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Evening Shade---Resistance Rising---Sunday, May 25th [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-05-25

YOU CAN REPOST IT AS COMMENT in the DIARY

WHEN YOU FIND SOMETHING in the DIARY that you LIKE

THE PERSON who MAKES the FIRST COMMENT WILL GET TWO CRITTERS

(Or NOT As the CASE MAY BE)

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Don’t miss bilboteach’s Sunday civics lesson, What It’s Like Being a Part of the House of Representatives. It’s fascinating.

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Truthiness, meet truth.

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These wildly different stories on Trump’s “deals” landed right together in Blue Sky:

x Trump: You have to watch we’re doing on trade. I know it’s not your primary thing. We are making deals with other nations that were not even --nobody thought it would be possible. The reason is very simple. They respect us again.



[image or embed] — Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 11:17 AM

x We're now exactly halfway through the 90-day pause on April 2nd tariffs, and the only "deal" the Trump administration has done is slightly lowering the tariffs on British Aston Martins. Meanwhile, we're starting 50% tariff on the EU in a week. This whole thing has been a disaster — Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 (@josephpolitano.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 12:20 PM

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There was the China tariff drop from 145% to 30%, but that's only temporary, not an actual “deal.” And for some reason it’s not helping.

x APOLLO: “It’s been nearly two weeks since the China/US trade deal, but container traffic from China to the US hasn’t shown a strong rebound. .. Are 30% tariffs on China still too high? Or are US companies simply waiting to see if tariffs will drop further before ramping up shipments?” — Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) 2025-05-25T11:21:15.304Z

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Headlining the New York Times this morning is a story about a new Trump golf course in Viet Nam that will take over farmland on which locals depend and will uproot a 5 generation cemetery. The story suggests that the reason Viet Nam is bending its own rules to allow this is hope for leverage against tariffs.

x NYT, page one: The “$1.5 billion golf complex” and “Trump skyscraper .. are the Trump family’s first projects in Vietnam — part of a global moneymaking enterprise that no family of a sitting American president has ever attempted on this scale.” www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/w...



[image or embed] — Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 5:45 AM

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I remember sitting up reading Midnight In Chernobyl at 4:00 am because I just couldn’t put it down. (It’s a thriller of a book even though you know how it ends.) In it Higginbotham makes the argument that the root causes of the explosion and meltdown were the government’s insistence on cost cutting and on replacing experts with loyalists. Those who don’t read about history are doomed to repeat it.

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More DOGE mayhem:

x Musk’s team was caught using a customized version of the Grok chatbot, without approval, to sift through sensitive government data inside the Department of Homeland Security. They used a modified version in an attempt to hide the fact that they were doing it. — Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social) 2025-05-24T00:19:12.867Z

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But more unsung heroes are fighting back:

x Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” tried to embed a team inside the Government Publishing Office (GPO), the agency responsible for printing official documents and maintaining public access to federal records across all three branches of government. — Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 7:55 AM

x The GPO, which answers to Congress and not the executive branch, flatly refused. DOGE was told to get lost. One more agency that stood its ground! — Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 7:55 AM

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This really great news dropped last night. If they can pull it off it could be a huge roadblock to DOGE and Trump mayhem.

x Wow. This is major news. Judges discuss moving the U.S. marshals from the executive to the judicial branch. Not only would they protect judges from trump threats, but it would also make it easier for courts to order marshals to carry out court orders.



[image or embed] — Mueller, She Wrote (@muellershewrote.com) May 24, 2025 at 9:29 PM

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Sunday Science

What, exactly, is Golden Dome, and how big is the problem of creating it for the US? Depends on the nature and number of the nuclear missiles that it’s protecting against and the strategy for defeating them.

ICBMs are a formidable target. An ICBM launches in a giant arc that sends the weapon it carries careening through space, traversing more than 5,000 kilometers to reach its target. The challenge of intercepting them has been compared to hitting a bullet with a bullet. But this understates the problem: At around 25,000 kilometers per hour, ICBMs speeds are about seven times that of a bullet. What’s more, they’re generally armed with nuclear warheads, each capable of killing a million people, rather than one. Ensuring protection from just one North Korean ICBM would require more than 1,000 interceptors in orbit, the APS report finds. Protection from 10 might demand over 30,000 interceptors, depending on missile type and other assumptions. For comparison, there are about 12,000 active satellites in orbit around Earth, most in SpaceX’s Starlink network. (Science News)

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If you follow a healthy life style you’ll live longer. But how healthy and how much longer? Scientists are trying to quantify that in units of micromorts and microlives.

One micromort corresponds to a one-in-a-million chance of dying during a certain activity. Do you want to run a marathon? The risk is seven micromorts. Are you going under general anesthesia? That’s 10 micromorts. To arrive at these figures, you first need detailed statistics. How many people engaged in these activities and died in the process? And the results depend heavily on the group of people being studied (their age, gender, and so on), as well as the geographic location... One of the most significant differences between micromorts and microlives is that one of the two types of units compounds over time, and the other does not... If I smoke a cigarette and then a second one an hour later, the time I’ve lost adds up. And of course, the mere ticking of the clock also shortens my available years of life. Every day 48 microlives are lost. But unlike micromorts, I can regain microlives. For example, a 20-minute walk provides me with around two microlives—that is, an extra hour of life expectancy. And eating a healthy diet with fruits and vegetables could gain you four microlives daily.

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DKos diarist Dan K pointed out that there’s a new COVID variant. From CBS:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's airport screening program has detected multiple cases of the new COVID-19 variant NB.1.8.1, which has been linked to a large surge of the virus in China. Cases linked to the NB.1.8.1 variant have been reported in arriving international travelers at airports in California, Washington state, Virginia and the New York City area, according to records uploaded by the CDC's airport testing partner Ginkgo Bioworks.

From a longer article in Economic Times of India:

There is no indication that NB.1.8.1 is more harmful than earlier strains. According to early data from Chinese researchers, the NB.1.8.1 variant is not more adept at avoiding the immune system than other strains that are becoming more prevalent, but it is more capable of attaching itself to human cells, which may indicate that it is more contagious. Will the current vaccines protect against NB.1.8.1?

Early data suggests that updated vaccines targeting related variants such as LP.8.1 may be beneficial.

The current vaccine — 2024-2025 — covers Omicron variant KP.2. One dose is recommended for everyone age 5 and up. Haven’t had yours? Best get it. The FDA is considering limiting availability to those 65 and older or with conditions that put them at serious risk.

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It’s National Missing Children’s Day.

Also National Brown Bag It Day. Take a kitten to lunch.

x YouTube Video

It’s National Family Fun Day.

x YouTube Video

Geek Pride Day: for those people who appreciate sci-fi, fantasy, board games, video games, comic books, cosplay, anime, steampunk, and zombies, and much more.

x YouTube Video

It’s Towel Day, dedicated specifically to the towel that a hitchhiker of the galaxy must never be without. (If you know, well, you should celebrate Geek Pride Day!)

x YouTube Video

It’s National Wine Day.

x YouTube Video

And National Tap Dance Day.

x YouTube Video

Tap your hearts out, Shade lovers! I’m out this evening. Cheers to everyone!

[END]
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