FORTEAN PHENOMENA

First, the Fish Fell From the Sky. 

Then They Washed Ashore.

Livia Albeck-Ripka

The New York Times

Fri, July 8, 2022 

One night last month, Britt Gerhard and her husband heard a bang on the roof of their house in San Francisco around 8 p.m. It was so loud, they thought it was an earthquake.

The couple had just put their 4-year-old daughter to bed, and Gerhard, a 38-year-old artist, was alarmed. Suddenly, shiny and silver things, each just a few inches long, began flying past the window.

They were anchovies

“We went outside, and there were just fish everywhere, about 20 to 30 fish,” Gerhard said. “I was like, ‘OK, we’ve had a pandemic and fires and now, fish are falling from the sky.’”

In the past month, a handful of residents in the Bay Area have reported similar occurrences. Then, last week, several thousand dead anchovies washed up about 30 miles north, on the shore of the Bolinas Lagoon.

The happenings might seem bizarre, or even biblical, but scientists say they have a perfectly rational explanation: The anchovy population off the California coast is booming.

Those that washed ashore were likely chased by marine predators into the shallow lagoon waters, where they soon got stuck and ran out of oxygen, said Jarrod Santora, a marine ecologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

As for the fish falling from the sky, he added, “That’s just birds carrying them back to their chicks, and they can only carry so many, and some of them fall out.”

Santora said that the gulls that nest atop buildings in the city often fight one another for food, and that they might drop their fish in a process known as kleptoparasitism: “That’s when a bird beats up on another bird for its lunch.”

Anchovies are a boom-and-bust species: Their populations naturally shrink and expand, and scientists don’t know exactly why. But since a marine heat wave that ended around 2016, the population of anchovies off the California coast has exploded “by orders of magnitude,” Santora said. It has created a banquet for the birds, sea lions and whales that feast on them, he added.

“These humpbacks are recovering, and they’re very hungry,” Santora said, adding that he suspected that a group of the whales could have driven the anchovies into shallow water. The whales, he said, cooperatively feed in small groups by splitting the fish into smaller schools, weakening their defenses.

“Five humpback whales can move an anchovy school basically anywhere they want to,” he added, “and just scoop it all up.”

The mass anchovy die-off in Bolinas Lagoon was rare, but not unprecedented. In 2013, anchovies crowded into Santa Cruz harbor, depriving themselves of oxygen. The next year, a mass die-off of the tiny fish fouled an Oregon beach town. Earlier this year, thousands of the fish also washed up dead on a beach in Chile.

Rudi Ferris, a fisherman who has lived in Bolinas for more than five decades, said that he recalled a handful of die-offs in the seaside town, and that only one, in the late 1970s, rivaled the carnage he witnessed last month.

“It stunk horribly for a really long time,” said Ferris, 71. This time, he added, he watched the scene from afar through his binoculars. A mass of pelicans and gulls were “frantically eating,” he said.

Staff members with Marin County Parks, which manages the lagoon, said that most of the fish had either been eaten or washed back out to sea, but that the phenomenon had provided a brief glimpse into the wonders of ocean life.

“We don’t usually get to see how many fish are in the ocean,” said Max Korten, director and general manager for Marin County Parks. “It’s kind of amazing.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Losing our freedoms on the road to becoming the Divided Fascist States of America



Chris Preece
Thu, July 7, 2022 

I enjoy my freedom as an American, free speech, freedom to worship how I like, and the comfort of knowing my kid will have opportunities to reach his full potential. This America, the one we have loved but had some tough times with, may be ending. Likely ending sooner than we think.

My wife, many loved ones, and half our population had their right to bodily autonomy (to do with their own body as they see fit) recently ripped from them by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and Kentucky State Legislature. Kentucky’s law on abortion has NO exceptions for rape or incest and only a narrow exemption for the life of the mother. Our wives, daughters, mothers, and friends now have their bodies controlled by our government. This is the first time in American history that SCOTUS has taken rights away from people regarding bodily autonomy.

Access to an abortion had been upheld by SCOTUS for 49 years under the view that we have a right to privacy and bodily autonomy. Since the right to privacy and bodily freedom are being whittled away, Justice Thomas has expressed interest in reexamining our right to contraception (condoms and birth control), as well as our right to marry whomever we love. All these cases center around sex. Do you want the government in your sex life? I do not.

Also, if we do not have a right to privacy, the government could start invading our cars, homes, phones, or worse. Yes, this is extrapolating to make a point. If SCOTUS is not afraid to strip reproductive rights away, how far are they willing to go?

SCOTUS has agreed to hear a case next term (Moore v. Harper) about state legislatures being able to control federal elections, potentially going as far as to allow state electors to cast votes for whomever they like regardless of how we, the people, vote. If SCOTUS allows state legislators to control these elections, the states could make up their own rules and ignore our votes. Then we would no longer have a democracy. Let that sink in. We could potentially no longer have a democracy. Each state would have its own rules on federal elections, and our country would be even more divided Red v. Blue.

Our lives have increasingly gotten harder. Harder to buy gas, food, and a place to live. This is designed to keep us regular folks too busy to pay attention to politics. Now, I ask you to stand up and fight back against SCOTUS and their decisions to strip away our rights and democracy.

You may feel that your actions don’t matter, but they do. We all have a voice and a vote. When we talk to our friends and get more people involved, we amplify our voices. I help organize a group of concerned citizens, Bluegrass Reproductive Justice Coalition, to push back against our government. Check out our Facebook page. If you want to push back against our government in general, you can start your own group or join groups like Kentuckians for the Commonwealth or The Poor People’s Campaign.

Actions you can take now: join a group with a common cause, start your own group, contact all your friends and get them informed and engaged, contact Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin to abolish the filibuster, expand SCOTUS, codify Roe, and pass Voting Rights and US Term Limits.

America needs us all to stand up for our freedoms right now. If we don’t fight, fascism will gladly take all our freedoms, leaving us as the Divided Fascist States of America.

Chris Preeece is a high school science teacher in Berea, comic book creator, new dad, and former Democrat candidate for U.S. Congress in Kentucky’s 6th congressional district.

With events 'scarier' than Jan. 6 predicted, are we on verge of another civil war? Opinion


Christopher Blattman
Wed, July 6, 2022

In 2016, democracy rating organizations began downgrading the United States, some scoring American institutions below that of El Salvador, then Nigeria, then Iraq.

Then, following the Jan. 6 insurrection last year, articles and books began predicting something scarier: another civil war.

The most sensational accounts foretold a national breakup, neighbor killing neighbor. The more level-headed ones warned of something still dire: a far-right insurgency waging a long campaign of bombings and attacks. The disturbing evidence emerging from the Jan. 6 congressional hearings merely underscores such concerns.

These worries are understandable but flawed.

After a career studying civil wars small and large, organized violence in the United States strikes me as extraordinarily unlikely. Worse, focusing on civil war dangerously distracts Americans from the real risks.

Now, those prophesizing war have a point. If you take civil conflict from recent history, you find a chillingly familiar list of initial conditions: politics hardening along identity lines; a surge of armed groups; an erosion of institutions. Ethnic polarization and democratic backsliding are especially persistent predictors of state collapse.

More: Our view: Until America is at peace with itself, we need protection from extremists

American democracy healthier than forecasts predict

But apply this to the United States with care. The data driving these results comes from predicting massive acts of violence – genocide or revolutionary wars – almost all from low- and middle-income countries. It’s dubious to use these models to predict a different phenomenon – low-scale insurgency – in America or other rich, advanced democracies.

America’s democracy numbers also don’t add up. In 2015, raters like the Polity Project gave the United States a perfect score of 10 – one it had enjoyed for decades. Then Donald Trump was elected president, and America’s score fell to 8.

In 2019, after the failed impeachment of Trump, Polity’s score fell further to 7. Finally, on Jan. 7, 2021, immediately following the insurrection, Polity announced a drop to a 5, meaning “no longer a democracy.”

Insurrectionists loyal to then-President Donald Trump climb the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Political scientists woke up, as rapid plunges to this level are persistently correlated with outbreaks of civil war.

But this slide is suspicious. It would mean that American democracy today is several points below that of 1859, on the eve of the Civil War, and when a majority of adults were barred from voting. It would put present-day U.S. institutions on par with other 5's, like Haiti and Somalia. Meanwhile, countries like Hungary – the poster nation for democratic backsliding – maintain a perfect 10.

This defies credibility. One suspects that it’s the democracy raters who have become politicized, not American institutions. The backslide is surely exaggerated. So, then, are predictions of civil war.

The fact is, even societies with hardened identities rarely erupt in conflict. One study looked at every ethnic pairing in Africa and Eastern Europe in the late 20th century and found no more than 1 in 1,000 turned violent in a given year.

So, yes, if you trace back from a civil war you find polarized politics, or a surge of protest and arms. But trace back from periods without war and you will find a lot of the same conditions. These are not automatic forerunners of violence.
Immense pain of civil war is a deterrence

Here's why: As a general rule, enemies prefer to loathe one another in peace. That’s because war – especially civil war – is disastrous. It kills people, destroys economies and weakens the country to outside enemies. This gives all sides huge incentives to avoid violence.

For anyone who doubted these horrific consequences, the events of Jan. 6, 2021, offered a painful reminder. This may be why far-right movements and violent political acts have declined since the insurrection.

Because of these costs, most political factions don’t fight. An extremist militia in the United States would be no exception. Few things are harder than launching an insurgency against a powerful state. Intelligence services will hunt you down. Justice systems will jail you. You will live clandestinely, full of hardships. This is why even the most disaffected groups are often dissuaded from violence. Better to use politics by normal means.

Those who do see violence ahead for America often point to the Troubles in Northern Ireland – a rare example of insurgency in a wealthy democracy. I draw comfort from this comparison. Northern Ireland was far more polarized and factionalized than America today. It also had a decades-long history of a well-organized, clandestine armed movement with broad public sympathy.

Naturally there are parallels to America today, but the differences in scale and seriousness are vast.

Another key difference is the state response. British forces had limited intelligence and were indiscriminately violent. When a Catholic boy in Derry threw a flaming bottle of fuel, the British military would sweep in and arrest half the neighborhood, beating (even killing) a few. Insurgent leaders joked that the British state was their best recruiter.

U.S. security services are less partisan, more targeted and restrained. The FBI disrupts most militias before they lay their first bomb. And if a far-right fundamentalist does demolish a building, federal agents don’t round up all the Proud Boys for 20 miles and beat them up. They mount an investigation and see the perpetrator prosecuted.

I would be worried if U.S. military and federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies showed more polarization. But they’ve been strikingly resilient. So, in many ways, has America’s electoral system. In 2020, the vast majority of Republican election administrators upheld Joe Biden’s victory.

But there are still real risks here in the United States. Do you know who else noticed the resilience of the electoral system? Trump’s most ardent supporters. That’s why the worrying activity now is not restive militias – it is a shortsighted but determined slice of the Republican Party who are filling election administration offices with partisans willing to trade democracy for short-term political gain.

Even then, however, don’t anticipate a civil war. There would surely be protests and angry confrontations. This could instigate sporadic violence in the streets. But a Northern Ireland-style insurgency? That’s unlikely. We shouldn’t ignore the risk. But nor should we exaggerate it.

Instead of focusing on a lone riot, I would prefer that the congressional committee broaden its investigation, heading off furtive efforts to co-opt elections and ensuring that federal agencies continue to be led and staffed by professionals who put country ahead of party.

Frightening but rare events should not distract us from the real present danger.

Christopher Blattman, a professor in the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, is the author of "Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace." This piece appeared first on USATODAY.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Americans are dangerously divided, but new civil war is unlikely

Boris Johnson Resigns Amid MP's Same-Sex Sexual Abuse Scandal


Trudy Ring

ADVOCATE
Thu, July 7, 2022 

Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson, who has resigned as leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party and therefore will be replaced as prime minister, leaves a largely negative record on LGBTQ+ rights.

He has supported marriage equality but not embraced transgender rights, and written articles with homophobic and racist slurs that he claimed were satirical. And gay members of his government have accused him of creating an “atmosphere of hostility” toward LGBTQ+ people.

Johnson announced his departure Thursday in the wake of scandals over ethics violations throughout his administration and the resignations of about 60 members of his government. The last straw appeared to be accusations of sexual assault against Christopher Pincher, his deputy chief whip, tasked with assuring members of Parliament toe the party line.

Johnson was criticized for failing to take action right away against Pincher, who eventually resigned. Johnson also claimed he didn’t know about previous allegations of sexual misconduct by Pincher against other men, and that was “the final lie that brought down the pyramid of untruths that sustained Boris Johnson’s premiership,” Rosa Prince wrote in a commentary piece for CNN.

Johnson has been prime minister since 2019 and was previously mayor of London, a member of Parliament, and a journalist. When he took office as prime minister, succeeding Theresa May, concerns were raised about columns he’d written that contained homophobic and racist language.

In 1998, while working as a journalist, Johnson referred to gay men as “tank-topped bumboys” in a column for the Telegraph newspaper. The subject was the resignation of Peter Mandelson, who is gay, as foreign secretary in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government. He also said Mandelson’s departure would remove the “lipstick” from Blair’s administration.

Then in 2000, Johnson wrote a column in the Spectator magazine denouncing the Labour Party’s “appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it.” Additionally, he had written articles calling Black people “picanninies” with “watermelon smiles.”

He repeatedly refused to apologize for these comments, and in 2019 he told Sky News they were “wholly satirical.” “I think if you look at each of every one of those articles ... the quotations have been wrenched out of context in some cases to mean the opposite of what I intended,” he told the outlet.

However, Johnson did support the marriage equality law passed by the U.K. government in 2013, when fellow Conservative David Cameron was prime minister. Johnson likewise supported the repeal of Section 28, a law that prevented schools and local governments from “promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship,” even though he had criticized Labour’s efforts to repeal it. And as mayor of London, he welcomed Pride events.

When he became prime minister, Johnson backtracked on a promise made by May to ban conversion therapy. After backlash, he quickly reversed his position but said the ban would cover only therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation, not gender identity. It has not been enacted yet. However, his government agreed to fund a private charity’s hotline providing support for survivors of conversion therapy or people at risk for undergoing it. “It will give tailored pastoral support to transgender people as well as those who are lesbian, gay or bisexual,” the BBC reported in May.

This week Mike Freer, a minister in the Equalities Office, resigned that post and lambasted Johnson. “I feel that we are moving away from the One Nation Conservative party I joined, not least in creating an atmosphere of hostility for LGBT+ people and I regret I can no longer defend policies I fundamentally disagree with,” Freer wrote in his resignation letter Wednesday, iNews reports.

Also Wednesday, Peter Gibson, a member of Parliament, denounced Johnson’s party in this statement: “On Saturday last week I marched with LGBT+ Conservatives at London Pride. As a gay MP, that should have been a liberating, enjoyable experience, instead due to the damage our party has inflicted on itself over the failure to include trans people in the ban on conversion therapy, it was a humiliating experience and signalled to me the immense damage that has been so needlessly inflicted after years of hard work by many to rebuild the damage of Section 28.”

Several members of the Conservative Party have been mentioned as likely successors to Johnson. LGBTQ+ activists are skeptical about some of them, such as Liz Truss, Dominic Raab, and Sajid Javid, Pink News reports. “A potential dark horse,” Penny Mordaunt, “has made a name for herself as one of the most progressive Tories when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights,” the site notes.

The timetable for choosing Johnson’s replacement will be announced Monday.

Opinion: The real labor shortage is looming, and everything we’re doing is making it worse

Seven things we can do now to increase the supply of workers and make them more productive

Last Updated: July 8, 2022
By Rex Nutting


A big change is coming to the U.S. economy: a prolonged period of labor shortages. And nearly everything we’re doing now is making the problem worse.

Over the past year, we’ve seen a hint of what labor shortages could mean: delays, higher prices and the frustration of not being able to buy things when we want them.

But we’re not really short of workers quite yet. Hundreds of thousands of people enter the workforce each month, and companies are hiring at a rapid pace.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that nonfarm payroll jobs increased by 372,000 in June. That’s a slowdown from the average of 545,000 over the past year, but it’s more than the average hiring in the 2010s of 190,000.

Jeffry Bartash: U.S. creates 372,000 jobs in June with strong labor market seen as bulwark against recession

But soon enough, sometime in the next few years, the lack of available workers will slow monthly job growth below 100,000, perhaps to less than 50,000.

That’s not a reckless economic prediction; it’s a conservative demographic projection of current trends.

This structural labor shortage could have a profound impact on our economy, politics and society, both good and bad. But if we want the good things that could come from slower growth, we’ll have to plan for it.


The supply of workers is growing much slower than it was in the 1970s or 1990s. MARKETWATCH
Demographic tidal wave

Roughly speaking, the growth rate of an economy is determined by two factors: growth in hours worked (mostly because there are more workers) and growth in productivity, including the increased output unlocked by machines, software, human capital, and more efficient methods of organizing production and commerce.

The United States is among the fortunate countries: growth in the labor supply is expected to slow but not actually decline, unlike in Europe and East Asia, which are on track to shrink dramatically as those countries age. Even China’s massive labor force will shrink.

Starting in the 1960s and ’70s, the U.S. economy has been propelled by a demographic tidal wave, as the 76 million baby boomers grew up and made their way into the world. Women entered the workforce in large numbers at the same time.

In the 1970s, the working-age population (15 to 64) was growing by nearly 2 million a year and, boosted by older women going to work, the labor force grew by about 2.5 million a year. No wonder employment grew by 19 million during the decade and annual GDP growth averaged 3.2%.

A similar demographic bulge hit the economy in the 1990s, when Gen X and the first wave of millennials began to work. The working-age population rose by 1.3 million a year and the labor force grew by 1.6 million a year. Employment increased by 22 million during the 1990s and GDP averaged 3.4%.

But now the tide is going out. Next year, the working-age population is expected to grow by just 400,000. In 2024, it’s expected to grow by 300,000 and by just 200,000 in 2025. The pool of workers will begin to grow a bit faster later in the decade and throughout the 2030s, but current projections through 2060 don’t foresee the labor supply returning to the same growth rate we’ve gotten used to over the past 70 years.

We can’t go back in time and raise the birthrate of 2002 to get more workers today but there are things we can do to increase the supply of workers or find ways to increase their productivity.

Some solutions

Here are some things we could do but aren’t:

Increase immigration. Far from being a danger to our prosperity, immigrants could be its salvation. If we don’t have enough doctors, teachers, airline pilots, baristas or Uber drivers, let’s import them.

This country was built by immigrants (including millions of miserable enslaved souls now known as “involuntarily relocated.”) But legal immigration has been declining since Donald Trump’s first year in office. We need to turn the faucet back on.

Make work more attractive. The pandemic exposed an ugly truth: Lots of jobs are unpleasant if not deadly. We can make them better by improving working conditions, raising wages, and providing more support for a decent work-life balance (such as making child care more available and affordable).

Workers who take care of other people (teachers, health-care providers, and people who care for children and the elderly) are especially prone to burnout, and these are the very jobs that will be needed most in the coming decades.

Make it easier for women to work: Women need pro-family policies if they are going to add to the pool of workers and have productive careers. They need flexible and predictable work schedules, paid time off, and support from their employer, their family and their communities to have a sane work-life balance. And, yes, they also need control over their own reproductive lives.

Make it easier for older people to work as well. We must strengthen and enforce age-discrimination laws and reduce the punitive taxes levied on retirees’ earnings. Training for second careers should be affordable, easy to access and targeted at needed skills. And companies must figure out how to better take advantage of the knowledge and experience that older workers possess.

Invest more in automation and artificial intelligence technologies. Business investment has been very weak over the past decade, but we need more machines to offset the loss of abundant labor. We’ve got to make the service sector more productive, especially industries that are particularly labor-intensive, such as healthcare and education.

If labor is scarce, maybe the Luddite fears that machines will take all the jobs won’t feel so real.

Increase fair trade. The developed world is aging rapidly, but much of Africa, Asia and Latin America is still relatively young, with a growing labor force. The next round of globalization is likely to be more equitable and sustainable than the one that just ended, if only because the young will have learned the lessons of the old. Increased fair trade could be a win-win for both young and old countries.

Change the culture of impatience. In a slow-growth world, maybe we can slow down our lives as well. If labor is scarce, maybe stores like 7-Eleven won’t find it profitable to be open 24-7. Maybe same-day delivery will be seen as a needless luxury and not a necessity. Yeah, I know, maybe pigs will fly.

Rex Nutting is a columnist for MarketWatch who has written about the economy for more than 25 years.

Syd Stone: Could we ever really get a 4-day work week in the U.S.?

Rex Nutting: The U.S. economy needs more immigrants

China says closely following India's raid of Vivo, warns of chilling impact on business confidence



Manish Singh
Thu, July 7, 2022

China's embassy in India has criticized Indian authorities in a statement for "frequent investigations" into local units of Chinese firms and warned that such moves "impede the improvement of [the] business environment" in India and "chills the confidence and willingness" of other foreign nation's businesses to invest and operate in the South Asian market following raids into Vivo offices earlier this week.

The Enforcement Directorate, India's anti-money laundering agency, earlier this week raided dozens of phone-maker Vivo's operations and production sites across multiple states. In a statement to TechCrunch, Vivo said it was cooperating with Indian authorities.

Wang Xiaojian, spokesperson of Chinese Embassy in India Counsellor said China was following the issue closely.

The Enforcement Directorate said Thursday afternoon that a firm associated with Vivo used forged documentation at the time of incorporation in India. The agency seized 119 bank accounts with $58.7 million linked with Vivo India, it added (PDF).



The incident follows a similar investigation into Xiaomi, another Chinese firm. The ED seized $725 million from Xiaomi India, accusing the company of violating the country’s foreign exchange laws. Executives of Xiaomi, which has refuted the charges and has legally challenged the ruling, faced threats of "physical violence" during their investigation, Reuters reported earlier.

Chinese smartphone makers command the Indian market, according to research firm Counterpoint. Xiaomi held the tentpole position in the India in the quarter that ended in March, whereas Vivo was the fourth-largest smartphone vendor by the volume of handsets shipped, Counterpoint said.

India Cellular and Electronics Association, a lobby group that represents several tech giants including Apple and Amazon, in May urged New Delhi to intervene and alleged ED of lacking understanding of just how royalty payments worked in the tech industry. (The Indian Enforcement Directorate said earlier that Xiaomi had remitted $725 million to three foreign-based entities “in the guise of royalty” payments.)

Tension between the two nuclear-armed neighboring nations escalated in 2020 after a skirmish at the border. India has since introduced several restrictions on Chinese firms (without ever naming China in its orders.)

In the past two years, New Delhi has banned hundreds of Chinese apps including TikTok, UC Browser and PUBG Mobile, citing national security concerns. India also amended its foreign direct investment policy in 2020 to require all neighboring nations with which it shares a boundary to seek approval from New Delhi for their future deals in the country. Previously, only Pakistan and Bangladesh were subjected to this requirement.

The investment rule has significantly curtailed Chinese investors' ability to back Indian businesses and startups. Prior to the amendment, Tencent and Alibaba were among the most prolific backers of Indian startups.

Xiaojian said Wednesday evening that the world's largest population always asks Chinese firms to follow laws and regulations overseas and "wishes" that the Indian side provides a "fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment" to Chinese firms.

"The essence of China-India economic and trade cooperation is for mutual benefit and win-win results. The bilateral trade volume between China and India strikes a historical record of over 100 billion USD in 2021, which reflects the huge potential and broad prospect of economic and trade cooperation between our two countries. China wishes the Indian side to investigate and enforce the law in compliance with laws and regulations, and effectively provide a fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese enterprises to invest and operate in India," he added.

The story was updated with ED's comment.

Twitter has laid off a third

of its recruiting team amid

Elon Musk takeover drama

Huileng Tan

Fri, July 8, 2022 

• Twitter has laid off a third of its recruiting team.

• Twitter said in May it was pausing most hiring and backfilling, aside for business-critical roles.

• Elon Musk — who has put in a $44 billion bid to buy Twitter — hinted at job cuts during a June town hall.

Twitter has laid off some of its recruiting teams two months after implementing a hiring freeze amid a takeover bid from Elon Musk.

About a third of the talent acquisition team was affected, according to Thursday reports from various media outlets including The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch. A representative for Twitter confirmed the layoffs to Insider.

Fewer than 100 people were affected by the layoffs, The Journal reported, citing Twitter. Twitter employs more than 7,000 people globally.

In May, the company said it was pausing most hiring and backfilling. The layoffs on Thursday were to align Twitter with its new business needs, the representative for the company said.

Twitter's layoffs came after Musk — who has put in a $44 billion bid to buy the social media platform — hinted at job cuts during a town hall meeting on June 16, reported Insider's Dominick Reuter and Kali Hays.

"We need to make more than we spend," Musk said, per the Insider report, citing a person who was at the meeting.

Musk's Twitter acquisition still hangs in balance. Since he put in his offer in April, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has zoomed in on spam and bot accounts on the social media platform.

In May, Musk said he was putting the deal "on hold" until Twitter proves that fewer than 5% of its accounts are fake, as his bid was based on the company's SEC filing being accurate. Twitter said in a May 2 SEC filing that fewer than 5% of accounts on its platform were fake.

'Big Short' investor takes a jab at Elon Musk's views on declining birth rates: 'that doesn't mean bosses should sleep with subordinates to try to remedy the situation'

Grace Kay
Thu, July 7, 2022 

Michael Burry and Elon MuskGetty

Michael Burry appeared to call out Elon Musk for fathering children with a subordinate.

Insider reported the billionaire quietly fathered a set of twins with a Neuralink executive.

"Doing my best to help the under-population crisis," Musk said on Twitter.

Michael Burry appeared to take a swipe at Elon Musk on Thursday after it was revealed the richest man in the world had quietly fathered a set of twins with an executive at one of his companies.

"Babies born in the US are at 1950 levels, but that doesn't mean that bosses should sleep with subordinates to try to remedy the situation," Burry tweeted. "Bigger problem is nuclear families are at 1959 levels, and woke doctrine wants it lower. More babies in broken families not the way."



Burry is most famously known for earning $800 million by shorting the housing market in 2008 — a phenomenon that was publicized in the Hollywood hit "The Big Short." More recently, the investor has said there will be a consumer recession in December.

While the "Big Short" investor did not directly name Musk in his recent tweet, the comment came only a few hours after the Tesla CEO tweeted about declining birth rates.

"Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis," Musk said on Twitter in an apparent response to the news of his relationship with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis. "A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far."



Since as early as 2017, Musk has repeatedly warned that declining birth rates could cause civilization to collapse. The US birth rate has fallen about 20% since 2007.

While Burry has not been known to comment on underpopulation, he's no stranger to Musk. The investor famously shorted Tesla in 2021, saying the electric-car maker's stock would collapse much like the housing bubble.

The investor is one of many people to comment on Musk's relationship with Zilis.

The news of Musk's relationship with the Neuralink executive comes after Insider reported in May that SpaceX paid a company flight attendant $250,000 to stay quiet after she alleged that Musk exposed himself and propositioned her for sex, even offering to buy her a horse in exchange.

"More confirmation of a totally normal and healthy workplace for women," Lindsey Boylan, a former aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo, tweeted. She was the first woman to speak out against Cuomo in the sexual harassment scandal which ultimately ended in his resignation.

Several major CEOs have been ousted for engaging in relationships with subordinates. In 2019, McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook was dismissed after it was revealed he'd had a consensual relationship with an employee. Similarly, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich resigned in 2018 over a consensual relationship with a staffer.

Last year, the Microsoft founder Bill Gates resigned from the company's board following an investigation into an extramarital affair with a Microsoft employee.

Top Russian Official’s Crazed 

Threat: Alaska Takeover Could 

Be Next

Shannon Vavra

Wed, July 6, 2022 

Russian officials have begun to issue a series of threats to the United States in an attempt to fend off a war crimes tribunal, with top officials suggesting that Russia could be interested in going after Alaska next, which the United States purchased from Russian in 1867.

Russia’s lower house speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin, warned the United States ought to hesitate when seizing or freezing Russian assets abroad, and instead ought to remember that Alaska previously belonged to Russia.

“Let America always remember, there is a part of [Russian] territory: Alaska,” Volodin said, according to Hromadske. “So when they start trying to dispose of our resources abroad, before they do it, let them think: we also have something to return.”

State Duma Vice Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy proposed holding a referendum in Alaska, Volodin said, according to RBC.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, took the threats even further, and hinted at nuclear escalation.

Putin’s Big Turning Point in the War Could Finally Be Here

The “idea to punish a country with the largest nuclear potential is absurd and potentially creates the threat to mankind’s existence,” he said, referring to Russia, which maintains more nuclear warheads than any other country, according to the Associated Press.

Medvedev suggested the United States hasn’t been held accountable for several bloody encounters and territorial grabs itself, and that it would do well to not look at Russia before examining its own history.

“The entire U.S. history since the times of subjugation of the native Indian population represents a series of bloody wars,” Medvedev said. “The U.S. and its useless stooges should remember the words of the Bible: Do not judge and you will not be judged... so that the great day of His wrath doesn’t come to their home one day.”

The threats come as Russia has turned a new leaf in its war plans. Russian fighting groups have begun effectively coordinating, according to a British intelligence assessment released this week. And early this week the work seems to be paying off: Russia successfully seized Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, too, has begun his own saber-rattling, suggesting that Europe is ripe for a “cleansing.”

But Russian officials shouldn’t get too cocky.

“This is not a serious person,” Steven Pifer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, said of the comments about Russia potentially aiming for Alaska next.

In recent hours, Russian forces haven’t been up to the task of fighting war in Ukraine, necessarily. Some Russian troops are so drunk in regions of Zaporizhzhia—and causing car accidents and arms violations—that they are banned from buying alcohol. Some Russians are worried their commanders have been selling out their locations to make a buck or two.

GOP QUALIFICATIONS
GOP candidate for Wisconsin state treasurer Orlando Owens has a history of foreclosures and bankruptcy

Ben Baker, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Wed, July 6, 2022 

Orlando Owens, running for Wisconsin state treasurer, speaks at the 52nd Chicken Burn, the unofficial start of the 2022 GOP campaign season.

MADISON – Republican candidate for state treasurer Orlando Owens has a history of financial troubles dating back to the early 2010s, including two foreclosures and a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, according to court records.

Owens faces an Aug. 9 primary challenge from attorney and state GOP operative John Leiber. The winner will advance to take on the eventual Democratic nominee on Nov. 8 to replace outgoing treasurer Sarah Godlewski, a Democrat running for U.S. Senate.

Owens' bankruptcy filing in 2012 indicated he racked up predominantly consumer debts totaling almost $250,000, according to public records made available by the Eastern District of Wisconsin's bankruptcy court.

Both foreclosures occurred on properties previously owned by Owens and his ex-wife as part of their real estate business.

Records from the Milwaukee County Clerk of Courts also indicate Owens owed JP Morgan Chase $169,427.72 in 2010 and Bank of America $132,638.93 in 2012 following mortgage foreclosures.

Landmark Credit Union — which was listed as an additional defendant in the 2010 case — also sued Owens alleging he owed the bank $9,914.15.

Though Owens was listed as a defendant in the 2012 case and his name was still on the deed for the property, a campign spokesperson said Owens' ex-wife was awarded the property and said he did not bear responsibility for its foreclosure.

In 2008, Owens' first wife filed for divorce before his personal finances began to suffer. Owens attributed his financial difficulties to the end of his marriage and credited his religious piety for his subsequent economic recovery.

"What we (my ex-wife and I) did not do well was our marriage, and through patience and God not giving up on me, I was able to recover from all those things," Owens said. "Only in America can my story be created: Someone who came from nothing, started several businesses, went through very tough times, rebounded 15 years later, and to be where we are now? Only in America."

Owens filed for bankruptcy as well as his second foreclosure four years after his divorce and two years after his first foreclosure. His ex-wife was listed as a defendant in each of the foreclosure proceedings.

Owens was also convicted of a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct in 2008 for which he was sentenced to 18 months' probation, required to complete a course in refraining from violence and "maintain absolute sobriety," according to Milwaukee County court records.

Leiber said he was "concerned as a Republican" by Owens' financial records and misdemeanor conviction and worried his opponents' history could prove to be a liability in November.

"I think everyone deserves a second chance," Leiber said "I just don't know if that second chance should be running for treasurer."

Owens acknowledged the negative impact of his past actions and the financial difficulties he faced as a consequence but said his faith and trust in his country set him on a path of personal growth.

"Through my faith in redemption, that anybody can fall down and get back up if you believe in God, if you believe in America," Owens said. "Look at where I am now."

Today, Owens is remarried, has a 13-month-old son and works as the southeast regional director for Republican Sen. Ron Johnson.

Owens is also a co-founder of the Joseph Project, a faith-based, multicity urban workforce development organization established by himself, Johnson and Milwaukee-based pastor Jerome Smith.

The Owens campaign has voiced support for reforming the office of treasurer through expanding its role in government and restoring a handful of responsibilities stripped away by the Legislature.

For instance, Owens called for greater local level activity from the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands — on which the treasurer serves as a commissioner — through crafting a "county by county" needs assessment strategy and tailoring agency involvement to those needs.

Owens also expressed hopes for the office to regain the power to conduct audits currently assigned to the Department of Revenue during his potential tenure.

"I really would like to see an accounting of the state books from all the COVID money we got and all the money that our state receives that no one can really tell the people where it went, who got the money, where's the money," Owens said. "I think those are some major questions we have to be able to answer.

His stance is a notable departure from that of the Republican-controlled Legislature, which sought to limit the treasurer's power through a series of acts in the early 2010s and approved an amendment to outright abolish the treasury in 2015.

Along with his position on the treasurer's responsibilities, Owens has not shied away from weighing in on hot-button cultural issues — which he would have little control over as treasurer — such as opposing vaccination mandates and Critical Race Theory, an academic school of thought not taught in Wisconsin public schools as "steeped in Marxism."

"It's definitely counter-productive to the American philosophy and ideals." Owens said on a podcast. "It is also, in my humble opinion, anti-God."