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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
Mexico City, I think, should be seen as an alarm bell warning cities throughout the United States, and the world come to that. Water and how it it handled is going to become a major factor in the wellbeing of communities, and neither Mexico nor the cities in the United States are preparing properly. I urge you to do some research into the community in which you live to see whether they are doing what should be done to face what is happening.
Mexico City is being threatened by a water crisis after the main reservoirs remain under 40 percent of their full capacity due to low rainfall, geography, and lack of infrastructure. Credit: Hector Vivas/Getty
Mexico City is parched.
After abysmally low amounts of rainfall over the last few years, the reservoirs of the Cutzamala water system that supplies over 20 percent of the Mexican capital’s 22 million residents’ usable water are running out.
“If it doesn’t start raining soon, as it is supposed to, these [reservoirs] will run out of water by the end of June,” Oscar Ocampo, a public policy researcher on the environment, water, and energy, told my colleagues over on the Today, Explained podcast.
The crisis is also leading Mexico City to siphon more from the underground aquifers on which the city sits, a decision that’s not just unsustainable without replenishment but also causes the ground to sink — at […]
Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University - The Conversation
Stephan:
Project 2025. This is what the TCP Republican Party and criminal Trump seek to do to American society, including eliminating true democracy in the country. We stand at a precipice, and a large percentage of Americans bow down to Trump’s goals. We have a two party system, you and everyone you know must vote only for Democrats or you will elect a christofascist.
Current polling separates Biden and Trump by just 2%. Credit: Andy Manis / AAP
In April 2022, conservative American think tank the Heritage Foundation, working with a broad coalition of 50 conservative organisations, launched Project 2025: a plan for the next conservative president of the United State
The Project’s flagship publication, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, outlines in plain language and in granular detail, over 900-plus pages, what a second Trump administration (if it occurs) might look like. I’ve read it all, so you don’t have to.
The Mandate’s veneer of exhausting technocratic detail, focused mostly on the federal bureaucracy, sits easily alongside a Trumpian project of revenge and retribution. It is the substance behind the showmanship of the Trump rallies.
Developing transition plans for a presidential candidate is normal practice in the US. What is not normal about Project 2025, with its intertwined domestic and international agenda, are the plans themselves. Those for climate and the global environment, defence and security, the global economic system and the institutions of American democracy more broadly aim for nothing less […]
If you have watched my latest SR podcast you know why people will violate all the principles they claim to base their morality on when they are told to do so by an authority who does not so much lead them as personify them. But I confess I never thought it would come to this. Trumpers wearing diapers and being proud to defecate and pee in their pants. His submissive followers do whatever they can to prove their submission to him.
Criminal Trump speaks during a rally aboard the Battleship USS Iowa in San Pedro. Credit: Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com
A recent viral story about Donald Trump’s supporters wearing diapers to rallies was confirmed by a fact-checker, prompting social media to explode.
Earlier this month, photos of purported Trump fans wearing “real men wear diapers” merchandise spread online. But many wrote the phenomenon off as staged, or even a result of an artificial intelligence program.
According to Snopes, however, that really happened.
“We noticed that the photographs that circulated all came from Dispatches from Trumpland, so we contacted the writers of the blog to ask for more details about the rallies. The writer replied that the photographs posted on April 11 had been taken at rallies in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Detroit. He added that he took the photographs in the April 24 post himself, in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania,” the report states. “He also shared an article from the Greensboro News & Record, published March 2, […]
If you vote for Trump or any of the cretins who serve him in Congress or State legislatures you will be voting for all efforts to end the carbon era to end and preparations for what climate change is doing to stop. In the years to come your children and their children will hate you for destroying their wellbeing.
Criminal Trump . Credit: Myles Cullen / Official White House
Donald Trump is promising CEOs of oil and gas conglomerates he will dismantle the climate protections President Joe Biden has installed, and he will green light their policy wishlists including gutting support for electric vehicles if they donate $1 billion for his presidential campaign, according to reporting from Politico and The Washington Post.
“You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House,” reports The Post, describing Trump’s conversation “with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month.”
“At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation,” The Post added. “Giving $1 billion would be a ‘deal,’ Trump said, because of the taxation and […]
We are heading, as this article describes, for a further degradation of America’s public education system. Why? Because the Republicans in Congress will not extend funding that began with the Covid pandemic. America is becoming the most poorly educated nation amongst the other developed nations in the world; the least literate, and the least capable in mathematics. Those are the facts. (Search the SR archive for the data upon which this statement is based, or watch my podcast on this subject.)
In this June 2022 photo, student backpacks hang on the backs of classroom chairs at a school in New York. Credit: Michael Loccisano / Getty
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Schools across the country are announcing teacher and staff layoffs as districts brace for the end of a pandemic aid package that delivered the largest one-time federal investment in K-12 education.
The funds must be used by the end of September, creating a sharp funding cliff as schools also struggle with widespread enrollment declines and inflation.
Many districts have warned of layoffs as the current school year comes to a close and next year’s budgets are planned. The local headlines about teachers likely won’t help Americans who remain stubbornly pessimistic about the economy feel any better, adding to the challenge President Joe Biden faces to show voters how things are better than they were four years ago.
In Missoula, Montana, for example, the public school district is considering cutting 33 teaching positions and 13 administrative positions, including its special education director and fine arts director, […]
This article is the first I have seen that really climbs into the IVF procedure in the United States which, as it describes is very different than in other nations. Why? Because in the U.S. you can gender select, something you cannot do in other nations. And, because we don’t have healthcare focused on wellbeing, having an illness profit system, IVF is increasing a profit scheme. As I read this report what came up in my mind, was the history-changing cultural mistake the Chinese made by limiting families to one child, and then overwhelming having families choose boys. China now has a population skewed to males. The percentage of females is 49.02 percent compared to 50.98 percent males, which is 28 million more males than females. There are a lot of men in China who will never marry, and it has affected the culture. In America IVF is being used to go the other way, to choose girls. The trend is growing, and it will be interesting to see how it develops, but it is unlikely to have a positive effect.
Illustration by Anna Kim / Slate
Amy Yin always envisioned having at least two daughters. She spent her 20s working as an engineer and founding a startup in San Francisco. When she wasn’t working, vacationing with friends, and spoiling her cats, Amy dedicated herself to helping other women take charge and launch high-powered careers. Now 32, she’s bringing that same energy to her family planning. She has frozen her eggs and, when she’s ready, will undergo IVF so that she can select the sex of her future children. “I think I’ll raise really powerful women who are going to be rock-star leaders,” Amy told me, without hesitation.
In vitro fertilization is invasive, grueling, and expensive. One round costs an average of $20,000. Only 15 states require that insurance plans offer any kind of coverage for it—and even then, the coverage is usually minimal. The treatment is often a last resort for those who are eager to be parents but who face one roadblock or another when it comes to conceiving; some couples are struggling with fertility […]
As the damage of the carbon industries and their role in creating climate change becomes ever more evident I think many Blue states are going to follow what Vermont is doing. This issue of the responsibility of the carbon industries, I think, is going to become a major political issue strongly influenced by the corruption of Congress and state legislatures.
Flood waters block a street in Barre, Vt on July 12, 2023 . Credit: Charles Krupa / AP
Modeled after the EPA’s Superfund program, which forces companies to pay for toxic waste cleanup, the climate superfund bill would charge major fossil fuel companies doing business within the state billions of dollars for their past emissions.
Vermont is poised to pass a groundbreaking measure forcing major polluting companies to help pay for damages caused by the climate crisis, in a move being closely watched by other states including New York and California.
Modeled after the EPA’s Superfund program, which forces companies to pay for toxic waste cleanup, the climate superfund bill would charge major fossil fuel companies doing business within the state billions of dollars for their past emissions.
The measure would make Vermont the first US state to hold fossil fuel companies liable for their planet-heating pollution. “If you contributed to a mess, you should play a role in cleaning it up,” […]
Hannah Devlin, Science Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
What I have been warning you about AI is now becoming increasingly recognized as this article describes. I think this is going to have a significant impact on our democracy because many people are easily manipulated by influences they see as authoritarian. To understand why take a look at my podcast. What I describe is changing American society radically already.
The researchers found an instance of an AI system playing a board game telling another player: ‘I am on the phone with my girlfriend.’ Credit: Wodthikorn Phutthasatchathum / Alamy
The analysis, by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers, identifies wide-ranging instances of AI systems double-crossing opponents, bluffing and pretending to be human. One system even altered its behaviour during mock safety tests, raising the prospect of auditors being lured into a false sense of security.
“As the deceptive capabilities of AI systems become more advanced, the dangers they pose to society will become increasingly serious,” said Dr Peter Park, an AI existential safety researcher at MIT and author of the research.
Park was prompted to investigate after Meta, which owns Facebook, developed a program called Cicero that performed in the top 10% of human players at the world conquest strategy game Diplomacy. Meta stated that Cicero had been trained to be […]
