Voters seem to be wising up to the stadium con

One of the worst things about professional sports in the US is that the owners of teams extort local communities to foot the bill for fancy new stadiums by threatening to take the teams elsewhere if they do not receive massive taxpayer subsidies. Studies have shown that the economic benefits that the stadiums supposedly provide are often wildly inflated and in reality bring nowhere near the amount that the public puts up. The team owners have pulled off this scam many times but it looks like citizens are getting wise to this extortion racket and refusing to pay.
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A better formulation of the Golden Rule

We are most familiar with the form of the so-called Golden Rule that says that one should treat others as you would like others to treat you. That seems reasonable on the surface but it has the problem that how you would like to be treated may not be how someone else would like to be treated. Some time ago, I argued for a better form of the Golden Rule that says simply “Don’t be a jerk” because the standard form was too vague and too subject to idiosyncratic interpretations to be useful.

My formulation was not very elegant but it turns out that there is a better way of expressing the same sentiment that has been around for millennia. It also takes a negative form of the rule and says that one should not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated. This seems better because avoiding doing things to others that one would not like have done to you avoids many pitfalls, since it is not requiring you to do something to others.
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Arizona adds to the GOP’s abortion woes

The US has lots of old laws on the books that are terrible, reflecting the awful views that people had in the past. Many of these laws were not explicitly repealed but became inoperative when new laws superseded them. One of the things that the Roe v. Wade opinion did was to lay down a federal standard for when abortions are permissible, making many old state laws on abortion that had extremely harsh restrictions null and void. But with the Dobbs decision repealing Roe, the US Supreme Court removed that federal shield and now the old laws are resurfacing.

The Arizona supreme court dropped a bombshell when, in a 4-2 ruling, it upheld an 1864 law that made all abortions illegal whenever it was carried out and left no exceptions even for rape or incest. The only exception was to save the life of the mother.

An Arizona Supreme Court decision on Tuesday that could end virtually all abortions in the state puts the issue front and center in a 2024 battleground that will play a crucial role in deciding the next president and the Senate majority.

Democrats immediately pounced on the ruling, which will allow a law first passed in 1864 to go into effect. It permits doctors or others to be prosecuted for performing an abortion at any time unless the mother’s life is in danger and does not include exceptions for rape or incest.

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Jon Stewart blasts the Biden administration over Gaza

In a blistering piece on The Daily Show, he blasts Joe Biden and his administration for their hypocrisy in using high-minded language while avoiding doing anything meaningful to stop Israel from slaughtering tens of thousands of Gazans and laying their entire community to waste. He also focuses on something that is not being talked about much and that is how Palestinians in the West Bank are also being killed by Israeli forces and settlers and their lands taken, even though they had nothing to do with the October 7th attacks. It is clear that Israel is using those attacks to justify yet another land grab, even though those violate international law.

The return of a cicada swarm

Parts of the northeastern US are bracing for a cicada swarm when trillions of these creatures will burst from the ground when the temperature warms up a little more.

There are thousands of species of cicadas around the world but only 10 are considered periodical – having a life cycle that involves the juvenile cicadas living underground and feeding on plant sap for years before emerging en masse to the surface.

This year will see Brood XIX, the largest of all periodical cicada groups, emerge after a 13-year dormancy underground at the same time as Brood XII, a smaller group that appears every 17 years. The emergence will occur in spring, as early as this month in some places, and will see trillions of cicadas pop up in as many as 16 states, from Maryland to Oklahoma and from Illinois to Alabama.
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Cicadas choose to burst aboveground when the soil temperature hits a certain point – usually around 64F (17C) – and global heating, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, is potentially scrambling this natural process.

Entomologists and cicada enthusiasts are excited about the prospect.

“It’s really exciting. I’ve been looking forward to this for many years,” said Catherine Dana, an entomologist who specializes in cicadas at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “For the public, it’s going to be a really special experience.”
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For now, onlookers can still enjoy this rare burst of nature in their gardens and public spaces. “Sit back and be in awe at the spectacle,” advised John Cooley, a cicada expert at the University of Connecticut who tracks the emergences. “It will be over soon enough. Then think about where you will be in 13 or 17 years. It’s a time for introspection.”

I can’t say that I share that enthusiasm. My only encounter with cicadas was in 2004 when I was in New Jersey for a few days when the area was hit with a cicada swarm. Since that was twenty years ago, that brood must not have been part of the big 13 and 17 year cohorts associated with broods XII or XIX. But the swarm was large enough. These creatures that look like cockroaches were everywhere, making a terrific racket and you could not walk outdoors without stepping on them and squashing them, which was kind of gross. I am glad that I will be nowhere near them this time.

Trump chickens out on abortion

One measure of how Republicans are viewing with alarm that their extreme positions on abortion risks damage at the polls is that serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), usually never shy about pandering to the religious and political extremists in his base, kept quiet about what his stance was on this issue for the longest time.

But he could not duck the issue forever and today his campaign issued a statement on his social media site Truth Social that was mealy-mouthed.

Donald Trump on Monday announced his belief that individual US states should decide the legality of abortion – and he declined to endorse a national ban on the procedure.

The former president’s stated position dashed hopes from anti-abortion groups that he would call for a ban on aborting pregnancies beyond 15 weeks.

“States will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both,” Trump said in a video post on Truth Social. “Whatever they decide must be the law of the land, or in this case the law of the state.

“Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks, some will be more conservative then others. At the end of the day this is all about the will of the people. You must follow your heart, or in many cases your religion or faith,” he said in a four-minute address outlining his view of reproductive rights in the wake of the US supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022.

He added, “Do what’s right for your family, and do what’s right for yourself.”

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Film review: Past Lives (2023)

This film, that has won many awards and was nominated for best film at the latest Academy Awards, will evoke long forgotten memories in viewers who have reached or passed middle age. Who amongst us does not recall past loves from whom we drifted away for a variety of reasons, and now occasionally wonder what our lives might have been like if things had turned out differently and we had stayed together?

This film tells the story of Nora and Hae Sung, childhood sweethearts in Seoul, South Korea who get separated at the age of 12 when Nora’s family emigrates to Canada. She subsequently moves to New York to pursue a career as a writer while he remains behind in Korea to become an engineer. But he still thinks of her and at the age of 24, he reaches out to her through Facebook and they start talking via Skype where they discover that they still feel warmly towards each other. But there is little chance of them meeting in the near future and that brief period of connection also fades and they do not make contact for another twelve years, when they are in their mid-thirties. In the meantime, she attends a writing residency and ends up falling in love and marrying Arthur, a fellow writer she met there, while Hae Sung also gets engaged.
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Trump’s curious campaign against his potential allies

Rachel Leingang writes that you have to listen to in full to the rally speeches of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) to appreciate how unhinged they are. The snippets that are broadcast, even if they are of his lies and lunacies, actually make him seem more lucid than he really is.

He’s on the campaign trail less these days than he was in previous cycles – and less than you’d expect from a guy with dedicated superfans who brags about the size of his crowds every chance he gets. But when he has held rallies, he speaks in dark, dehumanizing terms about migrants, promising to vanquish people crossing the border. He rails about the legal battles he faces and how they’re a sign he’s winning, actually. He tells lies and invents fictions. He calls his opponent a threat to democracy and claims this election could be the last one.

Trump’s tone, as many have noted, is decidedly more vengeful this time around, as he seeks to reclaim the White House after a bruising loss that he insists was a steal. This alone is a cause for concern, foreshadowing what the Trump presidency redux could look like. But he’s also, quite frequently, rambling and incoherent, running off on tangents that would grab headlines for their oddness should any other candidate say them.
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Watching a Trump speech in full better shows what it’s like inside his head: a smorgasbord of falsehoods, personal and professional vendettas, frequent comparisons to other famous people, a couple of handfuls of simple policy ideas, and a lot of non sequiturs that veer into barely intelligible stories.
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These tangents can be part of a tirade, or they can be what one can only describe as complete nonsense.

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The negatives of food delivery services

Many people take advantage of the convenience of food delivery apps like Uber Eats, GrubHub, and Door Dash. Their popularity soared during the Covid lockdown era when people were reluctant to go out and they were a boon to restaurants struggling to stay afloat then. But they have stayed popular even after things returned to almost normal as people had got used to the convenience and. continued to use them. It definitely helps those who for whatever reason are unable to cook their own food or are unable to go out.

In his latest episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver takes a close look at this business and finds that the two categories that we think benefit most from this model (restaurants and delivery workers) are in fact benefiting the least.


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