Anthony McAuliffe (centre) and his officers in Bastogne, Belgium, December, 1944. The commander of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne would go down in history for his defiant, one syllable reply to a German surrender ultimatum. //

“McAuliffe realized that some kind of answer had to be offered and he sat down to think it over. After several minutes he admitted to his officers that he did not know what to say in response.

Missouri legislators are trying to give Missouri families what they want and deserve: school choice and not school assignment. Mind you, they’re suggesting baby steps—a program that limits the number of students who can transfer out of a district and allows districts to decide whether or not to receive students from outside of their own boundaries. It is not the strong, mandatory program that Kansas has. It certainly isn’t the universal choice of any public or private school that all Iowa families have. But it still could provide a lifeline for Missouri families stuck in our lowest-performing districts or children who are struggling. //

And yet, the teachers' union leadership says they can’t support such a program unless students in high-minority and high-poverty districts are severely restricted from participating because otherwise there would be “no protection against resegregation.” First, resegregation? Missouri school districts aren’t currently segregated? Second, and more importantly, do you know what causes segregation? District lines. In many cases, district lines look a lot like the property red lines of 100 years ago. //

Open enrollment began happening in other states over 30 years ago. In 1988, when Minnesota first allowed all students to choose any public school in the state, they also began researching who chose to transfer and why. Since then, 27 states have passed mandatory open enrollment programs, and the research on them has continued.

So, who uses open enrollment? According to a 2015 study of the Michigan Schools of Choice program, it has been historically disadvantaged students, in this case, low-income and African American students, who were the most likely to request a transfer. //

I don’t really believe that the leaders of Missouri’s largest teachers union think open enrollment will lead to further segregation. I think the race card is a convenient excuse to try to prevent the two things that concern them most.

The first is finding out what families really think of their assigned public schools. I believe that families facing the biggest challenges are fully aware that their children are also trapped in low-performing schools. Charter schools in St. Louis and Kansas City quickly fill up because families want anything other than their neighborhood school. //

The second concern, if we’re being honest, is that enrolled students come with public money. If students leave low-performing districts, they will take money with them, and the schools will be even worse off. So, strap those kids to the deck of the Titanic. //

Cafeblue32
11 hours ago edited
As my dad learned in WW2, desperate actions for desperate times can somtimes get you killed pretty fast, because they lead to hasty unthought out decisions. Desperate times are when soldiers are most trained to remain clear headed and logical.

We are where we are because our solutions are always in crisis mode as a defense against the left. We act fast to try to stop it. In truth, if we simply returned to Constitutionl principles and ran the place as a Republic made up of multiple states rather than the permanent two party winner take all democracy they have turned it into, the system would correct itself. Until we do, all we're going to get is one party or the other's idea of what "our sacred democracy" should look like.

Desperate times call for a return to first principles, which are based in reason and informed by values, not in anger and moral panic.

IBM's SAA and CUA brought harmony to software design… until everyone forgot //

In the early days of microcomputers, everyone just invented their own user interfaces, until an Apple-influenced IBM standard brought about harmony. Then, sadly, the world forgot.

In 1981, the IBM PC arrived and legitimized microcomputers as business tools, not just home playthings. The PC largely created the industry that the Reg reports upon today, and a vast and chaotic market for all kinds of software running on a vast range of compatible computers. Just three years later, Apple launched the Macintosh and made graphical user interfaces mainstream. IBM responded with an obscure and sometimes derided initiative called Systems Application Architecture, and while that went largely ignored, one part of it became hugely influential over how software looked and worked for decades to come.

One bit of IBM's vast standard described how software user interfaces should look and work – and largely by accident, that particular part caught on and took off. It didn't just guide the design of OS/2; it also influenced Windows, and DOS and DOS apps, and of pretty much all software that followed. //

The problem is that developers who grew up with these pre-standardization tools, combined with various keyboardless fondleslabs where such things don't exist, don't know what CUA means. If someone's not even aware there is a standard, then the tools they build won't follow it. As the trajectories of KDE and GNOME show, even projects that started out compliant can drift in other directions.

This doesn't just matter for grumpy old hacks. It also disenfranchizes millions of disabled computer users, especially blind and visually-impaired people. You can't use a pointing device if you can't see a mouse pointer, but Windows can be navigated 100 per cent keyboard-only if you know the keystrokes – and all blind users do. Thanks to the FOSS NVDA tool, there's now a first-class screen reader for Windows that's free of charge.

Most of the same keystrokes work in Xfce, MATE and Cinnamon, for instance. Where some are missing, such as the Super key not opening the Start menu, they're easily added. This also applies to environments such as LXDE, LXQt and so on. //

Menus bars, dialog box layouts, and standard keystrokes to operate software are not just some clunky old 1990s design to be casually thrown away. They were the result of millions of dollars and years of R&D into human-computer interfaces, a large-scale effort to get different types of computers and operating systems talking to one another and working smoothly together. It worked, and it brought harmony in place of the chaos of the 1970s and 1980s and the early days of personal computers. It was also a vast step forward in accessibility and inclusivity, opening computers up to millions more people.

Just letting it fade away due to ignorance and the odd traditions of one tiny subculture among computer users is one of the biggest mistakes in the history of computing.

OpenWrt, the open source firmware that sprang from Linksys' use of open source code in its iconic WRT54G router and subsequent release of its work, is 20 years old this year. To keep the project going, lead developers have proposed creating a "fully upstream supported hardware design," one that would prevent the need for handling "binary blobs" in modern router hardware and let DIY router enthusiasts forge their own path. //

Failing an image of the proposed reference hardware by the OpenWrt group, let us gaze upon where this all started: inside a device that tried to quietly use open source software without crediting or releasing it.

In infant botulism, spores of Clostridium botulinum colonize the gastrointestinal tract after accidental ingestion and start producing toxin type A. The toxin makes its way into nerve cells and cleaves a critical protein complex necessary for the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, halting nerve signaling. Upon further investigation, the family revealed the baby seemed to have abdominal discomfort prior to falling ill and they had soothed him with honey—a known source of C. botulinum spores and botulism in infants. //

With the strong possibility that the boy had botulism, the doctors immediately ordered BabyBIG (Botulism Immune Globulin Intravenous), the only FDA-approved anti-botulism toxin antibodies used to treat infant botulism. It was developed by and is distributed from a unique program run by the California Department of Public Health. The faster infants with botulism get BabyBIG, the better, because the antibodies cannot get into nerve cells—they can only prevent the toxin from going into them. Once the toxin is in the nerve cell and cleaves its target protein complex, it takes four weeks for that protein complex to regenerate and reverse the toxin's actions.

The BabyBIG arrived from California, and doctors administered it to the baby 31 hours after he first went to the emergency room. About six days later, stool tests confirmed the presence of C. botulinum toxin type A. With the antibody blocking the toxin, the baby boy spent 10 days intubated until he started moving again on his own. He opened his eyes and could cough. He was discharged after 21 days and spent eight days in a rehabilitation facility. Three months later, he had fully recovered and was developmentally on track. And at his recent three-year checkup, he continued to do well.

In this case, the boy's exposure to honey gave a tidy explanation for why he developed botulism—the diagnosis that finally solved the riddle of his crying. But in most cases, the exposure isn't so obvious. Infant botulism is rare in the US, with an average of around 80 cases each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Clear exposure to honey or corn syrup only occurs in a minority of the cases, the doctors of the case report note. Instead, the condition is often linked to environmental exposures, such as rural living, dust production, or nearby soil perturbation. Its sporadic nature can make it yet more difficult to spot.

Do not present us with a plan that doesn’t have a wall and doesn’t have total enforcement of the immigration laws with ironclad enforcement provisions. Everything needs to be notwithstanding other laws, so they can’t sue to stop you. There has to be a grant of standing for states to sue to enforce the laws. And there has to be a cut off of any kind of aid the second the border reopens. Good gosh, this isn’t hard. But it seems really hard for you guys. I attribute that to the fact that, and I want to be charitable about this, a lot of you are really stupid.

Stop trying to do immigration deals with the Democrats.

You’re not smart enough to pull it off. Just say no to everything until the Dems comply. What’s the worst case? We have a wide-open border, and we’re not spending money on other people’s wars? That compares favorably to the present situation, where we have a wide-open border, and we are spending money on other people’s wars. //

I don’t know how many times I have to say this because I’ve been around for a while, and I’ve seen this same thing happen again and again and again when squish GOP senators try to negotiate with the Democrats about immigration. I know it’s meant to bully mental defectives, but when it comes to the GOP Senate caucus, that rule does not apply since some of its members apparently cannot learn from experience and must learn through pain. Here is a message to you, spineless Republican senators….

Stop trying to do immigration deals with the Democrats.

This same sorry scenario gets replayed over and over again. //

Maximus Decimus Cassius
5 hours ago edited
Hey Kurt, maybe its not because RINO Senators are horrible negotiators, or naive buffoons, but perhaps we need revisit Hanlon's razor. I mean, how many times have RINO doofuses tried to "negotiate" an immigration deal and they wind up getting hosed? It goes as far back as our beloved Ronald Reagan.

So maybe its not naivete or stupidity. Maybe its just plain greed and treachery.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill
English economist & philosopher (1806 - 1873)

Best practices for manipulating data with Pandas. This book will arm you with years of knowledge and experience that are condensed into an easy to follow format. Rather than taking months reading blogs and websites and searching mailing lists and groups, this book will teach you how to write good Pandas code.

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Learn how to quickly and reliable load, clean, and prepare data. Think about data processing like a "recipe".

Thomas Massie
@RepThomasMassie
·
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A one hour kitchen timer on a bomb allegedly placed 17 hours earlier. How could that be operable?

Could the detonator even function?

Did it contain explosives?

Remarkable timing of discovery.
6:32 AM · Jan 24, 2024 //

pinkunicorns
4 hours ago
We don't know who left the Coke in the White House, who planted the bomb, or who the Supreme Court leaker was! What do all of these things have in common? //

St. Joseph, Terror of Demons
6 hours ago
So the cell phone data is corrupted, the video quality isn’t great, the pipe bomb was conveniently found immediately after the RNC bomb was found after supposedly laying in the park overnight, and it had a one-hour kitchen timer on it.

There are so many holes in this story that it reminds me of all the “coincidental” things that occurred with Jeffrey Epstein’s “suicide.” //

anon-9s7n
5 hours ago
Secret Service protecting a VP "elect" casually walking over to a "pipe bomb", having a look and doing nothing. Allowing civilians to walk right by. The reaction says it all. They new it wasn't a live pipe bomb. They knew it wasn't dangerous. They knew it was a plant and part of the day's plan.

There is no way anyone can convince me otherwise. We need to have a public hearing where each of those police officers and secret service agents must account for the reactions (or lack thereof) to what we have all been told was an imminent mortal threat. //

Native Phoenician
6 hours ago
The transcript is amazing! I would love to see the video. Man, that seemed so squirmy, squirmy, squirmy. He was answering questions not asked, interrupting the questions, apologizing and rambling on and on. Exactly the type of interview I would expect from someone hiding lots of things.

A 61-year-old grandfather is suing Sunglass Hut's parent company after the store's facial recognition technology mistakenly identified him as a robber. Harvey Eugene Murphy Jr. was subsequently held in jail, where he says he was sexually assaulted, according to the lawsuit.

The January 2022 robbery took place at a Sunglass Hut store in Houston, Texas, when two gun-wielding robbers stole thousands of dollars in cash and merchandise.

Houston police identified Murphy as a suspect – even though he was living in California at the time.

When Murphy returned to Texas to renew his driver's license, he was arrested. He was held in jail, where he says he was sexually assaulted by three men in a bathroom. He says he suffered lifelong injuries.

The Librarian
5 hours ago
Representation of the People Act 1983, s.107:

Any person who corruptly induces or procures any other person to withdraw from being a candidate at an election, in consideration of any payment or promise of payment, and any person withdrawing in pursuance of the inducement or procurement, shall be guilty of an illegal payment.

s.112: a third party who supplies the money (knowing what it is for) can also be found guilty of an illegal payment.

He committed a crime and whoever sent him committed a crime.

Oh... wait... I forgot.... The Rule of Law no longer applies in the U.S.

The booming sound you may be hearing right now -- especially if you live in San Francisco or Washington, D.C -- could be resulting from liberal heads exploding as they read about what Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda said during a conference this month. Electric vehicles will only ever make up 30 percent of the market or less, he argued, and politicians should get out of the way and let the markets decide which cars are preferable to consumers. //

No matter how much progress BEVs [Battery Electric Vehicles] make, I think they will still only have a 30 % market share . Then, the remaining 70 % will be HEVs , FCEVs , and hydrogen engines. And I think engine cars will definitely remain.

I think this is something that customers and the market will decide, not regulatory values or political power. [Bolding and underlining theirs.]

That's why Toyota Motor Corporation, which is competing all over the world, has a full lineup of multi-pathway products.

A New York-bound Virgin Atlantic flight was canceled just moments before takeoff last week when an alarmed passenger said he spotted several screws missing from the plane’s wing.

British traveler Phil Hardy, 41, was onboard Flight VS127 at Manchester Airport in the UK on Jan. 15 when he noticed the four missing fasteners during a safety briefing for passengers and decided to alert the cabin crew. //

“Each of these panels has 119 fasteners, so there was no impact to the structural integrity or load capability of the wing, and the aircraft was safe to operate,” he said.

“As a precautionary measure, the aircraft underwent an additional maintenance check, and the fasteners were replaced.”

The Flammable Range (also called Explosive Range) is the concentration range of a gas or vapor that will burn (or explode) if an ignition source is introduced.

Three basic requirements must be met for explosion to take place:

1. flammable substance - fuel
2. oxidizer - oxygen or air
3. source of ignition - spark or high heat
   Below the explosive or flammable range the mixture is too lean to burn and above the upper explosive or flammable limit the mixture is too rich to burn. The limits are commonly called the "Lower Explosive or Flammable Limit" (LEL/LFL) and the "Upper Explosive or Flammable Limit" (UEL/UFL).

Meet Spaghettify

A Visual Studio Code extension to make your code spaghetti. 🍝

I have my doubts about the sustainability of “cellular agriculture.” //

…For Sanah Baig, USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics, these aims align well with the Biden administration’s own “bold goals” plan to reduce global methane emissions from food and agriculture by 30 percent within the decade. //

And, even if you removed all the cows in the United States and Europe, that wouldn’t touch the millions of methane-generating cud chewers in Africa.

James Hall @hallaboutafrica
·
Who says Africa doesn't contribute to global warming? Of all animals, the (um, how to put this?) biggest emitter of methane gas is the hippopotamus. The largest hippo ever weighed was 10,000 pounds (4536kg), and all are constantly passing gas.
9:41 AM · Sep 7, 2019 //

TargaGTS | January 23, 2024 at 7:59 am
I’m far more concerned with the nutritional value of these products than I am their ‘carbon footprint’…or ANY food’s carbon footprint. What is inescapable is MEAT is an essential element for the developing human brain. Adolescents need ample access to complex proteins that are only available in – you guess it – actual meat. There’s a reason why cultures that developed farming and animal husbandry developed at a much faster pace than cultures that did not. ANIMAL PROTEIN is the reason. //

WestRock | January 23, 2024 at 8:56 am
We’ve seen what happens when things are grown in labs – think Covid. And we know what happens when governments, NGOs and otherwise bad actors influence industries (and media and finance). Once our food becomes manufactured to a standard and controlled think how easily a drug or other agent of harm or control could be inserted into that food supply. No thanks.

It turns out that this was the first time an artificial intelligence tool translated a speech by a world leader in real-time. //

fscarn | January 22, 2024 at 9:48 am
When the Founders/Framers spoke of freedom, they meant freedom FROM government,

Javier Milei gets it.

“It wasn’t what government did that made America great; it was what government was prevented from doing that made the difference,

“What set America apart from all other lands was freedom – for the individual. Freedom to work, to produce, to succeed and, especially, to keep the fruits of one’s labor.

“America became great precisely because the stifling effects of too much government had been prevented [by means of Constitutional limitations].”

Part of narration of Overview of America,

https://jbs.org/video/featured/overview-of-america/?mc_cid=aab99f82ce

So Shaw took the precautions available to him.

"When we got on orbit, I went down to the hatch on the side of the orbiter, and I padlocked the hatch control so that you could not open the hatch," Shaw said. "I mean, on the orbiter on orbit you can go down there and you just flip this little thing and you crank that handle once, the hatch opens and all the air goes out and everybody goes out with it, just like that. And I thought to myself, 'Jeez, I don’t know this guy very well. He might flip out or something.' So I padlocked the hatch shut right after we got on orbit, and I didn’t take the padlock off until we were in de-orbit prep." //

After the Space Shuttle Challenger accident in 1986, the focus of the Shuttle program shifted somewhat, and NASA started flying fewer payload specialists. Those who flew came to be considered more a part of the crew and were met with less suspicion. According to some Space Shuttle astronauts, the lock was used less and less often. The final payload specialist to fly on the Shuttle was Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut. He died, of course, in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, when the vehicle broke up in the atmosphere during its return to Earth.

Although much of the concern for Shuttle commanders had come from flying non-professional astronauts, there was another incident later in the program with an all-professional crew that revived interest in the padlock program. It occurred during a 1999 flight. Because I have not been able to confirm the details with multiple sources, I won't name the astronaut or the mission. But essentially, a multiple-time flier had a bad reaction to some medicine he took after the launch. This seriously affected his mental state, and the astronaut had to be physically restrained from taking drastic action, including opening the hatch. //

This all may seem like a bit of historical trivia, but the issue lives on today. The Space Shuttle has been retired for 13 years, but the padlock remains in the fabric of US spaceflight with Crew Dragon. A commander's lock is an option for NASA's crews flying to the International Space Station on Crew Dragon, as well as private missions. //

That such incidents don't happen more often in commercial aviation may give us some comfort, but in reality, there have been many attempts by passengers to open an emergency exit door in flight. (Fortunately, it's almost impossible at cruising altitudes). And given that it has happened with two people out of the approximately 650 who have gone to space, it suggests the odds are non-negligible.

Nield concluded his note to me with a request. "Let me know," he said, "if you have any thoughts on how to mitigate the risks."

I wish I did. //

jeremyp66 Ars Scholae Palatinae 7y 811

YetAnotherBoris said:
The solution is obvious in this age of AI: automate all hatches, and put a computer exclusively in charge of activating them. The computer will be in turn controlled by a totally stable and reliable AI, with which the crew can communicate via voice interface.

Bonus points if it's called HAL...

The Hatch AI Lock

The headline is chilling enough. Add in the rest of the story and it's easy to see why President Joe Biden is a clear and present danger to the security of the United States and has been such since his first day in office — intentionally so, as revealed by a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report.

As the CBO reported, Biden — eagerly assisted by Homeland Security head Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken — has summarily allowed at least 6.2 million illegal aliens to walk into the country, with virtually no questions asked. //

So let's do the math: 1.2 million, 2.7 million, and 3.3 million — up to October 2023 — add up to 6.2 million illegal aliens encountered and summarily released in just three years.

Now add in gotaways — U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources have confirmed over 1.7 million known gotaways at the Southwest border — the number of which is unknowable, and estimates of the total number of illegal aliens released into the country by Team Biden reach 9 million or more.

As the tale goes, Hamas and Palestinians have no agency, and it's Israel that has committed "genocide" by daring to try to take out a terrorist group that invaded and murdered well over a thousand people while taking hundreds hostage.

The Spectator Index @spectatorindex
·
BREAKING: Hamas has rejected an Israeli offer of a two-month ceasefire in exchange for the release of all Israeli hostages
9:26 AM · Jan 23, 2024 . //

there can be no ceasefire with an entity like Hamas. There is only its total surrender or Israel's surrender. That's what's so mind-numbing about the "ceasefire now" crowd. If there's not an actual partner for peace on the other side, then you can't have peace. Hamas continues to say it will attack Israel until every last drop of Jewish blood is spilled and the nation no longer exists. You can't have a ceasefire with that, and that's been proven by the fact that there was a ceasefire in place on October 6th. //

anon-0a84
37 minutes ago
cease fire protestors = antifa protestors = BLM protestors = occupy wall street protestors = funding by soros