@orangecatstargrep.bsky.social

@orangecatstargrep.bsky.social

1888 Followers 511 Following

Just a geek with an interest in the world. Need more empathy and kindness in the world.

https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021-23/ Key findings Every year, millions of workers across the country are victims of the scourge of wage theft—meaning these workers are not paid the full wages to which they are legally entitled. Nearly $700 million in stolen wages were recovered for workers by the U.S. Department of Labor from 2021 to 2023. A total of $201.4 million were recovered by state departments of labor and attorneys general over those three years. The top 10 wage and hour class action settlements amounted to $641.3 million for workers in 2021.
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/minority-rule-in-the-senate-249583 James Madison, the putative father of the Constitution, called the desire to have a supermajority to form a quorum a reversal of “the fundamental principle of free government,” adding in his Federalist No. 58 essay that it “would be no longer the majority that would rule; the power would be transferred to the minority.” Clinging to arcane rules is what most well-established institutions do, but democratic governance demands something more: adherence to the essential democratic principle of majority will that gives citizens confidence that their votes matter.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=8298619_11606_2020_5895_Fig1_HTML.jpg Graph showing incidence of initial dementia diagnosis age per 1000 persons. Effective dementia diagnosis for an 80 year old woman (Senator Collin at the end of her next term) is 40/100 or 4%. With essential tremors, this dementia diagnosis rate increase to 12%
Website: https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/newsroom/articles/year-2024/april-tremor-triples-dementia-risk.html April 24, 2024 – Patients with a common movement disorder known as essential tremor (ET) developed dementia at three times the rate of similarly aged people in the general population, a study led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers shows. Their findings, published in the Annals of Neurology, provide the first concrete data to help doctors counsel those with this condition on their cognitive prognosis, future plans, and potential treatments, the authors said. “In the past, these patients have been told, ‘You’re old, and that’s why you have these cognitive problems.’ Now we can tell patients with confidence that this is part of their disease,” said Elan Louis, M.D., M.S., Chair and Professor of Neurology and in the Peter O’Donnell Jr. School of Public Health at UT Southwestern. Dr. Louis, an Investigator in the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute, initiated and co-led the study with Stephanie Cosentino, Ph.D., Professor of Neuropsychology at Columbia University. …
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.279804/gov.uscourts.dcd.279804.16.0.pdf Page 50: … Plaintiffs also fail to show that their alleged harms are irreparable. As plaintiffs concede, an importer “may recover from the federal government” any duties “that were unlawfully assessed” through an action in the Court of International Trade. Mot. 40. That availability of a refund accounts for the harm plaintiffs say they will suffer in the absence of an injunction. It accounts for the approximately $100 million Mr. Woldenberg says plaintiffs will have to pay in extra duties over this year. Woldenberg Decl. ¶ 8. And it accounts for the negative consequences Mr. Woldenberg speculates will follow from these refundable expenditures, like loss of business opportunities and goodwill, id. ¶¶ 10, 11, 20, albeit indirectly. …
From https://open.substack.com/pub/kenklippenstein/p/why-is-susan-collins-shaking The outlet, News Center Maine, used the same language in its headline: “Sen. Susan Collins reveals medical condition: benign essential tremor.” There’s just one problem. The condition isn’t actually called that. It’s called “Essential Tremor.” Movement-disorder neurologists dropped the word “benign” from the name over a decade ago — and for good reason. The condition coincides with a 300 percent increased risk of dementia and a 200 percent increased risk of death. For many people the condition is debilitating, with 85 percent of patients reporting “functional disability” in daily life tasks like eating and drinking. Even sleep often becomes difficult. As a result, about 80 percent of patients screen positive for signs of clinical depression — the same rate as found in Parkinson’s cases. In other words, Collins isn’t being honest; but the local media amplified her framing anyway, too lazy (or cushy) to independently check. And then the New York Times and other national outlets did the same.
A very comfortable cat is staring at the camera. Caption says: At just 3 years old, I have a house, 2 passive incomes, a personal chef and driver. Follow me for financial advice.
The guy on the left was arrested and convicted for illegally selling missiles to Iran during the Reagan Administration. The guy on the right is a Fox News "military analyst" who thinks Iran shouldn't have missiles. They're the same guy. OLIVER L NORTH
Fox News headline Published March 28, 2026 1:02pm 500 groups with $3B in revenues are behind the #NoKings protests and communist call for 'revolution' A Fox News Digital investigation finds the "No Kings" protests are backed by a network of about 500 groups with an estimated $3 billion in annual revenue, including communist and socialist organizations calling for "revolution." By Asra Q. Nomani • Fox News Compare this to Tea Party coverage with daily reporting even though there were only 300k-400k at the peak and multiple billionaires funded it and rented stadiums.
Trump “Truth social” March 19, 2026 blaming Israel for attacking Iran and attempting to tell Israel to stop launching attacks.
From armscontrol.org article linked by Cato article. Key point is Witkoff, a real estate guy, trying to understand nuclear reactors and so badly messing up. https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2026-03-11/us-negotiators-were-ill-prepared-serious-nuclear-negotiations-iran “…larger enrichment program that it was willing to accept—nobody puts their bottom line in a first proposal. But Wikoff appeared to dismiss engaging with Iran on the premise of a needs-based enrichment program (after a multi-year pause) because he misunderstood the operation of the TRR.”
Randy Herman @randyhermanlaw... • 2d Judge: I believe this issue probably affects lots of other cases in which you have been involved Randy Herman @randyhermanlaw... • 2d Judge: I want you to explain why your actions don't violate the NC Rules of Professional Conduct Renfer: this was not intentional. I did not intend to file a draft. I did not intend to mislead or defraud the court. Randy Herman @randyhermanlaw.com Renfer also claims that his filings were approved by his bosses and that should insulate him 1:44 PM • Mar 10, 2026
https://news3lv.com/news/local/nye-county-clerk-tempers-hand-count-expectations-calls-it-a-test ….. from middle of article… However, on day one at least, Kampf admitted the process wasn’t smooth. He blamed many of the hiccups on the age of those counting. Had he had months to prepare, he said he could’ve interviewed more people and selected a more varied demographic of counters. “We took the volunteers we had and put them to work. Unfortunately, you get a lot of mistakes when you get people in our demographic,” he said. “In this town, 85% of the people are 56 years and older. Sometimes even I make mistakes, you know, my ripe age of 68. So we had to send back a lot of votes for ballots for recount. But again, that's part of the quality control process is to make sure that we get the vote right.” Kampf said each volunteer works as long as they can, but he planned many would be working long hours and through the weekend. They take breaks and on Friday, Kampf had pizza delivered for lunch. After the first day, Kampf estimated there was a 25% error rate. He admitted it was “very, very high,” but remained optimistic it would improve after each day. As for the volunteers who couldn’t seem to keep up or grasp the process, Kampf said he would thank them for the support, but send them on their way. Kampf said about 2500 votes were hand-counted on day one and he was confident they could keep the rate up and hit the deadline. As of Nov. 12, Nye County had reported over 20,000 votes came in for the midterm.
From Wikipedia entry on Jack Smith classified documents case. A laptop and thumb drive belonging to a former Oval Office aide, Chamberlain Harris, were handed over. Harris had scanned some documents, consisting of Trump's travel schedules, onto her two devices, evidently unaware they were classified.[27][28]
Marshallproject.org That changed in 1997, when Australian forensic scientist Roland van Oorschot stunned the criminal justice world with a nine-paragraph paper titled "DNA Fingerprints from Fingerprints." It revealed that DNA could be detected not just from bodily fluids but from traces left by a touch. Investigators across the globe began scouring crime scenes for anything—a doorknob, a countertop, a knife handle—that a perpetrator may have tainted with incriminating "touch" DNA.But van Oorschot's paper also contained a vital observation: Some people's DNA appeared on things that they had never touched.In the years since, van Oorschot's lab has been one of the few to investigate this phenomenon, dubbed "secondary transfer." What they have learned is that, once it's out in the world, DNA doesn't always stay put.
From House bill https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr22/BILLS-119hr22eh.xml …. Section 2.b.5 “(5) A valid government-issued photo identification card issued by a Federal, State or Tribal government other than an identification described in paragraphs (1) through (4), but only if presented together with one or more of the following: “(A) A certified birth certificate issued by a State, a unit of local government in a State, or a Tribal government which— “(i) was issued by the State, unit of local government, or Tribal government in which the applicant was born; “(ii) was filed with the office responsible for keeping vital records in the State; “(iii) includes the full name, date of birth, and place of birth of the applicant; “(iv) lists the full names of one or both of the parents of the applicant; “(v) has the signature of an individual who is authorized to sign birth certificates on behalf of the State, unit of local government, or Tribal government in which the applicant was born; “(vi) includes the date that the certificate was filed with the office responsible for keeping vital records in the State; and “(vii) has the seal of the State, unit of local government, or Tribal government that issued the birth certificate. “(B) An extract from a United States hospital Record of Birth created at the time of the applicant's birth which indicates that the applicant’s place of birth was in the United States. …
Photo from creek cleanup showing what appears to be a pineapple type grenade next to rocks and a dinner fork. Found at the bottom of a creek during a volunteer cleanup day.
From: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna79434 … April 12, 2023, 4:46 PM EDT By Associated Press The California Civil Rights Department has voluntarily dismissed its case alleging caste discrimination against two Cisco engineers, while still keeping alive its litigation against the Silicon Valley tech giant. The two Cisco supervisors, Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella, were accused in the department’s lawsuit of discriminating and harassing an employee on the basis of caste — a division of people based on birth or descent. That case was dismissed by an order of the Santa Clara Superior County Court last week. The employee belonged to the Dalit community, a group that is at the bottom rung of the caste system which took root and evolved in India and elsewhere in the subcontinent. …
The argument is basically about weighing responsible publishing against our right to blather on to strangers online. That blather has, arguably, since lies/distortions/ propaganda/cruelty drive the internet, done as much harm as good. Under your logic, newspapers would already be being sued. 6:42 AM • Dec 13, 2025
From techdirt.com Now, to tackle the related argument — that 230 by itself provides no incentive to moderate — that is also wrong. Because courts have ruled Section (c)(1) to have immunized moderation choices, and Section (c)(2) explicitly says that sites are not liable for their moderation choices, sites actually have a very strong incentive provided by 230 to moderate. Indeed, this is one key reason why Section 230 was written in the first place. It was done in response to a ruling in the Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy lawsuit, in which Prodigy, in an effort to provide a “family friendly” environment, did some moderation of its message boards. The judge in that case rules that since Prodigy did moderate the boards, that meant it would be liable for anything it left up.
Traditional media — newspapers, magazines, radio, and television — have always been responsible for all content published and distributed. Responsibility for an advertisement published in the New York Times in 1960 was the issue in NY Times v Sullivan. But the unusual legal form of the new digital media soon became clear with two libel cases from the early 1990s: Cubby v Compuserv (1991) and Stratton Oakmont v Prodigy (1995) If an ISP or a content provider took any steps to edit or block some content, they were considered to be responsible for ALL of that content. If the ISP acted as a distributor and took a “hands off” approach, without any editing whatsoever, they were NOT considered responsible for any content. And so, to be safe, the ISPs did nothing at all. This lack of responsibility created a moral panic in 1995. One of the most alarming things was that pornographic videos were easily available to children, and a kind of moral panic took place, as seen in this July 3, 1995 Time Magazine cover.
Page 6 of paper showing different types of coding errors in 3 different LLMs.
BBB: CBO and The Budget Lab calculations of tax breaks by income quintile. Shows poorest lost 2.3% while richest gained 2.3% with middle class getting 0 to 1.5%. However, 2.3% tax break on richest Americans translates to the largest portion of the total money.
DOJ website justice.gov 09/30/2021 showing the guilty plea of Boogaloo boi. MINNEAPOLIS - A Texas man pleaded guilty today to a federal riot charge in connection to the 2020 civil unrest, announced Acting U.S. Attorney W. Anders Folk. According to court documents, Ivan Hunter, 24, admitted to traveling from San Antonio, Texas to Minneapolis with the intent to participate in a riot. Hunter is a self-described member of the Boogaloo Bois, a loosely connected group of individuals who espouse violent antigovernment sentiments. The term "Boogaloo" itself references an impending second civil war in the United States and is associated with violent uprisings against the government.
Newsweek article describing the Mennonite community of Texas and their central role in the measles outbreak of 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/texas-measles-outbreak-mennonites-2034627
Beats Power Beats 3 mini over-ear headphones. Discontinued 😢
Beats Flex headphones. Wireless but has wire and separate microphone connecting the two ear buds.
From acm.org paper in 2024 titled “Is Stack Overflow Obsolete? An Empirical Study of the Characteristics of ChatGPT Answers to Stack Overflow Questions” Key point - ChatGPT provided the wrong answers 52% of the time to specific programming questions. ABSTRACT Q&A platforms have been crucial for the online help-seeking behav- ior of programmers. However, the recent popularity of ChatGPT is altering this trend. Despite this popularity, no comprehensive study has been conducted to evaluate the characteristics of ChatGPT’s an- swers to programming questions. To bridge the gap, we conducted the first in-depth analysis of ChatGPT answers to 517 programming questions on Stack Overflow and examined the correctness, consis- tency, comprehensiveness, and conciseness of ChatGPT answers. Furthermore, we conducted a large-scale linguistic analysis, as well as a user study, to understand the characteristics of ChatGPT an- swers from linguistic and human aspects. Our analysis shows that 52% of ChatGPT answers contain incorrect information and 77% are verbose. Nonetheless, our user study participants still preferred ChatGPT answers 35% of the time due to their comprehensiveness and well-articulated language style. However, they also overlooked the misinformation in the ChatGPT answers 39% of the time. This implies the need to counter misinformation in ChatGPT answers to programming questions and raise awareness of the risks associated with seemingly correct answers.
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0100-0199/0112/Sections/0112.51.html (1) By executive order stating the grounds for the suspension and filed with the Secretary of State, the Governor may suspend from office any elected or appointed municipal official for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, habitual drunkenness, incompetence, or permanent inability to perform official duties. (2) Whenever any elected or appointed municipal official is arrested for a felony or for a misdemeanor related to the duties of office or is indicted or informed against for the commission of a federal felony or misdemeanor or state felony or misdemeanor, the Governor has the power to suspend such municipal official from office. (3) The suspension of such official by the Governor creates a temporary vacancy in such office during the suspension. Any temporary vacancy in office created by suspension of an official under the provisions of this section shall be filled by a temporary appointment to such office for the period of the suspension. Such temporary appointment shall be made in the same manner and by the same authority by which a permanent vacancy in such office is filled as provided by law. If no provision for filling a permanent vacancy in such office is provided by law, the temporary appointment shall be made by the Governor. (4) No municipal official who has been suspended from office under this section may perform any official act, duty, or function during his or her suspension; receive any pay or allowance during his or her suspension; or be entitled to any of the emoluments or privileges of his or her office during suspension.
Snipped from Fortune Magazine Dec 2023 issue Goodman's criticism stems from Boring's inability to finish a public tunnel project anywhere else. The Boring Company has raised more than $795 million from venture capitalists on Musk's big idea: underground, multi-station roadways where autonomous vehicles could shoot off individuals to their destination at speeds of 150 miles per hour. But on the ground, after seven years, Boring is only operating a mere 2.4 miles of operational tunnel, according to Las Vegas agencies and contracts reviewed by Fortune. Meanwhile Boring projects from California to Illinois, Texas, Florida, and Maryland have all fizzled or been disbanded. (Davis, Musk, and several of Boring's investors did not respond to requests for an interview.) (Picture caption) Left: One of five stations where travelers can access the Boring Co.'s tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center. Right: A map for convention-goers illustrates where they can catch a ride.
Press release titled Self-Described Member of “Boogaloo Bois” Pleads Guilty to Riot Thursday, September 30, 2021 From justice.gov web site
The teachings of republican Jesus, a satire of all the actual teachings of Jesus
Forbes article Nov 2024: A 2023 civil rights complaint against Harvard reported that between 2014 and 2019, donor-related applicants were a whopping seven times more likely to be admitted to Harvard than other applicants, while legacy applicants were almost six times more likely to be admitted. Though "recruited athletes, legacies, relatives of donors and children of faculty and staff" make up less than 5% of the applicant pool, they constitute approximately 30% of those accepted each year. At Princeton, legacy applicants are four times more likely to earn admission. In a 2022 interview, Notre Dame's former head of enrollment Don Bishop estimated that 19-25% of the school's incoming class is made up of legacy students each year. The school has one of the highest rates of legacy admission nationally. In other words, at top schools, legacy status still matters-and it matters a lot.
Orange cat sitting on top of highest kitchen counter, looking down with a look of haughty disappointment and disapproval.
An orange cat is curled up on a white fluffy fleece blanket on the couch. Its eyes are closed in a peaceful slumber with its head leaning against the armrest.
An orange cat with a holiday collar is carefully sniffing and tasting a rosemary plant that is shaped into a Christmas tree. Rosemary is know to deter cats, but apparently the cat doesn’t know this.
Orange cat sitting on blanket. His face is lit up and glowing with the afternoon sun. His eyes are closed in a peaceful nap.