Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet:
Florida Students Lose Access to Classroom Books
Popular Information’s Judd Legum reports on how Florida school districts and teachers are trying to implement some of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) worst culture war legislation. School districts are now telling teachers—under threat of felony prosecution—to remove student access to books in their classrooms until a media specialist can vet the books.
“Teachers in Manatee County, Florida, are being told to make their classroom libraries — and any other “unvetted” book — inaccessible to students, or risk felony prosecution. The new policy is part of an effort to comply with new laws and regulations championed by Governor Ron DeSantis (R). It is based on the premise, promoted by right-wing advocacy groups, that teachers and librarians are using books to “groom” students or indoctrinate them with leftist ideologies.
Kevin Chapman, the Chief of Staff for the Manatee County School District, told Popular Information that the policy was communicated to principals in a meeting last Wednesday. Individual schools are now in the process of informing teachers and other staff.”
And, to be clear, this isn’t about just one Florida county. It is happening statewide.
“Similar policies will be implemented in schools across Florida. Some Florida schools do not have a media specialist, making the process even more cumbersome.
That review must also be consistent with a complex training, which was heavily influenced by right-wing groups like Moms For Liberty and approved by the Florida Department of Education just last week. Any mistake by a librarian or others could result in criminal prosecution. This process must be repeated for any book brought into the school on an ongoing basis. But librarians and teachers are not being provided with any additional compensation for the extra work.”
And just in time for Florida Literacy Week! The laws that red state politicians pass to own the libs don’t die at the end of the celebratory press conference. School teachers and districts must implement them, and students encounter a degraded learning environment.
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Why Ukraine Needs to Win
As NATO nations consider what additional arms to provide Ukraine, historian and authoritarian expert Timothy Snyder shares 15 reasons why the world needs Ukraine to win the war Russia started.
Snyder starts his list with the need to halt Russian atrocities and its genocidal occupation. He writes:
“I am a historian of political atrocity, and for me personally number 1 — defeating an ongoing genocidal project — would be more than enough reason to want Ukrainian victory. But every single one of the other fourteen is hugely significant. Each presents the kind of opportunity that generations of policy planners wish for, but almost never get. Much has been done, we have not yet seen and seized the moment.”
In yesterday’s Atlantic Daily newsletter, Tom Nichols made a similar point: “At this point, the fight in Ukraine is not about borders or flags but about what kind of world we’ve built over the past century, and whether that world can sustain itself in the face of limitless brutality. As the Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said in Davos last week: “We don’t know when the war ends, but Ukraine has to win. I don’t see another choice.”
Neither do I.
Abortion, Every Day
Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day recaps the news from across the country regarding reproductive freedom and sexual and reproductive health care. Here are some stories that she highlights:
- Why hasn’t there been more media coverage of the extreme Arkansas anti-abortion bill that would criminalize miscarriages?
- A Tampa-based doctor describes the suffering Florida’s 15-week ban caused a pregnant woman with twins when one of the fetuses began to deliver. The patient had to wait for treatment because the doctors feared violating the law. As OBGYN Rachel Rapkin explained, “Because of the 15-week ban, she was forced to come to the office every day, as she waited in agony for the cardiac activity to stop or for her to develop signs of infection before the hospital would agree to end her pregnancy. By the end of the week, neither fetus had a heartbeat and doctors were finally permitted to end her pregnancy and prevent her from going into deadly septic shock.”
- And Idaho patients face similar problems: “The Idaho woman whose story went viral after she documented being denied miscarriage treatment in a series of videos on TikTok describes her 19-day ordeal and what if felt like to have a doctor explain that there was “trepidation” to give her care because of state law…”
- Vox’s Ian Millhiser explains why whether or not mailing abortion medication remains legal likely depends on how activist Republican judges rule and whether a Democrat or Republican is in the White House because of the Comstock Act. So I’m not optimistic.
The Best Place to Hide During a Nuclear Exchange
Here’s information I hope we never have to use: Gizmodo shares where physicists have determined is the best place to seek shelter during a nuclear attack.
“A new study provides a reality check about your chances of surviving a nuclear explosion. It suggests that, even if you’re hiding indoors and far away enough to avoid immediate disintegration, the high-speed winds created from the blast could still be enough to kill or seriously injure you. But the findings also indicate the best locations within a building to take shelter, should the worst-case scenario ever occur.
…
The worst places to hide seem to be in the direct vicinity of the windows, door openings, and hallways, since this is where the air will be most funneled through in the shockwave. But airspeeds are likely to be lowest in the room corners away from these openings along the walls facing the blast, so these areas should be the best to take immediate shelter.”
Nukemaps can help you figure out whether you’ll be outside the incineration radius of a nuclear explosion. You can go to that site, select a location, and decide what kind of nuclear weapon should explode there. It looks like I’d have a shot of surviving the initial burst of a detonation at the nearest Air Force Base to where I live. Of course, there’s still the radiation and radical environmental damage with which to contend, but one problem at a time.
Oh, and I should mention that Timothy Snyder has “preventing the spread of nuclear weapons” as number 10 and “to reduce the risk of nuclear war” as number 11 on his list of reasons Ukraine needs to win, which I mentioned above. I wish this weren’t so relevant.
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Opposing Putin
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny flew back to Russia two years ago this month despite knowing he would likely be arrested upon his return. Navalny had been in Germany to recover from an attempt to assassinate him using a Novichok nerve agent.
The Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr profiles Maria Pevchikh and the work she has continued to lead with Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation as the opposition leader continues to be jailed by Vladimir Putin’s regime.
“One of the foundation’s main objectives at the moment is simply to keep Navalny in the news. Inside Russia, they’re doing so via a whole new slew of YouTube channels, bringing news of the war to the public via the one channel that’s still available to them. And in the west, they’re doing it via a documentary, Navalny, an independent feature released last year that’s been nominated for a Bafta and shortlisted for an Oscar. Awards season is in full swing and for months Pevchikh and Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, have been flying back and forth to America to talk and appear on panels and meet the great and the good. “I honestly don’t know where we would be without the documentary,” Pevchikh says. “It’s mentioned in every meeting I have with ministers or their staff. Everybody knows who he is because of it. And who I am.”
Cadwalladr tells the story of the foundation and its efforts to oppose Putin. It is difficult—but essential—work. And Navalny just earned an Oscar nomination for best feature-length documentary. It is streaming on HBO Max, and I thought it was outstanding.
420 Jokes are Serious
I think the ongoing security fraud trial about Elon Musk’s August 7, 2018, tweet claiming he had secured funding to take Tesla private for $420 a share merits more attention.
As the Verge’s Andrew J. Hawkins reports from the trial: “In testimony during his ongoing securities fraud trial on Monday, Musk argued that the $420-a-share price he proposed back in his infamous “funding secured” tweet from 2018 wasn’t a weed joke but actually just a coincidence — with a dash of karma.
Musk was asked about the proposed share price by Nicholas Porritt, an attorney for a class of Tesla investors who are suing the billionaire CEO for the loss of millions of dollars that they say resulted from his bungled attempt to take Tesla private. And it prompted an eyebrow-raising response from Musk regarding what he considered a serious proposal despite nearly everyone else taking it as an obvious reference to cannabis.
“You rounded up to 420 because you thought that would be a joke that your girlfriend will enjoy, isn’t that correct?” Porritt asked. “No,” Musk said, adding, “there is some, I think, karma around 420. I should question whether that is good or bad karma at this point.”
Buying Twitter for $54.20 a share sure has worked out for Musk. And that 420 reference—I’m sure—is just a coincidence too.
Musk has already paid a $40 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission about the tweet. Still, he could be on the hook for billions more in damages if the jury finds him guilty of knowingly tweeting false information.
The California Senate Race
Rep. Barbara Lee‘s (D) supporters are making the case that she will run to serve one term as a transitional figure to counter arguments that the 76-year-old may be too old for the job.
Art and A.I.
The Guardian’s Sarah Shaffi writes about artists who are angry that companies used their work without permission to train generative A.I. programs.
As Shaffi explains, “Beyond creativity, there are deeper issues. An online campaign – #NotoAIArt – has seen artists sharing concerns about the legality of AI image generators, and about how they have the potential to devalue the skill of illustration. To create images from prompts, AI generators rely on databases of already existing art and text. These comprise billions of images that have been scraped from the internet. Among the biggest is the open-source LAION-5B dataset, used by DDG’s Text 2 Dream. Kaloyan Chernev, founder of DDG, says that the dataset comprises “largely public domain images sourced from the internet”, but many artists and illustrators say that databases will often also include a lot of copyrighted images.”
I also mentioned this controversy in my previous newsletter. It’s a complicated issue, but I think companies should ask artists to opt into these programs and companies should pay them royalties.
See The Comet!
Phil Plait explains how you can see the green comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) over the next few weeks. No, apparently, it doesn’t have a catchy name yet.
“The good news is its location in the sky: Toward the end of January it will be far to the north, close to the Big and Little Dippers, which means it’s up pretty much all night and decently high off the ground for most northern hemisphere observers. In fact, you may know the old method of finding Polaris, the North Star, by using the “pointer stars” at the end of the Big Dipper’s bowl, which point very nearly toward it.”
The comet has not been here for 50,000 years and may never return. So don’t miss your chance!
What Did the U.S. Women’s National Team Learn
Just Women’s Sports Claire Watkins examines what the United States Women’s National Team learned on its trip to New Zealand last week.
She writes, “The U.S. wrapped up their January game schedule in New Zealand on Friday, kicking off 2023 with two big wins, nine goals scored and none conceded. The trip was as much about getting acclimated to long travel in the World Cup host country as it was about friendly competition, but now that we’re under six months away from the tournament, every game matters.”
This Is Fine
K.C. Green, the creator of the webcomic that became one of the internet’s most recognizable memes, talks to the Washington Post’s Kelsey Ables about the 10th anniversary of This is Fine.
“Stressed college kids, irked congressmen, dispirited crypto bros and disillusioned Christian bloggers have all seen themselves or their situations in the dog. Wearing his tidy little hat and staring at his sad little coffee cup, he has become the internet’s patron saint of denial, a hero of helpless resignation.”
Final Thought
The institutionalization of election denial as GOP dogma and practice is another sign it is now an autocratic party. Election denial is not just propaganda but a form of corruption. Its ultimate purpose is to discredit the idea of choosing leaders through elections.
— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) 6:30 PM ∙ Jan 22, 2023
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