I know that science itself is not a substitute for morality or public policy. It is a method for us to understand the choices we might have to make. 

The United States is the world leader in incarceration, despite the national incarceration rate being at its lowest in 20 years, with about 25% of the world’s prison population being in the US. The United States currently has over 2.1 million total prisoners. The prison population in 1972 was 200,000, almost 2 million less than it is today. The prison populations in each state vary in each state, with the highest rates in Louisiana and Oklahoma.

Between the constant mass shootings and the rate of incarceration we need a fundamental change in federal policy not bandaid laws, anyone’s “hopes and prayers”, or debate on how your personal rights outweigh the common good.

Not only are few US airports among the world’s best, but overall, they are in bad shape: In 2021, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave America’s aviation system a D+, largely because airports’ basic inefficiencies and lack of space lead to problems like delays and overcrowding. The airport grade was worse than those of other, oft-maligned parts of US transportation infrastructure, like bridges, which earned a C, and roads, which were given a D.

Just how far behind are we in keeping up with the rising rate of air travel? There’s been plenty of small renovations and expansions to existing airports over the years. Mere budget bandaids that barely put a dent in actual needs. And this:

The only major US airport to open in the last 30 years is Denver International Airport, a mega project in which the Denver Regional Council of Governments had the luxury of selecting a space in the 1980s rather than the 1940s. The result, which cost $8.2 billion by today’s standards, was North America’s largest airport by land area, with far more space for terminals and concourses than is typical.

Wow.

At the time of their union drive in 2020, Instacart manager ran a union-busting campaign, circulating anti-union literature and memos intended to convince workers to vote down the union. 

The company reported profitability for the first time in 2020, is preparing to IPO at some point this year, and is estimated to be valued at up to $30 billion, CNBC reported.

More union-busting tactics from high valued, ready to IPO, Bullshit company.

While incumbent ISPs are wary of the new competition from Starlink’s low Earth orbit satellites, traditional wireline telcos are no guarantee to meet FCC deployment requirements. CenturyLink and Frontier recently missed FCC deployment deadlines in dozens of states, and both of them are slated to get more money from the new RDOF program.

I understand as a business you want to take advantage of every opportunity over your competition. But it is a really tough sell when current ISPs continually fail to meet deadlines, over charge, under delivery, and provide the worst customer service of any industry out there.

Meanwhile Comcast Data Cap

State Reps Try To Ban Data Cap

Low Income Internet Broadband

Give Everyone Internet Already

The state has seen a 400 percent spike in cases since March 5, when state officials eased restrictions on residential gatherings and occupancy limits for bars, restaurants, venues, and stores.

A reminder it’s not over. 😔

US District Judge Lynn Hughes called that argument “reprehensible” and issued sweeping rejections of their other claims that the mandate violates state and federal laws. In the five-page ruling filed Saturday, Judge Hughes wrote that the lawsuit by the 117 employees—led by coronavirus-unit nurse Jennifer Bridges—contained false statements, misconstrued legal provisions, wrongly claimed coercion, and made otherwise invalid arguments.

Judge Hughes also noted that on May 28, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined that employers can mandate COVID-19 vaccination, given reasonable accommodations.

Good.

Puerto Rico has been a US territory for 122 years. It’s the world’s oldest colony. And on Election Day, it’s holding its sixth nonbinding referendum on the issue of statehood.

I had no idea that Puerto Rico had been a territory for a 100 plus years?!? It’s just just that it isn’t a state. My vote is hell yes, about time.

Ultimately, Green’s big fundraising haul is a reminder that gaining notoriety on conservative media — rather than making efforts to pass meaningful legislation — is what holds real value in the modern Republican Party.

No longer the party of Lincoln.

He was chosen in part based on his track record in pushing Connecticut schools to reopen for in-person learning. In his confirmation hearing before the Senate education panel, he said he approached the job with a spirit of cooperation.

We were open and transparent with what we knew, and we made sure that we partnered with our health experts to put out very clear guidance early on to make sure that the mitigation strategies were very clear,” he said. “I look forward to, if I’m fortunate enough to serve as secretary of education, to bring that same mentality of partnership and clear communication to help recover our public education and reopen our schools.

I have said many times that I believe our national government has been based on two strong political parties competing for votes in the marketplace of ideas. I still believe that is the strongest manifestation of our political system. But I recognize that is not what we have now. The only way we can restore that order is to figure out how to foster action in government. And for now, the desire for action rests within the Democratic Party. The Republicans want power, to be sure, but to what end? It doesn’t seem in service to the needs of the nation. 

I most certainly agree it’s not in the service of the people, but to what end indeed.

curl and embedded comment giving a shoutout for developers ❤️

Just as there are good and bad Catalyst apps, there are good and bad Electron apps. I’m sure that the very best Electron app isn’t as good a Mac app as one written using Apple’s AppKit frameworks

This, to me, is the main problem I have with this argument. An Electron app, web app, PWA, or cli app can be every bit has good as AppKit.

I appreciate that AgileBits was originally planning two separate Mac implementations. That’s a sign that the company cared enough to expend extra resources to have a good experience on the Mac, rather than doing what it did to Windows users in deciding Electron was good enough.

Again. Electron apps aren’t just good enough, they can be great.

Lawmakers apparently relented to public pressure from supporters of municipal broadband and cities and towns that operate the networks. People and businesses from Fairlawn, where the city-run FairlawnGig network offers fiber Internet, played a significant role in the protests. FairlawnGig itself asked users to put pressure on lawmakers, and the subscribers did so in great numbers.

I’m still salty that we even have to have this conversation as previously noted

It’s not even clear who proposed the new law. “The language, inserted without prior public discussion during recent state Senate deliberations on Ohio’s two-year budget, is drawing condemnation from numerous sources. Officials have not said who put the language in the Senate budget document, only that they learned of it for the first time last week,” the Akron Beacon Journal wrote on June 13.

Really? We can’t even verify who added this restriction to the current bill ??

Gun enthusiasts often protest: Cars kill about as many people as guns, and we don’t ban them! No, but automobiles are actually a model for the public health approach I’m suggesting.

We don’t ban cars, but we work hard to regulate them — and limit access to them — so as to reduce the death toll they cause. This has been spectacularly successful, reducing the death rate per 100 million miles driven by 95 percent since 1921.

It is pretty clear how to do it. It is just a matter of public will to get it accomplished.

Free Press, one of the FCC’s opponents in the net neutrality court case, criticized Pai for claiming that the repeal spurred new broadband development. “Approximately 92 percent of the fiber deployments made during Pai’s chairmanship were actually planned and announced during the last few years of the Obama administration, when Title II was securely in place,” Floberg said. “Chairman Pai is trading away critical public protections for a bag of magic beans, and a wink and a nod from cable lobbyists. We need public servants who will actually listen to people, consider the data and serve community needs instead of long-debunked ideologies.”

Once you shine a little bit of light on FCC policy over the last 4 years it becomes very clear that an “open and competitive market” on not remotely their first or even second concern.

It’s enough to bring a parent to tears, except that every parent I know ran out a long time ago—I know I did. Ran out of tears, ran out of energy, ran out of patience. Through these grinding 18 months, we’ve managed our kids’ lives as best we could while abandoning our own.

I am out of tears. I am out of anger. I am out of sympathy. I am out of empathy.

Today I had to look this up for the X number time, so I thought I’d post it and see if it suck.

const { twitter: tweet, facebook: fb } = wes.links.social;

The above code will pull the wes.links.social.twitter into a variable called tweet and similarly for facebook.

In the United States, the authority of state governments to mandate vaccinations is clear — it goes all the way back to a 1905 Supreme Court case that upheld a Massachusetts law requiring vaccinations for smallpox.

Vaccine mandates will prove controversial, to put it mildly, but, like seat belt laws, drunken driving laws and motorcycle helmet laws, they will save lives. We should not grant an unreasonable minority the power to endanger public health.

It is far past time to put the health of the public, as a whole, over that of the individual. Don’t want to get vaccinated? Fine. Unless you medically are unable to, then you are no longer welcome or allowed in public spaces.

“Given Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which holds that a state may require all members of the public to be vaccinated against smallpox, there can’t be a constitutional problem with vaccination against SARS-CoV-2,” said the decision by a three-judge panel at the appeals court. The plaintiffs also made a due-process argument, but multiple court decisions show that “such an argument depends on the existence of a fundamental right ingrained in the American legal tradition,” the ruling said. “Yet Jacobson, which sustained a criminal conviction for refusing to be vaccinated, shows that plaintiffs lack such a right. To the contrary, vaccination requirements, like other public-health measures, have been common in this nation.”

You, or anyone else has no right to endanger others. Period.

“In a way I’ve never seen before, they are fighting tooth and nail,” said Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for Technology Law and Policy. “They consider these bills existential for them because they get at their business models.”

Is anyone actually surprised that companies encourage the “right” regulation, and actively fight it with every fiber of their being?

“Parents want their students to learn how to think critically, not be indoctrinated by the ridiculous leftist narrative that America and our Constitution are rooted in racism,” Patrick said.

And yet this country is very rooted in racism and racist practices, while at the same time trying to continue the experiment of democracy. These two things are not mutually exclusive.

Broadband connectivity — or, rather, the lack thereof — has long been a problem in the United States. The pandemic has demonstrated how essential a lifeline the internet is, and how costly it can be for those who don’t have it. Work, education, social services, and myriad other activities are increasingly taking place online.

While the focus of lawmakers and regulators is often on rural broadband, getting good internet to more people is really a two-pronged problem of both access and affordability. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) estimates that 21 million Americans don’t have access to quality broadband internet, though some estimates suggest the actual number is much higher.

21 million do not have access to broadband. Imagine if that were the case for electricity or clean drinking water? It would be declared a national emergency. And yet, people are sitting outside of public libraries for hours at a time trying to get school work done, apply for state/local relief aid, or connect with family in the only safe way.

It is pretty clear that the private sector is not interested in a ‘connection for everyone’. They often fall short of their current commitments while taking federal money and offering more promises without results. Frontier Gets More After Missing Deadlines or NY Settles with Version to Deliver on Contract Over and over again private companies are cutting corners, leaving out any areas that might not turn a quick profit, lobbing to keep state and local municipalities from delivering cheap high speed access themselves, it is laughable to stay that the ‘market’ is delivering high speed affordable internet access to everyone.

Apple’s App Store rules didn’t even acknowledge creators until this week. On Monday, they were updated with a new section saying that creator-made content and experiences are allowed in apps — so long as they’re properly moderated and monetized for Apple.

I really think this squeeze on individual creators will ultimately force regulation on Apple

Apple Is Holding Back The Creator Economy