Politics

NPR

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Misleading Facts Evade Social Media Moderation, Fuel Covid Misinformation : NPR

"This is something that we see repeatedly with human cognition," Freelon said. "It's the emphasis on the breathless anecdote and then the discounting of statistics that are much more representative."

The news media relies heavily on "breathless anecdote", it's essential for healthy corporate profits and selling more cars and laundry soap. 

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On Roman calendar, the Ides occur on the 13th for most months, but it falls on 15th in March, May, July, and October. The Nones are 9 days before the Ides, and the Calends are first date of every month. Roman calendars count the days until the next Nones, Ides or Calends.

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While going to work or school in the darkness would kind of a drag, I wonder if it would reduce carbon emissions to go to year round daylight savings time ? 🌅

Right now, power demand is very low in early morning hours, but there is a lot of generation, especially from wind coming on top of all the base-load plants that can’t be shutdown when demand is low. An earlier start would mean that people would be turning their lights on earlier and ramping up heating and air conditioning earlier in the morning, when there is typically more of a surplus of electricity on the grid, especially in areas with a lot of wind power. It might be a good way to tame the evening ramp, when they most have to fire up the really dirty power plants to meet demand.
 
In 1974, they implemented national year-round daylight savings time. They weren’t wrong with year round daylight savings time when it came to regions with energy shortages in 1970s — at least from an energy conservation perspective. Maybe the 1965 black out wouldn’t have occurred, had it still been daylight savings time — and grid not heavily loaded when things started to go wildly out of control.
 
The 1965 black out occurred at 5:16 PM, at the peak of rush hour. It was a cold November evening, and with the time change, people had turned on their lights across New York, cranked up their electric heat, and the subways were going full-blast, all loading grid heavily compared to a few hours earlier. Had the sun still been out at 5:16 PM, the lighting load and heating load would have been a fair bit lower and fewer subway cars running, especially back then when more people worked 9-5 PM.
 
But it sure would make winter mornings very dark.

How Much Longer Can This Era Of Political Gridlock Last? | FiveThirtyEight

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How Much Longer Can This Era Of Political Gridlock Last? | FiveThirtyEight

Democrats may have a narrow majority in both the House and the Senate for the next two years, but it’s nothing near the margin they hoped for. And the likelihood that Democrats keep both the House and the Senate in 2022 are low, as the president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterm elections.

That means more divided government is probably imminent, and the electoral pattern we’ve become all too familiar with — a pendulum swinging back and forth between unified control of government and divided government — is doomed to repeat, with increasingly dangerous consequences for our democracy.

Anonymous (group) – Wikipedia

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Anonymous (group) – Wikipedia

Anonymous is a decentralized international activist/hacktivist collective/movement that is widely known for its various cyber attacks against several governments, government institutions and government agencies, corporations, and the Church of Scientology.