…day of rest, they call it

There are two crucial policies to lower drug prices in the bill. The first is the one you hear the most about: requiring the federal government to negotiate prices for a limited number of expensive prescription drugs covered by Medicare. One of the key enforcement mechanisms for this policy is an excise tax of up to 95% on pharmaceutical companies to force them into the price negotiation regime. Republicans strongly believed this excise tax violated the strict rules of reconciliation outlined in the Byrd rule. But MacDonough [the Senate parliamentarian] rejected challenges to the excise tax and declared that it can be included in the bill — though she did not explain her reasoning, at least in her written guidance, a fact that has frustrated Republicans this morning.

…they’re frustrated? …gee…my heart goes out to them

The bad news for Democrats: The Dems’ second major policy to lower prices is inflation caps. As the Kaiser Family Foundation explains, the bill “requires drug manufacturers to pay a rebate if drug prices increase faster than the rate of inflation (CPI-U) for Medicare and private insurance.”

…& that does…by her reasoning…violate that byrd rule

The Democrats will need to change their inflation caps language so the caps no longer apply to the commercial market. And the change will affect the total savings in the bill. Inflation caps brought $100.7 billion of savings, according to the CBO. How much of that came from Medicare and how much came from the commercial insurance market is unclear, but one estimate says removing the latter would cost $40 billion in savings. On Friday, before this news, the CBO lowered its estimate of the total deficit reduction in the package by $11 billion, so in 24 hours the total savings of the bill has dropped considerably.

Alice Miranda Ollstein adds, “The exclusion of the private insurance price limits means there is little left that will reduce costs for the vast majority of Americans who receive health insurance through their private sector employer.”

…or to put it in the terms of one chuck schumer

“Democrats have received extremely good news: for the first time, Medicare will finally be allowed to negotiate prescription drug prices, seniors will have free vaccines and their costs capped, and much more. This is a major victory for the American people. While there was one unfortunate ruling in that the inflation rebate is more limited in scope, the overall program remains intact and we are one step closer to finally taking on Big Pharma and lowering Rx drug prices for millions of Americans.”
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2022/08/06/macdonough-kills-key-policy-in-dem-reconciliation-bill

…it’s not overly plausible to me that a dozen or so GOP senators are going to lend a vote to over-rule that…so…while it still seems like the good parts of what does get through are still good…they may once again not be as good as originally advertised…& of course then there’s the stuff that…wasn’t advertised?

The deal this week that secured the support of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) for major economic legislation contained a small provision that could have an outsized impact in federal courts.

In an early version of the talks, Democratic leaders agreed on a proposal that would move future litigation involving a particular natural gas pipeline proposed in Manchin’s state to be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and that judges weighing the cases would be randomly assigned. Experts say the ramifications of such a deal would go beyond the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline project that has long been stalled by the courts over environmental concerns.

“It would create a new pathway for lobbyists” to demand “congressional forum-shopping” for pet concerns, said Michael Gerrard, an environmental law professor at Columbia University, on the grounds that “’Joe Manchin did it for them; why can’t you do it for me?’”

It’s not clear what language will be used in a final agreement. A longer draft bill that has circulated among environmental and energy lobbyists, first published by Bloomberg, says only that federal courts “shall randomly assign cases seeking judicial review of any Federal authorization of a covered project to the maximum extent practicable to avoid the appearance of favoritism or bias.”

The word “practicable” leaves plenty of wiggle room for courts to assign cases as they see fit.

…I’ve read in a number of places that there’s an argument that the things in the bill that enable further fossil fuel extraction/use are “more than made up for” by the things that are good…but I can’t help feel like that kinda misses the point

As its name suggests, the pipeline first proposed in 2014 goes high and low in its 303-mile path through West Virginia and Virginia. From its inception, environmentalists have fought the plan as polluting waterways and damaging rock; landowners have protested the use of eminent domain to seize their property. After numerous legal battles, including one that ended in a consent decree over violations of Virginia law, the pipeline is now years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
[…]
The same three-judge panel has heard most of the Fourth Circuit cases involving the Mountain Valley Pipeline — Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory, who was given a recess appointment by President Clinton before his nomination by George W. Bush, and Judges Stephanie D. Thacker and James A. Wynn Jr., both Obama appointees. The Fourth Circuit has ruled that federal agencies failed to consider erosion, construction runoff or the impact on endangered fish species when approving permits and that the company would not complete work crossing streams quickly enough.
[…]
It’s not clear that the D.C. Circuit would rule differently if new permits are issued and challenged, but the company behind Mountain Valley Pipeline has made clear it blames these particular judges for its woes. Their lawyers recently took the unusual step of demanding a new set of judges, saying that repeated adverse rulings from the same panel has created “the perception of a deck stacked against large infrastructure projects generally and one private party specifically.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/05/mountain-valley-manchin-deal-court/

…if I had to bet…I’d say the chances that the consequences of the drug price thing…include money staying in the pockets of members of the manchin family that wouldn’t be there if things went the way that would benefit the rest of the world…I mean…the odds are good if you go by form

New email shows Heather Bresch, daughter of Sen. Joe Manchin, played direct part in EpiPen price inflation scandal https://t.co/sGyrLwKsYo by @ryangrim

— The Intercept (@theintercept) September 7, 2021

…& the degree of overlap with their direct personal interests is…pretty high…& I’m not saying bill gates gets high…but…I think maybe I might have to in order to match his levels of optimism?

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 may be the single most important piece of climate legislation in American history. It represents our best chance to build an energy future that is cleaner, cheaper and more secure. Senators Chuck Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia deserve a lot of credit for reaching this agreement, as do countless others. Many business leaders and activists I’ve gotten to know through Breakthrough Energy, the climate organization I founded in 2015 to accelerate the clean energy transition, have worked relentlessly for decades for this moment. But although it appears the legislation will pass, success is not guaranteed, so it’s critical to keep pushing for it. Let me explain why.

…I dare say that a man as wealthy as bill gates who’s chosen to devote money & time to a subject knows a great deal more about the state of it than I do…but I sure do wish he’d given me a better sense of where the confidence is coming from?

Many of the technologies we’ll need to reach net-zero emissions don’t exist, are in early stages of development or are still too expensive to scale up. At the same time, more mature technologies like solar, wind and electric vehicles must be deployed more quickly in more places. Through new and expanded tax credits and a long-term approach, this bill would ensure that critical climate solutions have sustained support to develop into new industries.

…because that sounds a whole hell of a lot like “we either don’t know – or don’t know how to do cheaply – the stuff we need to in order to match our efforts to the scale of the task before us…but we’re throwing money at it like nobody’s business so just trust us when we say it’s handled”…&…historically that hasn’t been a reliable line in that kind of context?

…like…this part?

These incentives would also provide the private sector with the confidence to invest for the long term.

…yeah…probably…but if you’re going to claim off the back of it that

This legislation would begin to transform the parts of our economy that are hardest to decarbonize, like manufacturing, which we must do to reach net-zero emissions.

…because yeah…we probably do need to somehow switch out the parts of manufacturing…or indeed just about every form of industry…shift from a petro-chemically-assisted model to…something that isn’t…& that most likely will require (among a great deal of things) long-term investment…but…maybe show your work?

American businesses are ready for this change. I’ve spoken with corporate leaders who are eager for our government to act. Many have made big climate pledges and invested significant amounts in clean energy, both because they care about making good on their promises and because it’s good business. Even more businesses are waiting on the sidelines for a strong signal from government that clean industries are a solid long-term investment. Passing the Inflation Reduction Act would send that message and enable private capital to supercharge our clean energy future with even greater confidence.

With President Biden’s signature, this legislation would jump-start and support clean energy industries that could create millions of jobs, many in communities that have been built by fossil fuels. In fact, many of the most promising technologies in the clean energy economy will require similar skills and expertise possessed by today’s coal, oil and gas workers. This will help ensure a fair transition.

Solving climate change is perhaps the hardest challenge humanity has ever faced. It will require fundamentally transforming how we power our communities, move goods, build things, heat and cool buildings and grow food — basically how we do everything. We need to do it rapidly with a cohesive and coherent plan if we want to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/05/opinion/climate-inflation-congress.html

…not to labor the point…although…it’s sort of hard not to when there’s so many articles that arguably do exactly that

While the extent of China’s withdrawal from climate discussions is still not clear, the move threatens to derail the often fragile cooperation between the world’s two largest carbon emitters, with only a few months to go before the crucial UN Cop27 in Egypt this autumn. Experts say there is little hope of avoiding disastrous global heating without strong action by the US and China, which are together responsible for about 40% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The rupture in relations has occurred amid a summer of climate change-fuelled disasters, with record heatwaves and wildfires sweeping the US and Europe, punishingly high temperatures scorching India and China, and ruinous flooding affecting the US, south Asia and Africa.

The US is on the brink of passing landmark climate legislation at home, but collectively the world’s governments are still not doing enough to avoid breaching agreed temperature goals. The goal of limiting heating to 1.5C is “on life support” with a weakening pulse, António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, warned last month.
[…]
The US and China have accused each other of not doing enough to cut planet-heating emissions at various points in recent years. China attacked US “selfishness” when then-president Donald Trump rolled back various environmental protections in 2017, while Joe Biden, Trump’s successor, last year claimed the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, had made a “big mistake” by not attending the Cop26 climate summit in Scotland.

However, the two powers achieved a breakthrough at the same talks in Glasgow in November, agreeing a surprise plan to work together “with urgency” on slashing emissions. Xie Zhenhua, the head of China’s delegation, said both countries must “accelerate a green and low carbon transition”. John Kerry, the US climate envoy, acknowledged that the nations have “no shortage of differences” but that “cooperation is the only way to get this job done. This is about science, about physics.”

…as opposed to…say…about taiwan

This rapprochement on climate has helped foster collaboration between US and Chinese organizations, as well as providing leadership to other countries, according to Nate Hultman, a former aide to Kerry and now director of the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland.
[…]
“The broader relationship is very complex but both countries understand this is not just a bilateral issue, there is a global dimension to this. That is what I hope will bring them back together. Hopefully this suspension is brief and they can get back to the table as soon as possible.”
[…]
“This has been challenging and at times we are going to stall out,” Hultman said. “But Cop27 won’t just crash out if the US and China don’t iron out their differences. We would have to focus on what else can be done as an international community.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/05/what-does-the-us-china-row-mean-for-climate-change-taiwan

…isn’t it reassuring to know that wealthy & powerful white guys in positions of influence are…hard at work on this stuff that concerns us all?

Britain, on the other hand, has seen business investment and exports contract as a product of Boris Johnson’s hard Brexit. One estimate has suggested that the economy is already 5% smaller than it would have been had the UK remained part of the single market and customs union. This amounts to billions of pounds lost each year from household incomes and public services’ budgets. It is an indulgence Britain can ill afford, a decision that will be looked back on as a ludicrous act of economic self-harm at a time of global economic crisis.

Many people will be experiencing a financial crisis by the autumn, facing defaulting on their mortgage or being unable to pay their rent. Yet the prime minister and the chancellor are now abroad on holiday. Meanwhile, the contest between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss to become the next Conservative leader continues to play out. One will be selected by Conservative party members on 5 September and will become responsible for leading the country through this economic emergency. Yet their proposed solutions are geared towards attracting the support of fewer than 200,000 members rather than the pressing needs of the country.

…well…not just guys, to be fair

Sunak remains a deficit hawk who would leave the NHS, schools and other public services horribly exposed to the real spending cuts that would result from double-digit inflation and who, it last week emerged, has boasted about diverting funding away from the country’s poorest areas. Truss has pledged to loosen fiscal policy by £30bn, but by handing out tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit the more affluent and do nothing for people who do not earn enough to pay tax. She has explicitly said she is opposed to the targeted measures so desperately needed to ease the burden for low-income families. The Bank of England’s rate rise, which aims to lower inflation by increasing unemployment and suppressing growth further, risks making an already painful recession even worse.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/07/observer-view-tory-party-leaving-britons-to-face-crisis-alone

…so…you know…at least the US doesn’t have brexit or boris to contend with…though that’s probably cold comfort

To the victims of Mr. Jones’s harassment campaigns, and to those who have followed his career for years, the verdict felt long overdue — a notorious internet villain finally facing real consequences for his actions. The families of the children killed at Sandy Hook, many of whom have waited years to see Mr. Jones pay for his lies, are no doubt relieved.

But before we celebrate Mr. Jones’s comeuppance, we should acknowledge that the verdict against him is unlikely to put much of a dent in the phenomenon he represents: belligerent fabulists building profitable media empires with easily disprovable lies.
[…]
Court records showed that Mr. Jones’s Infowars store, which sells dubious performance-enhancing supplements and survival gear, made more than $165 million from 2015 to 2018. Despite his deplatforming, Mr. Jones still appears as a guest on popular podcasts and YouTube shows, and millions of Americans still look to him as, if not a reliable chronicler of current events, at least a wacky diversion. (And a wealthy one — an expert witness in the trial estimated the net worth of Mr. Jones and Free Speech Systems, his holding company, at somewhere between $135 million and $270 million.)
[…]
But a bigger reason for caution is that, whether or not Mr. Jones remains personally enriched by his lies, his shtick is everywhere these days.

…I feel like calling it “his” might be giving him more credit than he deserves…but either way

You can see and hear Mr. Jones’s influence on Capitol Hill, where attention-seeking Republican politicians often sound like they’re auditioning for slots on Infowars. When Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, suggests that a mass shooting could have been orchestrated to persuade Republicans to support gun-control measures, as she did in a Facebook post about the July 4 shooting in Highland Park, Ill., she’s playing hits from Mr. Jones’s back catalog. Mr. Jones also played a role in fueling the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, in ways we are still learning about. (The House panel investigating the insurrection has asked for a copy of the text messages from Mr. Jones’s phone that were mistakenly sent to the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in his defamation case.)
[…]
It would be too simple to blame (or credit) Mr. Jones for inspiring the entire modern cranksphere. But it’s safe to say that many of today’s leading conspiracy theorists have found the same profitable sweet spot of lies and entertainment value. It’s also probable that we’ve become desensitized to conspiracy theories, and many of the outrageous falsehoods that once got Mr. Jones into trouble — such as the allegations about Sandy Hook parents that were at the center of his defamation trial — would sound less shocking if uttered today.

Other conspiracy theorists are less likely than Mr. Jones to end up in court, in part because they’ve learned from his mistakes. Instead of straightforwardly accusing the families of mass-shooting victims of making it all up, they adopt a naïve, “just asking questions” posture while poking holes in the official narrative. When attacking a foe, they tiptoe right up to the line of defamation, being careful not to do anything that could get them sued or barred from social media. And when they lead harassment campaigns, they pick their targets wisely — often maligning public figures rather than private citizens, which gives them broader speech protections under the First Amendment.
[…]
Social media companies can help curb the spread of harmful lies by making it harder for fabulists to amass huge audiences. But they have their own limitations, including the simple fact that conspiracy theorists have gotten more sophisticated about evading their rules. If you draw a line at claiming that Bigfoot is real, attention-seeking cranks will simply get their millions of views by positing that Bigfoot might be real and that their audiences would be wise to do their own research to figure out what Bigfoot-related secrets the deep-state cabal is hiding.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/06/technology/alex-jones-conspiracy-theories.html

…I…don’t know as I can exactly recommend reading this one…it’s apt to spoil your day…but by way of an example

Tate’s views have been described as extreme misogyny by domestic abuse charities, capable of radicalising men and boys to commit harm offline.

But the 35-year-old is not a fringe personality lurking in an obscure corner of the dark web. Instead, he is one of the most famous figures on TikTok, where videos of him have been watched 11.6 billion times.

Styled as a self-help guru, offering his mostly male fans a recipe for making money, pulling girls and “escaping the matrix”, Tate has gone in a matter of months from near obscurity to one of the most talked about people in the world. In July, there were more Google searches for his name than for Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian.

The coordinated effort, involving thousands of members of Tate’s private online academy Hustler’s University and a network of copycat accounts on TikTok, has been described by experts as a “blatant attempt to manipulate the algorithm” and artificially boost his content. In less than three months, the strategy has earned him a huge following online and potentially made him millions of pounds, with 127,000 members now paying the £39 a month to join Hustler’s University community, many of them men and boys from the UK and US.

Yet despite much of the content appearing to break TikTok’s rules, which explicitly ban misogyny and copycat accounts, the platform appears to have done little to limit Tate’s spread or ban the accounts responsible. Instead, it has propelled him into the mainstream – allowing clips of him to proliferate, and actively promoting them to young users.
[…]
Around the time UK police were investigating abuse allegations, Tate is understood to have left the UK for Romania. In one video explaining his reasons for the move he suggested it was because it would be easier to evade rape charges. This is “probably 40% of the reason” he moved there, he says in one video, adding: “I’m not a rapist, but I like the idea of just being able to do what I want. I like being free.”
[…]
Then in April, the brothers’ mansion was raided by police following a tip-off from the US embassy that a 21-year-old American woman was being held against her will. The Tates were taken in for questioning before being released and deny wrongdoing. The Romanian authorities said last week that the investigation, later expanded to cover human trafficking and rape allegations, was ongoing.

Amid the drama offline, online Tate’s content took off. Since January, repackaged videos from interviews with Tate over the years have been attracting millions of views on TikTok. But in recent weeks, this growth has accelerated. In August so far alone, clips tagged with his name have been watched more than a billion times.

The posts do not come from Tate himself, who does not appear to be active on the platform, but from hundreds of accounts, often using his name and photo, run by his followers – members of Hustler’s University. Members, including boys as young as 13, are told they can earn up to £10,000 a month through lessons on crypto investing, drop shipping and by recruiting others to Hustler’s University, earning 48% commission for each person they refer.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/06/andrew-tate-violent-misogynistic-world-of-tiktok-new-star

…something something, clouds…something something, silver linings?

Observers of the tech industry are wearily familiar with this kind of irrationality. Throughout 2020 and 2021, as Covid-19 wreaked economic havoc on countries throughout the western world, the tech industry remained strangely untouched by what was happening on the ground. While the rest of us cowered in lockdown, the pandemic made tech bosses and owners insanely richer. Their companies grew faster and became even more profitable while other industries languished. Apple had so much extra cash that it spent $90bn (£74bn) – nearly the gross domestic product of Kenya – buying its own shares. Amazon laid out $50bn in 2021 on warehouses, hiring tens of thousands of employees, ordering fleets of electric vehicles and building cloud computing centres. And so on.

So while the pandemic had put many conventional companies on life support, it looked as though it had consolidated the dominance of Alphabet (neé Google), Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple, making them the new masters of our networked universe.

And then something happened. On 19 November 2021 the Nasdaq stock market index (which is heavily influenced by tech companies) stood at an all-time high of 16,057, then suddenly went into rapid decline. As I write, it stands at 12,369. And so the question became: was this just what economists euphemistically call a “market correction” or an indicator that this particular speculative bubble had really burst?

The answer, if the quarterly figures released last week by the tech giants are anything to go by, is that it looks as though the bubble has at least been punctured. The numbers, according to an analysis by Luke Gbedemah and Sebastian Hervas-Jones of Tortoise Media, suggest that a split is emerging between the companies that can “sustain an economic downturn and those that might be facing existential decline”. The figures indicate that, for the first time in the history of the industry, the combined real revenue growth rate of the companies was negative rather than positive and real revenues overall were less than the year before.
[…]
But overall, one has the feeling that these giant money-printing machines are moving into territory that is unfamiliar to them – territory where, instead of having endless resources for expansion and experimentation, margins will be squeezed, costs and perks cut, workers fired and efficiencies found. Suddenly, Alphabet’s chief executive is calling for staff “to be more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper focus and more hunger than we’ve shown on sunnier days”. Similar sanctimonious exhortations are doubtless being issued by his counterparts at the other giants.

Two further thoughts stand out. The first is that the period of what one might call “tech exceptionalism” – the era when these companies and their cheerleaders were lauded for being different from normal, boring corporations – may be drawing to a close. From now on, they’re just corporations – like BT or Unilever.

…which is to say they’re everywhere…& well into too-big-to-fail territory…for better or worse

The second is the extent to which we have all underestimated Microsoft simply because it fumbled the smartphone opportunity. Instead, it focused on providing the basic computational infrastructure of the organisational world. The NHS, for example, has something like 750,000 PCs, all of them running Microsoft operating systems and software. Ditto for the UK government, large corporations, university administrations and small and medium-size enterprises in the western world. And it now has a successful cloud computing business. It’s not glamorous or exciting but it’s a rock-solid, enduring business. If you bought shares in it 30 years ago, you’d have the basis for a pretty good pension now. And it’ll still be around when Facebook is just a bad memory.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/06/have-the-tech-giants-finally-had-their-bubble-burst-id-hate-to-speculate

…after all…AWS may be among the more invisible elements of amazon’s corporate iceberg…but it makes a significant chunk of those profits…anyway…it isn’t just boris & his motley crew that are acting like they’re not really at home to the being at work thing

Rather than working late on a Friday evening, organising the annual team-building trip to Slough or volunteering to supervise the boss’s teenager on work experience, the quiet quitters are avoiding the above and beyond, the hustle culture mentality, or what psychologists call “occupational citizenship behaviours”.
[…]
TikTok posts about quiet quitting may have been inspired by Chinese social media: #TangPing, or lying flat, is a now-censored hashtag apparently prompted by China’s shrinking workforce and long-hours culture.
[…]
The term “great resignation” was coined in May 2021 by Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at University College London, when he predicted an exodus of American workers from their jobs, prompted by burnout, and the taste of freedom while working from home.
[…]
Perhaps “quiet quitting” has been brewing for a while – after all, Melville dreamt up Bartleby in 1853, and even the Bible says God needed a break on the seventh day. More recently, tech firms have capitalised on the reaction against the 1980s Gordon Gekko-inspired long-hours culture by creating more casual working environments with brightly coloured offices, free food and drink and corporate swag, wrapped up in the rhetoric of mission and purpose.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/aug/06/quiet-quitting-why-doing-the-bare-minimum-at-work-has-gone-global

…you could call it a “hive of inactivity”…you know…if you felt like it?

For most prime ministers, the certain knowledge that their premiership is coming to an end sparks a frenetic final effort to complete as much of their policy agendas as possible and secure a legacy. Yet Boris Johnson’s decision to spend his last months thanking supporters at Chequers, holding a wedding party and taking a holiday weeks before his time in Downing St expires is an “enigmatic end for an enigmatic premiership”, according to one of the country’s best-known contemporary historians.
[…]
Seldon said that, unlike his predecessors who found themselves in a similar situation, Johnson has made No 10 a “hive of inactivity”. “That would be rational behaviour for somebody who had done the jobs that he wanted to do,” he said. “He hasn’t done those things. It would be rational behaviour for somebody extremely diligent who had come in with all guns blazing. He didn’t do that.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/06/boris-johnson-under-fire-for-approach-to-final-weeks-as-pm

…could we maybe redistribute some of that inactivity…say…have less throwing around of explosives near the nuclear facilities?

The UN nuclear watchdog has called for an immediate end to all military action near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant after it was hit by shelling, causing one of the reactors to shut down and creating a “very real risk of a nuclear disaster”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/06/strikes-at-ukrainian-nuclear-plant-alarming-says-un-watchdog-chief

…maybe some on the whole book-banning thing?

A small-town library is at risk of shutting down after residents of Jamestown, Michigan, voted to defund it rather than tolerate certain LGBTQ+-themed books.

Residents voted on Tuesday to block a renewal of funds tied to property taxes, Bridge Michigan reported.
[…]
The controversy in Jamestown began with a complaint about a memoir by a nonbinary writer, but it soon spiraled into a campaign against Patmos Library itself. After a parent complained about Gender Queer: a Memoir, by Maia Kobabe, a graphic novel about the author’s experience coming out as nonbinary, dozens showed up at library board meetings, demanding the institution drop the book. (The book, which includes depictions of sex, was in the adult section of the library.) Complaints began to target other books with LGBTQ+ themes.

One library director resigned, telling Bridge she had been harassed and accused of indoctrinating kids; her successor, Matt Lawrence, also left the job. Though the library put Kobabe’s book behind the counter rather than on the shelves, the volumes remained available.

“We, the board, will not ban the books,” Walton told Associated Press on Thursday.

A few months later, in March, an anonymous letter went to homes in the area. It criticized the “pornographic” memoir and the addition of “transgender” and “gay” books to the library, according to Lawrence. “That fired a lot of people up and got them to start coming to our board meetings to complain,” he said. “The concern from the public was that it’s going to confuse children.”

The library’s refusal to submit to the demands led to a campaign urging residents to vote against renewed funding for the library. A group calling itself Jamestown Conservatives handed out flyers condemning Gender Queer for showing “extremely graphic sexual illustrations of two people of the same gender”, criticizing a library director who “promoted the LGBTQ ideology” and calling for making the library “a safe and neutral place for our kids”. On Facebook, the group says it exists to “keep our children safe, and protect their purity, as well as to keep the nuclear family intact as God designed”.
[…]
The vote comes as libraries across the US face a surge in demands to ban books. The American Library Association identified 729 challenges to “library, school and university materials and services” last year, which led to about 1,600 challenges or removals of individual books. That was up from 273 books the year before and represents “the highest number of attempted book bans since we began compiling these lists 20 years ago”, the ALA president, Patricia Wong, said in a press release.

“We’re seeing what appears to be a campaign to remove books, particularly books dealing with LGBTQIA themes and books dealing with racism,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, head of the ALA’s office for intellectual freedom, told the Guardian last year. Celebrated books by Toni Morrison, Alison Bechdel and Ibram X Kendi are among those facing bans.
[…]
If community members oppose the inclusion of certain books, there are formal means of requesting their removal, involving a review committee and ascertainment that the person making the appeal has actually read the book in question. But recently, she said, people have been “going to board meetings, whether it’s a library board meeting or a school board meeting and saying, ‘Here’s a list of 300 books. We want them all to be removed from your library.’ And that’s not the proper channel, but they’re loud and their voices carry.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/05/michigan-library-book-bans-lgbtq-authors

…& just generally give it a rest with the grand military gestures?

Shortly after Pelosi arrived, Beijing announced military drills in six sea areas surrounding the main island of Taiwan, starting the morning after her departure and running to Sunday. The plan was unprecedented in how close the zones were to Taiwan, including some that overlapped Taiwan’s territorial waters stretching 7 miles (12km) out from its coastline.
[…]
Thursday morning began with reports of multiple warplane incursions into the ADIZ, and cyber-attacks targeting the websites of the president’s office and the ministries of foreign affairs and defence. Signboards at railway stations and in-store screens at the ubiquitous 7-Eleven stores were also hacked, to display messages calling Pelosi a warmonger in the simplified Chinese text used in China.

It then escalated dramatically. The PLA fired almost a dozen Dongfeng ballistic missiles on Thursday, and made dozens of incursions over the highly symbolic median line. Japan said at least five missiles landed within its exclusive economic zone, and some had flown over Taiwan’s main island, just south of Taipei.
[…]
The US, Japan, Australia, the EU, the G7, and Asean were among the foreign governments or multilateral groups to condemn hostilities or call for calm. The US accused China of choosing to overreact, while its secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told Asean China’s reaction was “flagrantly provocative”.

Beijing only doubled down. It accused its critics of being evil, of interfering with internal affairs, and declared its response to be just and right. Chinese military officials lauded their tactics as demonstrating the sort of major blockade China would one day use against Taiwan for real. Its ambassador to France told a reporter Taiwan’s people would be “re-educated”, alarming those familiar with China’s treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. It announced sanctions against Pelosi and her direct relatives, before suspending or cancelling multiple cooperation mechanisms and dialogues with the US.

The ministry of foreign affairs also pledged “more countermeasures”.
[…]
But amid the round-the-clock global coverage, there was still a distinct lack of panic among Taiwanese. Reporters roamed coastal spots near the drill zones, looking for quotes but finding few in fear. In the capital, Taipei, people ate their lunches in city restaurants as warships steamed across wall-mounted television screens. Online, people shared memes and joked about an anti-US protester photographed outside Pelosi’s hotel, holding a sign made with pieced-together printed papers that was evidently supposed to say “Warmonger Pelosi” but instead read “ongerwarm osiPel”.
[…]
Beijing says it wants unification by peaceful means, and that the Taiwanese people would be supportive were it not for “extremist” propaganda by the governing Democratic Progressive party. The data does not back this up, and now, with years of PLA incursions, these highly aggressive drills, and Chinese officials talking about “re-education” of the Taiwanese population, it is hard to see unification being happily accepted. Opinions vary across Taiwan, and are influenced by family, history, and geography, but even the KMT (Kuomintang party), historically favourable to friendly ties with China, has condemned the drills as “belligerent acts” that should be “condemned by the entire civilised world”.
[…]
There are fears that with so many PLA, Taiwanese, Japanese and US warplanes and navy ships in the region, there is a high risk of an accident escalating into real conflict.

“What’s even more concerning is I’m not sure there are existing crisis management mechanisms [including communication] in place to manage the fallout if an incident were to occur,” said Amanda Hsiao, the senior China analyst with the Crisis Group.

Most of the drills are scheduled to end on Sunday, with one zone active throughout Monday. Should they conclude without incident, next week will be the start of a new normal for Taiwan and China.
[…]
Hsiao said it was likely that China would start focusing on “regularising” the median line incursions, diluting the significance of that once-respected unofficial border in the same way it has extended itself in the South China Sea.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/05/what-the-fallout-from-pelosis-visit-means-for-taiwan-and-china

…still…practice what you preach, I suppose…so…I’ll give it a rest…& some tunes when I find them?