tingilinde

the difference between the yips and the twisties

In Tokyo Simone Biles had a case of the twists.  The Real Science of Sport podcast has been having daily segments on the Paris Olympics and posted a nice description on the difference between the yips and twisties (audio about 11 min)

nazi tank counting

the end of voting

An excellent short piece by Greg Blonder.

 

a bit of olympic history

Donald Trump and many other Republicans including J.D. Vance called Simone Biles any number of things including weak, quitter, loser and not American.    Quite possibly the greatest athlete of this century. One of those rare icons who, by their actions, even rise above the Olympics.

 

values of the gop

 

 

 

school vouchers in arizona

One of the goals of the GOP is to move tax money intended for public schools to private, often religious and even more often low quality, schools.  Pro Publica looks at Arizona's experience.  Other conservative states are rushing in and national adoptation is a piece of Project 2025.

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Yet in a lesson for these other states, Arizona’s voucher experiment has since precipitated a budget meltdown. The state this year faced a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, much of which was a result of the new voucher spending, according to the Grand Canyon Institute, a local nonpartisan fiscal and economic policy think tank. Last fiscal year alone, the price tag of universal vouchers in Arizona skyrocketed from an original official estimate of just under $65 million to roughly $332 million, the Grand Canyon analysis found; another $429 million in costs is expected this year.

As a result of all this unexpected spending, alongside some recent revenue losses, Arizona is now having to make deep cuts to a wide swath of critical state programs and projects, the pain of which will be felt by average Arizonans who may or may not have school-aged children.

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and on the impact of Project 2025 on educaton

 

 

 

 

and heavily biased "journalism"

The respected independent press watch organization on the NY Times.

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In one small paragraph, Kahn outdid himself. He:

° Dismissed the importance of democracy as a political issue.
° Disclosed that the Times coverage is poll driven.
° Asserted that coverage of the economy and immigration is favorable to Trump.
° Whined that more coverage of democracy was tantamount to becoming a partisan publication.

Here’s what he said:

It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one — immigration happens to be the top [of polls], and the economy and inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things because they’re favorable to Trump and minimize them? I don’t even know how it’s supposed to work in the view of Dan Pfeiffer or the White House. We become an instrument of the Biden campaign?

(Smith had asked Kahn to respond to Pfeiffer, a former Obama official, who recently complained that the editors at the Times “do not see their job as saving democracy or stopping an authoritarian from taking power.”)

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a look at vance

From Talking Points Memo (recommeneded by journalism prof Dan Gillmor as one of the most reputable sources of reporting)

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The “childless cat lady” trope isn’t the only thing Vance relies on to make this attack.

While running for his current Senate seat in 2021, the former venture capitalist really leaned into a similar talking point: People without kids don’t have a direct stake in the future of this country, and are less entitled to make important decisions.

“I needed to speak DIRECTLY to patriots like you about the serious issue of radical childless leaders in this country,” reads a 2021 Vance fundraising email. “We can’t have people who don’t have a direct stake in this country making our most important decisions.

“We’ve allowed ourselves to be dominated by childless sociopaths – they’re invested in NOTHING because they’re not invested in this country’s children. Fighting back won’t be easy – our childless opponents have a lot of free time. That’s why I need YOU to stand with me,” he continues.

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hcr on the gop plan to kill democracy

The historian offers comments on recent and past Trump statements and Project 2025 (which is deeply embedded as the GOP Christian Nationalist plan)

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The idea that democracy must be overturned in order to enable a small group of leaders to restore virtue to a nation is at the center of the “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy” championed by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán’s imposition of an authoritarian Christian nationalism on a former democracy, in turn, has inspired the far-right figures that are currently in charge of the Republican Party. As Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts put it: “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”

Kevin Roberts has called for “institutionalizing Trumpism” and pulled together dozens of right-wing institutions behind the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 to create a blueprint for a second Trump term. Those who created Project 2025 are closely connected to the Trump team, and Trump praised its creators and its ideas.

Today, The New Republic published the foreword Vance wrote for Kevin Roberts’s forthcoming book. Vance makes it clear he sees Kevin Roberts and himself as working together to create “a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics.” Like others on the Christian right, Vance argues that “the Left” has captured the country’s institutions and that those institutions must be uprooted and those in them replaced with right-wing Christians in order to restore what they see—inaccurately—as traditional America.

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animal alphabets and .. language?

A fun listen

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Have scientists discovered an alphabet in whale calls? As researchers try to decipher the series of clicks made by sperm whales, we ask whether these cetaceans might have language, and if it follows that whales are thinking animals too. Could we one day get a peek into the thoughts of a humpback whale? Meanwhile, somewhere along the long path of evolution, one species emerged with an impressive gift for gab. Are speech and language unique human superpowers?

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