Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet:
Belated Holiday Greetings
I hope you had a fantastic Groundhog Day. Yesterday I went down a bit of an internet spiral learning about the day’s origins. Here’s where I started with a post from the History Channel:
“Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas, when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be. Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal—the hedgehog—as a means of predicting weather. Once they came to America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were plentiful in the Keystone State.”
I found that more interesting than speculating about an animal’s possible meteorological accuracy.
Exposing Junk Science in the Courts
ProPublica’s Sophia Kovatch, Pamela Colloff, and Brett Murphy write a great summary of the media outlet’s work exposing the use of junk science in our nation’s courtrooms.
The rise of the forensic science-focused television show over the past few decades has left far too many people with the impression that some scientifically debunked techniques are as accurate as a screenwriter or prosecutor may claim.
ProPublica has found several common traits that help define whether a technique is actually junk science:
- It has limited or no scientific evidence or research supporting it.
- It is presented as absolutely certain or conclusive, with no mention of error rates.
- It relies on subjective criteria or interpretation.
- It oversimplifies a complex science.
- It takes just a few days to become an “expert.”
Kovatch, Colloff, and Murphy write about what we’ve learned about 911 call analysis and bloodstain-pattern analysis as examples of the spread of junk science leading to the wrongful convictions of innocent people. They also note how our courts have had a junk science problem for decades.
“Forensic science has had a junk science problem for decades. In the 1980s and ’90s, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies used faulty microscopic hair comparison in hundreds of cases, only formally acknowledging the problematic science in 2015. Since at least the 1990s, law enforcement has used a written content analysis tool with no scientific backing to interpret witness and suspect statements.
The 2009 report from the National Academy of Sciences, which reviewed the state of forensic science in the United States, found that a lot of forensic evidence “was admitted into criminal trials without any meaningful scientific validation, determination of error rates, or reliability testing to explain the limits of the discipline.” A 2016 report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology found that despite efforts to fund forensic science research, there was still a major gap in understanding the scientific validity of many forensic methods.
In 2017, the Trump administration allowed the charter for the National Commission on Forensic Science to expire, further limiting the progress on validating forensic science methods.”
We need to do more to validate these scientific claims. We also should make it easier for convicted persons to access the courts when we learn that scientific testimony used in their case has been found to be unreliable.
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Fixing the Recall
One of my annoyances with our government is the continuing failure to deal with critical problems after events have exposed a vulnerability.
For example, the September 11, 2001, attacks revealed a significant continuity of government problem because our Constitution requires elections for the House of Representatives. The likely target for Flight 93 before the passengers intervened was the United States Capitol Building, where Congress was in session. If more than half of the members of the House were killed in an incident, it would be impossible for that chamber to convene for months while states held special elections to fill the seats. Here’s a great report from the Continuity of Government Commission that explains this vulnerability in more detail.
Congress hasn’t fixed this problem. I’m frustrated. It is also dangerous.
Anyway, that’s why I am glad when I see efforts to fix this kind of policy problem after they are exposed. The September 2021 effort to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom highlighted several issues with how those elections are conducted. California State Senator Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) has introduced SCA 1 to improve the rules in the state’s laws about recalling statewide officials (like the Governor) and legislators.
As Newman’s office explained in a press release: “With the support of the California Secretary of State, California Common Cause, and the League of Women Voters of California, State Senator Josh Newman introduced a constitutional amendment today that, when approved by California voters, will ensure that future statewide and legislative recalls in California are democratic, objective and less susceptible to hyper-partisan gamesmanship.
Under the provisions of SCA 1, in the event that the recall of a state or legislative official qualifies for the ballot, voters would be asked simply to make a judgement on the fitness of the elected official in question. The second question, in which voters choose from among replacement candidates in the event that a majority support a recall, would be eliminated, and the process for replacement would follow the same steps as currently provided in other scenarios in which a state or legislative office is vacated.”
Let’s quickly get this through the legislature and on the November 2024 ballot while we all remember why the current system doesn’t work. I don’t want to see us have these conversations again the next time a recall effort qualifies for the ballot.
How Police Use Digital Data to Prosecute Abortions
Police are using the digital tracks of texts, messenger conversations, and geolocation data to charge women and the people who help them with offenses under the forced-birth laws active after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year.
TechCrunch’s Runa Sandvik reports: “In late April, police in Nebraska received a tip saying 17-year-old Celeste Burgess had given birth to a stillborn baby and buried the body. Officers soon learned that her mother, Jessica Burgess, and a friend had helped her with transportation and burial. The police issued citations for concealing the death of another person and false reporting. But in June, they also charged Jessica with providing an abortion for her teenage daughter. Police had made the discovery after obtaining a warrant that required Meta to hand over their conversations on Facebook Messenger. The messages, which were not encrypted, showed the two had discussed obtaining and using abortion pills.
Warrants for digital data are routine in police investigations, which makes sense, given how much time we spend online. Technology giants have for years responded to valid court orders for specific information sought by law enforcement, though some companies have done more to fight for our privacy than others.”
While companies have to comply with subpoenas, they can do much more not to keep this sensitive data and ensure users are aware of all the risks. Sandvick summarizes many recent examples of tech companies’ failures.
“Last year, reporters found that Facebook and anti-abortion clinics collect sensitive information on would-be patients. The Markup also reported that Hey Jane, an online abortion pill provider, employed a series of online trackers that follow users across the internet — until the journalists reached out about the practice. More recently, ProPublica found nine pharmacies selling abortion pills also sharing sensitive data with Google and other third-parties. All nine were recommended by Plan C, which provides information about how to get abortion pills by mail. None responded to ProPublica’s request for comment.”
Aggressive prosecutors are going to come after this data. Technology companies have a responsibility not to put these women and people who can become pregnant at additional risk.
Putin’s Plot Against America
Puck’s Julia Ioffe explains why Western governments believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing to escalate the use of hybrid forms of warfare against the United States and other allies of Ukraine.
She writes, “People in the Biden administration are worried that this leaves Putin with one remaining option: unleashing a wave of asymmetric chaos across the West. Think political interference, cyberattacks, assassinations. “The Russians wrote the book on this but they haven’t turned it on,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, who once ran the C.I.A.’s operations in Europe, countering the Russian threat. “Why is that?”
As Ioffe notes, there are reasons to believe some of those efforts have begun. She describes an incident last month in Sweden where a far-right activist set a Quran on fire in front of the Turkish embassy. This complicated ongoing diplomatic negotiations to get Turkey to drop its objections to Sweden joining NATO. What a coincidence.
“Turkey, a majority Muslim country and NATO member which had already been on the fence about voting to accept Sweden into the alliance, was outraged. This triggered protests in Ankara, with Turkish protesters setting a Swedish flag on fire outside the Turkish embassy. The Turkish foreign minister said that the Swedish government was complicit in the Quran burning—Paludan had gotten a government permit for his demonstration, after all—and Turkey canceled a visit by the Swedish defense minister, who was on his way to Ankara to plead his country’s case for NATO accession. Within days, anti-Swedish protests broke out around the Muslim world. By week’s end Turkish President Reçep Tayyip Erdogan, who had already extracted significant concessions from the Swedes for his NATO vote, said, “Those who allow such blasphemy in front of our embassy can no longer expect our support for their NATO membership.”
But then an interesting bit of information emerged. Paludan, it turned out, hadn’t paid for his own protest permit. It had been paid for by a journalist, Chang Frick, who had once been a contributor to Russia Today and once bragged, while pulling out a wad of rubles, “Here is my real boss! It’s Putin!” The foreign minister of Finland also publicly hinted that the Quran-burning incident had ties to Russian intelligence.”
Ioffe explores several other recent incidents in the rest of her article.
Russia has excellent resources to fight—and demonstrated considerable success in fighting—an asymmetric war against the United States and other western countries. Ioffe’s Puck column was originally titled Tomorrow Will Be Worse for a good reason.
United States Claims Russia Violating Nuclear Arms Treaty
The Wall Street Journal’s Michael R. Gordon reports that the United States believes Russia is violating the last nuclear arms treaty that remains in place between the two countries.
“Russia has violated the New START treaty cutting long-range nuclear arms by refusing to allow on-site inspections and rebuffing Washington’s requests to meet to discuss its compliance concerns, the U.S. State Department said in a report sent to Congress on Tuesday.
The State Department’s finding that Moscow is in “noncompliance” with the accord marks the first time that the U.S. has accused Russia of violating the treaty, which entered into force in 2011.”
Our planet does not need a renewed race of nuclear arms escalation. As Gordon explains, the Russian invasion of Ukraine had already created concerns about the possibility of negotiating a new treaty to be in place when New START expires in 2026. These tensions are one of the reasons The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in January reset its Doomsday Clock to the closest-ever 90 seconds to midnight. I discussed that more in the January 26, 2023, edition of this newsletter.
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Florida’s Descent Into Fascism
While I subscribed to Craig Calcaterra’s Cup Of Coffee newsletter for the baseball news, I often nod my head at his political analysis. Since it was his Free Thursday, I hope you’ll read what he writes about how Ron DeSantis is turning Florida into a fascist state.
“I absolutely love the fact that the governor of the third largest state in the country is threatening teachers with felonies if they don’t empty classroom bookshelves, has essentially banned the teaching of Black history, seeks to terrorize and stigmatize students in furtherance of a hateful campaign against trans people, and is destroying an entire college for ideological reasons and The New York Fucking Times thinks that the key takeaway here is what it means for the 2024 horse race. Apparently, if it doesn’t happen in Manhattan it’s just theater.
My angst at the media aside, what is going on in Florida right now is profoundly reprehensible and downright dangerous.”
It is, indeed. We should pay attention now because we can see the signs of this descent into fascism right now. We won’t be able to claim to be surprised as DeSantis continues down this path and seeks national power.
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. Today she highlights efforts by Republican state legislators to ignore voters who want to keep reproductive rights on the books.
Valenti writes: “I told you this week about the bill that Wyoming Republicans are trying to pass which would ban abortion without exceptions for rape and incest—essentially, they’re supporting this new legislation because their trigger ban is currently blocked. The hope is that by passing HB152, they’ll have a ban that isn’t so easy for the courts to find unconstitutional. But some Republicans are concerned that in pushing for the new legislation—which would make the old ban moot—they’ll end up with no abortion ban at all.
But here’s the other super important thing to know about this bill: It’s the legislation that Republicans are using to declare that lawmakers have the same standing as the Courts to interpret the state constitution—which is a way for them to pass their abortion bans whether the courts agree or not. As you know, this has become a broad Republican strategy: Utah Republicans want to change the standards by which an injunction can be ordered as a way to remove the current block on the state’s abortion ban; and in Montana, Republicans have introduced legislation that gives them the power to declare that the state’s constitutional right to privacy doesn’t include abortion, no matter what the state Supreme Court says. And then there are the states like Missouri and Ohio who are trying to make it harder for voters to pass pro-choice ballot measures. They are going to do everything they can to bypass voters and the courts—because they know their bans are unpopular and unconstitutional.”
I also draw your attention to the story about a whistleblower who has exposed how a Kentucky crisis pregnancy center is “using expired disinfectant on trans-vaginal ultrasound probes” and how “lubricant gel staff used for trans-vaginal ultrasounds was actually only meant to be used externally on someone’s abdomen.” Crisis pregnancy centers are basically unregulated in red states that would regulate abortion clinics to the point that they would have to close because their hallways were not wide enough.
Women’s World Cup Hosts Protest Saudi Sponsorship
The co-hosts of the 2023 Women’s World Cup—Australia and New Zealand—are protesting the decision made by the international soccer governing body, FIFA, to sign a sponsorship deal with Saudi Arabia’s tourism authority given that country’s notorious record subjugating women.
“Such a confrontation between a World Cup host and FIFA is unprecedented in recent history, and is likely to shine more attention on so-called “sportswashing” investments by Saudi Arabia.
“We write to express our serious disappointment and concern at the news of the apparent appointment of Visit Saudi as a sponsor,” Chris Nikou of Australia and New Zealand’s Joanna Wood wrote Wednesday in the letter to FIFA seen by The Associated Press.”
This awful decision again demonstrates the ability of FIFA’s leadership to make the wrong decision because money is involved.
The Last Professional Player Drafted by the Montreal Expos Retires
Yeah, Tom Brady was also a pretty good baseball player. The Montreal Expos drafted Brady in the 18th round of the 1995 Major League Baseball Draft. As we know, Brady decided to go to Michigan after getting a football scholarship.
CBS Sports’ Mike Axisa features a quote in the Hartford Courant from Expos scout John Hughes describing the team’s evaluation of Brady, the baseball prospect:
“I never had as much fun scouting a player that we eventually didn’t sign,” chuckled Hughes, now an area scout with the Marlins. “We knew we didn’t have a good chance to sign him, because he had the scholarship (to play football for the University of) Michigan.
…
“He was drafted in the 18th round because everyone knew how difficult it would be to sign him,” Hughes said. “He was very talented. I mean on talent alone he would have been projected a late second-round pick.
“And I believe he would have made it, as a catcher, he would have gotten there.”
In his scouting reports, Hughes recalls Brady as already being around 6-3, “good athletic body” and “obviously” he could throw, Hughes said with a laugh. He had power to the pull-side and a good instinct for the game.”
Quick Pitches
People playing the online post-nuclear apocalyptic video game Fallout 76 can come across the Wasteland Theatre Company and its productions of Shakespeare’s plays. “Fallout 76 is an online open world; players travel wherever they wish and can bump into real-life strangers. With “area chat” enabled they can even talk to each other through microphones, calling out to a passer-by on the dusty road. This opens up endless opportunities for user-generated serendipity, and the Wasteland Theatre Company is one such experience: a delightfully unexpected thing for players to stumble upon in the devastation.” And yes: there is a reference to the traveling theater company from Emily St. John Mandel’s wonderful novel Station 11. Because, as St. John Mandel writes, “Survival is insufficient.” (Alysia Judge, The Guardian)
Tax experts who have examined Former President Donald Trump’s tax returns think they show how his finances are worse than many of us imagined. (Roger Sollenberger, The Daily Beast)
Figuring out what time it is on the moon is not easy because of the relativistic effects of gravity on time, but it is increasingly important to have a standard as countries plan more missions there over the coming decade. (Elizabeth Gibney, Nature)
Science explains why chocolate tastes so good, thanks partly to a 3-D printed tongue. (María Luisa Paúl, Washington Post)
Scientists have found more evidence supporting the theory behind one of the planet’s six mass extinctions. “The link between ancient volcanic eruptions and the most severe extinction event the world has ever seen just got even stronger. A new analysis of mercuryisotopes has provided evidence that a quarter of a billion years ago, far-flung places in Earth’s Southern Hemisphere were blanketed with debris from volcanic eruptions in Siberia. The so-called Great Dying, also called the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event, ensued, where most of life was wiped out under ash-filled skies.” (Clare Watson, Science Alert)
Let’s have more like this in Major League Baseball, please.
You ever seen a walk-off this electric?
Venezuela does it differently.
🎥 @ElExtrabase
— The Athletic MLB (@TheAthleticMLB) 5:08 AM ∙ Jan 31, 2023
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