What We Can Do, And What We Can Help Our Leaders Do-

Linked on TenBears’s blog.

A key point: Josh Marshall has been writing about how to leverage the separate sovereignty of the states against Trump. “Strategic depth,” he calls it, from military studies:

Understanding the critical role of the sovereign powers of the states as a redoubt beyond the reach of Trump’s increasingly autocratic power is really the entire game right now, at least for the next 18 months and, in various measures, almost certainly through the beginning of 2029. People can march, advocate, campaign, donate to candidates, all the stuff. But in many ways the most important thing right now is both communicating to and demanding of state officials that they act on this latent power.

There are key areas where Democrats in Congress may have moments of power, the ability to slow a few things down. But to a great degree, the battle is already lost within the federal government until the next election. It’s only in the states where opponents of Donald Trump hold executive power outside the reach of and the hierarchies of the federal government. That’s where the whole game is. It is strategic depth not in extent or remoteness of territory but in the structure of government and the state. And states have vast amounts of power, far more than we tend to realize because we’ve never been in a position where the mundane daily activities of state and local government have become so critical — its taxing powers, its policing powers, the ways in which the federal government actually struggles to effectively extend its powers to the local level at scale without the active participation of local government.

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As Real As It Gets

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 25, 2025

Something Jason Sattler wrote yesterday needs repeating this morning:

Everything we do makes it easier for our neighbors to stand up or sit down for this regime. We all know there’s a crisis coming that will force all who pay attention to make a choice that could define the rest of their lives.

Will people do it? In most cases, it depends on what they see us doing next.

SEE us doing. That’s the key.

How the less-engaged make up their minds about political matters, Anand Giridharadas observed (based on Anat’s work), is more akin to how they decide to buy pants: What’s everyone else wearing this year? What are normal people like me doing? Not in one-and-done big rallies but every day. Your resistance must be visible and persistent for that to work and give the less engaged permission to join the resistance movement. Calling your senator five days a week is fine, but which of your neighbors sees that?

Plus, if you want people to join your party, throw a better party. We’re out in the streets multiple times a week now. I bring dance music.

A friend pointed to this TikTok by someone going by @logicnliberty. She advocates a unified front by blue-state governors with trifectas. It’s not that they are not already unified, coordinating, and suing. They are. Govs. Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Kathy Hochul are speaking out and holding press conferences. (State AGs too.) But not necessarily as a team. Are they leveraging their trifectas proactively to erect firewalls in their states against Trump’s gutting of the Constitution? They should.

(snip-TikTok video embedded on the page)

Would the press cover it if they did? We are already in the slow civil war Jeff Sharlet described. The blue and the gray meets the blue and the red. Run with it. The press loves controversy. Generate more, blue state governors.

Josh Marshall has been writing about how to leverage the separate sovereignty of the states against Trump. “Strategic depth,” he calls it, from military studies:

There are key areas where Democrats in Congress may have moments of power, the ability to slow a few things down. But to a great degree, the battle is already lost within the federal government until the next election. It’s only in the states where opponents of Donald Trump hold executive power outside the reach of and the hierarchies of the federal government. That’s where the whole game is. It is strategic depth not in extent or remoteness of territory but in the structure of government and the state. And states have vast amounts of power, far more than we tend to realize because we’ve never been in a position where the mundane daily activities of state and local government have become so critical — its taxing powers, its policing powers, the ways in which the federal government actually struggles to effectively extend its powers to the local level at scale without the active participation of local government.

Understanding the critical role of the sovereign powers of the states as a redoubt beyond the reach of Trump’s increasingly autocratic power is really the entire game right now, at least for the next 18 months and, in various measures, almost certainly through the beginning of 2029. People can march, advocate, campaign, donate to candidates, all the stuff. But in many ways the most important thing right now is both communicating to and demanding of state officials that they act on this latent power.

And those actions must be not only public, but in-your-face public. Their actions and yours.

Update: Read it. It’s where your neighbors are.

The human heart hangs on to hope until there’s no other choice. People will not fight back in the ways that will work, until they realize there is no other choice, until the only other choice is their own imprisonment or death, or that of someone they love. For many of us, that moment is already here. But for most of us, it’s not.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

50501 – Labor Day events
May Day Strong Labor Day Events
No King’s One Million Rising movement
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink – Search on Labor Day events near you
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

“A New Old Name”

ʻAlawī (Hawaiʻi Creeper)

Fannie Lou Hamer, Rhodesia’s Olympics Team, Karen Silkwood, & More, In Peace & Justice History for 8/22

Say It Loud-Say It With Me!

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august22

“Nimble Native”

Hawai‘i ʻĀkepa

‘Game of Target Practice’: Doctors Back From Gaza Share Harrowing Stories of Israel’s Brutality

This is an interview with two doctors who served in Gaza. They tell of Israeli soldiers taking the baby formula the doctors tried to take in. They talk of the starving babies they can’t feed because Israel refuses any baby formula into Gaza. They talk of the systemic targeting of women and children by drone copters. The male doctor describes a game the IDF plays with using teenaged boys 11 to 16 for target practice. One day they would target heads, the next day they targeted chest, then abdomens, then arms, then legs. The most horrifying was the days the hospital was brought teenagers again 11 to 16 who had been shot in the testicles. Yes Israeli soldiers felt it was a great idea to shoot boys in the balls and dicks to make sure they couldn’t create any more Palestinians. I have no use for the government of Israel nor any use for the people of the country who support this. The public knows what is happening, the military knows what they are doing. This is a genocide of the Palestinians so that Jewish people can have the land. Jewish people of all people should understand this is wrong. Never again did not mean just never again to the Jews, it means never again for any genocide. Yes the US government is complicit in this act and should be held to account, but while we did not do enough at least democrats were willing to try to stop it, tRump and the republicans endorse it. There are chapter markings on the progress bar to help you get to the most damning parts of the interviews. Israel is not letting new doctors go in to help. They are killing the doctors and aid workers. Hugs

Supernova Remnants

The ghosts of dead stars

Cosmos: Cosmos is a quarterly science magazine. We aim to inspire curiosity in ‘The Science of Everything’ and make the world of science accessible to everyone.

Supernova remnant G278.94+1.35, dubbed ‘Diprotodon’, captured by CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope. Credit: Sanja Lazarević

Supernova remnants are some of the most visually impressive objects in space. Astronomer Kovi Rose offers us a unique window into these violent and powerful celestial events.

Something explosive always seems to be happening in space. We often see headlines in the news about dramatic events like a flaring star, a gravitational wave from colliding neutron stars, or the latest supernova erupting in a galaxy far, far away.

The stories normally tend to focus on the peak periods of these energetic events, which generate in a week roughly a trillion-trillion times as much energy as we generated on Earth last year. But what remains after a star’s collapse – a supernova remnant, as astronomers call it – is both spectacular and scientifically interesting.

Purple cloud like ripples in a donut shape on a dark background. — Supernova remnant G295.5+09.7 captured by the ASKAP radio telescope at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory. Cloud-like ripples and filaments of interstellar gases are illuminated along the boundaries of the supernova remnant. Credit: ASKAP Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) Team & Kovi Rose

The end of a star

Stars are endlessly collapsing under gravity. This immense pressure drives a fusion reaction, where hydrogen particles join together into heavier elements. The energy produced by this fusion reaction pushes outwards, stopping the star from collapsing in on itself. However, when a star starts to run out of fuel for its fusion engine, the balance breaks down and things get interesting.

For stars roughly the size of our Sun, there is no big explosion as they reach their final years. Instead, when they run out of fuel, they gently shrink into a glowing lump of carbon and oxygen called a white dwarf. White dwarfs don’t collapse entirely under the force of gravity, because the electrons in the remaining atoms are strong enough to push back. This is thanks to a quirky quantum effect called electron pressure.

A white dwarf can produce a supernova, but only under very specific circumstances, when the white dwarf is orbiting another star. When a white dwarf gets too close to the other star – which could even be another white dwarf – its gravitational influence will start to pull in material from the other star. This breaks the balance between gravity and those simmering electrons, ultimately causing the white dwarf to explode!

Bigger stars do end their lives in a supernova, and usually without any outside help. These stars – with more than 8 times the mass of our Sun – live fast and die young. They burn through their nuclear fuel faster than their smaller cousins, with lifetimes of millions (not billions) of years. These stars start by fusing hydrogen into helium in the core. As that runs out, they start fusing helium atoms together instead. And so it continues up the periodic table. The heavier the element, the faster the star runs out of fuel – with carbon and oxygen burning for mere years and months, respectively. But this can’t go on forever.

Once the core is made of iron, the fusion process grinds to a halt. With no new energy keeping the star inflated, its layers suddenly collapse. The rush of material inwards hits the remaining iron core and produces a shockwave that moves outwards at speeds nearing a quarter of the speed of light. These aptly named core-collapse supernovae usually leave their densely packed remains behind in the form of a neutron star – or, depending on how massive they were, a black hole.

Tuning the radio

For both classes of supernova, the stellar matter from the explosion is launched out across space at thousands, or even tens of thousands, of kilometres per second. Moving at these speeds, the leading front of the supernova can take tens of thousands of years to slow down, usually after spreading out across several light-years of space (one light-year is about 9.5 trillion kilometres) and sweeping up any additional material they encounter along the way. This is a supernova remnant: an interstellar bubble created by the wake of one of nature’s most energetic explosions.

This powerful blast wave contains fast-moving electrons that interact with nearby material in a fascinating way. The space around a supernova is filled with magnetised matter, and because of the special relationship between electricity and magnetism, the electrons curve rather than flying straight. As their paths change, the electrons are forced to slow down. Some of their energy is converted into light – but not always as light our eyes can see.

Pinky purple circular shape on a purple background — Supernova remnant SN1006 captured by CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope. SN1006 is the remnant of a supernova that was observed in the year 1006 by astronomers all over the world, from Egypt to China. It was first recognised as a supernova remnant in 1965, following radio observations at Murriyang (the Parkes radio telescope). Credit: Dr Emil Lenc & Kovi Rose.

Visible light is just one window into the full spectrum of electromagnetic waves. It has a short wavelength of a few hundred nanometres; for context, the average width of a single human hair is nearly 100,000 nanometres. Most of the light in supernova ‘bubbles’ has much less energy, with a wavelength of tens of centimetres or even metres. This particular type of light is called radio.

Radio astronomers have built just the right instruments to detect this kind of light emitted by supernovae. From the initial blast to the giant bubble-like structures they create as the explosion moves out through space, radio telescopes can detect these explosive supernova ‘bubbles’ expanding and eventually slowing down as they become a remnant.

We also see the brightness and energy of the light changing depending on how much material the shockwave sweeps up as it expands, or how strongly magnetised the surrounding material is. By studying the radio light generated by supernova remnants, we can learn when and how they formed, as well as what kind of dense objects the explosion left behind.

Australia’s view

Radio astronomy has a long, continuous history in Australia. We were one of the first countries in the world to use radio instruments to study celestial objects. The American radio engineer Karl Jansky, widely considered the founder of radio astronomy, first detected radio emission in 1933 from a dense region somewhere in the Milky Way. However, in 1954, CSIRO astronomers in Sydney figured out that the source of Jansky’s detection was located right at the centre of our galaxy.

As the field of radio astronomy developed, astronomers and engineers began exploring different types of telescopes that could be used to study a range of objects in the sky. Depending on the design of the instrument, we can use them to detect point-like radio sources – like the centres of distant galaxies – or diffuse clouds and filaments, like the boundaries of a supernova remnant. And using advanced image-processing techniques and modern telescopes like CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope, we can create images that show the beauty of the radio sky at both small and large scales.

Man sitting in a dish shaped hole adjusting wires radiating from the centre. — This 24-metre-wide ‘hole-in-the-ground’, originally dug out by a few radio astronomers during their lunch breaks, was used to locate Sagittarius A. At the time it was the second-largest radio telescope in the world. Credit: CSIRO

Close up of three satellite dishes in a red sandy flat landscape. — *CSIRO’s ASKAP is a telescope made of 36 smaller (12-metre) dish-like antennas spread over a large area on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia. Credit: Laura Driessen*

Exploring our galaxy

Supernova remnants are stunning markers of the explosive history of our galaxy. And luckily for astronomers, we’ve already discovered hundreds of them. Observations of that white road of stars that runs across the sky, the Milky Way, have revealed a foamy sea of interstellar bubbles created by ancient supernovae.

The shapes of supernova remnants reflect the circumstances of their formation and their encounters with neighbouring objects, including cosmic clouds of gas and dust. Some appear symmetrical, while others take on distorted forms, moulded by interactions with nearby material or overlapping with other expanding bubbles. In fact, our whole solar system sits near the centre of a ‘superbubble’ – a vast cavity containing most of the stars visible to the naked eye. Scientists reckon the superbubble was carved out by the cumulative explosions of multiple supernovae over millions of years.

Radio astronomers estimate that as many as 1,500 supernova remnants may be still hiding in our galaxy undiscovered. New observations with highly sensitive radio instruments like ASKAP and the upcoming SKA telescopes will help us uncover these elusive interstellar bubbles, and reveal more details about the energetic processes that shaped the Milky Way.

Cloudy green wavelengths as seen through the radio telescope. — The central band of the Milky Way seen at radio wavelengths. This image combines observations from the Parkes and ASKAP radio telescopes to reveal the network of supernova remnants and gas clouds in the central region of our galaxy. Credit: R Kothes (NRC) and the PEGASUS team.

Kovi Rose is an astrophysics PhD candidate at the University of Sydney who studies the radio light from nearby dwarf stars and distant supernovae.

Originally published by Cosmos as The ghosts of dead stars

“Nest Helpers”

Maui ʻAlauahio

Dancing “Jerks”

(“Jerks” is a joke on another blog.)

Dancing cockatoos more common than previously thought

Velentina Boulter

White cockatoos on a tv antenna — A group of Little Corellas (Cacatua sanguinea), a species of white cockatoo native to Australia and southern New Guinea, perch on a suburban TV antenna. Credit: Lea Scaddan / Moment / Getty Images Plus.

A new study shows cockatoos in captivity dance more often than expected, with the birds pulling out moves like the “body roll” and the “moving jump”.

The researchers observed cockatoos showing off a total of 30 distinct dance moves. Some stylish birds showed off unique moves not seen in any other bird.

“The work suggests that playing music to parrots may provide a useful approach to enrich their lives in captivity, with positive effects on their welfare,” says lead researcher Natasha Lubke from Charles Sturt University, Australia.

Lubke and colleagues analysed 45 videos of cockatoos dancing that had been posted to social media.

Across the videos, the researchers established 30 distinct dance moves like the “headbang” or the “sidestep”. Of these dance moves, 17 had not been previously described scientifically.

The “downward movement” was the most common motion, appearing in 50% of the birds’ repertoire. Routines involving just wings, like “flapping” and “wings back”, were the least common.

Each cockatoo species had a unique top 10 most common dance moves, and the researchers observed that closely related species did not display similar dances.

Illustration of cockatoo dance moves — *Illustration of the 10 most common recorded dance movements. Ethogram descriptors based on Keehn et al. [3] and illustrations by Zenna Lugosi. Credit: Lubke et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0.*

The researchers then followed up their initial video analysis by investigating the behaviour of 6 cockatoos at Wagga Wagga Zoo in Australia.

The cockatoos were then played either music, an audio podcast or no audio at all. All cockatoos performed dance moves whether there was music playing or not.

“I showed that dancing behaviour is more common in cockatoos than previously thought and was seen in 10 of the 21 cockatoo species,” says Lubke.

“My analysis also indicated that dancing is far more complex and varied than previously thought, recording 30 different movements seen in multiple birds and a further 17 movements that were seen in only one bird.”

Some of the dance moves observed were similar to those displayed by wild parrots when they are in the process of courtship. This suggests captive cockatoos may have redirected their courting dance toward their owners.

More research is needed to understand whether the cockatoos actually enjoy dancing in order to improve the welfare of captive cockatoos.

“The similarities with human dancing make it hard to argue against well-developed cognitive and emotional processes in parrots, and playing music to parrots may improve their welfare,” says Rafael Freire, a professor in animal behaviour and welfare at Charles Sturt University.

“Further research would be beneficial to determine if music can trigger dance in captive birds and serve as a form of environmental enrichment.”

All 30 of the cockatoos’ groovy dance moves are listed in the research paper published in PLOS One.

Originally published by Cosmos as Dancing cockatoos more common than previous thought

From My Friend Lique, On Substack

Do You Know Who Created The Super Soaker? by Lique
Read on Substack

It was him!

Lonnie Johnson. A NASA Scientist and Inventor.

Also, an African American. Though that should not make any difference. The part of his history that angered me, though I should not be surprised, was that Hasbro had tried to jilt this man out of $73 million dollars! I could not believe it. But him being the super star brain that he is won at his day in court.

I was so happy about that. (snip)

Hibernating For Better Health?

Unlocking the genetic ‘control switches’ of hibernation

Velentina Boulter – Velentina Boulter is science journalist based in Melbourne.

A small brown mouse curled up asleep in its nest — *Common dormouse. Credit: Michel VIARD/Getty Images*

New research has identified specific regions of DNA that regulate hibernation by tweaking metabolism. The findings could offer pathways to new treatments for metabolic disorders like type 2 diabetes in humans.

When hibernating animals wake, they reverse dangerous health changes similar to those seen in type 2 diabetes, muscle atrophy, Alzheimer’s disease and stroke. Researchers hope that unlocking hibernation regions in the human genome could help develop treatments for these potentially fatal health conditions.

“If we could regulate our genes a bit more like hibernators, maybe we could overcome type 2 diabetes the same way that a hibernator returns from hibernation back to a normal metabolic state,” says Elliot Ferris, a bioinformatician at the University of Utah (U of U) Health in the US.

Ferris is co-author of 2 new studies which pinpointed that DNA regions near a gene cluster called the “fat mass and obesity (FTO) locus” play a crucial role in the ability to hibernate. While the FTO locus also appears in humans, hibernating animals use it in a different, and potentially more advantageous way.

“What’s striking about this [FTO] region is that it is the strongest genetic risk factor for human obesity,” says senior author of the study, Chris Gregg, a professor in neurobiology at U of U Health.

According to the World Health Organization, 1 in 8 people worldwide were living with obesity in 2022. Obesity can lead to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other health implications, which illustrates the importance of preventing and treating the condition.

“Humans already have the genetic framework,” says Susan Steinwand, a research scientist at U of U and co-author of the studies. “We just need to identify the control switches for these hibernator traits.”

To locate the hibernation-specific regions of the genome, the team used multiple independent whole-genome technologies to compare mammals that do and don’t hibernate.

“If a region doesn’t change much from species to species for over 100 million years but then changes rapidly and dramatically in 2 hibernating mammals, then we think it points us to something that is important for hibernation, specifically,” says Ferris.

The hibernator-specific DNA regions (located close to the FTO locus) weren’t genes but DNA sequences called “cis–regulatory elements” (CREs) which contact nearby genes to either turn up or down their expression, almost like a film director coordinating cinematographers, set designers and actors. The researchers found the CREs regulated the activity of neighbouring genes, including those involved in metabolism.

When they mutated these regions in mice, the researchers observed changes in weight and metabolism. Some of the mutations the researchers performed sped up the weight gain, while others slowed it down. Other mutations affected the body’s ability to recover body temperature after hibernation.

They suggest that this is what allows animals to gain weight before entering hibernation and then slowly release the energy in their fat reserves during the winter.

This means that mutating a single hibernator-specific region has wide-ranging effects extending far beyond the FTO locus, says Steinwand.

“It’s pretty amazing,” she says. “When you knock out one of these elements – this one tiny, seemingly insignificant DNA region – the activity of hundreds of genes changes.”

The studies suggest that CREs might also play a role in regulating human metabolism.

While understanding this flexibility could lead to better treatments for disorders like type 2 diabetes, the study also helps indicate which DNA elements should be explored in future studies.

“There’s potentially an opportunity – by understanding these hibernation-linked mechanisms in the genome – to find strategies to intervene and help with age-related diseases,” says Gregg.

“If that’s hidden in the genome that we’ve already got, we could learn from hibernators to improve our own health.”

The research has been published in the journal Science.

Originally published by Cosmos as Unlocking the genetic ‘control switches’ of hibernation