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The courts are the only thing holding back total election subversion

The courts are the only thing holding back total election subversion

Richard L. Hasen writes: The United States has failed its first important test for democracy since the 2020 election season: Election denialism has taken hold among a significant segment of Republican voters, and election deniers are poised to win elections next week. They will go on to oversee or certify some elections in 2024. The question that matters now is whether the next line of defense for American democracy—our system of state and federal courts—is strong enough for the task…

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Trump lawyers saw Justice Thomas as ‘only chance’ to stop 2020 election certification

Trump lawyers saw Justice Thomas as ‘only chance’ to stop 2020 election certification

Politico reports: Donald Trump’s attorneys saw a direct appeal to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as their best hope of derailing Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election, email messages newly disclosed to congressional investigators show. “We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt,” Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in a Dec. 31, 2020 email to Trump’s legal…

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The Intercept’s story about government policing disinformation is total garbage

The Intercept’s story about government policing disinformation is total garbage

Mike Masnick writes: Do not believe everything you read. Even if it comes from more “respectable” publications. The Intercept had a big story this week that is making the rounds, suggesting that “leaked” documents prove the DHS has been coordinating with tech companies to suppress information. The story has been immediately picked up by the usual suspects, claiming it reveals the “smoking gun” of how the Biden administration was abusing government power to censor them on social media. The only…

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Ocean bacteria reveal an unexpected multicellular form

Ocean bacteria reveal an unexpected multicellular form

Carrie Arnold writes: Close your eyes and imagine bacteria. Perhaps you’re picturing our intestinal Escherichia coli, or the shiny golden balls of staphylococcus, or the corkscrewing ringlets of Lyme disease spirochetes. Regardless of the species and its shape, chances are your mind’s eye conjured up a single cell, or maybe several free-living cells. The problem with this image, says the microbiologist Julia Schwartzman, is that it doesn’t reflect how most bacteria are likely to live. Often, bacteria use sticky molecules…

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Ancient DNA reveals a hidden history of human adaptation

Ancient DNA reveals a hidden history of human adaptation

Chelms Varthoumlien / Unsplash By Yassine Souilmi, University of Adelaide; Christian Huber, Penn State, and Ray Tobler, Australian National University Humans may be just as vulnerable to environmental change as other animals, according to our new research analysing genetic data from more than a thousand people who lived across Europe and Asia over the past 45,000 years. We found traces of more than 50 “hard sweeps” in which a rare genetic variant rapidly swept through a population – most likely…

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Saudi Arabia, U.S. on high alert after warning of imminent Iranian attack

Saudi Arabia, U.S. on high alert after warning of imminent Iranian attack

The Wall Street Journal reports: Saudi Arabia has shared intelligence with the U.S. warning of an imminent attack from Iran on targets in the kingdom, putting the American military and others in the Middle East on an elevated alert level, Saudi and U.S. officials said. In response to the warning, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and several other neighboring states have raised the level of alert for their military forces, the officials said. They didn’t provide more details on the Saudi…

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Iran is preparing to send additional weapons including ballistic missiles to Russia to use in Ukraine, western officials say

Iran is preparing to send additional weapons including ballistic missiles to Russia to use in Ukraine, western officials say

CNN reports: Iran is preparing to send approximately 1,000 additional weapons, including surface-to-surface short range ballistic missiles and more attack drones, to Russia to use in its war against Ukraine, officials from a western country that closely monitors Iran’s weapons program told CNN. The shipment is being closely monitored because it would be the first instance of Iran sending advanced precision guided missiles to Russia, which could give the Kremlin a substantial boost on the battlefield. The last shipment of…

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Inside the growing Republican fissure on Ukraine aid

Inside the growing Republican fissure on Ukraine aid

The Washington Post reports: In Ohio, Senate candidate J.D. Vance (R) said the United States would have to “stop the money spigot to Ukraine eventually.” J.R. Majewski, a fellow Ohio Republican running for a House seat, has criticized President Biden for “[cutting] billion-dollar checks to Ukraine” during a time of inflation at home. In New Hampshire, Senate candidate Don Bolduc (R) said U.S. aid to Ukraine is “money we don’t have.” Opposition to — or skepticism of — sending more…

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I helped run the ‘Fire Pelosi’ effort. Our toxic politics goes too far

I helped run the ‘Fire Pelosi’ effort. Our toxic politics goes too far

Doug Heye writes: More and more in our politics, the loudest, angriest, most divisive voices get the most attention (and money). Real solutions, and the politicians who put their heads down to do hard work, get short shrift. Collectively, we have to lower the temperature. People keep getting hurt. We’re very lucky no one has been killed — and I worry I need to emphasize “yet.” As a Republican, I know the original sin begins with us. Republicans — not…

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Twitter’s failings long preceded its ownership by Elon Musk

Twitter’s failings long preceded its ownership by Elon Musk

Yair Rosenberg writes: [M]ost of Twitter’s pathologies that people are pinning on Musk predate his ownership. I know this from personal experience. During the 2016 presidential-election campaign, I was inundated with anti-Semitic invective on Twitter over my critical commentary on Donald Trump’s candidacy. An Anti-Defamation League study found that I received the second-most abuse of Jewish commentators on the site during that cycle. Twitter subsequently vowed to clean up its act, but though some strides were made, most anti-Semitic bigotry…

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Musk’s Twitter: ‘This is exactly what many of us were worried about’

Musk’s Twitter: ‘This is exactly what many of us were worried about’

Politico reports: A day after Elon Musk seemed to confirm critics’ worst fears about his ownership of Twitter by tweeting out right-wing misinformation from his personal account, political leaders and operatives wrestled with a loaded question: Would the most important social-media platform in the political world survive his ownership? And if it did, should they stay on it? “This is exactly what many of us were worried about,” said Mark Jablonowski, the managing partner of Democratic digital advertising firm DSPolitical….

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The science of color perception

The science of color perception

Nicola Jones writes: What color is a tree, or the sky, or a sunset? At first glance, the answers seem obvious. But it turns out there is plenty of variation in how people see the world — both between individuals and between different cultural groups. A lot of factors feed into how people perceive and talk about color, from the biology of our eyes to how our brains process that information, to the words our languages use to talk about…

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Alt-tech social media platform, Rumble, backed by J.D. Vance, promotes Russian propaganda

Alt-tech social media platform, Rumble, backed by J.D. Vance, promotes Russian propaganda

The New York Times reports: In June, two American veterans fighting as volunteers in Ukraine, Alex Drueke and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, were captured by Russian forces. They were taken to a black site where they were beaten, run into walls with bags over their heads and hooked up to a car battery and “electrocuted,” the men said after being freed in late September. Between beatings, they told the New York Times, they were interviewed on Russian media outlets, including…

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What if Rumble is the future of the social web?

What if Rumble is the future of the social web?

Kaitlyn Tiffany writes: When Donald Trump was banned from Twitter in January 2021, it was obvious that he would have to find somewhere else to post. His own platform, Truth Social, was still a distant dream, so he had to choose one of the “alt-tech” platforms hosting professed free-speech absolutists, vaccine skeptics, Hunter Biden obsessives, and MAGA shitposters. He could have gone to Parler, where much of the pregaming for the January 6 riot took place, or Gab, where an…

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