FirstCircle

A new study, published in the journal Science Advances, Wednesday, finds that hot droughts have become more prevalent and severe across the western U.S. as a result of human-caused climate change.

"The frequency of compound warm and dry summers particularly in the last 20 years is unprecedented," said Karen King, lead author of the study and an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

For much of the last 20 years, western North America has been in the grips of a megadrought that's strained crop producers and ecosystems, city planners and water managers. Scientists believe it to be the driest period in the region in at least 1,200 years. They reached that determination, in part, by studying the rings of trees collected from thousands of sites across the Western U.S.

Cross-sections or cores of trees, both living and dead, can offer scientists windows into climate conditions of the past. Dark scars can denote wildfires. Pale rings can indicate insect outbreaks. "Narrow rings [mean] less water," said King, a dendrochronologist, who specialized in tree ring dating. "Fatter rings, more water."

Scientists have looked at tree ring widths to understand how much water was in the soil at a given time. King and fellow researchers did something different. They wanted to investigate the density of individual rings to get a picture of historical temperatures. In hotter years, trees build denser cell walls to protect their water.

King collected samples of tree species from mountain ranges around the West, road-tripping from the Sierra Nevada to British Columbia to the southern Rockies. She and her co-authors used those samples and others to reconstruct a history of summer temperatures in the West over the last 500 years.

The tree rings showed that the first two decades of this century were the hottest the southwestern U.S., the Pacific Northwest and parts of Texas and Mexico had experienced during that time. Last year was the hottest year on record globally.

By combining that temperature data with another tree-ring-sourced dataset looking at soil moisture, the researchers showed that today's hotter temperatures – sent soaring by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities – have made the current western megadrought different from its predecessors.

It also suggests that future droughts will be exacerbated by higher temperatures, particularly in the Great Plains, home to one of the world's largest aquifers, and the Colorado River Basin, the source of water for some 40 million people.

"As model simulations show that climate change is projected to substantially increase the severity and occurrence of compound drought and heatwaves across many regions of the world by the end of the 21st century," the authors wrote. "It is clear that anthropogenic drying has only just begun."

For decades now, airlines, hotels, cable companies, banks and a long list of other companies have bilked U.S. consumers out of billions of dollars annually via bullshit fees that unfairly jack up the advertised price of service. More interesting perhaps is the fact that it it took until 2023 for a U.S. federal regulator to even ponder the idea that this was perhaps bad and could or should be stopped.

Last year, the FTC announced it would be cracking down on such fees. That included a 126 page proposal aimed at the auto industry’s use of “administrative fees,” document fees, and other markups used to fatten up the price consumers pay for new or used cars.

Not surprisingly the auto industry didn’t much like that, and has been fighting the effort in court. While the rules were supposed to go into effect on July 30, the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) and Texas Automobile Dealers Association filed a challenge with the notoriously wacky (and corporate friendly) Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has suspended the FTC’s plan upon review. As with most such challenges, the automakers are trying to claim the FTC doesn’t have the authority to implement such rules, despite the agency’s authority to police “unfair and deceptive” behavior being very clear under the FTC Act.

Here’s the thing: the FTC and FCC aren’t doing anything crazy here. They’re doing the absolute bare minimum when it comes to policing obnoxious, misleading fees, often used to help companies falsely advertise a lower price that doesn’t actually exist. And even here you can see how such efforts face an unrelenting legal and lobbying assault by companies with near-unlimited legal and lobbying budgets.

Now remember that the corrupt Supreme Court is on the precipice of dismantling Chevron, a cornerstone of regulatory law as we know it, effectively undermining most existing independent regulatory authority. Once Chevron is dead, every last regulatory decision corporations don’t like will be challenged in court, and it will be left to a (potentially corrupt) judge to determine what regulators can or can’t do.

Picture this fight over fees. Now apply it to pretty much any regulatory effort to do anything. Then apply the assumption that corporations will win most of the time thanks to corrupt, unelected judges (often with lifetime appointments), and you’ll begin to see the full picture.

There is no effective health care system left in Gaza. Infants are dying. Children are having their limbs amputated without anesthesia. Thousands of cancer patients and those in need of dialysis lack treatment. The last cancer hospital in Gaza has ceased functioning. An estimated 50,000 pregnant women have no safe place to give birth. They undergo cesarean sections without anesthesia. Miscarriage rates are up 300 percent since the Israeli assault began. The wounded bleed to death. There is no sanitation or clean water. Hospitals have been bombed and shelled. Nasser Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in Gaza, is “near collapse.” Clinics, along with ambulances – 79 in Gaza and over 212 in the West Bank – have been destroyed. Some 400 doctors, nurses, medics and healthcare workers have been killed — more than the total of all healthcare workers killed in conflicts around the world combined since 2016. Over 100 more have been detained, interrogated, beaten and tortured, or disappeared by Israeli soldiers.

Israeli soldiers routinely enter hospitals to carry out forced evacuations – on Wednesday troops entered al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis and demanded doctors and displaced Palestinians leave – as well as round up detainees, including the wounded, sick and medical staff. On Tuesday, disguised as hospital workers and civilians, Israeli soldiers entered Jenin’s Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank and assassinated three Palestinians as they slept.

The cuts to funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) — collective punishment for the alleged involvement in the Oct. 7 attack of 12 its 13,000 UNRWA workers — will accelerate the horror, turning the attacks, starvation, lack of health care and spread of infectious diseases in Gaza into a tidal wave of death.

The evidence-free charges, which include the accusation that 10 percent of all of UNRWA’s Gaza staff have ties to Islamist militant groups, appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The reporter, Carrie-Keller Lynn, served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Given the numerous lies Israel has employed to justify its genocide, including “beheaded babies” and “mass rape,” it is reasonable to assume this may be another fabrication.

The allegations, of which details remain scant, are apparently based on confessions by Palestinian detainees — most certainly after being beaten or tortured. These allegations were enough to see 18 countries including the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, France, Australia and Japan cut or delay funding to the vital U.N. agency. UNRWA is all that stands between the Palestinians in Gaza and famine. A handful of countries, including Ireland, Norway and Turkey, maintain their funding.

From The Chris Hedges Report 31-Jan-24, much more in TFA.

Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans have a problem. They hate Social Security, because it is popular, effective, and doesn’t make any money for their billionaire donors. But their voters love Social Security. Ninety-four percent of Republicans oppose benefit cuts.

McConnell understands the political dangers of being openly hostile to Social Security. So instead, he is plotting to sabotage it from within. The latest instrument of that sabotage is Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the billionaire-funded American Enterprise Institute. Biggs is McConnell’s pick to serve on the Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB), which “provides advice and recommendations to the President, Congress, and the Commissioner of Social Security on matters related to the Social Security and Supplemental Security Income programs and policies.”

Biggs supports raising the retirement age, and has testified before Congress that people should work longer. In his words:

Go back to 1950, when we had a highly industrialized economy. You had coal miners, and farmers, and factory workers. The average age of initial Social Security claiming then was 68. Today, when your biggest on the job risk is, you know, carpal tunnel syndrome from your mouse or something like that, it’s 63... [T]he idea that we can’t have a higher retirement age, I think it just flies in the face of the fact that people did, in fact, retire later in the past, and today’s jobs are less physically demanding than they were in the past.

Nurses, firefighters, auto workers, and so many others would be surprised to hear that their jobs aren’t physically demanding! Biggs seems to think everyone has a cushy, billionaire-funded desk job like his, and would be happy to work until they die.

Biggs also wants to turn Social Security from an earned benefit into a poverty-level flat benefit. That means huge cuts for middle class workers who’ve been paying into the program their entire lives. It would destroy Social Security’s political popularity by turning it into a welfare program—a sitting duck for Republicans to make even larger cuts.

What Biggs doesn’t want is for his billionaire donors to pay their fair share into Social Security. He doesn’t want the American people to know that if billionaires pay into Social Security all year long on all of their income, not only can we protect Social Security—we can expand benefits.

The U.S. Navy is starting to enlist individuals who didn’t graduate from high school or get a GED, marking the second time in about a year that the service has opened the door to lower-performing recruits as it struggles to meet enlistment goals.

The decision follows a move in December 2022 to bring in a larger number of recruits who score very low on the Armed Services Qualification Test. Both are fairly rare steps that the other military services largely avoid or limit, even though they are all finding it increasingly difficult to attract the dwindling number of young people who can meet the military’s physical, mental and moral standards.

Under the new plan, Navy recruits without an education credential will be able to join as long as they score 50 or above on the qualification test, which is out of 99. The last time the service took individuals without education credentials was in 2000.

The Navy is the only service that enlists anyone considered a “category four” recruit, meaning they scored 30 or less on the qualification test. The service expanded the number of those category four recruits arguing that a number of jobs — such as cook or boatswain mate — don’t require an overall high test score, as long as they meet the job standards.

But even as things opened up, the military struggled to compete with higher-paying businesses in the tight job market, particularly as companies began to offer the types of benefits — such as college funding — that had often made the military a popular choice. Those economic problems were only exacerbated by the sharp political divide in the country and young people’s fears of being killed or injured going to war.

An NPR review of social media posts, speeches and interviews found that Trump has made calls to "free" Jan. 6 defendants or promised to issue them presidential pardons more than a dozen times. Trump has said he would issue those pardons on "day one" of his presidency, as part of a broader agenda to use presidential power to exact "retribution" against his opponents and deliver "justice" for his supporters.

"We'll be looking very, very seriously at full pardons," Trump told an interviewer in 2022. "I mean full pardons with an apology to many."

"LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO," Trump posted on his social media site, Truth Social, in March 2023.

Later that year, Trump re-posted a Truth Social post stating, "The cops should be charged and the protesters should be freed."

In the immediate term, a pardon for Jan. 6 defendants would free them from prison as well as other court-ordered supervision, and end ongoing prosecutions. The pardon would also allow the hundreds of defendants convicted of felonies to legally own guns again.

scientists led by archaeologist Prof Mark Collard of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver say the truth may be far more gruesome. “There is compelling evidence that these people may have had their fingers amputated deliberately in rituals intended to elicit help from supernatural entities,” said Collard.

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The latest helpful guidance from Mr. Deity. If like so many of us you hear voices in your head, but aren't sure it's God, this vid's for you.

"This study unveils, for the first time, a potential protective mechanism, 'wake' slow waves, employed by the brain to counteract epileptic activity. This mechanism takes advantage of protective brain activity that normally occurs during sleep, but in people with epilepsy, can occur during wakefulness."

As part of the research, the team also wanted to test whether the occurrence of "wake" slow waves had any negative effects on cognitive function. During the memory task, researchers found that the "wake" slow waves reduced nerve cell activity and so affected cognitive performance—increasing the length of time required by patients to complete the task.

The team reported that for each increase of one slow wave per second, the reaction time increased by 0.56 seconds.

Professor Walker said, "This observation suggests that the cognitive difficulties—in particularly, memory deficits—experienced by individuals with epilepsy may be attributed, in part, to the brief impairments induced by these slow waves."

The team hope that future studies will be able to increase such activity as a potential novel treatment for people with epilepsy.

In a 32-29 vote on Saturday, members of the Texas GOP’s executive committee stripped a pro-Israel resolution of a clause that would have included the ban— delivering a major blow to a faction that has called for the party to confront its ties to groups that have recently employed, elevated or associated with outspoken white supremacists or antisemitic figures.

In October, The Texas Tribune published photos of Fuentes, an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler who has called for a “holy war” against Jews, entering and leaving the offices of Pale Horse Strategies, a consulting firm for far-right candidates and movements. Pale Horse Strategies is owned by Jonathan Stickland, a former state representative and at the time the leader of a political action committee, Defend Texas Liberty, that two West Texas oil billionaires have used to fund right-wing movements, candidates and politicians in the state — including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

At least two people were fatally shot and three were wounded with non-life threatening injuries Friday in Las Vegas in the area of Charleston Boulevard and U.S. 95 at 5:30 local time, police said.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department told ABC affiliate KTNV that the victims were "unhoused."

Police told KTNV that the victims were shot by the same person who is still at large.