A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Many in the western business community are still hoping they can keep their heads down and continue to benefit from Hong Kong’s unique position in the world.

They are wrong — from a moral as well as a practical perspective.

Hong Kong is now the main battleground in an escalating cold war between China and what is left of the US-led liberal world order. Beijing’s decision to ignore the damage to its global reputation and defy its international treaty obligations under the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong shows the Chinese Communist party already believes this.

Great recipe for Chicken sprite adobo. Filipino dish

While Sweden has avoided the worst outbreaks in Italy, Spain and Britain, it has also seen an extraordinary increase in deaths, mortality data shows.

Today we’re announcing that Facebook AI has built and open-sourced BlenderBot, the largest-ever open-domain chatbot. It outperforms others in terms of...

"The VC funding model is terrible for most open source projects. With a few exceptions, you end up with an acquisition that ends or repurposes the project, or an Open Core project. And a VC-funded Open Core project will end up trying as hard as it can to have everyone need to buy the paid version, since that's clearly the way to optimize revenue and eventually the slippery slope will get you there. I don't blame folks for taking VC; it was easy to get, and there aren't a lot of alternative funding models that can pay the multiple fulltime staff that might be required to create what one wants to create.

I don't think VC funding as it currently exists is consistent with running an open source company according to my values, which is why we're not taking venture funding for Zulip. Obviously, being scrappy, applying for NSF grants, and spending my own money have very real downsides both personally and for our growth, especially when every competitor has VC funding, but it also means that I can ensure Zulip continues existing as a real open source project for the long run."

The CDC’s Select Agents and Toxins program requires that “theft, loss, release causing an occupational exposure, or release outside of primary biocontainment barriers” of agents on its watchlist be immediately reported. Between 2005 and 2012, the agency got 1,059 release reports — an average of an incident every few days.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, had an outbreak in 2003. Since then it hasn’t reoccurred in the wild, but there have been six separate incidents of it escaping the lab: one in Singapore, one in Taiwan, and four times at one lab in Beijing.

one third of ncov cases in December had no connection to the seafood market. two thirds did. what is that evidence of? that the market could that's been the origin since a third had no connection to it. or that the market is the likely origin, since 66% is a big portion, and maybe connections to the market for the other third were just not found?

millenials have all the reason in the world to burn it all down, experiencing a second once-in-a-lifetime downturn in like a dozen years "near guaranteeing that they will be the first generation in modern American history to end up poorer than their parents" when normal things like housing and job safety are no longer even on offer even in boom times.

unlike the great financial crisis, this time people are willing to genuinely question the basic makeup of society. makes sense when it's an outside-in crisis, impacting society everywhere resulting in economic impact. last time, being an inside-out crisis stemming from financial markets, few people called for any kind of major overhaul of the system, and think they were mostly written off as kooks. things were patched over with traditional methods, liquidity, QE, regulation.

now people are going much further, thanks to bernie/AOC/yang creating real discussion about fundamental change. recent events making that argument much more palatable. many trump supporters and nonsupporters favour radical change from where we are now. visible direct conflict between major powers (russia, US, UK/EU, China) beg the question of "what's the right system?" and the many flaws in each of the existing ones. change is on everyone's minds

"The lament one reads repeatedly is that they were "unfairly" forced to fund retirement benefits -- though what we're really talking about is retiree medical benefits which the Post Office neither prefunded nor accounted for at the time of benefit accrual, until the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. As reported in The Week in 2018, in an article the title of which ("How George Bush broke the Post Office") makes clear the author's point of view:"

if there's no chance of rescinding these benefits, and the USPS is backstopped by the Treasury, there should be no need to fully pre-fund these liabilities.

"Now, one might point to the private-sector practice of leaving retiree medical liabilities unfunded as justification for doing the same here, so that they sit as an expense item and a balance-sheet liability but don't require any cashflow, but, at the same time, a private-sector company can justify its lack of funding because they can eliminate these benefits at any time; can the Post Office realistically do the same?"

unnecessarily harsh in the execution due to short phase-in period, and additional restriction to invest only in US Treasuries.

"But all this being said, why do I say that Ocasio-Cortez is only "mostly" rather than "wholly" wrong in her statement? Based on private-sector precedents, the 10 year requirement for the plan to fund its retiree liabilities was unusually harsh. In the original 1974 ERISA legislation, plans were given 40 years to fully fund plans that had previously been pay-as-you-go, and 30 years to fund plan enhancements."

"In addition, the retiree medical fund is required to invest exclusively in U.S. Treasuries (see the Postal Service 10-K, page 35-36), and, as a result, the discount rate used in the valuation is considerably lower than a private-sector plan would be obliged to use, in the latter case based on high-quality corporate bonds."

I agree it's difficult to assign malice. but with the modern republican party, it's been borne out that even benign ideas like "addressing election security" are underpinned by malice (to lower voter turnout, in this case). if something smells of malice, what are the odds it isn't?

He'll throw a shit fit to protect 30,000 coal jobs but could give a fuck about 500,000 USPS employees.

More than that, the post office is an enemy because they would facilitate absentee and mail-in voting.

This is exactly it.

The GOP want the outbreak to last until November or at least cause another flair up at that time. Wisconsin was their test case. They want it so only the absolute crazies that have words painted all over their cars about Jesus will vote. Sure, you can vote...if you don't mind lining up 2 days before in only 52 polling stations across the whole country.

Republicans aren't fucking around any more. The fake democracy is over. They are cashing out and preparing for permanent dictatorship run by them.

There were only 5 polling stations in Milwaukee out of the usual 180. 5. Out of 180. There were lines literally over a mile long. Some of my friends waited for hours. I really hope that Jill gets that SC win. Wisconsin needs that right now.

Reagan literally rebuilt the Republican party in his image, I mean shit he literally helped build the right wing media infrastructure or at least early perfected the Rush Limbaugh-esque radio programming in the early 70s.

Reagan's presidential legacy above all else should be the"Unitary Executive" theory

, Ed Meese the AG under Reagan was aided in writing theory up by several Alex P. Keaton - young conservative movement type characters, such as Bill Barr, wrote up the theory that's essentially answered the Nixonian question of "whatever the president does isn't illegal.

The UET has opened the door for all proceeding administrations since Reagan to basically have unchecked power and namely most harmfully used by the Bush and Trump administrations. I think that the rise of the UET can be the key to understanding the sixth party system
that we are currently operating in.

I blame Newt.

The Man Who Broke Politics (Newt Gingrich)- https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/

But few figures in modern history have done more than Gingrich to lay the groundwork for Trump’s rise. During his two decades in Congress, he pioneered a style of partisan combat—replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism—that poisoned America’s political culture and plunged Washington into permanent dysfunction. Gingrich’s career can perhaps be best understood as a grand exercise in devolution—an effort to strip American politics of the civilizing traits it had developed over time and return it to its most primal essence.

And his Padawan?

Pundits, aghast at the brazenness of the strategy, predicted backlash from voters—but few seemed to notice. Even some Republicans were surprised by what they were getting away with. Bill Kristol, then a GOP strategist, marveled at the success of his party’s “principled obstructionism.” An up-and-coming senator named Mitch McConnell was quoted crowing that opposing the Democrats’ agenda “gives gridlock a good name.” When the 103rd Congress

adjourned in October, The Washington Post declared it “perhaps the worst Congress” in 50 years.

"our democracy is a democracy in name only"

likelihood of policy passing insensitive to public support, but very sensitive to support by economic elites and interest groups

Some important tips to make your drives last longer — and how to spin them down automatically on Linux

"So all signs point to the boson being the carrier of some new, fifth force. But physics isn't keen on celebrating prematurely. Finding a new particle is always big news in physics, and warrants a lot of scrutiny. Not to mention repeated experiment."

Everything in our Universe is held together or pushed apart by four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and two nuclear interactions. Physicists now think they've spotted the actions of a fifth physical force emerging from a helium atom.