Reading archive 2025-12-16

Is your lamp the right size? There’s an equation for that. You don’t need to be a math whiz to choose a lamp. You just need to consider function and know a bit about proportion.

She was MAGA’s favorite conspiracist. Then she dug into Charlie Kirk’s killing.: Candace Owens rose to prominence as a pro-Trump conspiracy theorist. Her latest claims have infuriated some of her former allies. - "Pool, for his part, said Owens’s defection on Israel and claims about Kirk are a “nihilistic” grab for attention from a person with a history of shifting her opinions to propel her career. Owens is adopting the conventions of true-crime storytelling, Pool said — foreshadowing, cliff-hangers and questions that never get answered — to tap into an appetite for conspiracy thinking on the right and the left."

Some Republican lawmakers call for mass expulsion of American Muslims: Comments from Rep. Randy Fine and Sen. Tommy Tuberville reflect a brazen Islamophobic sentiment being voiced by some in the party. - "Mitchell [ed. note: CAIR spokesman] expressed frustration with both parties for not doing more to formally sanction members for Islamophobic rhetoric. He said a double standard exists, pointing to a House censure on a bipartisan basis of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), a Muslim Palestinian American, for comments following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel." [ed. note: lol maybe ask Jill Stein for help???]

Hunt for Brown University gunman starts anew as tension rises: Authorities released a person of interest and provided video and still images of a different man they want to locate.

How Much Water Do AI Data Centers Really Use?: The AI industry’s use of water and its effects on an increasingly parched world are more complicated than people think.

Can Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals Affect Gender Identity?: Some scientists see it as a question worth exploring. But others say it’s dubious — and fodder for right-wing prejudice. - "To be sure, the number of 18- to 24-year-olds who self-identify as transgender in the United States nearly quintupled between 2014 and 2022, increasing from 0.59 percent to 2.78 percent, according to a national survey run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The largest increase was among White transgender men. But while Kennedy and Jones see a chemical culprit, and still others suggest social influences may play a role, Hayes and Roepke remain skeptical that these increases reflect anything more than a cultural moment wherein transgender people feel more comfortable revealing or exploring their gender identity.

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"The sex-determining process doesn’t always happen so neatly, however: The SRY gene can show up on the X chromosome, for instance, resulting in a genetic female with testes. If the SRY gene doesn’t work in the usual way, then a genetic male might develop a uterus and fallopian tubes. Some genetic males don’t have the working receptors needed to respond to male sex hormones called androgens — of which testosterone is the most common — or have only a partial ability to respond, which means that they can develop typically female or sexually ambiguous genitalia. (People whose anatomies are not typically male or female may be intersex, which is distinct from being transgender.)"

The Largest and Bloodiest U.S. Battlefield in 2025? Somalia: At least 87 drone strikes, raids and other U.S. military engagements have hit Somalia this year, by far the most ever. And it's likely an undercount

Ukraine could gain NATO-like security assurances in US-proposed Russia peace deal

University of Maryland president cleared of plagiarism allegations: University of Maryland President Darryll Pines was cleared of plagiarism allegations after an independent review, though the review did find his papers lifted some texts.

HBCU president sues professor who accused her of plagiarism and racism: A former University of Maryland Eastern Shore professor says she was illegally pushed out at the historically Black college because she is White.

What the new Purple Line looks like in action

‘Kind of embarrassed’: In Vance’s hometown, I saw patience running thin: Middletown’s regard for its most famous son was more subdued than I’d expected.

Chicago has lost its mind: The city’s fiscal situation is dire, and Mayor Brandon Johnson is determined to make things worse.

Jimmy Lai and the end of Hong Kong: The fate of the former British colony is a warning to any nation that cuts a deal with China.

Trump’s Top Aide Acknowledges ‘Score Settling’ Behind Prosecutions: In interviews with Vanity Fair, Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, said President Trump "has an alcoholic's personality," called JD Vance a "conspiracy theorist" and concluded that Pam Bondi "completely whiffed" the early handling of the Epstein Files.

Reading archive 2025-02-11

What the Democrats’ Musk Whisperer Thinks Now: “We need to make sure that Elon Musk has an allegiance to the Constitution,” Representative Ro Khanna says.

California’s smart and vocal farmers are silent about Trump as he wasted their water | Opinion

‘We’ll all have to go vegan’: Wisconsin dairy farmers fret over immigration crackdown: Business groups warn agriculture sector will collapse without foreign labour

Trumper Who Could Lose Farm Says He Had No 'Time To Research' Before Voting

‘Devastating to my state’: Why Trump’s newest tariff threats promise catastrophe for Kentucky bourbon: Canada is the No. 2 export market for U.S. distillers, after the European Union.

Trump Enrages Christian MAGA By Naming ‘Heretic’ Pastor to White House

Proposal To Stop Minting Pennies Hits Home In Greene County - "Americans for Common Cents, a pro-penny group with Artazn among its backers, stated in a January news release that eliminating the penny will not save the government money. 

"'In fact, such a move would have a significant negative impact on the U.S. Mint’s cost structure. Many overhead expenses at the Mint would remain and would need to be absorbed by other coins, increasing their per-unit costs. Additionally, without the penny, the demand for nickels would rise to fill the gap in small-value transactions,' the news release notes. 

"'Since each nickel costs nearly 14 cents to produce, this shift would drive up overall production expenses for the government. Rather than saving money, eliminating the penny would increase and redistribute financial burdens,' the news release states."

U.S. Travel Association Warns of Economic Tourism Disaster After Thousands of Canadian Tourists Cancel Trips in Protest

Trump’s Gaza proposal frustrates his new Arab American supporters: Whether Trump can keep these new supporters could have implications for key statewide races, but also on the fragile coalition the GOP assembled to gain ground.

Trump administration plans for federal contracts stir worries across Kentucky - "Payments for indirect costs cover items that make basic research possible, Capilouto said, such as building and outfitting labs; research equipment; ventilation, heat and lighting; technology, and graduate students who work in labs."

The Rise of the Selfish Plutocrats: Instead of pursuing philanthropy, many now seek to evade social responsibility. - "In 2021, The Wall Street Journal broke the news that [da Vinci's Salvator Mundi] priceless painting had been kept on private display aboard bin Salman's superyacht, Serene, a 439-foot-long, half-billion-dollar boat that had recently run aground in a navigational accident. A fragile, irreplaceable object of significance to the shared cultural history of all humanity was being kept in a hot, humid environment for the private enjoyment of one royal billionaire and his ultrarich guests. (In another room, Serene was also equipped with state-of-the-art snow machines that could produce four-inch-deep flurries on demand.)"

The Government’s Computing Experts Say They Are Terrified: Four IT professionals lay out just how destructive Elon Musk’s incursion into the U.S. government could be. - "DOGE is many things a dismantling of the federal government, a political project to flex power and punish perceived enemies but it is also the logical end point of a strain of thought that's become popular in Silicon Valley during the boom times of Big Tech and easy money: that building software and writing code aren't just dominant skills for the 21st century, but proof of competence in any realm. In a post on X this week, John Shedletsky, a developer and an early employee at the popular gaming platform Roblox, summed up the philosophy nicely: 'Silicon Valley built the modern world. Why shouldn't we run it?'"

‘A Very Christian Concept’: The faith’s mandate is more arduous than J. D. Vance’s account seems to allow.

Tech layoffs reveal the unintended consequences of mass job cuts: After mass layoffs, tech workers lost trust in their employers. Federal employees may soon face the same fate.

D.C. managed to avoid return-to-office chaos over Navy Yard parking shortage: Local and military officials had been sounding the alarm about a potential parking shortage.

An ICE raid gutted a town in Trump’s first term. Now, fear of a repeat.: Tiny O’Neill, Nebraska, is still recovering from the 2018 raid. It forced some businesses to close and left many residents, especially immigrants, reeling.

In the Trump era, renewable energy isn’t green — it’s ‘dominant’: Clean-energy executives are tailoring their pitches for the president and his political allies. - "One trend the groups are planning to emphasize is that congressional districts that favored Trump in the 2020 election have seen three times as much investment as a result of clean-energy tax credits, according to a Washington Post analysis. In addition, over half of all new clean-energy jobs are in Republican-led districts, according to a separate analysis by Climate Power, an environmental advocacy group.

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"Spokespeople for [Rep. Marjorie Taylor] Greene and 10 other Republican lawmakers with the most new clean-energy jobs in their districts did not respond to requests for comment."

19-year-old Musk surrogate takes on roles at State Department and DHS: The move illustrates that Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service aides are being asked to fulfill multiple posts at once.

The Chilling Consequences of Going Along With Trump

Trump’s NIH challenges the model that underlies U.S. scientific dominance: The 80-year-old partnership between the federal government and research institutions has made the U.S. the leader in scientific innovation. But now a proposed funding cut threatens the arrangement. - "'At a time of rapid strides in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, brain science, biological imaging, and regenerative biology, and when other nations are expanding their investment in science, America should not drop knowingly and willingly from her lead position on the endless frontier,' Harvard President Alan M. Garber said in a letter to the university community."

The Islamic State has regrouped in Somalia — and has global ambitions: The Post ventured to the front lines of an offensive against the Islamic State in northern Somalia, where foreign fighters are flowing in and cash is flowing out.