the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice
2 decades of Fergie lying, scumming, and cheating his way against mid-table poverty clubs like the Boltons, Wigans, Blackpools, Stoke and Porsmouth
I'm an avid cyclist, but admittedly not an avid cycling as sports watcher. This is the first spectator cycling event I'm invested in. What I'm truly surprised by is how much of a broader praxis opportunity a multi-stage bike race covering hundreds of kilometers is compared to a single sports event in a stadium. The organizers simply cannot control what signs people bring, and they cannot control what kind of flag people hang over their balcony as the routes go through some residential streets. It's been great to see everyone in Italy, from rural villagers, to small, medium towns, large cities, all waving the flags, and the commentators were forced to acknowledge the cause because at some point, everywhere they pan on the live feed there is a Palestinian flag
Hella based event, kudos to the Italian people for their organized, coordinated, nationwide shitposting for a fantastic cause
I think AmeriCorps is one of the good Fed institution doing good work. But know that they are lowballing the value of your labor
/r/antiwork but literally
If only you knew how bad things really are
https://watch30rockonline.cc/ is one of my favorite website, I like just clicking random episode and watch 30 rock out of context. However, whenever S1 episode came out and it says "18 years ago" it feels depressing
Pepsi is chud? Or just soda in general is chud
Dr. Jen Psaki
In retrospect, Luke and Leia's behavior in ANH were unhinged. Luke had his entire livelihood, his surrogate parents (Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru) incinerated into skeletons. Leia had her entire planet nuked into stardust by the Death Star. They both shrugged these off and just went to happy-go-lucky banter adventure with Han and Chewie.
Listen Jack, here are the receipts for my 4-year tax return:
2021
2022
2023
2024
I guess I'll be watching League 1 (3rd tier English football). Good thing is that we already have an appropriate theme song for next season, by Swansea's most famous poet, ~~Dylan Thomas~~ Helen Love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXhjGtr5XDk
Another long season in division 3
La la la, lalalala, Cardiff City Superstars
tldr; Tom Friedman took a Waymo ride. He's a "Waymo Democrats" now
I struggle these days whenever someone asks me for my political affiliation. But if you really force me, I’d describe myself as a “Waymo Democrat.” Waymos are the self-driving electric taxis started by Google. My party’s bumper sticker would read, “A chicken in every pot and a Waymo in every city.” And our TV ads would say: “Trump is for he/him — his grievances, his revenge, his corruption — and for bringing old stuff back ‘again,’ like coal and gasoline cars. Waymo Democrats are for ‘We the People’ and reinventing American industry anew.”
Why am I bringing this up now? It’s because, as my colleague David Brooks likes to say, Donald Trump is often the wrong answer to the right question. Trump today is offering America a spectacularly wrong answer — a tariff war against the whole world and a revival of 1960s assembly lines — to a very valid question: How do we get more Americans making stuff again?
So, then, what’s the right answer? I admire the fiery protest campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I love their ability to get people out to push back on Trump’s destroy-America-in-100-days campaign. God bless them for that.
But when I listen to A.O.C. and Sanders, I don’t hear them solving for the future. So much of what they are about is lazily bashing billionaires, along with defending Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from the Trump-Elon Musk chain saw. Please, save all of that.
But if Democrats are going to again be the party of the working class, and unify the country more, they need a strategy for expanding the pie of work by expanding new industries — not just protecting the pie of benefits. At a time when Trump Republicans have so given up on the future, Democrats should be for reinventing it. And that requires a strategy to push advanced manufacturing in America into wholly new realms. And that is why I am a Waymo Democrat. It is the right answer to the right question: How can we create more good jobs in advanced manufacturing?
I say this for three reasons. First, robotaxis are going to be a huge industry, not just because I use only Waymos whenever I am in San Francisco, but because I am not alone. In just San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin and Los Angeles — the four cities where Waymo offers its fully autonomous ride-hailing service — it’s now racking up a whopping 200,000 paid rides a week. That’s a growth industry.
Second, as I have written based on two recent trips to China, if you want to see the future of manufacturing, you need to go to China, not America anymore. But not in every industry, and robotaxis are among the exceptions. A Chinese company does offer limited robotaxi service in a few cities, but it is an industry of the future in which American technology is still more than competitive and can become even more dominant.
And while I don’t enjoy seeing anyone put out of work, taxi drivers are not in a growth industry. Whereas the number of better-paying jobs supporting a robotaxi network — A.I. researchers, engineers, data scientists, chip designers, blue-collar mechanics, electrical engineers, marketers, maintenance workers, software designers, data-center construction workers — constitute a growth industry, with good incomes for more people. Finally, I can’t think of a more obvious moonshot project to spur advanced manufacturing in America generally than making it our goal to have Waymos or robo-Teslas — or any other brand of self-driving taxis that we can make — operating in every city in America. Because if you look under the hood of any Waymo, it is made up of chips, batteries, sensors and other components that also go into every part of the 21st-century industrial ecosystem — including robots, drones and flying cars — all infused with artificial intelligence.
Waymo uses its own proprietary artificial intelligence system for driving. That system runs on task-specific chips — GPUs (graphics processing units) and TPUs (tensor processing units) — designed in America but manufactured in Taiwan. There is no reason more could not be made here if the industry expands. Waymos contain a collection of high-tech sensors, including lidars (short for light detection and ranging), lasers, radars, some 30 cameras and an array of external audio receivers, all tied together by U.S.-designed software to provide a comprehensive 360-degree vision for the car.
They also have onboard computers and backup systems that control braking, the battery and collision detection/avoidance. The Waymo fleet consists entirely of fully electric Jaguar I-PACE cars assembled in America with a contribution from American Axle & Manufacturing and Magna. It is protected from theft and hacking by an A.I.-controlled cybersecurity system. (And recent studies suggest they are safer than human drivers.)
Waymo is planning to have its next generation of robotaxis manufactured by Zeekr in China, but, again, there is no reason those cars, or those of a U.S. competitor, could not be made in America by Ford or G.M. (Unfortunately, in December, under economic pressure, G.M. scrapped development of its own robotaxi, Cruise, a hugely shortsighted mistake in my view.) Let’s imagine that one day soon self-driving taxis were operating in every city in America and we, not China, became the world’s biggest market for them. There would be a huge incentive to make more and more of their components here. And that is one place I would use tariffs and government investment to give this industry a leg up.
To accelerate this industry further, Waymo Democrats would do everything Trump is doing maliciously today — but do it productively.
We would insist that big law firms that want to do business with the federal government have to offer a certain number of pro bono hours to any start-up building A.I. or other components for our robotaxi industry.
We would tell Harvard and every other Ivy League university that they can teach whatever they want, however they want. But … any student graduating with a degree in math, biology, chemistry, physics, engineering or A.I. on commencement day should get handed a refund check for their entire tuition along with their diploma.
We would tell would-be immigrants, especially from China and Russia, that if they have a degree or expertise in fields related to artificial intelligence, they can have an “A.I. visa” and stay as long as they want. Instead of destroying the Department of Education and letting it be run by a former World Wrestling Entertainment executive who is so clueless she referred to A.I. as “A1” (as in the steak sauce), we would repurpose her agency as the Department of Engineering and Innovation — D.E.I. for short. Has a nice ring to it.
Instead of wrecking our great research institutions like the National Institutes of Health and our national labs the way Trump is, we would triple their budgets and encourage more research in robotic cars. And, finally, we’d say to Elon Musk: “Stop wasting your talents and hurting America with your DOGE craziness and finally get the Tesla robotaxi that you have been promising for a decade out on the road. The greatest gift you could give America today is to junk your stupid chain saw, replace it with car tools and create a nationwide competition with Waymo for robotaxis.”
In sum, the best way for Democrats to demonstrate they are the party of the working people is not just by promising to protect people’s entitlements for another generation, but also by nurturing new industries, like robotaxis, that will fund them for another generation.
Remember, back in the 1960s, the moon was our destination, but the space race project spun off all sorts of new technologies, from CT scans to M.R.I.s and more, including the GPS technology that is used by Waymo cars to navigate today! A giant robotaxi industry in America and its ecosystem would surely spin off all kinds of other technologies that can sense, digitize, connect, process, learn, share and act autonomously — all optimized by A.I. — that would be used in hospitals, homes, data centers and myriad factories. Any time you try to invent the future you end up inventing a whole bunch of things along the way that spawn multiple industries and solve multiple problems, not just the one that you are trying to solve. Any time all that you are focused on is reinventing the past — the way Trump is with coal and combustion cars — you end up stuck in the past.
The cycle rickshaw, which is a variant of a cargo bike is quite common in Asia. The price for a new one ranges from $100-500. Meanwhile, a bike with elongated rear rack, e.g., a longtail cargo bike (barely counts as cargo bike) can cost $1,000 in the West, and that is the entry level "cargo bike." A front load cargo bike costs $2500 and upwards. An Urban Arrow (tm) cargo bike can cost a whopping $6-7k.
https://www.midstory.org/the-mystery-of-the-midwest-jell-o-salad//
The Mystery of the Midwest Jell-O Salad
Jell-O salad, a staple of the Midwest potluck or holiday dinner table, has acquired an undesirable reputation outside of America's heartland. But with ancient origins and immense impact on American culinary culture, there's more to the Midwest salad beneath its jiggly surface. That is, if you can stomach it.
There are few foods as divisive as the Jell-O salad.
For some, it elicits a warm feeling of nostalgia for a childhood full of church potlucks and holiday gatherings. For others, the thought of tuna fish and cucumber suspended in lime-flavored gelatin has them reaching for a trash can instead of a fork.
Most people today would likely fall into the latter camp. That is, unless they live in the Midwest, where locals continue to make the salads, Lime Jell-O and tuna in hand, despite a downward trend in popularity. And by some measures, they might even be ahead of their time. Ring-Around-the-Tuna recipe from “Joys of Jell-O,” 1962. Image courtesy of General Foods Corporation via Vintage Recipes.
People started eating gelatin long before Jell-O became a cupboard staple.
“The first recipes go back to the Middle East, in the Middle Ages, around the year 1000 or so,” Ken Albala, culinary historian and author of “The Great Gelatin Revival: Savory Aspics, Jiggly Shots, and Outrageous Desserts,” said.
Initial gelatin recipes were typically only available to the wealthy, as the labor involved in making gelatin was intense: Collagen would be extracted from animal bones and skin and then undergo a lengthy clarification process, involving continuous straining and scraping that would be impractical for a home cook without a kitchen staff. This difficult process did not deter enterprising medieval chefs, whose gelatin recipes started to appear during the 12th and 13th centuries. By the time of the Renaissance, gelatin recipes were all the rage.
“They’re multicolored and layered. They’re flavored with all sorts of exotic spices and floral scents, and they’re really magnificent,” Albala said.
These recipes were also largely savory, or some mixture of savory and sweet, including ingredients like fish, vinegar and pork.
Despite their popularity, gelatin recipes faded into obscurity in the 1600s.
“Gelatin is one of those things that I would say, one of the few ingredients that goes so radically in and out of fashion over the years,” Albala said. “There are some periods that want things to be very simple and natural … and then there are some periods that want things that are technologically driven, with bright colors and bold flavors.”
It was technology that led to the re-emergence of gelatin in 20th-century America, when Peter Cooper was granted a patent for powdered gelatin in 1845. His powder was innovative — it was easier to produce and to cook than gelatins of the past — but it did not fly off of store shelves: It took widespread adoption of refrigeration and a massive marketing push starting in the early 1900s for name-brand Jell-O to take hold with consumers.
While home chefs experimented with their own recipes, the most widespread Jell-O salad recipes actually came from the company itself. Jell-O’s sponsored recipes helped Americans acclimate to savory foods mixed with sweet gelatin, including chicken suspended in lemon Jell-O and tomatoes suspended in orange Jell-O, served with lettuce and mayonnaise.
Other companies also had success in integrating their own product through Jell-O salad recipes, with 7-Up promoting 7-Up salad in 1953. The salad dipped into the dessert-like territory occupied by strawberry pretzel salad and watergate salad, both of which were also popularized by the Jell-O company. Together, these sweet recipes and others like them blurred the lines of what a salad could be, becoming a broader category of Jell-O-based food.
While gelatin saw wider adoption during this period, it maintained its status as a class-indicator food. Refrigerators were expensive and required up-to-date electrical systems, meaning only around 8% of Americans owned one by the early 1930s. Jell-O — which must be chilled to hold its shape — signaled to others that you could afford modern conveniences.
“You could show the people what you have without saying ‘I have a refrigerator at home’ by bringing a gelatin dessert in the middle of summer,” Catherine Lambrecht, a culinary historian who specializes in midwestern cuisine, said.
Jell-O’s status signaling was especially important for the Midwest, where rural areas lagged behind other regions in refrigeration. This made Jell-O-based dishes especially popular to bring to potlucks, maximizing the display of wealth.
Over time, though, refrigeration became commonplace; by 1960, 83% of Americans owned one. The novelty of Jell-O salads and the technology that enabled them had worn off, and with it, preferences started to shift.
“My generation was like ‘I don’t want to get that stuff, I want natural food,’” Albala said.
While Jell-O salads fell out of vogue with much of the U.S., they remained common in the Midwest, enough to earn the nickname “Midwest Salad,” a distinction it shares with a few other decidedly non-leafy dishes. Why they remain specifically in the Midwest is unclear, though there are some theories. A savory Jell-O salad from a 1930s cookbook recipe. Image courtesy of Science History Institute via Wikimedia Commons.
Bringing a Jell-O salad to a potluck may not hold as much social cache as it once did, but it remains a dish that’s easy to make and easy to share. Jell-O salads may also present fewer food safety concerns than hot savory dishes.
“I used to help manage a potluck picnic,” Lambrecht said. “We brought in lots of ice so cold food had the ability to stay cold. And the hot food, well, we just kept telling people ‘Either bring it really hot, or maybe just leave it at home for another day.’”
Albala has another theory: that Jell-O has a tendency to be popular with politically conservative people, which also makes up a majority of the Midwestern population.
“I think it actually charts pretty close to politics, because conservative-minded places like the Midwest and South still do Jell-O salads and still take it seriously,” he said. “Not that people’s taste follows their politics, but this one is pretty close.”
One other theory (one that was rejected by both Albala and Lambrecht) is that midwesterners’ taste for savory Jell-O might be inspired by the popularity of another gelatinous dish from Norway: Lutefisk.
“That makes absolutely no sense,” Albala said. “There are obviously pockets of Scandinavians in the Midwest, but that doesn’t account for Jell-O [salad] popularity at all.”
Regardless of how it came to be, the modern association between Jell-O salad and the Midwest appears to be fairly accurate — at least anecdotally.
“I can tell you that [Jell-O salad] disappears [from] my family table very fast, and nobody thinks of it as dessert,” Lambrecht said.
And Jell-O (with or without fish and nuts) may not be just for midwesterners much longer.
“My prediction is that it’s going to come back,” Albala said, citing the rise in lab-grown meat as potential evidence that Americans are ready to embrace futuristic foods yet again.
Between google trends data indicating a rise in popularity of searches for “Midwest Salad,” popular social media accounts extolling the virtues of Jell-O salads, and the adoption of savory Jell-O based dishes by some fancy restaurants, Jell-O salad really could be on a comeback.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be for everyone.
“Ironically, I don’t like it at all,” Albala said. “Actually, it’s okay — but you have to add alcohol.”
Science article
https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-seeks-end-climate-research-premier-u-s-climate-agency
NYT article
The proposal from the Office of Management and Budget would abolish the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research office at NOAA, one of the world’s premiere Earth sciences research centers.
A budget allocation of just over $170 million, down from about $485 million in 2024, would hobble science as varied as early warning systems for natural disasters, science education for students in kindergarten through high school, and the study of the Arctic, where temperatures have increased nearly four times as fast as the rest of the planet over the past four decades. “At this funding level, O.A.R. is eliminated as a line office,” the proposal states.
State rights LMAO what name so
On Tuesday, April 8, 2025, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick announced that nearly $4 million in funding is ending to Princeton University after a detailed, careful, and thorough review of the Department’s financial assistance programs against National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (“NOAA”) current program objectives. In addition, the ending of these award programs will streamline and reduce the cost and size of the Federal Government, consistent with President Trump’s promise for his Administration.
The Department of Commerce is delivering on that promise.
Specifically, the following awards to Princeton are no longer aligned with the program objectives of NOAA, a sub-agency of the Department of Commerce, and are no longer in keeping with the Trump Administration’s priorities:
Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System I: This cooperative agreement promotes exaggerated and implausible climate threats, contributing to a phenomenon known as “climate anxiety,” which has increased significantly among America’s youth. Its focus on alarming climate scenarios fosters fear rather than rational, balanced discussion. Additionally, the use of federal funds to support these narratives, including educational initiatives aimed at K-12 students, is misaligned with the administration's priorities. NOAA will no longer fund these initiatives.
Climate Risks & Interactive Sub-seasonal to Seasonal Predictability: This cooperative agreement suggests that the Earth will have a significant fluctuation in its water availability as a result of global warming. Using federal funds to perpetuate these narratives does not align with the priorities of this Administration and such time and resources can be better utilized elsewhere.
Advancing Prediction: A Regional Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean Model for High Resolution Physical Process Studies of the Air Sea Interface: This cooperative agreement has used its resources to assess risks associated with climate change, including alleged changes to precipitation patterns and sea-level rise. It also aims to address coastal inundation while other more targeted research efforts are addressing this issue. Additionally, the cost of simulating this program’s specific atmosphere-ocean-wave interactions is exceedingly high, diverting resources from more practical and cost-effective solutions.
For these reasons, the Department of Commerce will not continue funding these multi-year awards to Princeton University, saving the United States taxpayer millions of dollars in the process effective June 30, 2025. The Department will, of course, continue to review its outstanding cooperative agreements, grant awards, and other financial assistance on an individualized basis to avoid wasteful governmental spending—whether they be to Princeton or any other recipient.
In doing so, the Department will be doing its part to continue to “right size” the Federal Government. Reducing and streamlining the Department of Commerce’s external financial assistance programs is a key part of its efforts to be a responsible steward of federal funding from hard-working American taxpayers.
Bureaus and Offices
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
McTOM "Man Of The Match" Tomaney becoming Napoli legend like Diego Maradona, etched for eternity as a mural and UNESCO heritage site on the street of Naples meanwhile you guys are losing to Burmese fishermen lol
Kinda doubt that anything would happen to Citeh though. They cheat off the pitch, so it is not as blatant and people are not seething that much. Also they have no annoying fans to rub it in like the 90s and 2000s Man Utd kids