…a man walks into a joke

Mr. Musk, who runs Tesla and SpaceX, visited Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on Wednesday and tweeted a nine-second video of himself smiling and carrying a porcelain sink into the building.

“Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in!” he wrote.
[…]
Mr. Musk, 51, also changed his profile on Twitter by describing himself as “Chief Twit” and marking his location as “Twitter HQ.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/26/business/elon-musk-visits-twitter.html

…nobody said it was a good joke

Doctors are taking aim at the fossil fuels industry, placing blame for the world’s most dire health problems on the companies that continue to seek oil and gas profits even as climate change worsens heat waves, intensifies flooding and roils people’s mental health.
[…]
The report accuses fossil fuel purveyors — and the governments that subsidize them — of subverting “efforts to deliver a low carbon, healthy, liveable future” and demands that world leaders pursue a health-centered approach to solving the climate crisis.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/doctors-decry-record-profits-fossil-fuel-companies-climate-change

…but there are certainly too many sick jokes going around

The legislation came after research published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that nearly 18,000 out of 113,000 emergency visits related to sexual violence in 2019 resulted in out-of-pocket costs for the survivors. The average cost was $3,551 per person.

The Violence Against Women Act (VA[W]A), a federal law enacted in 1994, stipulates that sexual assault victims cannot be charged for a forensic exam, which involves treating people for immediate injuries and collecting evidence needed for an investigation such as samples of blood, urine, skin or hair.

But some patients are charged anyway, either because of hospital error or because the exam included medical services that are not covered under the VA[W]A.

[…for reasons I don’t follow NBC had an M in that acronym…maybe I’m missing something…or maybe I’m not the one who hasn’t had enough coffee this morning?]

If a victim receives a bill for costs the state is legally responsible for under the Violence Against Women Act, the proposed law would also require private insurers to let survivors know how to seek proper reimbursement.

Additionally, the bill, called the No Surprises for Survivors Act, stipulates that forensic medical exams should be considered an emergency service under the No Surprises Act, a 2020 law that protects people with private insurance from receiving surprise medical bills for certain forms of emergency care.
[…]
A March study published by KFF, a nonprofit health-focused think tank formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that two-thirds of privately insured women who likely received a forensic exam after a sexual assault from 2016 to 2018 were charged out-of-pocket for at least one standard service included in that exam. The women spent $347, on average.
[…]
The bill, however, would not have an effect on the additional medical services that some survivors get charged for as part of an emergency visit, such as pregnancy tests, emergency contraception, or testing or treatment for sexually transmitted infections. Only some states require that such services be free. The KFF report found that 17 states cover the costs of STI testing, 15 cover preventative HIV treatment and 11 cover emergency contraception.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-bill-medical-bills-sexual-assault-survivors-rcna48503

…maybe there are some clues in who the joke is on

Aphasia has been back in the headlines following the stroke that Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman suffered days before winning the Democratic Senate nomination in May. Fetterman’s campaign said earlier this month that he didn’t have aphasia. Whatever the diagnosis, though, it’s clear that several months post-stroke, Fetterman still struggles to process what he hears and sometimes jumbles words when he speaks.
[…]
Although scores of experts agree that speech and language disorders like aphasia do not affect intelligence or other cognitive functions, they also agree that they do affect how people perceive our intelligence. The Oz campaign is clearly hoping that perception will hurt Fetterman.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/fetterman-oz-debate-pennsylvania-senate-seat-sends-message-stroke

…about which you could make some guesses based on who’s laughing

In mid-September, the government of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia announced a blockbuster, 5bn-watt “green” hydrogen plant.

The plant was meant to deliver 200,000 tonnes of ammonia to Europe each year, without the use of fossil fuels.

Heading into November there is no prospect green power will be available by the time the EverWind Fuels facility begins operations, the Energy Mix and Halifax Examiner have learned in a joint investigation in partnership with the Guardian.
[…]
Nova Scotia has five large onshore wind farms due to start up by 2025, but they’ll account for only 30% of its electricity use – without factoring in new demand, much less the needs of the EverWind plant.

In a 20 September release, Nova Scotia premier Tim Houston’s office said a separate set of leases would deliver “5 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030 to support [the province’s] budding green hydrogen industry”. But that’s just the deadline for offering leases to wind farm developers, with actual production expected around 2038, a provincial spokesperson later clarified. The5 gigawatts, she added, is a target, not a firm commitment.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/26/nova-scotia-green-energy-plant-coal-powered

…the arc of the moral universe may well bend towards justice…but it could be it needs to get its skates on

Pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions will lead to global heating of 2.5C, a level that would condemn the world to catastrophic climate breakdown, according to the United Nations.
[…]
The UN calculated on Wednesday that the plans submitted by governments would lead to a temperature rise of between 2.1C and 2.9C, with the best estimate about 2.5C. This represents a “marginal” improvement, said Stiell, on the 2.7C temperature rise that would have followed from the commitments made at Glasgow.
[…]
The NDC synthesis report showed that current NDCs would lead to an increase in emissions of about 10.6% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels. This is an improvement over last year’s assessment, which found countries were on a path to increase emissions by 13.7% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels.

But the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that greenhouse gas emissions need to fall by about 45% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels, to give the world a chance of staying within 1.5C.
[…]
A second UN report on long-term low-emission development strategies, also released on Wednesday, examined the plans that many countries have put in place to reach net zero emissions by or around mid-century. These plans showed that emissions could be about 68% lower in 2050 than in 2019, if all the long-term strategies are fully implemented on time.
[…]
The prospects for the Cop27 UN climate summit, hosted by the Egyptian government, which will begin in Sharm el-Sheikh on 6 November, are being viewed with increasing concern. Geopolitical tensions from the Ukraine war, the energy, food price and cost of living crises around the world, and the chill between the US and China are all casting a shadow over the talks where the likelihood of major progress on emissions cuts remains small.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/26/current-emissions-pledges-will-lead-to-catastrophic-climate-breakdown-says-un

…because some of the things that’re looking like a joke

Opinion polls that show massive support for the war are unreliable, since opponents of Mr Putin are warier of sharing their views with strangers. Independent analysts say that there probably is still a majority in favour, but that it is not monolithic. There are hardline nationalists who see the conflict as a crusade against the west, but also a less ideological segment that backs the country’s armed forces as a matter of cultural habit. The former group is committed to total war without limits. The latter camp would gladly see the whole thing brought to a swift conclusion. That division is increasingly reflected in debates on state propaganda channels, where it is no longer taboo to suggest that things have not gone to plan.
[…]
He badly underestimated the capacity of Ukraine to resist invasion in February, and he has overestimated the readiness of Russians to martyr themselves for his vanity. Independent Russian media in exile report that senior government figures have lost faith in Mr Putin, but have no way of replacing him. The image of totalitarian control shown to the west is a facade, concealing a weak structure held together by fear, corruption and inertia.

Mr Putin’s authority cannot withstand unlimited military setbacks and his regime might be more brittle than it looks. His method of responding to failure with escalation is leading to yet more failure. His defeat in Ukraine would be the just outcome for the people of that country. It is also a necessary step on the long road to a better future for Russia.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/26/the-guardian-view-on-russias-war-machine-little-more-than-a-brittle-facade

…seem like they’re in poor taste

It’s like being forced to sit through a game of cricket or baseball. The beer and the snacks are fine, but the game only makes sense to the insiders who have been thrilled by the secret strategies since childhood.
[…]
There has long been a yawning chasm between what British people admire in the mirror and what the rest of the world observes.

But over the last six years, that gap between myth and reality has become unbridgeable.
[…]
Sunak, for all his earnest schoolboy affect, is heading for the same fate as all four of his predecessors, because you can only fool all of the people some of the time.

Of course, some of the people can be fooled all of the time. We call those people Conservative party members who are – like their American Republican counterparts – no longer conservative at all.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the monster raving loony right has glugged down a radical cocktail of conspiracy theories, free-market fever dreams, and a corrosive taste for cultural victimhood.

Six years into Brexit, it’s obvious that the world is not in fact hankering after glorious new trade deals that will make Britain ludicrous amounts of loot. It’s also obvious that erecting trade barriers to the largest economy on your doorstep did not in fact punish the foreigners on the other side.

As the former governor of the Bank of England points out, before Brexit the British economy was 90% the size of Germany’s. Today it is less than 70%. Well done, chaps.
[…]
Today’s rightwingnuts idolize the notion of a long-lost greatness that somehow proves their own exceptionalism.
[…]
Today’s so-called conservatives are united in their desire to demonize outsiders, especially immigrants and those they consider immoral, who are allegedly threatening the national culture. Nothing identifies and separates left and right today like attitudes to immigration.
[…]
And yes, Rishi Sunak is a hardcore Brexiteer who is determined to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda and has pandered to the anti-trans mob who claim they are threatened by pronouns.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/26/uk-british-politics-rishi-sunak-richard-wolffe

…it’s amazing what a difference perspective can make

The leak of the draft supreme court opinion abolishing the right to abortion put members of the conservative majority at risk of assassination, Samuel Alito, the author of the draft, has said.

…yeah…still processing that one…but it’s hard to wring even a dry chuckle out of this chucklefuck’s antics…lemme get this straight though

Alito’s draft opinion, arguing for overturning the two definitive precedents that for decades established a woman’s constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy – Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey – was leaked to Politico, which published it on 2 May. The final ruling, with only minor amendments, was released on 24 June.

…now his “logic” appears to be that (notwithstanding the part where little substantively changed between draft & final ruling) the threat component boiled down to the part where someone might get it in their head that killing a supreme court justice from the majority…or I guess a couple or three if they wanted to alter the majority part…could alter the outcome…if they did it before the draft matured into a ruling

In his 75-minute Q&A session, Alito pointed to the arrest of a man outside the Maryland home of one conservative justice, Brett Kavanaugh, two weeks before the release of the abortion ruling.

…imagine having to content with that kind of thing for a less finite span of time…over something other than your own egregiously twisted partisan hackery…what might that look like?

“Everybody is free to criticize our reasoning, and in strong terms … But to say the court is exhibiting lack of integrity is something quite different,” he said.

He added: “Someone also crosses an important line when they say that the court is acting in a way that is illegitimate. I don’t think that anybody in a position of authority should make that claim lightly.”

…who the fuck said anyone was doing that shit lightly you trifling shitbird?

His remarks were clearly directed at Elena Kagan, one of the three liberal justices who now form the outvoted rump of the court. Following the upending of abortion rights, Kagan has spoken out in unusually forthright terms, accusing the conservative supermajority of damaging the legitimacy and standing of the court.
[…]
“When courts become extensions of the political process, when people see them as extensions of the political process … that’s when there’s a problem,” Kagan said.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/oct/26/samuel-alito-supreme-court-assassination-abortion-ruling

…refusing to call a problem a problem isn’t historically a great way to arrive at a solution

Mackerel is the most economically valuable fish in the north-east Atlantic Ocean, and along with herring and blue whiting at No 2 and No 3, it has been systematically overfished – in some cases, for more than a decade.
[…]
To avoid a wild west scenario where everyone takes whatever they can, the coastal states – Norway, Russia, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, along with the EU and, since Brexit, the UK – meet every year in London at the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC), where they must try to agree on catch quotas. (Russia was not invited this year after it invaded Ukraine.)

In most cases, the countries formally accept scientists’ recommendations for the maximum amount of fish that should be caught. When it comes to sharing the pie, however, the negotiators don’t agree on who gets what. They almost always end up allocating themselves quotas that are far too high – and, collectively, end up fishing too much.

The result has been chaos. An investigation by journalists from the German broadcasters NDR and WDR, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Guardian shows that in recent years, fishers in the north-east Atlantic have caught between 66% and 86% more than the amount scientists – and even the countries themselves – agree is safe.
[…]
The effect could be catastrophic. Mackerel, blue whiting and even the famously plentiful herring may soon be in real danger should this systematic overfishing continue.
[…]
“When you understand how the negotiations are really going, you can’t believe it,” says Anna Heiða Ólafsdóttir, a marine biologist at the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute in Iceland. Along with many experts, she describes the current system of negotiations as unsustainable.
[…]
Then Brexit happened, and things went from bad to worse.
[…]
There are negotiations of this kind all over the world, and like many of them, the NEAFC has a problem: it has no way of forcing the countries to agree, and no way of punishing them for not agreeing. As long as the countries meet, they have, officially, done their duty.

The negotiations follow a similar pattern. Each country sends a delegation to London, usually accompanied by industry representatives and marine biologists, and together they sit down in the NEAFC offices, in a nondescript building like any other in white-collar Baker Street. Between rounds of negotiations, the representatives occasionally step outside for a coffee, but are otherwise confined to the closed-door meetings.

To open the dance, scientists from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea – an independent organisation that studies the sustainable use of the ocean – recommend a maximum catch quota for each species. Mostly, everybody agrees. Then the negotiations begin. In round after round of backroom talks, each country jostles for the highest quotas, leaning on historical or territorial arguments in an attempt to justify why it alone should get a different share than the proportion recommended by scientists.

[…]Fishing was a key plank of the campaign to leave the EU, and fishers were targeted with such slogans as “seas of opportunity” and “take back control of our waters”.

“I was constantly amazed by the sort of high profile of fisheries in the [Brexit] debates,” Stewart says, noting that the industry accounts for only 0.12% of the UK’s economy. In the end, small-scale fishers strongly supported the Brexit campaign.

Many now feel betrayed. “We’ve probably lost more than we’ve gained,” says David Milne, the chairman of the Scottish White Fish Producers’ Association.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/26/north-east-atlantic-overfishing-brexit

…& the little things effect the big things

Warming water temperatures caused by climate change are affecting where zooplankton multiply in abundance, which has in turn been driving North Atlantic right whales into areas with fewer regulatory protections in recent years. For example, many whales were killed by entanglements and vessel strikes in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Hamilton said, spurring Canada to begin adopting measures to manage ship traffic during certain parts of the year. Meanwhile, it is illegal to get closer than 500 yards from right whales in U.S. waters.
North Atlantic right whale population drops to about 340, worrying scientists [WaPo]

…speaking of little things…to give some idea of context…that 0.12% thing

According to The Telegraph Doctor Who made $1.8 billion in global sales last year. $550 million of which were from the US.

This makes it one of the BBC’s biggest exports and means, in programme sales alone, Doctor Who is worth three times as much as the UK’s fishing industry. pic.twitter.com/E8neH8XMQA

— WilliamWho (@BBCWilliamWho) October 24, 2022

…context can be kind of a bitch when it comes to the punchline

Far from an outlier, Texas, with its new law, joined what has been an expanding effort to remove nearly all restrictions on carrying handguns. When Alabama’s “permitless carry” law goes into effect in January, half of the states in the nation, from Maine to Arizona, will not require a license to carry a handgun.

The state-by-state legislative push has coincided with a federal judiciary that has increasingly ruled in favor of carrying guns and against state efforts to regulate them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/26/us/texas-guns-permitless.html

…or…you know…you can just duck the question & kick the can a little farther down the road

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has taken on the unenviable task of restoring Britain’s credibility in international markets, said on Wednesday that he would delay the announcement of a major economic plan by two and a half weeks as he seeks more time to make the “right decisions.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has taken on the unenviable task of restoring Britain’s credibility in international markets, said on Wednesday that he would delay the announcement of a major economic plan by two and a half weeks as he seeks more time to make the “right decisions.”

…the “right decisions” or the “right” decisions?

“If all there is is tax rises and spending cuts, and there is nothing in there about growth, the country could end up in a similar doom loop where all you have to do is keep coming back every year to find more tax rises and more spending cuts because you’ve got no growth.” [Tony] Danker [the head of the Confederation of British Industry] told the BBC.

One of the consequences of delaying the fiscal plan is that it will now come after the Bank of England’s next policy meeting, set for Nov. 3.

The earlier date would have allowed officials at the central bank to assess the government’s policies and then decide how high to raise interest rates to curb inflation. This was deemed important when there was concern that Ms. Truss’s tax cuts would add to Britain’s inflationary pressures, pulling fiscal policy in the opposite direction of monetary policy, and force the central bank to raise rates sharply.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/26/business/rishi-sunak-uk-economic-plan.html

…sure…let’s keep handing out passing grades to people before they turn in their homework…that’s been working out great so far…right? …nothing throwing out the curve?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2022/top-election-donors-2022/

…at least tomorrow’s friday