Trump Republicans just love Hungary’s leader

It is quite fascinating to see how quickly Trump’s followers latch on to authoritarian leaders around the world who pursue bigoted anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant policies, all wrapped up in the rhetoric of nationalism and patriotism and with a religious garnish. Their latest hero is president Viktor Orban of Hungary, who has been in power for 12 years and just won re-election.

Hungary’s authoritarian leader and longtime Russian ally, Viktor Orban, clinched a fourth consecutive term in power on Sunday, after a landslide election win that he touted as a rebuke of liberalism, the European Union and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Orban’s Fidesz party strengthened their position in Parliament despite forecasts predicting a tight race. It won 53% of the vote with almost all ballots counted, enough for a commanding lead over a united coalition of opposition parties.
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The scandal of false confessions

One of the big problems in the US (in)justice system is that often the zeal of police and prosecutors to get convictions overrides any desire to catch the actual guilty party. One of the many ways that innocent people end up in prison is when they ‘confess’ to crimes that they did not commit. Confessions have a powerful effect on juries because they, like many of us, cannot imagine why anyone would possibly admit to something they did not do, especially when it is a serious offense.

But false confessions are unfortunately not uncommon and the 1989 case of the Central Park Five where five Black and Latino youths aged 16 and under were convicted of the brutal rape of a young white woman who had been jogging in the park is one of the most egregious examples. Donald Trump paid for a full page ad in the New York Times calling for them to be executed. He still refuses to apologize, repeating the fact that they had confessed as his justification for continuing to think that at least some of them are guilty.
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Alex Jones files for bankruptcy protection

I wrote earlier about how the net was tightening around this spreader of all manner of false and malicious information, including some that made life a living hell for the families of the Sandy Hook massacre, who were already suffering because of the murder of their children. He was under increasing legal pressure and has now started the process by which rich people, like the Sacklers, try to avoid paying for their behavior, by declaring bankruptcy.
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The Canary in the Mine: The Achievement Gap Between Black and White Students by Mano Singham

Here is another published article of mine that I am making freely available by posting here. It was published in the education journal Phi Delta Kappan in September 1998

The background to this article in that in 1992 I was selected to be part of an initiative funded by the National Science Foundation to improve science and mathematics education for middle school students in the state of Ohio. I was involved in it for a decade or so and during my work, I was not only struck by the difference in achievement between Black and white students (something that is well known) but more by how people viewed the problem and suggested solutions.
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Meanwhile, over in the UK …

… The Chancellor of the Exchequer (their equivalent of the Secretary of the Treasury in the US) Rishi Sunak has come under fire because it was revealed that his wife Akshata Murty, an Indian citizen and the daughter of an Indian billionaire, has used the non-domiciled status provision in the UK tax laws to avoid paying UK taxes on her large global income. While this is legal, it does not look good for Sunak, the person who has raised taxes on British citizens, to have his extremely wealthy wife take advantage of these provisions.
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Great moments in NFT investing

I have expressed my puzzlement with the idea of buying so-called NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and have made several posts about the whole concept. And yet people are spending huge amounts of money on them. NFTs seem like collectibles except that while most collectibles are tangible objects with limited numbers of them, NFTs are digital constructs that can be easily reproduced by pretty much anyone. The value of an NFT seemed (to me at least) far more speculative than other forms of collectibles and thus liable to wild price fluctuations.

So it did not surprise me to read about someone who bought an NFT for $2.9 million in March 2021 but when he tried to resell it for $48 million yesterday, the highest offer he got was $6,800.
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The doorway effect

(Pickles)

This cartoon that appeared this past week illustrates a phenomenon that we have likely all experienced at some point and that is called the ‘doorway effect’. I wrote about it five years ago, where I pointed to research suggesting that it is due to our short term memories being at least partially cleared when we go from one environment to another, such as by walking through a door.