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Now, watch this comic become slowly less funny over time.Today’s News:
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/gently
May 232025
2025-05-23
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May 232025
Expert advisors for the Food and Drug Administration met Thursday to discuss which virus strain this year’s updated COVID-19 vaccines should target. The advisors have been meeting around this time each year for such a strain selection, a routine decision in the process of updating the life-saving vaccines.
But this year’s meeting was awkward and even a little tense. Earlier this week, new FDA leaders under health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a sweeping new framework that would restrict access to the shots, making them available only to people 65 and older and those with medical conditions that put them at risk of severe illness. For updated COVID-19 vaccines to be approved for…
2025-05-23
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May 202025
Chris Hedges transfers blame for the crimes of the Israeli-Zionist state and capitalist imperialism to the entire human race. Gaza, he proclaims, proves the futility of any belief in human progress.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/05/20/morw-m20.html
2025-05-20
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May 202025
Under the control of anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Food and Drug Administration is unilaterally terminating universal access to seasonal COVID-19 vaccines; instead, only people who are age 65 years and older and people with underlying conditions that put them at risk of severe COVID-19 will have access to seasonal boosters moving forward.
The move was laid out in a commentary article published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, written by Trump administration FDA Commissioner Martin Makary and the agency’s new top vaccine regulator, Vinay Prasad.
The article lays out a new framework for approving seasonal COVID-19 vaccines, as well as a rationale for the change—which was made without input from independent advisory committees for…
2025-05-20
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May 162025
If Roko’s Basilisk is real, then wouldn’t it be a certainty that you would already be being tortured in a Hell Dimension? It would be infinitesimally unlikely that, out of the billions of copies of your mind, you’d be experiencing the one that was not.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh no.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/05/pascals-weiner/
2025-05-16
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May 162025
After multiple delays of the REAL ID Act of 2005 and its updated counterpart, the REAL ID Modernization Act, in the United States, the May 7th deadline of REAL ID enforcement has finally arrived. Does this move our security forward in the skies? The last 20 years says we got along fine without it. There were and are issues along the way that REAL ID does impose on everyday people, such as potential additional costs and rigid documentation, even if you already have a state issued ID. While TSA states this is not a national ID or a federal database, but a set of minimum standards required for federal use, we are still watchful of the…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/security-theater-realized-and-flying-without-real-id
2025-05-16
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May 162025
The arguments before the Supreme Court in Trump v. CASA underscore the administration’s efforts to eviscerate judicial oversight, clearing the path for unchecked presidential dictatorship.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/05/16/tlsv-m16.html
2025-05-16
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May 142025
Progressive streamer Hasan Piker’s recent detention by CBP at the Chicago airport has generated widespread outrage — and rightfully so. No US citizen should be interrogated about their political beliefs when re-entering their own country. But while CBP’s behavior was egregious, Piker’s response was potentially even more dangerous: he chose to engage in a two-hour conversation with federal agents without a lawyer present, streaming about it afterward as if this were just more content for his millions of followers.
For many years, we’ve called out this kind of bullshit interrogation technique of citizens at the border (it didn’t start with Trump, though it’s almost certainly gotten worse with him in power).
Rather than following the basic rule of…
2025-05-14
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May 142025
SACRAMENTO, CA—Promising his podcast listeners an engaging and enlightening conversation, California Gov. Gavin Newsom reportedly sat down Tuesday with a serial killer who targets the homeless population. “So what do you think Democrats can learn from somebody who, like you, targets the most vulnerable among us?” said Newsom, who acknowledged that while he and the murderer might not see eye to eye on the best way to eliminate the homeless, he was grateful for the opportunity to exchange ideas and perspectives. “You hate the homeless, I hate the homeless. People have been very hard on you, but I think at the end of the day, we all really just want the same thing. So, do you…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://theonion.com/gavin-newsom-sits-down-for-podcast-with-serial-killer-who-targets-homeless/
2025-05-14
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May 132025
Nextcloud provides an
open-source collaboration platform called Nextcloud Hub, which includes file-sharing and syncing
features. The company has written
a blog post explaining that Google has revoked a critical permission
from the Nextcloud Files app for Android that allows it to sync files
to Nextcloud Hub.
Google is stating security concerns as a reason for revoking the
permission. This is hard to believe for us. Nextcloud has had this
feature since its inception in 2016, and we have never heard about any
security concerns from Google about it. Moreover, several Big Tech
apps as well as Google’s own still have this. What we think: Google
owning the platform means they can and are giving themselves
preferential treatment. Despite multiple appeals since mid-2024, Google has refused to
reinstate the…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/1021016/
2025-05-13
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May 112025
A day after Columbia University called in the New York Police Department to arrest more than 70 pro-Palestine protesters who had occupied a library reading room, the university and its affiliate Barnard College suspended several students who had been present in the library. The suspended students included students who happened to be studying in Butler Library at the time the occupation began, as well as journalists. The suspensions came amid final exams at the university. Some of the students who were not protesting have had their suspensions rescinded. Barnard College informed suspended students that they would have to vacate their college housing within 48 hours and that their meal cards would be voided. The housing deadline…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2025/05/10/columbia-library-gaza-protests-students-suspended/
2025-05-11
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May 102025
PostgreSQL 18 beta has been released, and it’s the perfect time to start exploring the new features we can expect in the General Availability (GA) release. One feature that particularly caught my attention relates to improvements in statistics collection and usage. Here’s an excerpt from the official PostgreSQL release notes:
Add functions to modify per-relation and per-column optimizer statistics (Corey Huinker) Add pg_dump, pg_dumpall, and pg_restore options –statistics-only, –no-statistics, –no-data, and –no-schema (Corey Huinker, Jeff Davis)
One of the key ingredients in performance analysis is understanding the underlying statistics of tables, columns, and indexes. Often, we encounter cases where queries behave differently in production compared to Pre-Prod or UAT environments. A common reason for this discrepancy…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/773
2025-05-10
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May 102025
Stephen Miller’s threat to suspend habeas corpus is a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s erection of a political dictatorship.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/05/10/jqvw-m10.html
2025-05-10
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May 102025
It’s a voluntary program launched during a Republican administration, endorsed by manufacturers and well-recognized by U.S. consumers, who have saved an estimated $500 billion over the past 33 years guided by its familiar blue label.
But President Donald Trump’s administration has decided the Energy Star program has got to go.
CNN and The Washington Post first reported the plan to eliminate the program that certifies the most energy-efficient appliances and buildings with the Energy Star label. Knowledgeable sources have confirmed to Inside Climate News that Environmental Protection Agency staffers learned the details at an internal meeting earlier this week.
2025-05-10
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May 102025
Demcoratic Mayor Ras J. Baraka, the mayor of Newark —New Jersey’s largest city— was arrested by federal agents during a peaceful protest at Delaney Hall.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/05/10/yiub-m10.html
2025-05-10
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May 092025
Raleigh’s planning commission, the all-volunteer body that makes recommendations to the city council about zoning, development, and growth, has two new members—and it lost two members who were eligible for reappointment and wanted to continue serving. It happened quickly during the city council’s Tuesday meeting: the deputy city clerk told the council members that freshman planning commissioners Reeves Peeler and La Tanta McCrimmon were each seeking reappointment for a second term, and that Mayor Janet Cowell had nominated Mark Shelburne and Nick Neptune to replace them.Council member Jane Harrison made a motion to reappoint Peeler, a community organizer who works in affordable housing tax credit financing. Council member Christina Jones seconded it. The members voted by a…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://indyweek.com/news/wake/raleigh-city-council-ousts-two-planning-commissioners/
2025-05-09
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May 072025
After a five-year pause in student loan collections, the Trump administration has begun ruthless collection efforts while simultaneously preparing massive budget cuts to higher education programs.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/05/07/yddc-m07.html
2025-05-07
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May 072025
On May 6, Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed HB 41. It changes the filing deadline for new parties from August 1 to July 1. Also it says that if a new party petition is found not to have enough valid signatures, the party that circulated it can’t just supplement the original petition. Instead it must start all over with a new petition.
Maryland is the second state this year to have made ballot access more difficult for minor parties. The first was New Jersey. Both states have Democratic majorities in both houses of the legislature, and Democratic governors.
2025-05-07
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May 072025
Ari Paul (FAIR.org, 4/25/25): “Going after public broadcasters is…part of the neo-fascist playbook authoritarian leaders around the world are using to clamp down on dissent and keep the public in the dark.”
The death of former 1960s radical turned right-wing provocateur David Horowitz brought to mind the time he called me “stupid” (Michigan Daily, 9/8/03) because he disliked a column (Michigan Daily, 9/2/03) I wrote about neoconservatism.
I was reminded of that again just days later when Matt Taibbi (Racket News, 5/4/25), a journalist who left Occupy Wall Street populism for ruling class sycophancy, attacked my recent article, “Cuts to PBS, NPR Part of Authoritarian Playbook” (FAIR.org, 4/25/25). In his response, titled, “No, State Media and Democracy Don’t…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://fair.org/home/taibbi-cites-government-attacks-on-media-to-defend-government-attacks-on-media/
2025-05-07
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May 062025
On May 5, U.S. District Court Judge Richard E. Myers II, a Trump appointee and a member of the Federalist Society, issued an order in Griffin v North Carolina State Board of Elections, e.d., 5:24cv-731. The ruling says North Carolina cannot refuse to count the votes of voters who voted in November 2024 election, and who had been told at the time that they had fulfilled all steps taken to have their votes count. The order is stayed for seven days in case the losing side wishes to appeal to the Fourth Circuit.
This lawsuit stems from the very close race for Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. The vote shows that the Democratic nominee won…
2025-05-06
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