuge.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-ftc-is-banning-noncompetes-heres-what-happens-if-youre-currently-bound-to-one/ar-AA1nAKqk

@nonproductive @GottaLaff @lolgop

My daughter and SIL are in the camp of 'sending the message.' I'm waiting until closer to the election to give her my "Old Codger" talk.

Every 3rd party run I've seen in America (the most known, Wallace, Perot, Nader, Paul) has, in their own way, been a spoiler. Sometimes directly in the vote. Sometimes in their effect on a party's politics.

I guess it's best summed up in historian Richard Hofstadter's quote: "Third parties are like bees. Once they have stung, they die." Kennedy, in this race, could kill not just his own ambitions, but the very concept under which he runs for office, our democracy.

The next spoiler can spoil it for us all.

(on edit) And Kennedy must realize this. He knows...and persists. The traitor of the clan.

The word "conservative" now means right-wing extremist, and news organizations should be clear about that. They should make a major point of explaining that the traditional definition of conservative no longer applies in today's common usage of the word.

They don't, of course, and this is undoubtedly a source of confusion for news consumers.

Another example of the willful imprecision of journalism...

Cops kill Native Americans at a rate 5X that of whites and 3X of Blacks. Why?

https://madison.com/news/nation-world/crime-courts/indigenous-deaths-police-killing-native-americans/article_e1d4c20a-0258-5579-9f2f-7e3beb470263.html

How worried should we all be?

This is real-time data of close approaches between stuff in orbit (credit to Dr. Moriba Jah): http://astriacss03.tacc.utexas.edu/ui/min.html

1-2km close approaches every few minutes doesn't seem too bad, but remember everything in orbit travels at *several km per second* and most of these tracked objects don't have the ability to maneuver.

It's pretty bad, folks.

Morning beautiful Fedizens.

I think we can now stop saying “google it” if you’re looking for info.

SCOTUS's evil plan is working brilliantly.
#ImpeachSCOTUS #SCOTUS #SupremeCorruption

Ex-prosecutor: SCOTUS delay in deciding Trump immunity is 'corrosive' to democracy
https://www.alternet.org/scotus-delay-trump-immunity/

Believe it or not, even the ultra free market economist Milton Friedman wanted to give people a universal basic income. Because, at that time, greed wasn’t paramount. There was actually a belief by both the right and left that Americans have to take care of each other. But then the greedsters took over. It’s not the Republican party anymore, it’s the Koch Party, the Harlan Crow Party... the Greedy Old Party.

▶️ Catch the full Thom Hartmann Program with Palast: https://thom.tv/p/audio-and-video-podcasts-friday-april-1d2

People need to know the whole "This is actually hurting Trump" thing is part of the Bannon ruse to muddy the waters. Trump can't win without Bobby running and every bit of energy needs to be put into explaining that a vote for Bobby is a cowardly vote for Trump.

So we're four years into a 6-3 Republican majority on the Supreme Court and we're already hearing arguments for debtors’ prisons.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/04/court-divided-over-constitutionality-of-criminal-penalties-for-homelessness/#:~:text=The%20Supreme%20Court%20on%20Monday,sle

I'm reasonably sure the mama goat is *finally* in labour! I'm going to go sit in the barn with my tablet and read a neutrino PhD thesis while keeping her company and making sure everything goes smoothly.

@GottaLaff yo this is bad. I've been a paramedic for 14 years, EMTALA is a lynchpin law to our emergency medical system that guarantees that you will be treated regardless of your ability to pay. It exists because hospitals were turning away homeless and broke people having life threatening emergencies, and since then they've only become even more private equity and profit driven, so I can personally guarantee we'd speedrun a return to that if EMTALA got whacked.