Eric Maskin, a Harvard economist and a 2007 Nobel laureate, said: “I…blame politicians who know better for not trying harder.” Maskin said he can’t recall an election cycle that reeked so badly of rotten policy. “I think this may be a new low,” he said.
Not partisan, says WSJ.
The search for who was behind the manufacturing, sale and distribution of the pagers has pointed to some companies that were created in recent years, with little to no paper trail of their activities and run by mysterious business people with a vague online footprint and little experience in the telecommunications industry.
Supply-chain attacks (which are not "hacks" in the conventional sense but might involve some hacking in the execution) have been an established threat in the software world for some time now.
This current attack on Hezbollah's pagers, widely assumed to have been conducted by Israeli operatives, breaks new ground. Dramatically.
And, clearly, underlines new concerns. Intricate international supply chains have become commonplace and the global enterprise is honeycombed with shell companies and ambiguities both legal and political. A lot hinges on just plain trust — which may not be so just plain anymore. And the amount of tweaking it would take to modify, say, a microchip is literally microscopic.
O brave new world.
The week of their debate, Kamala Harris outspent Donald Trump by 20 to 1 on Facebook and Instagram. It was just one sign of how uneven their online advertising battle has become.
The more things change…
Endowment for the Humanities grant last year to research liberal gun owners, found that gay and transgender gun owners worried about rising hate crimes and Jewish people feared potential violence from pro-Palestinian groups or individuals. Black gun owners shared similar anxieties, along with mistrust of police in some areas and concerns about crime.
On this side we have…
The lawsuit asserts that the companies’ actions leading up to the catastrophe were “outrageous, grossly negligent, willful, wanton, and reckless.”
Wow.
The U.S. Government hopped on that bridge collision when it happened, six months ago, promising to front the money for rebuilding it to avoid delay, get it back up right away, toot sweet [I know, I know].
I met somebody last week who had just flown over Baltimore harbor the day before, took a picture from the airplane window. There is, of course, no bridge there, nor any sign of construction.
Imagine.
The easy answer is that it is our fundamental power infrastructure, which supplies electricity for everything from household lights and refrigerators to the internet, data centers, and hospitals. But go deeper, and one ends up quickly in a jumble of regulatory authorities, utilities, wires, power plants, early-20th-century technologies, and cutting-edge science – as well as big questions about what power and life should look like in the 21st century.
I guess "early-20th-century technologies" are not "cutting-edge science" to these guys. Here, in New England, I'm pretty sure we're still using the same wires the Pilgrims hung on poles.
Lutheranism came to the Upper Midwest with 19th-century Scandinavian and German settlers, and it remains the dominant faith together with Catholicism. Potlucks and that staple of Midwestern lore, lutefisk — dried cod cured in lye — remain part of rural church life.
Seriously, AP, you should know better. Potlucks come before everything in Minnesota. In most of the Midwest, in fact. Although lutefisk is, well, not so much.
(I worked in a butcher shop for a while when I was in high school. One of my once-a-week jobs was to change the brine on the lutefisk in the very smelly pan at the back of the cooler. And until this very moment I have managed to not even think of it for three quarters of a century.)
You can be in the worst mood, and when you get in a Rocket Car, you’re happy.
Domestic ducks in the wild become easy targets for predators; they are literally sitting ducks [sigh]. Being bred and reared for the meat industry means most domestic ducks can’t fly because their bodies are oversized and their wings are too small. And Chicago has no shortage of possible predators, including coyotes, foxes, raccoons, hawks and great horned owls. As pets, ducks also learn to depend on humans for food so they aren’t prepared to forage.
Building a family around a sleeper agent comes with a heavy price—presenting ethical quandaries so profound that Western intelligence services rarely go that route.
Spying is an ethical quandary entire. Adding fake identities and phoney nationalities may muddy the water, but doesn't make it any wetter than it was.
We've come a long way from "gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail." There's likely no way back.
Still, commanders have long cautioned that their biggest recruiting challenge may be more about basic fitness. Some three-quarters of 17-to-24-year-olds don’t qualify for military service in the first place because of physical fitness levels, mental health challenges, or drug use, both recreational and prescribed.
Military aside, this level of fitness among young people seems concerning. It's not just about pushups; it's about the ability to thrive — or even survive — in a world that is.
