President Trump is refusing intelligence briefings because the Deep State continues to try and sabotage him:
“They come in, they give you a briefing and then two days later they leak it and then they say you leaked it. The only way to solve that problem is not to take them.” pic.twitter.com/8UEhoE2Qsm
Lindell has been spotted at the United Center wandering around in a fedora to “investigate” gender-neutral bathrooms and peddle his baseless election conspiracy theories. On Wednesday, the pillowmonger got into a verbal altercation with Knowa De Brasco, a 12-year-old activist who was there supporting Kamala Harris. Read the full article. Watch all of the LOL clips.
Knowa: Lindell provided no facts, no sources. I’m confused as to why his source was ‘trust me bro’ pic.twitter.com/qXtOUbkECq
New York state lawyers urged an appeals court to uphold Donald Trump’s nearly $500 million civil fraud judgment, arguing there’s “overwhelming evidence” to support the finding that Trump lied for years about his wealth as he built his real estate empire. https://t.co/8KZh4WASDi
Read the full article. Almost all voters register using the state form. As of last month, only 42,000 Arizonans are registered to vote via the federal form.
According to a coming biography, Queen Elizabeth told others that she found Trump “very rude” and that he always seemed to be looking over her shoulder “as if he was looking for someone more interesting.” The book further claims that the Queen believed that Trump and Melania must have “some kind of special arrangement,” considering his flagrant serial adultery.
Read the full article. Sentencing will be determined next week. As you can see below, Reimer’s first arrest last year resulted in a money beg from a major right wing Canadian outlet. Reimer’s previous non-drag related convictions resulted in sentences totally nearly three years.
Election officials said Arkansans for Limited Government failed to comply with state law primarily because it submitted documentation regarding paid signature gatherers separately and not in a single bundle.
As I said last month, it appears that the office of Secretary of State John Thurston [photo] deliberately withheld the above-cited rule about petition bundling. Thurston was a pastor before entering politics.
“I got a message for the Republicans and the justices of the United States Supreme Court. You can pry this wedding band from my cold, dead, gay, hand. And I’m retaining a lot of water, so good luck with that.” – Michigan AG Dana Nessel, last night.
WATCH: Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel speaks at the Democratic National Convention.
“I got a message for the Republicans and the justices of the United States Supreme Court," Nessel said. "You can pry this wedding band from my cold, dead, gay hand.” pic.twitter.com/0rN3OuhVTt
“What they’ve done is they’ve allowed murderers, people in prisons, people in jails, people in mental institutions, insane asylums, and terrorists to pour into our country by the hundreds of thousands. And they are in our country right now, and the country that brought them out said, ‘If you ever come back, we’re giving you the death penalty or we’re gonna kill you.’” – The world’s most famous liar, inventing a death penalty for migrants who return to their home countries.
Trump claims countries are threatening migrants with the death penalty if they leave the United States and return to their country of origin. pic.twitter.com/d2kxR6czcN
“President Trump knew more about diplomacy than any president of the last 40 years. And Asia, he opened diplomatic talks with North Korea after a half century of stagnation.
🚨 SENATOR JD VANCE: “While all these Democrats lied about Donald Trump being the candidate of nuclear war, Donald Trump is the person who prevented nuclear war, and if we're not careful, Kamala Harris is going to walk us right into nuclear war.” pic.twitter.com/juUSChErYB
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the state’s rejection of signed petitions for an abortion rights ballot initiative on Thursday, keeping the proposal from going before voters in November.
The ruling dashed the organizers’ hopes of getting the constitutional amendment measure onto the ballot in the predominantly Republican state, where many top leaders promote their opposition to abortion.
Election officials said Arkansans for Limited Government failed to comply with state law primarily because it submitted documentation regarding paid signature gatherers separately and not in a single bundle. The group argued that it should have been given more time to provide any additional documents needed.
“We find that the Secretary correctly refused to count the signatures collected by paid canvassers because the sponsor failed to file the paid canvasser training certification” in the way the law requires, Justice Rhonda Wood wrote for the 4-3 majority.
A dissenting justice wrote that the decision strips Arkansans’ of their rights and effectively changes the state’s initiative law.
“Why are the respondent and the majority determined to keep this particular vote from the people?” wrote Justice Karen Baker, who is running against Wood for chief justice. “The majority has succeeded in its efforts to change the law in order to deprive the voters of the opportunity to vote on this issue, which is not the proper role of this court.”
The integration of artificial intelligence into public health could have revolutionary implications for the global south—if only it can get online.
(Whew! It’s a long one. Maybe read it in part, then come back and read some more. Or read it all at once, it’s not insurmountable. I’m interested what people here think about this.)
The transformative potential of digital connectivity became a global game changer more than two decades ago. Mobile phones reshaped telecommunications, enabling connectivity even in homes without landlines. Digital health quickly leveraged these innovations, making remote patient-doctor communication, digital payments, care coordination, and online peer support networks possible.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has undoubtedly sparked another phase of digital innovation. Although the field’s origins date to the mid-twentieth century, recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have thrust it into the spotlight. Reflecting this growing relevance, the World Health Organization (WHO) dedicated a session at its World Health Assembly (WHA) in early 2024 to AI’s implications for global health, convening regional, national, academic, and international health organizations and actors to examine this matter.
AI Applications in Global Health
The literature generally presents four key use cases for artificial intelligence in health in low- and middle-income countries: disease diagnosis, risk assessment, outbreak preparation and response, and planning and policy-making. As the 2021 WHO report on AI in healthcare indicates, several AI applications are already in use or in development for diagnosis and assessment, such as in India for rapidly creating encephalograms in six minutes; in Rwanda and Pakistan for patient navigation; in Uganda, for malaria diagnosis; and in Nigeria for monitoring vital signs in mothers and children, and detecting infant asphyxia. On a broader scale, the advancement of DeepMind’s AlphaFold system in predicting the three-dimensional shape of proteins holds promise for enhancing our understanding of diseases and accelerating treatments.
Use cases in outbreak surveillance and response are also prominent. Google Flu Trends used search engine queries to predict influenza activity, but its overestimation of flu prevalence demonstrated the need for continuous algorithm updates. Tools like HealthMap have also proven valuable, detecting early signs of vaping-related lung disease and issuing an early bulletin about the novel coronavirus in Wuhan.
AI is also being used in planning and policy making, such as in South Africa where machine-learning (ML) models were used to predict how long recruited health workers’ would commit to their placements in rural communities; and in Brazil where artificial neural networks were used to create a method to geographically optimize resources based on population health needs.
Could AI Represent a Sea-Change in Global Health?
The integration of AI in public health is still evolving and being cautiously assessed in some cases, but it’s poised to transform key health functions. Evidence generation, the foundation of health policies and practices, is undergoing significant change. Traditionally, systematic reviews, a cornerstone of evidence synthesis, may take months or even years to complete. Now tools like Eppi-Reviewer use ML for more efficient screening, while platforms like Open Evidence are able to summarize existing studies rapidly. As AI becomes capable of handling technical aspects such as quality appraisal, meta-analysis, and synthesis with high rigor and fidelity, its role in evidence generation will expand. This advancement will enable more cost-effective and timely production of health guidelines, with leading bodies already creating guidelines for AI use in evidence synthesis.
Data collection and analysis are also experiencing transformative changes. AI-powered tools enable rapid analysis of both structured and unstructured data, marking a significant shift from traditional paper-based methods and conventional fieldwork. This capability has a remarkable impact on public health strategies centered on behavior change. AI can allow for the creation of highly targeted health promotion campaigns with unprecedented speed and precision. Moreover, sentiment analysis tools can assess public perceptions in real-time, enabling agile adjustments to ongoing health campaigns.
The healthcare workforce is also expected to evolve as AI-human partnerships are normalized. For instance, Hippocratic AI’s generative models can perform certain care management functions, while Google’s Med-Gemini provides real-time feedback on medical procedures, including surgeries. As they improve and are adopted by practitioners, these tools will have the potential to enhance the cost-effectiveness and precision of healthcare delivery.
As of May 2024, the FDA had authorized 882 AI- and ML-enabled medical devices. The rising volume of such AI-enabled devices as well as the rise in registered clinical trials related to their use underscores how much the field has embraced such tools.
A Changing Actor Landscape
The integration of AI in healthcare is not only transforming practices but also reshaping the landscape of global health actors. Historically, global health was a multilateral activity, dominated by international non-governmental organizations and national governments alike. The early twenty-first century saw the emergence of influential philanthropic actors like the Gates Foundation. Now, we are entering a phase where private-sector AI companies are poised to become increasingly influential in this arena.
While open-source models and government-developed AI systems exist, the predominance of private-sector AI models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, raises critical questions about data governance in global health. Unlike existing cross-national commercial influences on health such as the fast food or tobacco industries, AI systems present more nuanced concerns. For instance, if private models become integrated into existing multilateral health initiatives, how can we ensure their compliance with global health objectives? How do we address potential conflicts of interest when companies hold influence over health data and decision-making?
Regional and national guidelines are emerging to govern this evolving landscape. The European Health Data Space, discussed at the World Health Assembly, offers one such example. This initiative aims to create a single data space across the twenty-seven EU member states, empowering patients to control their health data while establishing a framework for safe data reuse and AI deployment. It also includes provisions for rigorous evaluation of high-risk AI systems in healthcare.
Similarly, the African Union recently launched its Continental AI Strategy, with a stated aim “to harness artificial intelligence to meet Africa’s development aspirations and the well-being of its people, while promoting ethical use, minimizing potential risks, and leveraging opportunities.” Monitoring measures like this as they develop will be instructive for the future deployment of AI in global health initiatives.
Building Foundational Infrastructure
Another factor to consider is that advances in AI mean little for health systems at an insufficient level of maturity. Progress in AI depends heavily on a strong foundation of digital health architecture, which encompasses secure data management, interoperability between health information systems, and comprehensive digital strategies. While most countries have digital health strategies, their implementation varies widely, with progress in resource-limited settings often lagging. Several countries have neither sufficient health workers to regularly input data nor dependable electricity and Wi-Fi to support a transition from paper to digital records. The lack of foundational infrastructure presents a significant barrier to AI implementation.
Initiatives like the Precision Public Health Initiative, led by the Rockefeller Foundation in collaboration with the WHO, UNICEF, global health funding agencies, ministries of health, and technology companies aim to strengthen AI use in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). With initial funding of US$100 million, it aims to extend the use of AI and data science in LMICs, providing the latest technology to under-resourced parts of the world. Initiatives like this will need to concentrate resources on foundational health system strengthening functions such as the training and supportive supervision of staff and resource management.
Ethical Implications
As AI advances, ethical considerations must keep pace. These challenges can be broadly categorized into privacy and surveillance concerns, data misuse, algorithmic biases, and issues of transparency and liability. Recent cases highlight the urgency of addressing these matters proactively.
As the research report Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence for Health: WHO Guidance explains, during the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s Alipay introduced a “Health Code” that used collected data to determine exposure risks. This system, which determined individuals’ mobility based on their assigned color codes, raised concerns about privacy, rights, and the potential for mass surveillance. Another case discussed in the WHO guidance report is Dinerstein vs. Google, in which the University of Chicago shared patient records stripped of identifying information with Google to develop machine-learning tools for predicting medical events. A class action complaint was filed, alleging that records could be re-identified, threatening patient privacy.
Several cases other cases in the WHO guidance report highlight the critical issue of bias in AI systems. In Argentina, an AI system designed to predict adolescent pregnancy faced criticism when it was found to have flawed methodology and to violate the privacy of adolescents. Similarly, a study in the US revealed racial biases in an algorithm that resulted in Black patients receiving less medical attention than equally sick white patients.
Additionally, an AI technology designed to detect potentially cancerous skin lesions was trained primarily on data from lighter-toned individuals in Australia, Europe, and the US, highlighting its inadequacy for darker-skinned populations.
The “black box” nature of many AI algorithms also raises critical questions about informed consent and liability. If an AI system recommends a specific drug dosage, but the underlying algorithm is opaque to the physician, who bears responsibility for adverse outcomes?
A Case Study
To illustrate how the various considerations of AI in global health converge, the WHO’s Smart AI Resource Assistant for Health (S.A.R.A.H.) project provides a recent and relevant case study. Launched in April 2024, S.A.R.A.H. is a video-based generative AI assistant designed to address gaps in health information accessibility. Developed in partnership with Soul Machines Biological AI, this initiative represents, in the words of WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “how artificial intelligence could be used in future to improve access to health information in a more interactive way.”
The potential for LLMs in health promotion must be viewed against the backdrop of the burden placed on health systems. For example, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have an estimated 0.2 and 0.8 doctors per 1000 people, respectively, compared to 4.3 in the European Union and 3.4 in North America. A map of travel time to health facilities reveals that it’s not uncommon to spend a day traveling to see a doctor in several regions such as North Africa. Even when they can see a doctor, more than a billion people are driven into poverty each year because of exorbitant health care costs. In such contexts, LLMs can complement the health promotion efforts currently being provided by community health workers. They can also enhance supervision and training.
S.A.R.A.H. stands out for its efforts to tailor recommendations to local contexts. For example, it offers meal recommendations based on regional dietary habits. It also uses visual emotional cues to display empathy. Like its WhatsApp-based chatbot predecessor for sharing COVID-19 information, S.A.R.A.H.’s reach will probably expand through partnerships with telecommunications providers and social networks, supporting its broad dissemination.
However, S.A.R.A.H. faces some challenges that mirror broader issues in AI for global health. Users have noticed errors in the information S.A.R.A.H. has provided; it incorrectly stated, for example, that a drug for Alzheimer’s was still in clinical trials when the drug had been approved in 2023. This highlights the critical need for AI systems to keep pace with rapidly evolving medical knowledge.
While S.A.R.A.H. offers a wider range of languages than many existing tools (including French, Russian, English, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Arabic, and Chinese), this still represents only a fraction of global languages, potentially limiting its reach. Also, the success of video-based tools like S.A.R.A.H. depends on robust digital infrastructure and access to smartphones with video capabilities, which are hardly universally available.
The processing of users’ video data also raises important privacy considerations. While not yet available, the WHO has committed to making the training materials and the evidence base for S.A.R.A.H. publicly accessible, aligning with its principles on LLM use. Transparency in how S.A.R.A.H. processes and uses data will be crucial in maintaining trust and offering insights for this emerging space.
Conclusion
As noted by WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros at the WHA, AI represents a transformative advancement in global health akin to past innovations such as the introduction of vaccines, penicillin, MRI machines, and human genome mapping, all of which revolutionized the field. As reported in the above-linked 2021 WHO report on AI in healthcare, the integration of AI into health systems presents immense potential with projections noting that the top ten AI applications in health could result in an estimated US$150 billion in savings by 2026.
While the potential of AI is undeniable, the critical question remains: can it fulfill the promise of improving health outcomes worldwide? This hinges on several factors, including building foundational infrastructure, addressing ethical considerations, and effectively governing the evolving landscape of actors, which are no small feats.
August 22, 1958 President Dwight Eisenhower announced a voluntary moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. A report outlining a system for monitoring and verifying compliance of a complete ban on such testing had been released just the day before. The Conference of Experts, as it was known, had been meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, to work out the details on detection of violations of such a treaty. The U.S. delegation was led by Nobel physics laureate Ernest Lawrence from the University of California (the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is named after him). Eisenhower predicated his moratorium on U.S.S.R. and U.K. agreement to the same limitations. All three countries agreed to the one-year halt in testing and to begin negotiations on a complete test ban at the end of October; all three performed last-minute (atmospheric) tests before the opening of talks.
August 22, 1964 Fannie Lou Hamer, leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), testified in front of the Credentials Committee at the Democratic National Convention. She was challenging the all-white delegation that the segregated regular Mississippi Democrats had sent to the presidential nominating convention. Singing at a boardwalk demonstration: Hamer (with microphone), Stokely Carmichael (in hat), Eleanor Holmes Norton, Ella Baker . Mississippi’s Democratic Party excluded African Americans from participation. The MFDP, on the other hand, sought to create a racially inclusive new party, signing up 60,000 members. The hearing was televised live and many heard Hamer’s impassioned plea for inclusion of all Democrats from her state.The hearing was televised live and many heard Hamer’s impassioned plea for inclusion of all Democrats from her state. In her testimony she spoke about black Mississippians not only being denied the right to register to vote, but being harassed, beaten, shot at and arrested for trying. Concerned about the political reaction to her statement, President Lyndon Johnson suddenly called an impromptu press conference, thereby interrupting television broadcast of the hearing. Hear her testimony Link to photo gallery
August 22, 1971 The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) arrested twenty in Camden, New Jersey, and five in Buffalo, New York, for conspiracy to steal and destroy draft records. Eventually known as the Camden 28, most were Roman Catholic activists, including four priests, and a Lutheran minister. “We are not here because of a crime committed in Camden but because of a war committed in Indochina….” Cookie Ridolfi The Camden 28
August 22, 1972 Rhodesia’s team was banned from competing in the Olympic Games with just four days to go before the opening ceremony in Munich, Germany. The National Olympic Committees of Africa had threatened to pull out of the games unless Rhodesia was barred from competing. Though the Rhodesian team included both whites and blacks, the government was an illegal one, controlled by whites though they represented just 5% of the country’s population. It had broken away from the British Commonwealth over demands from Commonwealth member nations that power be yielded to the majority. Read more
August 22, 1986 The Kerr-McGee Corporation agreed to pay the estate of the late Karen Silkwood $1.38 million ($2.68 in 2008), settling a 10-year-old nuclear contamination lawsuit. She had been active in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union, specifically looking into radiation exposure of workers, and spills and leaks of plutonium. The story of Karen Silkwood
(My great- Aunt and Uncle lived in St. Petersburg, and my sister and I went there to visit. I got to hold a lime, and a grapefruit, attached to trees in their backyard, which was a big deal to a little kid.) Good news for Florida!
By KATE PAYNE Updated 10:28 PM CDT, August 20, 2024
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — School board candidates in Florida backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis were defeated Tuesday in several counties, results that opponents of the Republican say are a rebuke to his conservative education agenda.
Incumbent school board members in one of Florida’s largest swing counties appear to have held off a challenge from candidates backed by DeSantis, according to preliminary results. Activists had hoped that three challengers endorsed by the local chapter of Moms for Liberty would win a conservative majority in Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
But unofficial results show current school board chair Laura Hine and incumbent member Eileen Long have held on to their seats, after arguing that a political shift on the board could create turmoil in the district and distract from the mission of student achievement.
In a third race for an open seat on the Pinellas board, candidates Stacy Geier and Katie Blaxberg appeared to be headed for a runoff, after no one in the three-way contest cleared 50% of the vote.
With 100% of precincts reporting, Hine, the board chair, carried 69% of the vote over DeSantis-backed challenger Danielle Marolf’s 30%, according to preliminary results. Incumbent member Long brought in 54% of the vote over the 45% netted by Erika Picard, who was also endorsed by the Republican governor.
“We have got to stay focused on that work at hand and not be subject to the social political winds. Education is vital. And it has to be stable,” Hine told The Associated Press ahead of Tuesday’s elections.
In the third race for the board, Stacy Geier garnered 37% of the vote compared to Katie Blaxberg’s 34%, with a third candidate Brad DeCorte netting 28%, according to the county’s preliminary results. Geier was endorsed by DeSantis and the local Chapter of Moms for Liberty, while Blaxberg has argued parental rights activists have gone too far, with some equating books with pornography and labeling teachers as “groomers”. She found herself on the opposing side of the local chapter of Moms for Liberty and was targeted by conservative activists online.
“The misinformation that has been spread by this group of people and the intent to … place mistrust in our teachers,” Blaxberg said, “people are tired of it.”
Much of the political debate in the races had hinged on “parental rights”, a movement which grew out of opposition to pandemic precautions in schools but now is animated by heated complaints over teachings about identity, race and history.
Long, one of the Pinellas incumbents, said she sees the results as an admonishment of the governor.
“People want sanity. People want common sense. And people believe we should educate everyone,” Long said. “The people have spoken.”
Incumbents in Hillsborough County hold off conservative challengers
An Iowa man fired for posting a comment on his employer’s intranet site condemning the rainbow pride flag as an “abomination to God” was not illegally fired based on his religion, the Eighth Circuit ruled Wednesday. @roxalaird16https://t.co/il3obOetLO
"More people believe in UFOs than believe in Congress."
— Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) ahead of the House Oversight Committee's hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) next week pic.twitter.com/ZSyuRFe2aQ
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) on leading an upcoming hearing on UFOs:
“The Tic Tac videos … the military denied that that even existed … The Pentagon's coming around because they smell dollars. The war pimps at the Pentagon, all they wanna do is drain more dollars from us.” pic.twitter.com/LdioUWgoU7
Walters has ordered daily bible lessons in all public school classes and has vowed to fire any teacher who does not comply. Earlier this week around 25 Republican lawmakers moved to impeach Walters for refusing to their demands for transparency on his spending. They are particularly irked that Walters has traveled the country on the state’s dime to appear at far-right and pro-Trump events. The speaker of the Oklahoma House has said that he needs a majority to sign onto the impeachment letter before any action can begin. Walters is widely expected to run to succeed Christian nationalist Gov. Kevin Stitt, who is term-limited.
Ryan Walters slapped with defamation suit over attacks on Bixby superintendent: A suburban school superintendent is suing Oklahoma's state superintendent for more than $75,000 after being called a clown, a liar and a poor steward of taxpayer funding. https://t.co/TwboVovNHEpic.twitter.com/COP5k1dcAg
As with his previous lawsuits, this one was filed in the Amarillo division of U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas, all but assuring the case will go to far-right Christian nationalist and anti-LGBTQ Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. Yesterday Paxton sued to block federal regulations on staffing at nursing homes. Last month Paxton also sued to block federal rules on birth control for teenagers. Both of those cases are before Kacsmaryk.
“True the Vote, … whose alleged data formed the basis of the election conspiracy theorist documentary ‘2,000 Mules,’ told a court it doesn't have any records to support its claims of extensive voter fraud in Georgia, reported the AJC on Wednesday.” 1/ https://t.co/pZ6lZZYynhpic.twitter.com/nfEopFsr8Y
MUST WATCH!‼️ Catherine and Gregg discuss IV3, the process of normalizing millions of voter records, and how the projects they’re working on give citizens hands on access to election integrity tools. pic.twitter.com/G4uezLyjjs
2/ Here is True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht blathering about “God” on Flashpoint (which is on Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel). pic.twitter.com/bKswwMD9xt
Murillo last appeared here in June 2024 when he asked for $10 million in donations to stop Pride Month. He first appeared here in 2021 when he prophesied that God was about to “send down a righteous fire” to smite America’s atheists. He also appeared here in February 2024 when he joined Charlie Kirk’s alleged $100 million drive to mobilize Christian voters.
Trump-loving evangelist Mario Murillo warns that "as a Christian, voting for [Kamala Harris] will be the most reckless thing you will do in your life." pic.twitter.com/0bngGFq0ek
Read the full article. You will be utterly shocked to learn that Paxton has never sued a church for violating the same rules.
.@KenPaxtonTX is trying to shut down @FIELHouston, alleging it is "systematically" flouting nonprofit rules by advocating too aggressively against state laws and political candidates. It is his latest attempt to shutter groups aiding immigrants in Texas. https://t.co/ND4C4TDtXo
Paxton is trying to punish @FIELHouston for social media posts which he argues run afoul of the limits federal law places on 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.
If judges accept that argument (and so far it seems they're not), it would put every nonprofit in the state at risk. pic.twitter.com/MbxxyeCo34
As I’ve mentioned here many times, Alliance Defending Freedom once petitioned the US Supreme Court to keep homosexuality criminalized. Since then, they have provided free legal support to overseas groups seeking to maintain or institute such laws in their own countries.
On the above post the republicans are so desperate and Comer is such a loser. They learned from harassing Hillary that if they hammer on a pretend issue and make it seem real, that lowers the candidate’s favorable ratings. It worked with Hillary so they went after Biden and his son Hunter. But it was not working like they want. They know they can not attack VP Harris, so they went for Walz. It is not governing, it is not legit, sadly they are accusing Walz of the same things they tried to hit Biden and Hunter with. How totally clueless in today’s society. Hugs. Scottie
The Inflation Reduction Act has sparked a manufacturing boom across the U.S., mobilizing tens of billions of dollars of investment, particularly in rural communities in need of economic development.
The future of those investments could hinge on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The prospect of a Republican victory has shaken the confidence of some investors who worry the IRA could be weakened or in a worst-case scenario repealed.
Actual manufacturing investment has totaled $89 billion, an increase of 305% compared to the two years prior to the IRA, according to MIT and Rhodium. Overall, the IRA has leveraged half a trillion dollars of investment across the manufacturing, energy and retail sectors, according to the data.
“It is having a transformative effect within the manufacturing sector,” said Trevor Houser, a partner with the Rhodium Group. “The amount of new manufacturing activity that we’re seeing right now is unprecedented in recent history, and is in large part due to new clean energy manufacturing facilities.”
Some 271 manufacturing projects for clean energy tech and electric vehicles have been announced since the IRA passed, which will create more than 100,000 jobs if they are all completed, according to the advocacy group E2, a partner of the National Resources Defense Council. The investments sparked by the IRA have been a boon for rural communities in particular, Houser said.
“Unlike investment in AI and tech and finance, which is clustered in big cities, clean energy investment really is concentrated in rural communities, and is one of the brightest sources of new investment in those areas,” Houser said.
The IRA has also accelerated the deployment of renewable energy, with $108 billion in invested in utility-scale solar and battery storage projects. Investments in solar and battery storage have surged 56% and 130%, respectively, over the past two years, according to the Rhodium data.
“The more mature technologies, so like wind and solar generation, electric vehicles, those have achieved escape velocity,” Houser said. “They will continue to grow no matter what. It’s a question of speed.”
Trump threats to IRA
But the “manufacturing renaissance” is still in its early stages and remains fragile, Houser said. Without the IRA, the resurgence of new factories would not have taken off, said Chris Seiple, vice chairman of Wood Mackenzie’s power and renewables group.
Former President Donald Trump has threatened to dismantle the law as he advocates for more oil, gas and coal production.
“Upon taking office, I will impose an immediate moratorium on all new spending grants and giveaways under the Joe Biden mammoth socialist bills like the so-called Inflation Reduction Act,” Trump told supporters at a May rally in Wisconsin.
“We’re going to terminate his green new scam,” he said. “And we’re going to end this war on American energy — we’re going to drill, baby, drill.”
(And of course you should listen to “Supermassive Black Hole” by Muse while enjoying this article. It’s the real only way. 😉)
August 21, 2024 Evrim Yazgin
Astrophysicists at Melbourne’s Monash University have generated the first simulation which accurately depicts what happens when a star ventures too close to a supermassive black hole.
The research, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, is a technical milestone in our attempts to understand these mysterious cosmic giants.
First author Daniel Price, a professor at Monash, tells Cosmos that there are about 100 events which have been observed over the past decade-and-a-half which astronomers believe fit the bill to be a star being destroyed by a supermassive black hole, also called a tidal disruption event (TDE).
Not X-ray vision
But these observations have thrown up some odd measurements which haven’t been explained until now.
“If you dump a bunch of material close to black hole and form an accretion disk around that black hole, there’s a prediction for where the material should land,” Price says. “The material at that location should be more than a million degrees in temperature. It should generate X-rays.
“So, if you have unobscured stuff feeding a black hole, you get X-ray emission. For example, the black hole sources in the galaxy, they’re all X-ray emitters.”
Stars falling into supermassive black holes, however, do not result in emission of X-rays. They emit light in the visible, or optical, spectrum.
Current theories can only speculate why such events lead to material being flung toward us at 20,000km per second – about one-fifteenth the speed of light.
An eating analogy – but not in the way you think
Price explains that the simulation illuminates why it is optical light, not X-rays, which we observe when our telescopes pick up stars falling into supermassive black holes.
“The analogy with me eating is that you don’t see my stomach. You’re not seeing the thing that’s generating the energy, you’re seeing it reprocessed through my skin,” Price says. “If you look at my light curve, you see that I’m a constant temperature of 38°C all day.
“My light curve is very much like a disruption event. The temperatures are pretty much constant. Luminosity changes a bit, but you infer that’s because the size of the objects changing, but the temperature evolution is very flat. So, it looks like exactly like me, just a lot warmer and a lot bigger.”
In fact, this size of the photosphere – the object which emits the optical rays – itself is surprising, says Price.
The photosphere in the simulation, which matches observations, is about 100 astronomical units (AU), where 1 AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun (roughly 150 million kilometres).
Price says the simulations confirm a theoretical explanation for these unexpected observations called the Eddington envelope.
“That’s the concept that you’re stuffing material down towards the black hole faster than it can process it,” Price says. “By process, I mean like the sun processes the energy from its core – it just kind of gently radiates it away. So the black hole can’t radiate away the stuff that you’re trying to feed it. And, so, it has to literally blow it away.”
This material “smothers” the black hole, absorbing the X-rays that the black hole emits and re-emitting it as optical light.
Price extends the eating analogy to an unpleasant place.
“Basically, it’s like stuffing your stomach. You’re going to vomit eventually. That’s pretty much what happens.”
The power of a simulation
“That’s the exciting thing in simulations. People have speculated for a long time and drawn illustrations and this kind of thing, but there’s no physics in that. That’s just what we call phenomenology. That’s how it must be to explain this phenomena. But we don’t know what produces that kind of envelope or layer, or reprocessing layer,” Price says.
The simulation, Price says, just requires the initial conditions – the star – the fluid mechanics governing the star, and the rules of general relativity.
“Then it’s just a technical challenge,” he says.
“In a lot of simulation work, you’re kind of guessing what might have happened,” he adds. “But in this case, we’re pretty sure what happens. It’s really nice to get that connection to the observations of transients from just chucking a star at a computer.”
Price explains that the simulation will set astrophysicists and astronomers up to be able to understand such phenomena much better as more observations are expected to be made soon.
“The first optical transient was only detected in 2010, but what’s coming is the Rubins observatory being built in Chile. That’s expected to boost the population of these things into the thousands.
“Having a good theoretical understanding of what the kind of phenomena is sets us up really well for that future flood of observations. It’s not just some theoretical speculation. There’s really something we can go after and understand by looking at it.”
This was published yesterday. I wanted to post it though, because my recollection of watching Donohue any chance I got, for years, was that he always treated his guests, on stage and in the audience, like human beings equal to him. I saw more than one very empathetic show about trans people, about gay people, about women in various situations solely because they were women, about so many who were marginalized during the years Phil Donahue was on TV. His show, along with Oprah’s, never got into the reality show circuses that those who came behind them went with (no disrespect to Jerry Springer, who started out like Donohue, but bowed to pressure.) Anyway, here is this; Godspeed, Mr. Donahue.
Phil Donahue earned praise for his “insatiably curious and accepting” nature and his ability to hold a “mirror up to America” when he received the Medal of Freedom from President Biden in May.
The groundbreaking daytime talk show host reinvented the relationship between TV hosts and their audiences, opening the medium up to genuine conversations about race, religion, reproductive healthcare and scores of other hot topics over more than 6,000 episodes.
“He saw every guest as worthy of interest and worked to build understanding, bringing us to see each other not as enemies but as fellow Americans,” a White House announcer said of Donahue in May.
Donahue died Sunday “peacefully after a long illness,” his family said in a statement to The Times. He was 88. NBC’s “Today,” where he was a contributor, broke the news of the host’s death. (snip-More on the page linked above)
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