Hasnain says:

Things keep getting worse.

“In its most extreme form, the independent state legislature theory was invoked — unsuccessfully — by Trump advocates in an effort to sidestep the legitimate outcome of the 2020 election. In Arizona, for instance, some Trump supporters used the theory in calling for the decertification of the state's electors. Among those seeking decertification was Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas.”

Hasnain says:

Worth thinking about. Damning and I agree with the core thesis: new leadership is required.

“The overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the underwhelming reaction from senior Democratic leaders to that huge defeat, make the case even clearer that the party’s too-long-in-power leaders — including President Biden — need to move aside. On their watch, a radicalized Republican Party has gained so much power that it’s on the verge of ending American democracy as we know it.”

Hasnain says:

Food for thought. Maybe humans weren’t meant to interact with this much text on a daily basis.

“The anthropologist Joseph Heinrich has suggested that the rise of literacy in the West helped to produce a certain mindset that he calls “WEIRD” — for “Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic” — that excludes some aspects of reality in favor of others. The neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene has speculated that literacy could “displace and dislodge” the older functions of parts of the brain that contribute, in non-literate cultures, to a particular sensitivity to things like our immediate environment. Writing, as the Native American activist Russell Means would have it, is a way of seemingly controlling the world, a way of shearing it of the intangible. It is “the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.” Maybe we just don’t know anymore what to do with the experience of experience — and putting it into writing, of course, only adds to the problem.”

Hasnain says:

Given climate change, this is really scary. 35C wet bulb was hit again in parts of Pakistan this year and a lot of scary things happened. We’ve been planning for and worried about the apocalyptic scenarios if that hits elsewhere. 31 is probably happening in a lot of places already and…

“It has been widely believed that a 35°C wet-bulb temperature (equal to 95°F at 100% humidity or 115°F at 50% humidity) was the maximum a human could endure before they could no longer adequately regulate their body temperature, which would potentially cause heat stroke or death over a prolonged exposure.

Wet-bulb temperature is read by a thermometer with a wet wick over its bulb and is affected by humidity and air movement. It represents a humid temperature at which the air is saturated and holds as much moisture as it can in the form of water vapor; a person’s sweat will not evaporate at that skin temperature.

But in their new study, the researchers found that the actual maximum wet-bulb temperature is lower — about 31°C wet-bulb or 87°F at 100% humidity — even for young, healthy subjects. The temperature for older populations, who are more vulnerable to heat, is likely even lower.”

Hasnain says:

This is from 2009 but I came across it just now. So heartbreaking and well written. The thing that struck me the most was how people were so quick to judge and prosecute, and even turn down measures to prevent this. Because it can never happen to them. Until it does. I really hope things have improved since.

“Two decades ago, this was relatively rare. But in the early 1990s, car-safety experts declared that passenger-side front airbags could kill children, and they recommended that child seats be moved to the back of the car; then, for even more safety for the very young, that the baby seats be pivoted to face the rear. If few foresaw the tragic consequence of the lessened visibility of the child . . . well, who can blame them? What kind of person forgets a baby?

The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist.”

Hasnain says:

“The U.S. Supreme Court has informed the nation and the world that the American constitutional ideal of liberty protects guns but not a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. A huge majority of us don’t believe that. These right-wing statists have declared that doesn’t matter. They’ll force it on us anyway. Their preferences prevail. Human rights and democracy be damned. They seem oblivious to the fact that they have, this day, announced the death of the Supreme Court. It may come in a month, or in a couple years, but it’s coming. Self-inflicted.”

Hasnain says:

“And, contrary to Gorsuch’s repeated claims that Kennedy only wanted to offer a “short, private, personal prayer,” Kennedy was surrounded by players, reporters, and members of the public when he conducted his prayer session after that game. We know this because Justice Sonia Sotomayor includes a picture of the scene in her dissenting opinion.”

Hasnain says:

This echoes a lot of my feelings.

“Podhorzer isn’t predicting another civil war, exactly. But he’s warning that the pressure on the country’s fundamental cohesion is likely to continue ratcheting up in the 2020s. Like other analysts who study democracy, he views the Trump faction that now dominates the Republican Party—what he terms the “MAGA movement”—as the U.S. equivalent to the authoritarian parties in places such as Hungary and Venezuela. It is a multipronged, fundamentally antidemocratic movement that has built a solidifying base of institutional support through conservative media networks, evangelical churches, wealthy Republican donors, GOP elected officials, paramilitary white-nationalist groups, and a mass public following. And it is determined to impose its policy and social vision on the entire country—with or without majority support. “The structural attacks on our institutions that paved the way for Trump’s candidacy will continue to progress,” Podhorzer argues, “with or without him at the helm.””

Hasnain says:

“I don’t want to hear anything about how voting in November is now more important than ever. Spare me, I am begging you. As I’ve written before, my entire career voting at the national level, for my whole life, has been a reaction to Democrats’ emotional blackmail: If you care about Roe at all, hold your nose and vote for us. We now all see where that’s gotten us, and we see how little elected Democrats are willing to do to protect us. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer can barely be bothered to say the word “abortion.” But don’t worry, Pelosi has already blasted out a fundraising email. (She says she’s “absolutely sick to my stomach” and needs “25,000 Democratic gifts in the next 24 hours.”) And the Senate has promised to…hold a hearing. In July. A real sense of urgency there!”

Hasnain says:

This is the worst timeline. A fully corrupt Supreme Court doing whatever it can without any regard for the rights of millions of Americans; or even the appearance of self consistency. It’s so blatant.

Yesterday; NY’s ban on concealed carry was repealed because it’s too important to leave to the states (among other arguments); today, abortion was “left up to the states”.

“Writing for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that the 1973 Roe ruling and repeated subsequent high court decisions reaffirming Roe "must be overruled" because they were "egregiously wrong," the arguments "exceptionally weak" and so "damaging" that they amounted to "an abuse of judicial authority."

The decision, most of which was leaked in early May, means that abortion rights will be rolled back in nearly half of the states immediately, with more restrictions likely to follow. For all practical purposes, abortion will not be available in large swaths of the country. The decision may well mean too that the court itself, as well as the abortion question, will become a focal point in the upcoming fall elections and in the fall and thereafter.”