The development of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia and the Middle East led to a substantial increase in violence between inhabitants. Laws, centralized administration, trade and culture then caused the ratio of violent deaths to fall back again in the Early and Middle Bronze Age (3,300 to 1,500 BCE). This is the conclusion of an international team of researchers from the Universities of Tübingen, Barcelona and Warsaw. Their results were published in Nature Human Behaviour.

Billionaire Charles Koch, who will turn 88 on November 1, is funneling his wealth into two secretive organizations that can continue his right-wing political advocacy for years. Koch structured more than $5 billion in donations to exploit a loophole to allow him to avoid paying capital gains or gift taxes. It's not surprising that Koch is familiar with the loophole — he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying to create it.

One fundamental way this double standard operates is through a false equivalence, a two-sides-ism that hides the massive asymmetry of power between the state of Israel and the scattered population groupings that make up the Palestinian people. They’re not equal. One dominates while the other is dominated. One colonizes. The other is colonized.

Isn’t it risky for him to testify? Won’t he be subjected to withering cross-examination from well-prepared prosecutors who will trap him in lies? Well! I mean, sure, probably. But if he does not testify, all the jury will have is (1) the testimony of FTX customers who are like “all our money is gone,” (2) the testimony of all of his closest friends and colleagues testifying “yeah we stole all the money because Sam told us to” and (3) screenshots of FTX computer code that is like “IF you_feel_like_it THEN steal(all.the.money).” His testimony just cannot make things worse! The jury is going to get the prosecutors’ story and it is really, really, really, really bad for Bankman-Fried. He needs to tell his side of the story to have any shot at all. If his testimony has a 10% chance of being compelling and a 90% chance of being disastrous, that is all upside.4 If he does not testify, that is 100% disastrous.

Instead, Iger is trying “incremental fixes,” the report said, tinkering with the movie release calendar, raising Disney+ subscription prices , publicly toying with selling ABC and inking a sports-betting deal tied to ESPN.

frail or unhealthy individuals were more likely to die during the pandemic than those who were not frail. During the flu, the estimated hazards for individuals with periosteal lesions that were active at the time of death were over two times higher compared to the control group

Trump’s rhetoric does not alter attitudes toward democracy as a preferred system but does reduce support for inclusiveness and equality among his supporters

3.3 Parentheses

Use parentheses sparingly.

It is fine, though not required, to use parentheses around tuples. Do not use them in return statements or conditional statements unless using parentheses for implied line continuation or to indicate a tuple.

view source -> copy "browse_id" value
insert into https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNELID

The report also noted that Biden had asked Congress in his fiscal 2022 budget request to cancel any “unobligated” funding, meaning money that hadn’t yet been contracted, for border barriers. “Cancellation of this funding can only be accomplished through a duly enacted law,” GAO said, adding that Biden can’t legally withhold the funding based only on his request.

“Nearly three years into a new administration, any further delay would pretty clearly be intentional disregard for following the appropriations statute as Congress drafted and the president signed,” Murphy said.

What’s the penalty if Biden violated the impoundment law? Murphy explained that GAO can sue to force compliance. “But the biggest consequence is political. Clearly and deliberately flaunting the will of Congress is generally not looked upon highly by Congress,” he said.

GAO said the Trump administration violated the act in withholding security assistance to Ukraine in 2019, a decision Democrats used in Trump’s first impeachment case.

As for Biden’s action on border wall spending, he said he still doesn’t think a wall is effective. Asked whether he thought a border wall “works,” Biden responded: “No.”

It was equally shocking to learn several days after Trump’s private conflab with the Russian Foreign Minister and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. that he had “shared secrets about Israel” with the two Russian officials.
Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”

25% want to annex Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley in the West Bank even without US support
25% want it only with US backing
30% oppose it
The Trump plan also envisages negotiations leading to a Palestinian state under near-complete Israeli security control, creating what Palestinians leaders say would be an unviable country
Israeli cabinet minister Tzachi Hanegbi said on Army Radio on Wednesday that settlers need not worry “because there will never be” a Palestinian state. Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014, part of a now-moribund peace process that began in the 1990s.
This week, Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz ordered the military to begin preparing for the consequences of annexation, which could stoke Palestinian unrest.

28% support the two-state solution
53% support a return to an armed intifada, 47% support waging peaceful resistance, and 26% support a one-state solution
52% believe that armed action is the best way to end occupation

23andMe confirmed hackers used stolen credentials from other hacks to gain access to accounts, which a report says were then used to find and scrape other users’ information.

Dark matter might have its own force, mediated by dark photons similar to the way electromagnetism is mediated by photons. A new study shows that not only are dark photons consistent with experiments in particle physics, they could also solve the g-2 anomaly for muons.

Experimentally, g-2 = 0.00233184121. Theoretical calculations put g-2 = 0.00233183620. This is known as the g-2 anomaly and is beyond irksome. If you include dark photon interactions, the theoretical result becomes g-2 = 0.00233183939, which is significantly better. Overall, the dark photon model is preferred over the standard model at 6.5 sigma, which is a very strong result.

the biggest damage he's done is to faith in democracy

Trump supporters exposed to Trump’s norm-violating tweets were less likely to disagree with statement such as “Everyone should be allowed to vote” and “The more people participate in politics and elections, the better.” Trump’s general norm violations also decreased support for political equality among Trump supporters (e.g., “The government should never treat members of one religion differently than members of any other religion”).

“I’ll answer one question on the border wall: The border wall – the money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t, they wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I can’t stop that,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office.

Asked whether he believes the border wall works, Biden answered, “No.”