- To the surprise of few, Donald Trump is musing about pardoning the Jan 6 rioters and their ilk; for their part, federal prosecutors are looking at this as possible evidence against Trump himself. The thing is, if Trump is able to defer prosecutions against himself till after the election, and win the election, there's very little that can be done to stop him. Many doubt that he will win, so there's that, but a lot of these people didn't think he could win in 2016 either; then again, a lot of people who might have voted for him in 2016 as a sort of "screw you" might think twice now that they have more information about what he's actually like. The thing is, though, even if he is defeated (and I do think that's more likely than not, though far from guaranteed) the potential for extreme violence from his supporters exists, not to mention that they are a big enough swath of the population that they probably won't go away even when he does, and could be a problem for years to come. A country where as many people are actively pro-fascist as the US is going to take a long time to fix. Meanwhile, some of the ultra-rich Silicon Valley techbros think the solution is just to separate themselves from the rest of society, ideally forming new states where they don't have to follow rules so they can be the dukes and barons in the new Dark Ages.
- If Trump does somehow get in again in the fall, one wonders if the guy just convicted of a hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband will be among those issued pardons.
- A senior adviser on education in the Biden administration has resigned in protest against the administration's unwavering support of Israel at all costs. This follows another advisor, this one with the State Department, who resigned in October.
- In California, the site of several large scale experiments with autonomous vehicles, the state's traffic legislation has not been updated to enable the owners of fully autonomous vehicles to be ticketed. Arizona and Texas, hardly hotbeds of regulation, have at least had the sense to allow said ticketing, but I guess Silicon Valley lobbyists are working hard to keep the status quo. Because "freedom", or something.
- On a macro scale, the US economy (and numerous others, including ours) are caught between a rock and a hard place with regards to housing prices. If prices keep going up, you have an affordability crisis; if they fall, you get a deep recession. Not an easy problem to solve, and either could make the masses look for scapegoats and vote for extremists.
- Germany's CO2 emissions in 2023 were the lowest in 70 years. Some of this is attributable to a reduction in coal-fired electricity generation (though they wasted years by panicking and closing the nuclear plants first). Unfortunately some of it is simply because industries ramped down their operations due to issues with natural gas supply, thanks to the Russia-Ukraine war.
- A 17 year old student shot six people, one fatally, at the local school before turning his gun on himself. Pretty small potatoes by American standards.
- The Golden Gate Bridge now has suicide nets to catch people who jump from it.
- A 71 year old woman from the English town of Lewes has died as a result of a "slapping therapy" workshop she was participating in, apparently because she stopped taking insulin during the program on the advice of the man delivering the workshop; he has been charged with manslaughter.
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