Australia's 'Black Summer' fires affected ozone layer: study
Agence France-Presse
August 26, 2022

Brush Fire Australia PETER PARKS AFP

Australia's catastrophic "Black Summer" bushfires significantly affected the hole in the Earth's ozone layer, according to a new report published Friday.

The report, which appeared in the Nature journal "Scientific Reports", traced a link from the unprecedented smoke released by the fires to the ozone hole above Antarctica.

The fires, which burned through 5.8 million hectares of Australia's east in late 2019 and early 2020, were so intense they caused dozens of smoke-infused pyrocumulonimbus clouds to form.

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds, referred to as the "fire-breathing dragon of clouds" by NASA, are so powerful they can affect the local weather, causing fire tornadoes and lightning storms.

During the "Black Summer", these clouds shot more smoke high into the atmosphere than the previous record, set by the 2017 North American wildfires.

Around New Year 2019, uncontrolled fires along Australia's east coast caused a pyrocumulonimbus event that stretched on for days.

The result was "millions of tonnes of smoke and associated gases being injected into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere", according to researchers from the University of Exeter and the University of Manchester.

A build-up of smoke particles, in turn, caused the lower stratosphere to warm to levels not seen since the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, they found.

Because of this stratospheric warming, the fires also prolonged the Antarctic ozone hole, which appears above Antarctica each spring and "reached record levels in observations in 2020".

Ozone gains threatened

The hole was first created by human pollution -- particularly the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were once emitted from many refrigerators -- but in recent decades, global cooperation has given the ozone layer a chance to repair.

The Montreal Protocol, signed in 1987 and since ratified by 195 countries, sharply reduced the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere, and the ozone layer was expected to fully recover by 2060, according to United Nations modeling.

However, the researchers warn that because climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of bushfires, similar events -- in which pyrocumulonimbus clouds shoot smoke high into the stratosphere –- will become more likely.

Professor James Haywood told AFP that climate change could "absolutely" stymie the gains made by the Montreal Protocol.

"Our climate models suggest an increase in frequency and intensity of wildfires in the future under global warming. This may lead to more events like that in 2020, which could in turn lead to more ozone depletion," he said.

"So the considerable efforts that we've put in protecting the ozone hole could be thwarted by global warming."

Nicole Mann says she is proud to be first Native American woman in space

Reuters
August 26, 2022


By Ashraf Fahim

(Reuters) - Nicole Aunapu Mann has waited nine long years for her chance to go into space.

And if all goes according to plan, that wait will end on Oct. 03, when she will lead NASA's Crew-5 mission to the International Space Station.

"It has been a long journey, but it's been so well worth it," Mann told Reuters on Friday.

Mann will be the first Native American woman in space. The first Native American man in space was John Herrington in 2002.

"I feel very proud," said Mann. "It's important that we celebrate our diversity and really communicate that specifically to the younger generation."

Mann, a member of the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in Northern California, says that her upcoming mission has sparked excitement in her community.

"That's really, I think, an audience that we don't get an opportunity to reach out to very often," she said.

With her journey into space just weeks away, Mann says she will be taking a few mementos into orbit to remind her of home, among them a 'dreamcatcher,' a traditional Native American protective charm.

Mann, a marine colonel with a master's in mechanical engineering, was recruited into NASA in 2013 and finished candidate training two years later.

The former fighter pilot who flew U.S. combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan now heads up an international crew that includes fellow NASA astronaut Josh Cassada, Japan's Koichi Wakata and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina.

They are set to launch from Florida's Kennedy Space Center aboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft and swap out Crew-4 from the ISS.

The Crew-5 mission will follow the beginning of NASA's landmark Artemis mission, set for its debut launch on Monday.

The gigantic Space Launch System, topped by an unmanned Orion Crew Capsule, is the first step in the goal of returning humans to the Moon after a half-century hiatus.

Mann said that she and her ISS crew will be helping to prepare for the future success of Artemis.

"What we're doing in low earth orbit not only trains the astronauts but provides the technical development and operational concepts that we're going to need to live (with a) sustained human presence on the moon and eventually take us to Mars," she said.

"So I just hope that the whole world is watching on Monday."

(Reporting by Ashraf Fahim, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

Abraham Lincoln, master inventor: The true story of the only president to ever patent an invention

Matthew Rozsa,

 Salon
August 27, 2022

A head-on photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken on November 8, 1863 (Wikimedia Commons)

When you think of Abraham Lincoln, your mind probably conjures up an image of a tall, lanky man with a chinstrap beard and a stovepipe hat. Perhaps you also think of the 16th president's most famous accomplishments — winning the Civil War and freeing the slaves — or of his early life, much of which was spent reading and writing even when his family wanted him engaged in physical labor. Like many daydreaming youths throughout history, Lincoln yearned to do great things with his mind, even though his peers insisted that he pursue work through his hands.

This, no doubt, explains why he is the only American president to patent an invention.

On May 22, 1849, only three months after the native Kentuckian celebrated his 40th birthday, the United States Patent Office issued Patent No. 6,469 for a device "buoying vessels over shoals." The impetus for this invention was Lincoln's own hard experience; as a ferryman navigating boats along the Sangamon and Mississippi Rivers, he had repeatedly been frustrated when his flatboat would get stranded and take on water. On one occasion, while he and several other men were trying to get to New Orleans, their flatboat became stranded on a milldam (a dam built on a stream to raise the water level for a water mill) near the small pioneer settlement of New Salem.

As the boat took on water, Lincoln rose to the challenge. To right the boat, he dropped part of their cargo, then purchased an auger so he could drill a hole in the vessel's bow and let out the water. Once that had been accomplished, Lincoln plugged the hole and then worked with the rest of the crew to move the boat over the dam. They succeeded, and soon he was back on his way to New Orleans.

Although Lincoln rarely shared this anecdote with people he met later in his life, it obviously stuck with him at the time it happened. In the mid-19th century Mississippi River Valley, rivers were the equivalent of roads and highways today; people needed them to easily transport themselves. Having your flatboat regularly get stuck would be the equivalent today of facing massive traffic jams or having your car constantly stall out. In other words, it was a big problem — and Lincoln clearly thought he could solve it.

Hence his invention. Lincoln's idea was to place "adjustable buoyant air chambers" on the sides of any boat that would be traversing a river. Obviously inspired by the financial loss he had suffered by dumping part of his cargo on the last occasion when he had been stranded, Lincoln's patent specifically mentioned that it would enable vessels to reduce their water intake and pass over bars or shallow water "without discharging their cargoes." That is because the invention, once lowered into the water, could in theory be inflated to simply lift a boat over the various obstructions.

At least, that was Lincoln's invention intention. To the best of our knowledge, his device was never sold or used by anyone, with Lincoln's former law partner and biographer William Herndon dismissing it as "a perfect failure." Yet in a 2018 article for the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, industrial designer Ian De Silva conducted a number of experiments to see if Lincoln's invention could have worked. It didn't — but not because the future president got the science wrong.

"On the contrary, it was a prescient concept and one that was scientifically tenable," de Silva wrote. "Where Lincoln erred was in the execution, specifically his complicated system of poles and ropes that made it an invidious contraption. Had he devised a simpler and less intrusive means of inflating his bellows, the Great Emancipator might have also been remembered for an emancipation of a different sort — freeing boats captured by river sand."

"...it was a prescient concept and one that was scientifically tenable," de Silva wrote. "Where Lincoln erred was in the execution..."

David J. Kent, President, president of Lincoln Group of DC and author of the new book "The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln's Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America," told Salon by email that he too believed that Lincoln's invention likely would have worked in practice if not for the cumbersome "system of ropes and poles and pulleys." He also pointed out that Lincoln's inability to make money off of the invention had less to do with his engineering aptitude than with more mundane realities.

"It is common for patents to meet the standards for being accepted but not ever be commercialized," Kent pointed out. "Lincoln made no attempt to commercialize his design. He was too busy running a law firm and dealing with big picture political issues."

At the same time, the invention is more notable for what it tells future historians about Lincoln's character — and here, we must return to the young boy who found farm life to be dull and yearned to indulge his natural intellectual interests.

"For Lincoln, this was about observing a technical problem and his natural curiosity about how to resolve it," Kent explained. "He never planned to try to make money off of it; solving the problem was his goal. He hated the subsistence farm life he was born into and was intellectually curious. He always sought to 'better his condition.' He did so through self-study, augmenting his meager formal schooling (less than a year total) with many hours of reading, writing, and turning over problems in his head until he felt he fully understood them."

One can also glean something about Lincoln's political philosophy through his invention. In his mind, scientific innovation and infrastructure improvement were moral imperatives as well as subjects of personal interest.

"Lincoln was a big believer in what we call infrastructure as the key to economic development and general prosperity," Columbia University historian Eric Foner, author of "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War," told Salon by email. "His invention was connected with his support for making the Sangamon River more navigable, to spur the development of New Haven." Although the development of American railroads changed transportation in America, Lincoln "gave a speech quite a few times in the 1850s on the history of inventions." He strongly believed in the value of knowledge, and how it could be used for the betterment of mankind.

"For Lincoln, this was about observing a technical problem and his natural curiosity about how to resolve it," Kent explained.

Harold Holzer, also a renowned scholar on Lincoln's life and times, told Salon last year that Lincoln's former political affiliation as a member of the Whig Party further explains his passion for infrastructure. Lincoln had "always passionately believed in infrastructure, including government investment in railroads, canals, and roads," just like Whig Party leader Henry Clay, and as president this led him to push for major projects like the building of a transcontinental railroad.

Tellingly, Lincoln's support for investments in science and technology put him on the wrong side of the racists of his time.

"In general, the slaveholding states rejected science and technology," Kent wrote to Salon. "They, as many do today, said this was because they thought it would give too much power to the federal government. In reality, it was because they feared that it would loosen their power over both enslaved African Americans and poor white farmers in the South."

By contrast, "Lincoln saw science and technology (and education) as a way to improve democracy by ensuring all of its citizens could 'better their condition.' This conflict between those who see America as a broad democracy where all of us have an equal chance and those who see America best served by a class of powerful leaders overseeing the masses has defined our history and continues to this day."

The horrific consequences of the GOP merging church and state are here

Thom Hartmann
August 27, 2022

Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio finally made public his position on what should happen when a 10-year-old girl is raped and impregnated by a relative. His message, in summary: Tough luck.

Women and girls across America are living in terror because the US Supreme Court has decided that religion — and witch-burning 15th century religious authorities — should have a significant say in the governance of our 21st century nation.

With the trigger laws going into affect this week, fully a third of American women no longer have the right to an abortion; Republican legislators in multiple states are discussing ways to keep women from leaving those states or to track and prosecute them if they go out-of-state.

This didn’t come out of nowhere: it’s the result of a project several of the Court’s old-timers — particularly Scalia, Thomas, and Alito — have been working on for decades. Scalia, back in the day, was the most open about their whole letting-religion-control-American-law agenda.

And, perhaps ironically or perhaps just predictablely, it’s not only ruining government and politics: it’s destroying people’s faith in and attachment to religion.

As theologian and author Ryan Burge notes:

“Among those born in the early 1930s, 60% attend church weekly. 17% never attend.
“Among those born in the early 1950s, 32% attend weekly. 29% never attend.
“Among those born in the early 1990s, 18% attend weekly. 42% never attend.”

Much of this crisis of both religion and government can be traced back to a small group of Republicans on the Supreme Court who were often led, in this crusade, by Antonin Scalia.

Arguably the most powerful man on the Supreme Court — thus, one of the most powerful men in America during the years since the Reagan Revolution — Scalia turned history on its head when he visited an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in New York and claimed straight-up that the Founders intended Christianity to play a big role in government.


Scalia, apparently reflecting the perspective of all six Republicans currently on the Court, then went so far as to suggest that the reason Hitler was able to initiate the Holocaust was because of Nazi separation of church and state (which, by the way, did not happen: it was the opposite).

Again, A sitting justice of the US Supreme Court publicly claimed that the holocaust happened because of the separation of church and state.

The Associated Press reported on November 23, 2004:

“In the synagogue that is home to America's oldest Jewish congregation, he [Scalia] noted that in Europe, religion-neutral leaders almost never publicly use the word ‘God.’”

But in Scalia’s mind the really big problem wasn’t that political leaders weren’t sufficiently religious. It was that religious leaders weren’t dictating laws and the application of them.

“Did it turn out that,” Scalia asked rhetorically, “by reason of the separation of church and state, the Jews were safer in Europe than they were in the United States of America?”
He then answered himself, saying, “I don't think so.”

Scalia had an extraordinary way of not letting facts confound his arguments (see Heller), but with this argument he went completely over the top by suggesting that a separation of church and state facilitated or even caused the Holocaust.

If his comments had gotten wider coverage (they were only noted in one small AP article, one in the Jerusalem Post, and an op-ed I wrote in December, 2004), they may have brought America's largest religious communities — both Christian and Jewish — into the streets, back in the day.


Born in 1936, Scalia was old enough to remember the photographs that came out of Germany when he was a boy: they were all over the newspapers and news magazines at war’s end. It’s difficult to believe he wasn’t exposed to them as a teenager, particularly having been raised Catholic.

And if he missed all that, one would think that Scalia’s son the politically-connected priest (here he is at Amy Coney Barrett’s swearing in) would have told him about them.

There’s no shortage of photos of Catholic Bishops giving the collective Nazi salute. The annual April 20th celebration, declared by Pope Pius XII, of Hitler’s birthday. The belt buckles of the German army, which declared “Gott Mit Uns” (“God is with us”). The pictures of the 1933 investiture of Bishop Ludwig Müller, the official Bishop of the 1000-Years-Of-Peace Nazi Reich.

That last video should have been the most problematic for Justice Scalia, because Hitler had done exactly what Scalia was recommending: he merged church and state.

And, as Republicans across the country are moving us toward, he did it by passing laws and amending or changing the understanding of Germany’s constitution.

Article 1 of the “Decree concerning the Constitution of the German Protestant Church, of 14 July 1933,” signed by Adolf Hitler himself, merged the German Protestant Church into the Reich, and gave the Reich the legal authority to ordain priests.

Article Three provides absolute assurance to the new state church that the Reich will fund it, even if that requires going to Hitler's cabinet. It opens:

“Should the competent agencies of a State Church refuse to include assessments of the German Protestant Church in their budget, the appropriate State Government will cause the expenditures to be included in the budget upon request of the Reich Cabinet.”

That new state-sponsored German church's constitution opens:

“At a time in which our German people are experiencing a great historical new era through the grace of God,” the new German state church “federates into a solemn league all denominations that stem from the Reformation…”

Catholics out, Protestants in. In power, that is. And everybody under the single umbrella of Hitler’s state.

Section Four, Article Five of that new constitution further established a head for the new German state-church with the title of Reich Bishop. Hitler filled the job with a Lutheran pastor, Ludwig Müller, who held the position until he committed suicide at the end of the war.

Which brings up one of the main reasons — almost always overlooked by modern-day commentators, both left and right — why the Founders and Framers were so careful to separate church and state: They didn’t want religion to be corrupted by government.

Many of the Founders were people of faith, and even the Deists like Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson were deeply touched by what Franklin called “The Mystery.” And they’d seen how badly religious bodies became corrupted when churches acquired power through affiliation with or participation in government.

As I note in The Hidden History of Big Brother, the Puritans, for example, passed a law in Plymouth Colony in 1658 that said:

“No Quaker Rantor or any other such corrupt person shall be a free man in this Corporation [the state of Massachusetts].”

Puritans banned Quakers from Massachusetts under pain of death, and, as Norman Cousins notes in his book about the faith of the Founders, In God We Trust:

“And when Quakers persisted in returning [to Massachusetts] in defiance of law, and in practicing their religious faith, the Puritans made good the threat of death; Quaker women were burned at the stake.”

Quakers were also officially banned from Virginia prior to the introduction of the First Amendment to our Constitution. Cousins notes:

“Quakers who fled from England were warned against landing on Virginia shores. In fact, the captains of sailing ships were put on notice that they would be severely fined. Any Quaker who was discovered inside the state was fined without bail.”

Throughout most of the 1700s in Virginia, a citizen could be imprisoned for life for saying that there was no god, or that the Bible wasn't inerrant. Jefferson, for example, who openly ridiculed Christian preachers, joined and attended a Virginia church because Virginia law required church attendance to qualify to run for the Virginia legislature.

“Little wonder,” notes Cousins, “that Virginians like Washington, Jefferson, and Madison believed the situation to be intolerable.”

Even the oppressed Quakers got into the act in the 1700s. They finally found a haven in Pennsylvania, where they infiltrated government and promptly passed a law that levied harsh fines on any person who didn't show up for church on Sunday or couldn't “prove” that s/he was home reading scripture on that holy day.

Certainly, the Founders wanted to protect government from being hijacked by the religious, as you can find by an even cursory reading of the more outspoken Founders like Jefferson, Franklin, or Dr. Benjamin Rush on this topic.

But most of them were even more concerned that the churches themselves would be corrupted by the lure of government's access to money and power.

Religious leaders in the Founders’ day, in defense of church/state cooperation, pointed out that for centuries kings and queens in England had said that if the state didn’t support the church, the church would eventually wither and die.

James Madison flatly rejected this argument, noting in a July 10, 1822 letter to Edward Livingston:

“We are teaching the world the great truth, that Governments do better without kings and nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson: the Religion flourishes in greater purity without, than with the aid of Government.”

He added in that same letter:

“I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.”

But always, in Madison’s mind, the biggest problem was that religion itself showed a long history of becoming corrupt when it had access to or controlled the levers of governmental power and money.

As he wrote to Edward Everett on March 18, 1823:

“The settled opinion here is, that religion is essentially distinct from civil Government, and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both...”

Yet now, in 2020, religious leaders have both corrupted government and — in the process — corrupted themselves by grasping for the power and influence government can wield.

If there’s any lesson to be learned from Reagan’s, Bush’s, and Trump’s embrace of white evangelical Christianity, it’s that its as destructive to Christianity as it is to government.

That all of this — the merging of church and state, 16th century laws against abortion, forced school prayer, taxpayer subsidies for religious schools — has now been put into law with the Dobbs and other recent Supreme Court decisions, is no less shocking than that it was first publicly announced by Scalia in the nation’s oldest Orthodox synagogue.

And it is damaging faith and religion every bit as much as it is government.

In some distant place, Adolf Hitler and Bishop Müller must be smiling at the six Republicans on the Court’s growing conflation of church and state in America. It's exactly what they worked so hard to achieve in Germany in the 1930s, and what helped make their horrors possible.

And our nation’s Founders, if they’re watching, must have tears in their eyes.

‘Semi-fascist’ is the perfect term to describe today’s GOP: authoritarianism expert

Bob Brigham
August 27, 2022

President Donald J. Trump visits approximately 200 National Guard troops Saturday, Aug, 29, 2020, at Cougar Stadium in Lake Charles, La., during his visit to view damage caused by Hurricane Laura. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Fascism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat explained on CNN on Saturday why she thinks President Joe Biden's characterization of today's GOP as "semi-fascist" is the perfect term.

Ben-Ghiat, a NYU professor and author of the 2021 book Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present, was interviewed by CNN's Jim Acosta.

"And President Biden, Ruth, I thought -- I'm sure you saw this and thought it was interesting," Acosta said. "He weighed in on this radical streak at the heart of the Trump movement right now, and he said it's like semi-fascism. Democrats can call this stuff out all they want and I guess try to bring down the temperature, but a whole segment of the population won't hear it."

"What do you think?" Acosta asked. "Do you agree with Biden's assessment that part of the MAGA movement, much of the MAGA movement is semi-fascist?"

"I actually think that's the perfect term, because it takes a lot from the leader cult, even though the leader's no longer in office, to the loyalty quotients to the party line, the GOP has a party line, and that's the big lie, right? It's acting like a fascist party and more broadly an authoritarian party," she replied.

IN OTHER NEWS: Ted Cruz worries working class might 'get off the bong' and vote after student debt relief  🤣🤣🤣

"The semi part is interesting because today you don't shut down elections, you hold elections and then you fix them, right? So that you -- you know, you have the appearance of democracy like [Viktor] Orbán and Hungary calls it illiberal democracy," she explained. "That's the semi-fascist. The tactics they're using are straight out of the playbook that started with [Benito] Mussolini."

Pennsylvania Republicans defend Doug Mastriano's Confederate cosplay: 'not sure what the big deal is'

Reuters
August 27, 2022


Some Republicans in Pennsylvania defended Donald Trump-backed gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano on Saturday after Reuters published a 2014 photo of him posing in a Confederate uniform.

The previously unreported photo was released by the U.S. Army War College to Reuters under a Freedom of Information Act request. It showed Mastriano among the 2013-14 faculty for the Department of Military Strategy, Plans, and Operations, where he worked at the time.

For years, the photo had hung at the college, which took it down following Reuters' request, saying the image did not reflect its values. Mastriano, a state senator who retired from the Army in 2017, did not respond to requests for comment.

Lee Snover, chair of the Republican Party in Northampton County, downplayed the significance of the photo.

"It happened years ago. There was something called the Civil War and that included Confederate soldiers, so not sure what the big deal is," Snover said.

Asked whether she supported the college's decision to take down the photo, she said, "I wouldn't have. I don't like liberals tearing down our history."

Sam DeMarco, head of the Allegheny County Republican Party, which includes Pittsburgh, once penned an op-ed airing his concerns about Mastriano's electability. But he said the photo was being overblown by the candidate's opponents.

"This story is another example of why the media is viewed poorly and with distrust by many on the right," DeMarco told Reuters.

Faculty in the photo had been given the option of dressing as a historical figure, people familiar with the photo said, but most opted for regular attire. Mastriano is the only one wearing a Confederate uniform.

Displays of Confederate symbols can be seen as insensitive to those who view them as painful reminders of racial oppression and the Civil War that saw 11 rebelling Confederate states fight to keep Black people enslaved.

Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania's attorney general who is running against Mastriano in the November ballot, said on Saturday that his opponent had voluntarily worn the uniform of traitors.

"This man is dangerous and out of touch," Shapiro told a campaign rally. "This man doesn't respect you or our shared values of common humanity."

More than 33,000 soldiers from Pennsylvania died fighting for the Union during the Civil War, and the state was the site of the Battle of Gettysburg, the conflict's bloodiest battle, which ended with a Union victory and inspired President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

Mastriano's district, Pennsylvania's 33rd, includes Gettysburg.

Democrat Austin Davis, a candidate for lieutenant governor and the first Black American to serve as a state representative for Pennsylvania's 35th district, said it was "unconscionable" and "deeply hurtful" for Mastriano to wear a uniform that reflects the enslavement of Black people.

"We must defeat him in November," Davis wrote on Twitter.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$T
Sandy Hook families accuse Alex Jones of hiding assets while claiming bankruptcy
2022/08/27

Far-right radio show host Alex Jones speaks to supporters of President Donald Trump as they demonstrate in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 12, 2020, to protest the 2020 election. - OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Alex Jones has been accused of funneling millions of dollars to himself and his relatives while claiming bankruptcy in a bid to avoid compensating families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims.

The families of nine Sandy Hook victims filed a motion on Thursday in a federal bankruptcy court in Houston, requesting that Jones give up control of Free Speech Systems, the parent company of his far-right, conspiracy website Infowars.

The bombastic internet personality previously used the platform to declare the 2012 massacre a hoax involving crisis actors, triggering a series of defamation lawsuits filed by those impacted by the school shooting.

A total of 26 people, 20 elementary school students and six teachers or administrators, were killed during the violence inside the school in Newtown, Connecticut.

“Since the Sandy Hook Families filed their lawsuits, the Debtor has systematically transferred millions of dollars to Alex Jones and his relatives and insider entities,” the filing reads.

“It claims to owe a massive, secured debt to an insider that was first documented as a loan when the Sandy Hook Families were securing key wins in Connecticut and Texas, but no records show that an actual debt existed before the Sandy Hook Families sued.”

The families have also asked that the court appoint a committee to investigate Jones and the company’s conduct to “ensure transparency, accountability and maximize the Debtor’s Estate for all creditors.”

Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy last month, citing its $54 million debt to a company called PQPR, which is owned by Jones’ parents. According to the court filing, approximately 72% of payments to PQPR go to Jones while the rest goes to his mother and father.

In the summer of 2021, after default judgments were entered in Sandy Hook families’ lawsuits in Texas and then in Connecticut, Free Speech Systems was allegedly siphoning anywhere between $11,000 a day and $11,000 a week to PQPR, according to the court filing.

In total, Jones has allegedly transferred between $18 million and $62 million from Free Speech Systems amid the Sandy Hook suits.

Earlier this month, a jury Texas jury ordered Jones to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages to the parents of one of the children killed at Sandy Hook, and another $4.1 million in compensatory damages.

His attorneys have said they plan to appeal.

———

© New York Daily News

Plenty of roadblocks for automakers seeking electric vehicle success
AFP
August 27, 2022

Tesla is the undisputed leader in the electric vehicle sector, but its rivals are trying to catch up

The world's top automakers -- motivated either by governmental regulations or pure profit -- have made a sharp turn away from fossil fuel vehicles. But there are plenty of obstacles on the road to a future full of eco-friendly cars.

Will there be enough lithium and other vital raw materials to make electric car batteries? Will there be sufficient charging stations? How will carmakers ensure that their offerings are affordable for the average driver?

Following the success of Elon Musk's Tesla, built solely on electric vehicles, most of the biggest names in the sector are planning to invest tens of billions of dollars to reorient their businesses toward clean energy.

Stellantis, the world's fifth-largest automaker, plans to sell only electric cars in Europe by 2030. Toyota expects to release about 30 electric models in that same timeframe. GM hopes to stop making cars with combustion engines by 2035.

These corporate ambitions have dovetailed with efforts by national and local governments to go green.

On Thursday, California announced that from 2035, all new cars sold in the Golden State -- the most populous in America -- must be zero-emission.

The European Union also has taken steps to ban the sale of gas- or diesel-fueled cars -- and even hybrids -- by 2035, while China wants at least half of all new cars to be electric, plug-in hybrid or hydrogen-powered by that time.

Built-in demand

Automakers are on notice that "they are going to have to figure out how to put cars on the market," said Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights for the automotive research firm Edmunds.

"We used to say that the challenges for electric vehicles would be consumer acceptance and price," she added.

With car buyers increasingly attuned to the environment and the woes of climate change, selling the concept of electric vehicles is no longer an issue.

In the United States, General Motors says it has more than 150,000 pre-orders for the electric version of its Silverado pickup truck, which will be available next year. The wait time for a Tesla these days is several months.

For Caldwell, the bigger issue now is whether automakers "can get the raw materials" they need to make the cars.

Scarce raw materials

Karl Brauer, an executive analyst for used car search engine iseecars.com, agrees, saying that no matter what government incentives are offered for would-be buyers of electric vehicles, the rare elements needed may simply be unavailable.

"Right now, we have a lack of palladium, and nickel, and lithium. Everything you need to build an electric car is harder to get than it was six or 12 months ago," he told AFP.

The supply issue is linked partly to Russia's invasion of Ukraine six months ago.

But Brauer said that "nobody, a year ago, would have predicted the kind of price escalation for those raw materials, and the difficulty of getting them."

The situation "can change drastically" at any given moment, he added.

Automakers are determined to leave as little as possible to chance.

They are building their own factories to produce car batteries, setting up joint ventures with specialized parts makers and sealing partnerships with mining firms.

German auto manufacturers Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz on Monday signed memorandums of understanding with the Canadian government to ensure their access to rare metals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt.

But, as with oil, the market for these raw materials is a global one, and the normal rules of economics apply, noted Brauer.

"If there is a certain amount of global demand for raw materials, if there is a certain amount of global supply for them, someone will always pay the price," he said.

For Brauer, shifting production lines to accommodate electric vehicle components is, by comparison, quite easy, as the automakers "have control over that."

Help, but with conditions

Local regulations could make things more complicated for automakers.

In the United States, new legislation championed by the administration of President Joe Biden allots up to $7,500 in tax credits to every American who buys an electric vehicle.

But there are conditions: for example, final assembly of those cars must take place within US borders.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a US lobbying group, estimates that about 70 percent of the 72 electric, plug-in hybrid or hydrogen-powered cars now on the market would not qualify for the tax credit.

For Garrett Nelson, an analyst for the CFRA research firm, the new law will clearly give Tesla, GM and Ford an advantage in the United States over their European and Asian rivals.

Following California's announcement, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation said it would be "extremely challenging" to meet the sales requirements due to external factors such as inflation, supply chains and charging infrastructure.

The ongoing semiconductor shortage will also play a role, it said in a statement.

"These are complex, intertwined and global issues well beyond the control" of authorities in California or the auto industry," it warned.

WORK TO RULE BY ANY OTHER NAME
Managers freaking out over 'quiet quitting' shows some bosses are out of touch and have always expected their employees to work extra
insider@insider.com (Juliana Kaplan) -


ljubaphoto/Getty Images© ljubaphoto/Getty Images
Quiet quitting has become the latest labor market and TikTok buzz-phrase.
Managers are sounding the alarm that workers are doing just their jobs and nothing more.
But the rise of the phrase shows more of an issue with managers' expectations than workers.

When Liz Gross first heard the phrase "quiet quitting," she rolled her eyes.

"Quiet quitting sounds a lot like doing your job, but I could see what has led us as a society and economy to a place where this is a thing that we're talking about," Gross, the founder and CEO of Campus Sonar, a higher education consultancy, told Insider.

The phrase first picked up steam on TikTok, workers' new digital town square. In essence, quiet quitting is doing your job as it's written — and maintaining firm boundaries otherwise. That means no overtime and prioritizing the bare minimum requirements. For many workers, it's a way to make work more sustainable in the long term.

While it seems like a pretty straightforward concept, quiet quitting has reverberated throughout the Internet. Managers are asking if they can discipline or fire the quiet quitters on their teams. Quiet quitters who name themselves as such are "likely not to have a job for very long." They say that quiet quitters might be the first axed in layoffs.

"When you describe doing work as quitting, I think it becomes very obvious to people how stupid that sounds," Jason Horn, a 39-year-old freelance writer, told Insider.

But for Gross, there came another realization as the phrase became ubiquitous: "The more I thought about it, the more I realized this was a commentary on managers and corporate cultures, not the actual employees who felt the need to quiet quit."

Quiet quitting isn't a new phenomenon, and it isn't even quitting. It's just workers doing their jobs as written. But its emergence during a time when people are rethinking work, and how it fits into their lives, has made it into a lightning-rod for the shifting labor market. Quiet quitting isn't about the workers who are doing their jobs; it's about the managers who have to adjust to employees who are no longer willing to extend themselves above and beyond.
Quiet quitting reveals systemic 'cultures of overwork'

For decades, employers have had the upper hand in setting wage and job standards. But as that's shifted just a little bit, employers seem to be playing defense, and realizing they can't ask as much outside of the formal requirements of work.

"I don't think quiet quitting would be a phrase or something that we're talking about if we didn't have a widespread problem with corporate cultures of overwork, under appreciation, and frankly distant or ineffective managers and leaders," Gross said.


Liz Gross. Liz Gross© Liz Gross

Now, after more than two years of a pandemic overlapping with other crises like war and climate change, workers are rethinking work, especially as they notice their jobs making the same demands that they did before a cascading series of world-changing events.

"There is a large portion of the workforce that went above and beyond, over the course of time, but particularly during the pandemic, and received absolutely no reward for that — and maybe actually lost something in the process," Gross said. "So if there is no incentive to exceed expectations, you should never expect people to go above and beyond."

At the same time, "employees recognize this as maybe a moment in which they can kind of push back on some of what they might see as unfair or perhaps burdensome treatment by their employers," Bradford Bell, a professor in the HR studies department at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told Insider. He's referring to more than a year of employers desperate to hire while workers quit their jobs in droves for a better deal.

Employees slowing down isn't necessarily a new practice, Bell said. For decades, workers have participated in everything from work slowdowns to work to rule — a labor union tactic where you adhere strictly to your job's rules and do nothing else.

"Definitely, it's labor feeling its power," Horn said, adding: "It's just generally workers realizing that when my boss is treating me poorly, I can tell them to shove it."
Employers are learning they have to pay people what they're worth — and that includes work outside of their jobs

Workers have been pretty successful at sending tremors through the labor market, whether through quitting or unionizing or asking for more money. Employers aren't used to that.

"Leaders and managers of all generations have had to seriously consider what is realistic and acceptable to ask of employees that are in the workforce now," Gross said.

Workers certainly expect to get paid more — the Federal Reserve of New York's annual survey on wages found that the lowest wage workers would accept for a new job is $72,873.They know they can find a job elsewhere if they need to, or if they're asked to do work beyond the scope of their role. That comes after decades of wages not keeping up with productivity.

"Even if you have a very good paying job, you are paid to do your job," Kate, a corporate IT worker in her early 30s, told Insider. "If your employer wants you to do more than your job, they should give you a reason to do that. It shouldn't be an expectation."

Kate has always been a high achiever. But she found that constantly going above and beyond doesn't get you a raise or promotion — instead, "you have to do at least this good all the time."

She said she ultimately participated in the Great Resignation and nearly doubled her salary and found better conditions. She's not alone: Over 4 million people quit their jobs in June, a trend that's been going on for over a year.

For managers, that means that the pre-pandemic trend of expecting workers to go well beyond their stated goals and duties — never leaving the office, or working overtime, or piling on work — can't be replicated.

"If you are in a situation where you've had people exceeding expectations and you've done absolutely nothing for them, then they should definitely reset the bar, because you've done nothing to raise it for them," Gross said.

The asteroid NASA will slam into in September is right where scientists expected

Tereza Pultarova - 12h ago

Six nights of observations by two powerful telescopes confirmed that the orbit of double asteroid Didymos is perfectly aligned for NASA's asteroid-smashing DART spacecraft to arrive in late September.


Asteroid Didymos in images captured by the Lowell Discovery Telescope in July 2022.

© Provided by Space

The observations, conducted in early July by the Lowell Discovery Telescope in Arizona and the Magellan Telescope in Chile, confirmed earlier orbit calculations from 2021. The new data comes as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft is racing to the pair with plans to crash into the smaller rock, dubbed Dimorphos, to test a potential technique to deflect an asteroid that threatens Earth, which Didymos and Dimorphos do not.

"The measurements the team made in early 2021 were critical for making sure that DART arrived at the right place and the right time for its kinetic impact into Dimorphos," Andy Rivkin, the DART investigation team co-lead at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, said in a statement. "Confirming those measurements with new observations shows us that we don't need any course changes and we're already right on target."

Related: NASA's DART asteroid-impact mission explained in pictures

NASA DART spacecraft and spinning SpaceX booster seen from Earth

View on Watch  Duration 1:39

Didymos and its moon Dimorphos will make their closest approach to Earth in years in late September, passing at a distance of about 6.7 million miles (10.8 million kilometers) from the planet. During this time, on Sept. 26, the DART spacecraft will slam into the 560-foot-wide (170 meters) Dimorphos in an attempt to alter its orbit around the 0.5-mile-wide (780 m) Didymos. The experiment, the first ever attempt to change an orbit of an asteroid, might pave the way for a future planetary defense mission if an asteroid were ever to threaten Earth.

Scientists need the detailed orbital parameters of the two space rocks not just to reliably guide DART to its target. After the impact, astronomers all over the world will measure the asteroids' orbits again, to see how the orbit of Dimorphos sped up following the collision. The alteration might be rather minute and therefore extremely precise measurements of the initial configuration are required.

"The before-and-after nature of this experiment requires exquisite knowledge of the asteroid system before we do anything to it," Nick Moskovitz, an astronomer with Lowell Observatory in Arizona and co-lead of the July observation campaign, said in the statement. "We don't want to, at the last minute, say, 'Oh, here's something we hadn't thought about or phenomena we hadn't considered.' We want to be sure that any change we see is entirely due to what DART did."

Apart from the obvious forces, such as the gravitational pulls of larger bodies, asteroid orbits can be influenced by more subtle phenomena, such as the pressure of solar radiation, the scientists said in the statement.

The orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos is expected to shorten by several minutes after the impact, as the moon moves closer to the bigger asteroid. By measuring the change with maximum precision, astronomers will be able to glean important information about Dimorphos' structure and properties of the material it is made of.

The recent measurement campaign determined the orbital period of Dimorphos around Didymos by observing the change in brightness that takes place when one asteroid passes in front of the other. It was, however, tricky to make enough observations, as skywatching conditions at this time of the year are not favorable due to the short summer nights coinciding with the rainy season in Arizona, the researchers said. Earlier this year, the asteroids were too far away from Earth to be observable.

"It was a tricky time of year to get these observations," Moskovitz said. "We asked for six half-nights of observation with some expectation that about half of those would be lost to weather, but we only lost one night. We got really lucky. We really have high confidence now that the asteroid system is well understood and we are set up to understand what happens after impact."

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