this is the next biggest city about half an hour from me and where I do my shopping and bruh, the state of illinois is gonna slap down a major lawsuit on these fucking clowns lmao bc illinois enshrined the right to abortion in their constitution in 2019 I believe. also, it wasn’t even the aldermen who wanted this!! it was a group from Texas. keep that shit down there u cunts

Big week for news about “mountain lions wandering back into historic habitat where they were once persecuted to extinction” in February 2023.

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Central Texas:

Headline and screenshots from: Priscilla Aguirre. “Potential mountain lion sighting in San Antonio area raises awareness.” My San Antonio. 14 February 2023.

Excerpt from this article: Officials at the San Marcos Parks and Recreation Department are asking others and the surrounding areas to be cautious about potential mountain lions in Central Texas. Officials said the message comes after the department received a call about a potential sighting of a mountain lion at Upper Purgatory Creek Natural Area in San Marcos on Sunday, February 12. [...] In Central Texas, it’s extremely rare to see a mountain lion in person, according to a report from the San Antonio Express-News. [...] Only one mountain lion has been confirmed in Bexar County in the past decade, on November 24, 2013, according to TPWD. [End of excerpt.]

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Great Plains and Nebraska:

Headline and screenshot from: Damon Bennett. “Nebraska mountain lion now looking for a name after 700-mile journey.” Lincoln Journal-Star. 16 February 2023.

Excerpt from this article: A Nebraska mountain lion that found itself in a sanctuary in Indiana after a 700-mile journey through four states is now looking for one last souvenir: a name. Back in the fall, the big cat made its way from the scenic Niobrara River valley all the way to suburban Springfield, Illinois, according to the GPS tracker that Nebraska Game and Parks had tagged it with a year prior. "A lot of people were watching him," said [the director of an “exotic feline rescue center”] in Center Point, Indiana, where the mountain lion has been since October. When the lion overstayed its welcome near Springfield, it was sedated by federal wildlife officials, who offered to return it to Nebraska. Nebraska declined.’ [...] "I'm incredibly impressed with this animal; he crossed both the Missouri and Mississippi rivers [...]." [End of excerpt.]

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Ozarks and Missouri:

Headline and screenshot from: Julia Wilson. “Mountain lions in Missouri? We’re seeing more than usual this winter.” Columbia Missourian. 16 February 2023.

Excerpt from this article: Footage from a trail camera taken Jan. 3 confirmed that a roaming mountain lion made a rare appearance in northern Boone County. Since then, the Missouri Department of Conservation documented three additional sightings around the state last month — one in Callaway County, another in Montgomery County and a third that was hit by a vehicle south of St. Louis.  Reports of mountain lions, also known as cougars, pumas and panthers, have increased over the past decade in the state. Between 2013 and 2022, a total of 65 were counted around Missouri. Compare that to the years between 1994 and 2006, when only 12 were spotted. [...] The animals may come from an established colony in the Black Hills, cross Nebraska and wander into Missouri, according to the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. Missouri’s extensive forest coverage, which includes 35% of state acreage, then becomes an ideal destination for the animals. Mountain lions have roamed Missouri since pre-settlement times. Their range crosses the western hemisphere from Canada to southern Chile. [...] Although they are seen across the state, over half of all sightings have been documented within 40 miles of Mark Twain National Forest in southeast Missouri. [...] Trophy hunting by early colonists wiped out most of the population east of the Mississippi River. [...] Except for the recent encounter in Franklin County where a lion was hit by a vehicle, the last documented human contact occurred in December 2021 during another vehicle collision. [End of excerpt.]

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For reference:

Montana youths take climate case to trial in historical first

By Megan Michelotti

Independent Record

Feb. 15, 2023

Some Montana youths say they are fed up with their big sky being polluted in Big Sky Country and their Treasure State losing its value to the obtrusive hands of climate change.

On March 13, 2020, 16 young Montanans filed a constitutional climate lawsuit against the state of Montana — two days before COVID-19 started shutting down the United States. Held et al v. Montana is now the nation's first-ever youth constitutional climate case set to go to trial.

The case asserts that by supporting a fossil fuel-driven energy system, the state is violating its own constitutional rights “to a clean and healthful environment and the rights of pursuing life's basic necessities, enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and seeking their safety, health and happiness in all lawful ways. In enjoying these rights, all persons recognize corresponding responsibilities,” according to Article II, Section 3 of Montana’s Constitution.

Montana's Constitution was adopted in 1972, replacing the original 1889 constitution.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare Montana’s State Energy Policy, parts C-G and the Climate Change Exception in the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) Section 2, part A that was passed in 1971 as unconstitutional. They also ask that the state be ordered to develop a remedial plan based on what scientific research recommends to protect the youth plaintiff's constitutional rights from continuing to be infringed upon.

Lander Busse, one of the 16 plaintiffs, said it is a matter of accountability. 

“As much as we want to think about the historical retrospect or how big of an impact this could have on a wider scale, our mission right now is to make sure we’re holding our Montana government accountable for their violations of our state constitution,” he said. “... It’s sad that it’s falling on us, the youth, to do this and not the adults, our elected officials, who know this material best.”

Montana’s State Energy Policy has goals of developing and utilizing Montana’s “vast coal reserves” and increasing oil and gas exploration in the state. In MEPA, Montana lawmakers codified a provision that prohibits the state from considering regional, national or global impacts when debating permits for projects that require an environmental impact statement.

The case states how greenhouse gas emissions are “triggering a host of adverse consequences in Montana,” such as increasing temperatures, extreme weather events, wildfires, glacial melt, changing precipitation patterns, droughts and floods and causing adverse health risks to many, especially children.

Other defendants named in the 104-page lawsuit are former Gov. Steve Bullock and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, the Montana Department of Transportation, and the Montana Public Service Commission.

The trial is scheduled for June 12 in front of Montana 1st Judicial District Judge Kathy Seeley.

Read more.

Amid a concerted effort by global law enforcement to crack down on ransomware attacks, payments to hackers and even the volume of attacks fell in 2022. But the trend doesn’t seem to be holding for 2023, and attacks have shot up again.

Data from cryptocurrency tracing firm Chainalysis indicates that victims have paid ransomware groups $449.1 million in the first six months of this year. For all of 2022, that number didn’t even reach $500 million. If this year’s pace of payments continues, according to the company’s data, the total figure for 2023 could hit $898.6 million. This would make 2023 the second biggest year for ransomware revenue after 2021, in which Chainalysis calculates that attackers extorted $939.9 million from victims.

The findings track with general observations from other researchers that the volume of attacks has spiked this year. And they come as ransomware groups have become more aggressive and reckless about publishing sensitive and potentially damaging stolen information. In a recent attack against the University of Manchester, hackers directly emailed the UK university’s students telling them that seven terabytes of data had been stolen and threatening to publish "personal information and research" if the university didn’t pay up.

“We think as a result of their budgetary shortfalls in 2022 we’ve seen these more extreme extortion techniques, ways to kind of twist the knife,” says Jackie Burns Koven, head of cyber threat intelligence at Chainalysis. “In 2022 we were very surprised to find that decline. Then we talked to external partners—incident response firms, insurance companies—and they all said, yeah, we’re paying less, and we’re also seeing fewer attacks.”

Chainalysis and other organizations attributed the slump in 2022 to a number of factors. Expanded security protections and preparedness played a role, as did the availability of decryption tools offered by private companies and the FBI to help ransomware victims unlock their data without paying attackers. Chainalysis also believes that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine impacted the day-to-day operations of a number of prominent ransomware groups, which are primarily based in Russia.

Improvements in how potential victims defend themselves along with government deterrence initiatives haven’t fallen off in 2023. But Chainalysis researchers suspect that the evolving state of Russia’s war in Ukraine must explain this year’s increased ransomware activity, or at least be playing a role.

“I really think the tide of the Russia-Ukraine conflict has impacted these numbers,” Chainalysis’ Koven says. “Whether that’s actors have settled into safe locations, whether their year of military service has finished, or whether perhaps there’s a mandate to release the hounds.”

Chainalysis specializes in cryptocurrency surveillance and tracking, so researchers at the company are well positioned to capture the scope and scale of ransomware payments. The company says it takes a conservative approach and is rigorous about continuing to retroactively update its annual totals and other figures as new data comes to light about historic transactions. In general, though, many researchers emphasize that true totals for ransomware attacks or payments are virtually impossible to calculate given available information, and that numbers like those from Chainalysis or government tracking can be used only as broad characterizations of trends.

"We still have such poor insights on the actual number of attacks," says Pia Huesch​, a research analyst at the British defense and security think tank Royal United Services Institute. She adds that companies are still reluctant to talk about attacks, fearing reputational harm.

In May, officials at the UK's National Cybersecurity Center and data regulator the Information Commissioner's Office said they were increasingly concerned about companies not reporting ransomware attacks and “the ransoms paid to make them go away.” They warned that if incidents are “covered up,” the number of attacks will only increase.

"Individuals who engage in cybercrime, to them the benefits still massively outweigh the risks of perhaps being prosecuted," Huesch says.

Regardless of their ability to independently validate ransomware revenue totals like those put forward by Chainalysis, researchers agree that ransomware represents a dire threat in 2023 and that the most prolific groups, most of whom are based in Russia, are evolving to counter defenses and meet the current moment.

“The ransomware groups who are still around are really good at what they do, and it is hard for organizations to secure against all possible points of entry,” says Allan Liska, an analyst for the security firm Recorded Future who specializes in ransomware. “And what’s worse, the groups seem to be mastering new techniques.”

One such tactic that researchers and governments have their eye on is mass exploitation campaigns in which a ransomware group finds a vulnerability in a widely used product that they can exploit to launch extortion campaigns against many organizations at once. The Russia-based gang Clop, in particular, has refined this technique.

All of this bodes poorly for anyone who hoped after last year that the tide was turning against ransomware actors.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 6, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) met in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, sparking speculation over the 2024 Republican presidential field. Hard-right figures like Donald Trump and his loyalists Mike Lindell, the MyPillow entrepreneur, and Kari Lake, who lost the 2022 race for Arizona governor, attended, along with House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) and right-wing media figure Steve Bannon, but many of those testing the 2024 presidential waters gave it a miss. CPAC started in 1974, and since then it has been a telltale for the direction the Republican Party is going. This year was no exception. CPAC was smaller this year than in the past, and it showcased the Republican extremism that is far outside the mainstream of normal American politics. “Feels like MAGA country!” Donald Trump, Jr., told the crowd. The headliner was former president Trump, twice impeached, deeply involved in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and embroiled in a range of criminal investigations. In his speech, Trump embraced his leadership of those hardening around a violent mentality based in grievance that echoes that of fascist movements. “In 2016, I declared: I am your voice,” he said. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.” He claimed that he and his followers are “engaged in an epic struggle to rescue our country from the people who hate it and want to absolutely destroy it…. We are going to finish what we started. We started something that was a miracle. We’re going to complete the mission, we’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory. We’re going to make America great again.” After listing all the “villains and scoundrels” he and his followers would “demolish,” “drive out,” “cast out,” “throw off,” “beat,” “rout,” and “evict,” he continued: “We have no choice. This is the final battle.” Other Republican hopefuls are waiting in the wings. Trump has, in fact, never won the popular vote, and his leadership has brought historic losses for the party, but his control over his voting base makes him the front-runner for the Republican nomination. Other candidates seem to be hoping that criminal indictments will knock Trump out of the race and open space for them without making them take a stand against Trump and thus alienate his followers. It seems likely that if such an indictment were forthcoming, they would blame Democrats for Trump’s downfall and hope to ride to office with his voting bloc behind them, without having to embrace that voting blocs’ ideology. That hope seems delusional, considering the increasing emphasis of the Trump Republicans and their imitators on violence. The Republicans are hitting on a constant refrain that crime is on the upswing in the U.S. Since crime does not, in fact, seem to be rising, it seems worth noting that an emphasis on crime justifies the use of state power to combat that crime and normalizes the idea of violence against “criminals,” a category the Republican Party is defining more and more broadly. This will be an extremely difficult genie to stuff back into a bottle, especially as leading Republican figures are increasingly talking in martial terms and referring to the U.S. Civil War. That emphasis on violence corresponds with something else on display at this year’s CPAC: how completely the Republican Party now depends on a false narrative constructed out of lies. CPAC fact checkers had their work cut out for them. Linda Qiu of the New York Times found Trump repeated a number of things previously identified as incorrect as well as adding some new ones. Politifact fact checked other speakers and found they, too, continued to develop the idea of a country run by those who hate it and are eager to undermine it. Various speakers said the Department of Justice is calling parents worried about their kids’ educations “terrorists” (false), fentanyl will kill you if any of it touches your skin, thus putting us all at deadly risk (false), cartels have “operational control” of the U.S.-Mexico border (false), and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky has said he wants America’s “sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine” (again, false). Right-wing media amplifies this narrative. Depositions in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against the Fox News Corporation made it very clear that both Fox News executives and hosts work closely with Republican operatives to spread a Republican narrative, even when it is based on lies—in that case, in the lie that Trump won the election, which they privately agreed was ridiculous. So, when House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave to FNC personality Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 44,000 hours of video from the footage from the Capitol on January 6, 2021, he indicated the Republicans will continue to try to garner support with a false narrative. Carlson’s coverage of the videos started tonight, with him depicting the rioters as “sightseers” and claiming that other media outlets have lied about the violence on January 6. In reality, Carlson simply didn’t show the many hours of violent footage: more than 1,000 people have been arrested on charges relating to their actions surrounding January 6, more than half have pleaded guilty, and around one third of those charged were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding police officers. McCarthy’s desperation to maintain the party’s narrative shows in his unilateral decision to give Carlson exclusive access to that video. A wide range of media outlets are clamoring for equal access to the footage while congressional Democrats are demanding to know on what authority McCarthy gave Carlson that access. The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol had arranged to transfer the films to the National Archives, but when the Republicans rewrote the rules in January, they instead transferred the video to the House Administration Committee. McCarthy did not consult the committee when he gave access to the films to Carlson. Nor did he consult House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who has noted that releasing the films without consultation with the Capitol Police is a security risk. Instead, McCarthy apparently coordinated with Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight. Loudermilk led a tour of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021. Representative Norma J. Torres (D-CA), ranking member of the Oversight Subcommittee, told Justin Papp of Roll Call that McCarthy “totally went around, not just the subcommittee, but the entire committee…. I hope Ethics will have something to say about this. I think it needs to be investigated on all different levels.” In contrast, House Administration Committee chair Bryan Steil (R-WI) appeared unconcerned with the end run around the responsible committee, saying that “the key is that we’re balancing the transparency that’s needed for the American people with the security interests of the House.” Republicans are planning to take this disinformation campaign across the nation. Despite their insistence that they want to slash government spending, Republican leaders are in fact urging their colleagues to engage in “field hearings” that will take their “message” straight to voters at a time when they are not managing to accomplish much of anything at all in Washington. Jordan’s Judiciary Committee has requested a travel budget of $262,000, more than 30 times what it spent on travel last year and 3 times what it spent before the pandemic, and it is not just the Judiciary Committee that is hitting the road. As Annie Karni and Catie Edmondson of the New York Times noted today, this also means that they speak at the plants of Republican donors, thus giving them free advertising. Congressional Democrats say they received almost no notice of these trips.

[MORE] 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Hundreds of guests in tuxedos of all styles — sequined, quilted, velvet — and colorful gowns sipped on Trump-branded champagne and martinis. Between courses of steak and bite-sized Key lime pie, they danced to “YMCA” and “Macho Man,” the disco anthems at Trump rallies.

Thursday night’s Log Cabin Republicans’ “Spirit of Lincoln” gala in the main ballroom of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago beachfront club was a joyous celebration of gay rights and — in a case of ironic timing — the historic same-sex marriage law signed by President Joe Biden days earlier.

The long-planned event in honor of the conservative LGBTQ organization’s 45th anniversary brought in Republican notables like former Ambassador Ric Grenell, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus, who emceed the evening in a feathered turquoise gown, and former GOP gubernatorial candidate from Arizona Kari Lake, who was swarmed by guests eager to meet her and take a photo.

But the main attraction, obviously, was Trump. He received a standing ovation after delivering an enthusiastic affirmation of gay rights not often heard in the GOP.

“We are fighting for the gay community, and we are fighting and fighting hard,” the former president and 2024 candidate said. “With the help of many of the people here tonight in recent years, our movement has taken incredible strides, the strides you’ve made here is incredible.”

Throughout the evening, speakers praised Trump for his embrace of the gay community. They credited him for his initiatives to combat the criminalization of homosexuality, his work pushing for public heath initiatives to combat the HIV epidemic, and for appointing the first openly gay Cabinet member, Grenell, as Director of National Intelligence.

Trump and his administration had a mixed record on LGBTQ issues. He’s been criticized for driving a wedge between gay and transgender communities, and for promoting extreme religious liberty policies and executive orders they say allowed for discrimination against LGBTQ people that pushed the movement backwards. The Log Cabin Republicans’ first female executive director, Jerri Ann Henry, resigned in 2019 over the group’s decision to endorse Trump.

The Log Cabin Republicans’ gala came just days after the Respect for Marriage Act was passed with support of 39 House Republicans and 12 GOP senators and signed into law by Biden. But the issue of same-sex marriage has continued to spark debate inside the GOP. Conservative Christian and right-wing groups lobbied against the legislation, arguing that it stepped on religious liberties.

According to Gallup, 55% of Republicans and 71% of Americans overall support same-sex marriage.

In an interview on Fox News earlier this week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — a Trump rival widely viewed as a top GOP hopeful in 2024 — said there was “no need” for the Respect for Marriage Act and called the right’s concerns over religious liberty “valid.”

Trump did not mention the law in his speech. But attendees at the gala were quick to credit the former president: For all his recent missteps, they said he has gone further on LGBTQ rights than many others in the GOP.

Charles Moran, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, challenged other 2024 hopefuls to also say they are willing to fight for gay rights.

“I just heard a Republican candidate for president stand up and say he is willing to fight and I challenge every other Republican to make the same pledge Donald Trump made tonight,” Moran said.

“I’m going to hold all candidates to that same standard,” he added in a later interview. “We’re really at a place now where we’re going to have an open election and there are going to be other Republicans running, and we have a responsibility to look at the entire Republican field.”

Moran and his group worked behind the scenes to build support for the Respect for Marriage Act and brought at least four GOP members of Congress on board. He noted that House Republican Majority Whip-elect Tom Emmer is an ally of the group and wants to proactively engage on legislation.

A primary legislative goal for Log Cabin Republicans is the “Restore Honor to Servicemembers Act,” which would provide an opportunity for those dishonorably discharged under “Don’t ask, don’t tell” to have their discharge status changed.

The appearance by Trump came weeks after his lackluster presidential campaign debut and bruising headlines, brought on by the former president himself. As his campaign has sputtered, he has largely avoided the spotlight. On Thursday night, he pushed back on the idea that his approval ratings as a result are down, calling polls showing as much “fake.”

In an effort to move on from recent controversies, Trump is expected to deliver policy speeches tied to specific parts of his platform and has plans to do interviews with a mix of outlets, according to aides. He will also be announcing more campaign hires, they said.

While the gala centered around the new same-sex marriage law, speakers at the gala also made lighthearted jokes. Trump, for one, mused about his wife Melania Trump joining Grenell, who is gay, for a Log Cabin Republicans trip to Beverly Hills, Calif., last week.

“She flew out to California with Ric, and I trusted him 100% with her,” Trump said to laughs.

Lake, who recently lost her gubernatorial bid but has not conceded defeat and recently launched a legal challenge over the election results, credited the group with supporting her campaign but sounded off on her recent lawsuits.

“We just had such a huge movement going into Election Day, to watch these people — these evil bastards, can I say that here? To watch them steal this election in broad daylight, and if they think they’re going to get away with it, they messed with the wrong bitch,” she said to cheers.

But for all the applause lines and hobnobbing, the members of the group at times recognized themselves as being a part of the Republican Party that has felt mislabeled, judged, and ostracized over the years.

Tammy Bruce, a lesbian and conservative commentator, was awarded the group’s 2022 “Spirit of Lincoln” award and talked about challenges she has faced.

“I know there are problems still with how we are viewed on occasion. But what I also know is that visibility matters and that bigotry only survives because people only can use their imagination,” she said. “Suddenly things changed when you find out that your son or daughter is gay.”

So much for not having any comments on active cases. Can Democrat show me where Trump has been convicted of an “insurrection”, let alone charged with it? Do you remember when the slave owning, Democratic run states, kicked Abraham Lincoln off ballots? If you’re going to call someone a “semi-fascists” you should really understand what that means. Historically fascists have policed communication, taken all fire arms away and locked up / killed political rivals when first coming to power.  

To my fellow conservatives let’s slow down a tad. It has to get over turned by the SCOTUS . This is only the primary election and unless something crazy happens Donald Trump will win the Republican primary.

Direct Quotes:

President Joe Biden told reporters Wednesday there is “no question” former President Donald Trump supported an insurrection

“Well I think certainly it’s self-evident," Biden said. "You saw it all. Now whether the 14th Amendment applies, I’ll let the court make that decision. But he certainly supported an insurrection." 

In its ruling Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court declared that the former president “is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” and thus should not be on the state’s primary ballot next year.

A year before, Biden likened “MAGA philosophy” to "semi-fascism,” while speaking at a midterm election fundraiser in August 2022. 

“What we’re seeing now is the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy," Biden said at the event. "It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism."

My historically extremely conservative mother told me one of her old friends who had a wife and kids got divorced and married a man and her response was just “hey good for you!” and like half an hour later told me she and my dad used to smoke weed all the time in college and really until my dad got his job as a pilot and when I told her I smoke weed for my migraines she was like “yeah that’s really good for that I’m glad you can do that instead of take those medications that we’re making you sick” and literally my jaw was on the floor that entire interaction. None of those words would have some out of my mothers mouth even 5 years ago. And you know what that is???? fucking GROWTH. People are never too old to learn and change. If my almost 60 year old mom can do it. Anyone can.

In December 2022, NASA lost contact with its Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) Mars lander, which had been operating on the Martian surface for just over four years. In the time since InSight’s mission was declared over, scientists have continued to analyze the incredible data the lander collected and have made some exciting discoveries. One team of scientists, led by Sebastien Le Maistre of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, recently published research that utilized InSight’s Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE) instrument to show that Mars’ rotational speed is increasing. The measurements are the most precise measurements of Mars’ rotation ever taken, and even show how the planet wobbles due to the movement of the planet’s molten metal core. As mentioned, Le Maistre et al. used InSight’s RISE instrument, which is a collection of radio transponders and antennas, to make their measurements. They ultimately found that Mars’ rotational speed is accelerating by approximately four milliarcseconds per year squared. The increase in rotational speed corresponds to the length of the Martian day decreased by a fraction of a millisecond per year. Artist’s depiction of InSight on the surface of Mars. Note the RISE antennas on the lander. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) “It’s really cool to be able to get this latest measurement — and so precisely. I’ve been involved in efforts to get a geophysical station like InSight onto Mars for a long time, and results like this make all those decades of work worth it,” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight’s principal investigator of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. See AlsoInSight UpdatesSpace Science CoverageL2 Future SpacecraftClick here to Join L2 While the acceleration is quite small, scientists are still unsure of its cause. One scenario that scientists believe could’ve caused the acceleration is that ice accumulated on the polar ice caps or post-glacial rebound (the rising of landmasses after being buried under ice). By conservation of angular momentum, a significant shift in the mass of a planetary body leads to an acceleration in rotation — similar to how a spinning ice skater speeds up after pulling their arms inward. Using radio waves to learn more about Mars’ characteristics is not unique to InSight. Previous Mars landers, such as the two Viking landers and Pathfinder, employed the use of radio waves to learn more about Mars’ interior and characteristics. However, InSight’s access to advanced radio technology and upgrades to NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) allowed InSight to provide scientists with data that was five times more accurate than that from Pathfinder and the Vikings. So, how did Le Maistre et al. measure the rotational speed of Mars? When InSight was still operational, the scientists used the DSN to beam a radio signal at InSight, which operated in the Elysium Planitia region of Mars. When InSight received the signal, RISE reflected the signal back to Earth. When the DSN received the reflected signal, scientists would take a look at the data and look for small changes in the signal’s frequency caused by the Doppler shift. Measuring the shift in frequency allowed the scientists to determine the rotational speed of Mars. “What we’re looking for are variations that are just a few tens of centimeters over the course of a Martian year. It takes a very long time and a lot of data to accumulate before we can even see these variations,” said Le Maistre. Given the extremely small variations in the signal frequencies, Le Maistre et al. had to look at frequency data from InSight’s first 900 Martian days, or sols, to notice the variations. Furthermore, the slight variations in frequency meant that eliminating sources of noise, such as moisture from Earth’s atmosphere and solar wind, from the data would be a challenge. “It’s a historic experiment. We have spent a lot of time and energy preparing for the experiment and anticipating these discoveries. But despite this, we were still surprised along the way — and it’s not over, since RISE still has a lot to reveal about Mars,” Le Maistre said. As mentioned, the RISE data used by Le Maistre et al. was so precise that it picked up Mars’ nutation — the planet’s wobbling motion caused by the sloshing of Mars’ molten metal core. The RISE data allowed the team to measure the size of the core, which they found to have a radius of approximately 1,835 kilometers. Additionally, the nutation gave scientists further insight into the shape and characteristics of the core. Mars is spinning faster! Before it retired last December, @NASAInSight sent back radio science data that’s providing new details about how fast Mars rotates and how much it wobbles. See what the latest findings mean: https://t.co/G47N5oY89s — NASA Mars (@NASAMars) August 7, 2023 But Le Maistre et al. didn’t stop there. They continued with their research of the core and compared their measurement of the core’s size to other measurements derived from data collected by InSight’s seismometer. Specifically, the team looked at whether seismic waves within Mars reflected off of the core or if they traveled through the core uninterrupted, which allowed them to estimate the radius of the core. All three measurements showed that the core was anywhere between 1,790 and 1,850 kilometers. “RISE’s data indicate the core’s shape cannot be explained by its rotation alone. That shape requires regions of slightly higher or lower density buried deep within the mantle,” said co-author Attilio Rivoldini of the Royal Observatory of Belgium. Le Maistre et al.’s results are just the beginning. The team will continue to analyze the RISE data in hopes of learning more about Mars’ rotation, core, and other planetary characteristics. Although InSight’s mission may be over, the incredible data it gathered during its four-year mission will continue to allow scientists to make groundbreaking discoveries in planetary science for the months, years, and decades to come. Le Maistre et al.’s data and results were published in the journal Nature in June 2023. (Lead image: InSight takes a selfie on April 24, 2022, the 1,211th sol of the mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) The post Using data from InSight, scientists discover that Mars is rotating faster appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com.

Jermaine Lucious: Pointing at a Paradise Some Refuse to Provoke

Peak a boo, he’s looking at you. Well, maybe, but that just means he’s one of us, though. One of the observers. Just another set of eyes watching our lives because we place ourselves on display – and up for judgement – more so now than ever before.  But that’s where we are now, and that’s where Jermaine Lucious is, too. Not only does he work as a youth counselor, but he’s also a Karaoke host and a partner with Exit Zero Entertainment, a local business that books music and comedy. That’s right, he wants you to smile, maybe even laugh a little, too, but first and foremost, he’d love us all on the same page no matter of age, race, or religion. Why? Because it’s possible, that’s why. And Lucious sees it that simply, too, and he has no idea whatsoever why so many others refuse to even sneak a peak down a street that doesn’t lead to a land full of hate-filled deceit and discrimination. Lucious, though, always will point you down the path.   Lucious posts on social media a lot of reactions to what he experiences during his days. You observe a lot on social media and then you comment on what you see. Why the commentary? A few years back I saw one of my favorite directors, Kevin Smith, speak. He said the three things he believes drive people are to “Eat, Make Love (He used different terminology) and be heard.”  I think I just want to be heard like most. I want to make sure I have nothing left to say when it’s my time to go. Social media is a great form of entertainment. It keeps me aware and engaged in current events.  As long as I’m respectful and honest, and try not to harm others, I think I’m doing it right. Overall, what is it you see? I’ve seen good. I’ve witnessed people find understanding and acceptance. I’ve seen young people find their cultural “niche” earlier in life. Whether that be in music, movies, hobbies, fashion, etc. I’ve seen people network and find social groups they would have never been exposed to 20 years ago.I also believe it’s the biggest cause of division in this country.I think the media helps drive division by taking two or three tweets and publishing them as a story. On social media, we tend to take words like “conservative” and “liberal” and apply them to the most extreme comments we’ve seen. There isn’t much room for nuance. I think there is a whole generation of people who, for the first time, were told their views were seen as “backward” or their jokes as “offensive”. I think that has caused a bit of resentment. They lack an understanding of how social media has changed the views of the younger generation. A whole generation has had the opportunity to find humanity in a diverse group of people by listening to their stories.  People are looking toward school curriculums and blaming corporations like Disney or Budweiser when all along, it's Vloggers on YouTube and Tik-Tok.  In a recent series of statements on social media, you say meeting people in bars who were not alive on 9/11 make you uncomfortable. Please explain. My Father was a much older man when I was born. So, I’ve always measured historical dates after 1940 by how old he was and where he would have been on the planet. It’s kind of been my way of putting things into perspective. I’ve gone on to do that with other people. For 20 years, “Where were you on 9/11?” was a question I could ask people to get a better understanding of who they are and where they came from. Now that post-9/11 children are reaching adulthood, it signals a new era. These young people were raised in a much different world than I was. I’m nearing 40, and I’m feeling a generational disconnect, which I’m sure we all do if we’re around long enough. He wants you to smile and maybe even laugh as he is hosting Karaoke at Taqueria 304. As a Karaoke host, how have you learned to tell some people that they should never sing publicly again?  I’m sure the fine folks at Taqueria 304 wouldn’t want me even hinting to people that they shouldn’t come back and sing. Let’s be honest though, Karaoke singers aren’t usually known for their “Ticket to Hollywood” vocals.  I just don’t want you to be boring. We try to hype every single singer up when they take the mic in hopes they’ll let loose and entertain the crowd. I want to see you dance. Give me some soul. Play air guitar with one of the inflatables. Sing something borderline inappropriate. You left your home, came out on a Tuesday night, and build up the courage to sing in front of others. Just don’t stand there and read the lyrics to “Soak up the Sun.” What is the best story a cemetery has ever told you? I’ve recently enjoyed informing my nephew that his practice field on 16th Street used to be the site of a cemetery. There isn’t one single story I can point to. The cemeteries in town tell the story of the city. I came across a beautiful headstone at Peninsula Cemetery shaped to look like a tree trunk. A quick search of the library’s newspaper archives revealed the man was a gardener who lived on the Island and his funeral was held in his home in the 1890s.   You notice countless graves of affluent people whose names are plastered on the buildings in this city. You come across markers of people you have met. This weekend I noticed a section of Greenwood Cemetery that were mostly the graves of children. I hope to do some research to see if they were all from the same hospital or orphanage. It was nice to show them some attention and respect. You notice that some Cemeteries have fallen out of vogue in the city, and their mausoleums and headstones are reaching disrepair. Then you realize that’s guaranteed to be the fate of all cemeteries in time. It makes me want to enjoy life more.  Read the full article

Lack of ecosystem services corresponds to non-white areas, researchers find

https://sciencespies.com/environment/lack-of-ecosystem-services-corresponds-to-non-white-areas-researchers-find/

Lack of ecosystem services corresponds to non-white areas, researchers find

Making urban environments greener and giving residents greater access to nature is an increasing focus for municipalities across the country. But all too often, these efforts do not take into consideration how communities of color remain excluded from what nature has to offer.

In a recent publication in Landscapes and Urban Planning, Mayra Rodríguez González, assistant extension educator of urban and community forestry in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, found that people of color are inversely linked to high amounts of ecosystem services.

“We’re all aiming for greener and more resilient cities,” Rodríguez says. “But what is a resilient city if its community members and residents are not equitably resilient as well? We want to make sure we reach equitable resilience.”

Rodríguez collaborated with Cloutier Professor of Forestry, Robert “Bob” Fahey in the UConn Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, and professors Bryan Pijanowski and Brady Hardiman at Purdue University, where Rodríguez did her graduate work.

Ecosystem services are the goods humans obtain from nature to improve quality of life, like access to fresh water or clean air. Ecosystem services can also include factors like not living in a flood zone or areas exposed to extreme heat.

“Nature, when properly managed allows us to have a higher quality of life,” Rodríguez says.

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Access to ecosystem services is often very unevenly distributed. In her paper, Rodríguez defines ecosystem service “hot” and “cold” spots.

A “hot spot” is a mapped area with at least five ecosystem services provided in high amounts, defined as the top 20th percentile for that service. Rodríguez defined “cold spots” as areas with no ecosystem services within that top 20th percentile.

Rodríguez’s paper enters a discussion about how to plan urban areas to make them more resilient, especially in the face of climate change.

“Having a diversity of ecosystem services makes a city more resilient,” Rodríguez says.

Further, Rodríguez’s research reinforced the connection between areas where more people of color live and ecosystem services cold spots.

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After identifying this correlation, Rodríguez looked to see if there were any publicly managed lands in areas that could be strategically enhanced to provide greater access to ecosystem services for historically marginalized groups, including Black and Latinx communities.

However, the areas with the highest number of ecosystem services were conserved, publicly managed lands, which tend to overlap with predominantly white, higher-income neighborhoods.

“Although conservation and managed land throughout the region is incredibly valuable, it’s not going to drastically improve access to nature for those populations that have been marginalized,” Rodríguez says.

Rodríguez also created a policy brief for the Gund Institute for the Environment including her research and other studies on the topic of land management and equity. In the brief, Rodríguez recommends obtaining land for restoration, conservation, and management in areas where diverse communities to increase access and equity.

“That really speaks towards being much more creative in how we’re adopting spaces for us to purposely ‘green,’ make more accessible to all community members because they could then have equitable access,” Rodríguez says. That said, Rodriguez also advocates for caution on how poorly planned greening efforts can lead to green gentrification.

A fundamental piece of this work, Rodríguez says, is including community members in the conversation and actually listening to them. Marginalized communities may distrust or be unaware of these public programs, and they may face language barriers if diversity isn’t made a central priority.

Some of Rodríguez’s upcoming work will share findings from a large-scale regional survey about supply and demand for ecosystem services. For example, urban residents are more interested in services related to flood prevention while rural residents are most concerned about freshwater access for irrigation since those are issues that they face most often.

“We want to make sure the communities feel this is for them,” Rodríguez says.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Connecticut. Original written by Anna Zarra Aldrich, College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Environment

Terrorized by gunmen, neo-Nazis and radical judges, the United States is breaking up into the Un-United States, with unforgiving values ​​and desires, socially, culturally, politically. On the one hand, there are the liberal coasts, where I used to live also, and a few islands in the Midwest. On the other hand, the landmass of the conservative – or at least conservatively governed – states in between: The two Americas are drifting apart more and more abruptly, like tectonic continental plates that are drifting towards the big bang, the historic, incurable earthquake of the century.

The first temblors can no longer be ignored. Mass shootings in ever shorter succession, a possible comeback by the autocrat Trump and the recent shock judgments of the Supreme Court, which has shifted the foundations of US society sharply to the right, only accelerate what has been fermenting for a long time.

On the 246th anniversary of this "great experiment America," as President Joe Biden puts it that day, as if living in a parallel reality, everything seems to be falling apart. Nothing is agreed on anymore: guns, abortion, climate, civil rights, education, history, media, even the recognition of election results - the bedrock of the system.

The reasons are not new: the thoughtless violence, the rampant poverty, the arbitrary death penalty, the world's highest incarceration rate, the power of the oligarchic class, the extremism disguised as patriotism. And America's surreally exaggerated self-image as "the greatest nation in the world."

America makes it hard for those who used to like it. It's a nation on the brink of collapse. This collapse was not brought about by invaders or immigrants, as the right would have you believe, but by enemies within, see January 6. 2021. Brutal, heartless, indifferent to the climate catastrophe, the impoverishment of millions, the mass deaths in Uvalde, Buffalo, Highland Park. "That's not who we are," they say reflexively, we're not like that. But that's exactly how too many of them are, again and again.

Women have taken up guns in northern and central Afghanistan, marching in the streets in their hundreds and sharing pictures of themselves with assault rifles on social media, in a show of defiance as the Taliban make sweeping gains nationwide.

One of the biggest demonstrations was in central Ghor province, where hundreds of women turned out at the weekend, waving guns and chanting anti-Taliban slogans.

They are not likely to head to the frontlines in large numbers any time soon, because of both social conservatism and lack of experience. But the public demonstrations, at a time of urgent threat from the militants, are a reminder of how frightened many women are about what Taliban rule could mean for them and their families.

“There were some women who just wanted to inspire security forces, just symbolic, but many more were ready to go to the battlefields,” said Halima Parastish, the head of the women’s directorate in Ghor and one of the marchers. “That includes myself. I and some other women told the governor around a month ago that we’re ready to go and fight.”

The Taliban have been sweeping across rural Afghanistan, taking dozens of districts including in places such as northern Badakhshan province, which 20 years ago was an anti-Taliban stronghold. They now have multiple provincial capitals in effect under siege.

In areas they control, the Taliban have already brought in restrictions on women’s education, their freedom of movement and their clothing, activists and residents of those areas say. In one area, flyers were circulating demanding that women put on burqas.

Even women from extremely conservative rural areas aspire to more education, greater freedom of movement and a greater role in their families, according to a new survey of a group whose voices are rarely heard. Taliban rule will take them in the opposite direction.

“No woman wants to fight, I just want to continue my education and stay far away from the violence but conditions made me and other women stand up,” said a journalist in her early 20s from northern Jowzjan, where there is a history of women fighting.

She attended a day’s training on weapons handling in the provincial capital, which is currently besieged. She asked not to be named in case it falls to the Taliban. “I don’t want the country under the control of people who treat women the way they do. We took up the guns to show if we have to fight, we will.”

She said there were a few dozen women learning to use guns with her, and despite their inexperience they would have one advantage over men if they faced the Taliban. “They are frightened of being killed by us, they consider it shameful.”

For conservative militants, facing women in battle can be humiliating. Isis fighters in Syria were reportedly more frightened of dying at the hands of female Kurdish forces than being killed by men.

It is rare, but not unprecedented, for Afghan women to take up arms, particularly in slightly less conservative parts of the country. Last year a teenager, Qamar Gul, became famous nationwide after fighting off a group of Taliban who had killed her parents. The militants included her own husband.

In Baghlan province, a woman called Bibi Aisha Habibi became the country’s only female warlord in the wake of the Soviet invasion and the civil war that followed. She was known as Commander Kaftar, or Pigeon.

And in northern Balkh, 39-year-old Salima Mazari has recently been fighting on the frontlines in Charkint, where she is the district governor.

Women have also joined Afghanistan’s security forces over the past two decades, including training as helicopter pilots, although they have faced discrimination and harassment from colleagues and are rarely found on the frontlines.

The Taliban shrugged off Afghanistan’s historical precedents, claiming the demonstrations were propaganda and men would not allow female relatives to fight.

“Women will never pick up guns against us. They are helpless and forced by the defeated enemy,” said a spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid. “They can’t fight.”

The Ghor provincial governor, Abdulzahir Faizzada, said in a phone interview that some of the women who came out in the streets of Firozkoh, the provincial capital, had already battled the Taliban, and most had endured violence from the group.

“The majority of these women were those who had recently escaped from Taliban areas. They have already been through war in their villages, they lost their sons and brothers, they are angry,” he said. Faizzada added that he would train women who did not have experience with weapons, if the government in Kabul approved it.

The Taliban’s conservative rules are particularly unwelcome in Ghor, where women traditionally wear headscarves rather than covering themselves fully with the burqa, and work in fields and villages beside their men, Parastish said.

The Taliban have banned women even from taking care of animals or working the land in areas of Ghor they control, she added. They have closed girls schools, ordered women not to leave home without a male guardian and even banned them from gathering for weddings, saying only men should attend.

Women from these areas were among those who marched. “More than a dozen women have escaped from Allahyar in Shahrak district last week and came to us and asked for guns to go and fight for their lands and freedom. The same situation is in Charsadda region,” Parastish said.

“Women said: ‘We are getting killed and injured without defending ourselves, why not fight back?’ They were telling us that at least two women were in labour in their region, with no medical things around and they couldn’t come with them.”

For now, she said, the main thing holding the women back was the men in power. “The governor said there is no need for us now and they will let us know.”

Akhtar Mohammad Makoii contributed reporting

To the people silently asking, “does me just... not streaming the show actually do anything?”

Answer: Yes, ESPECIALLY if you apply it to ALL of their shows.

You’re not here to punish Just Supernatural. In fact, you’re probably not here to punish SPN itself at all, as most people are aware this is the NETWORK and not the CREATIVES. That means you have to send a message to the NETWORK. That’s why we’re also working with, say, parts of Supergirl fandom, or pointing out what they did to the Black Lightning crew, and more. Hell, it’s too late for like the 100 fandom, or clexa, but maybe if we turn up the heat enough, Supercorp will stop getting treated like shit because they’ll want to turn around their image and go OH LOOK AT US BEING PROGRESSIVE FOR REAL NOW to save face. But that also requires Supercorp fans onboarding this with equal dedication to the 90K+ people in the last few waves that were righteously hot about SPN -- now, not only after it does or doesn’t affect them personally. Because ironically, right now, it does affect them personally.

But SPN, for example, topped the global list in digital calls since about S11, running in a similar category to Grey’s Anatomy and Game of Thrones. About half the list are CW products, because at the end, they don’t care about live, and here’s why.

Digital calls include, but are not limited to: official hashtags, and digital streaming services. This can range from buying Amazon passes to a season to watch live, to using Netflix to stream already uploaded content.

FWIW, early S15 was shattering records it hadn’t seen in years in its SVOD and digital calls. Meaning it was positioned, early, especially with the early netflix upload, to hop forward on that top 20 digital list again. But it’ll be a while before we get the report, and I’m interested to see if it, and other CW shows, can be punted off the list.

Are you one of those people that casually put on SPN while you clean the house or whatever? Hell, are you one of those people that do pretty much sequential binge watches, maybe 30 episodes a week? Knock those out. That’s 30 digital calls they lose, not counting the drop in hashtags. Now do that for a few months. Suddenly that’s 300 digital calls they’ve lost. Now get 10 friends to do it. That’s 3000 digital calls they’ve lost. 

For example, during the year of S12, there were 891,364,902~ digital calls for SPN. So let’s say we get 1,000 career binge watchers to stop for the next 3 months. That’s - 360000 digital calls on their streaming calls alone (again, not including hash trends and the like.) So you’ve just knocked off everything beneath the millions alone, and those are DIRECTLY going to hit their streaming services they have to shop the product to. 

How many hash tags did you use usually? Knock those calls out too. How many of your friends that watched more like 3 episodes a week can you find and get to stop doing this? Maybe another 10,000 people that more fit that bill get on board? Oop there’s another 360000 calls. Let’s assume everyone used about proportionate hashtags. 360000, 360000 again. Oh, shit, so suddenly, off of the simple rebellion of *not watching this show on any streaming service*, you’ve knocked out a few *million* digital calls. Add in the more casual loss of people not using it to stream live and they’re going to even lose that whole like, 40K active accounts monthly on twitter alone that maybe spammed 10 tags a week. Oh, there goes another 400,000... weekly... times that maybe 3 months... another 4,800,000 out the door easily.

What about the passive GA that felt burned by that ending? Cuz they ARE out there. How many of them are going to move on their interests and just wait for nostalgia to come around later? 

You see how quickly this stacks? Especially when you also won’t buy their swag or watch live either, even if live is their secondary interest? What are we at in only one quarter of the year now? Like them losing about 7 million? Okay and if that was the full year reports come in? 28 million? Without even calculating in the GA that felt whacked off by this? And with us being extremely conservative on how wide this reach will get? And hitting them ONLY on SPN?

SomethingtoSay and TheySilencedYou got almost 100K tweets. The #MissingSupernatural sad trombone got 2K, despite the “related interests” trend push and the blurb to try to catch attention and tell us all how sad we should be. I’m going to need someone to think about that.

They have to individually shop products around since the Netflix deal broke. That’s WHY in some countries SPN has bounced between Netflix and Amazon often. With their shit-shows it’s a matter of convincing platforms to stream. With their big ones that are streaming wonders, it’s a boon to them, because biggest bidder scenario. What people think will bring them to their platform.

If you only use a streaming service for CW shows? Cancel it, use the little reason box to clarify exactly why. Let them know those products aren’t worth as much anymore. Let them know loudly. They’ll buy it for less and less historically, which again, hits the CW right in the money maker. Suddenly it’s not a competition for this property and they won’t be racing for it the same way.

Do that for *all* their shows. Imagine mirroring that on like 4 shows. That alone slams them with a loss of like, over a hundred million digital calls. Jazz fucking hands. Do you know what that does to a network who’s entire strategy is to shove shit TV out on digital and wait for it to catch fire?

Yes, it helps. And it takes negative effort.

Cancelling your netflix or whatever -- in just a few months of casual savings you’ll have enough to buy at least half the DVDs pre-owned. Start with your favorite seasons and by the time you’re done with those, you’ll be able to get the others off the same income save.

I’ve already cancelled my Netflix and told them why. Have you?

Is 616 Tony a Democrat or Republican or neither? I’ve seen posts comparing him to Trump (barf!)

Wow. Geez. You don't ask easy questions, do you, anon?

First off, I am going to assume that whoever was comparing 616 Tony to Trump was trying to slander Tony. And I will tell you that we do in fact have 616 Tony's canonical opinion of Trump -- yes, Donald Trump exists on Earth-616 and has been referenced in several comics -- and he doesn't seem to like him much. I mean, this is back when Trump was primarily being known for being a New York businessman. They canonically ran in the same circles and Tony canonically knows him. He doesn't like him.

Here's Tony in Iron Man v1 #227 complaining that Trump bought him out of a building:

And here's Tony again in Iron Man v3 #37 being not especially thrilled when he thinks that the person he is about to meet is Trump:

(The person he is actually meeting is Tiberius Stone, which is also a very bad idea.)

I am also going to point out that due to the way Marvel likes to handle politics in its comics, I don't think we can say anything about the canonical political affiliation of most characters, because Marvel deliberately leaves that undefined. So to the best of my knowledge, we don't have a canonical statement about Tony's political affiliation and we probably won't ever get one.

But we can speculate based on canonical evidence, can't we?

My very long answer is under the Read More.

Your question is sort of framed as "tell me if Tony is a good or a bad person," and I would like to suggest that this is not really a useful framing for several reasons: (1) what the political parties currently stand for is pretty recent, actually, and Tony as a character predates a lot of the modern conceptions of the two parties; (2) the history of the Democratic Party specifically in New York, where Tony is from, is, let's just say, not 100% pure and unproblematic; and (3), when we're talking about someone with the amount of money, connections, and influence that Tony has, party affiliation generally doesn't mean the same thing it would mean for us ordinary mortals. What I mean by that last point is that there is a big, big difference between every one of the following list of statements: "I would vote for Republicans," "I am a registered Republican," "I would give very large amounts of money to Republicans," and "I would accept a political appointment in a Republican administration." For most of us, the last two of those points aren't ever going to be something that comes up in our lives, but they are going to be things that matter very much for someone like Tony Stark. And we have a canonical answer for at least one of those things. We can theorize about at least some of the rest of them.

I'm saying all that because I suspect you're really not going to like my answer.

I think that there is a very, very high chance that 616 Tony is a Republican.

I mean, I don't think he'd be a Republican right now at this exact moment in time, are you kidding me, but I feel like he has definitely been a Republican at some point in the past. Say, before Trump. One of those socially-liberal fiscally-conservative types. With a conscience. Sort of like Mitt Romney. Picture the kind of Republican Massachusetts likes to keep electing as their governor.

Yes, is possible that, since Tony is from New York, he's a lifelong Democrat. It is definitely possible. New York is heavily Democratic in our world, and barring contradictory evidence, that is probably also the case on Earth-616. But I think that, specifically because of the rest of Tony's background and the ways that Tony has interacted with the world of politics in 616, he is most likely to be a Republican. It doesn't mean he couldn't be a Democrat! I have no proof either way! In terms of several elements of his characterization -- say, his commitment to social justice and fighting inequity -- I would say he definitely leans Democrat, because these days that sort of thing is mostly the province of the Democrats, although I suspect that back when Tony was created it wouldn't have been out of character for a lot of Republicans. I'm just saying that Republican seems more likely. If you gotta pick one. I think you could definitely argue for either. He doesn't fit completely into either but his canon interactions with politics push me toward thinking he's a Republican, because he does several specific things that I think it would be unlikely that anyone other than a Republican would be given the opportunity to do at the specific time that he does them.

Yeah. I know.

Right. Okay. Tony is extremely, extremely rich, and even though I know that he is basically the fantasy of The One Good Ethical Billionaire (more on this in a sec), it's probably worth thinking about what actual real-life rich people do with their money in ways that intersect with politics. And the answer to that is, well, generally they give money to politicians who are favorable to, say, helping them continue to have money. Now, yes, as far as I know there is no evidence of Tony doing this in canon -- this is where all the conjecture comes in. So we ask ourselves, okay, if Tony were to endorse particular politicians because of this, what party would he give money to? Who would he want to get in good with? In most parts of the country, that would probably be the Republican party. But, specifically in New York, it's the Democrats.

So, yeah, one of the big points in favor of him being a Democrat is that, well, Democrats traditionally run New York. The class of old-money New York elites are pretty stereotypically Democrats. And that would include Tony. Which is not to say that he couldn't be a Republican, but if he wants to get anywhere with New York politicians, and I suspect he probably does because he is trying to run a series of very large businesses and he owns a fair amount of real estate including several buildings whose permitting processes I can only imagine fall into the category of “probably highly irregular" -- I mean, he has multiple jets that he regularly lands on his house and secret underwater tunnels for a submarine -- he has to cozy up to Democrats. If he gives money to anyone involved in politics, that's who he gives money to. Making superhero bases probably took a lot of money. A massive amount of money. The city planners probably cry when they see him coming.

(At one point I believe they did ban him from keeping the Quinjets in his house. That was when the Avengers had the Hydrobase.)

I tend to assume most people know something about the history of the Democrats in New York, or at least the history of US political parties in general, but the tl;dr version is that the parties haven't always stood for the same things that they do now. They also weren't always the same parties. And historically, in New York, the political machine gives you Democrats. That's just the way it is. The Democratic Party of the past was not really, um, devoted to all the same causes as the current Democratic Party. And it was very hard to get anywhere in New York and not be a Democrat. It still is. If you haven't read up on Tammany Hall, maybe you should. There was a lot of corruption. I mean, yeah, it's not currently a thing, but the Democrats remained in power in New York; it dissolved probably around about the time the Republican Party explicitly decided that the way to win the South was to appeal to the racism of white voters ("the Southern strategy"). Because, yes, before that a lot of white, conservative Southerners were traditionally Democrats. And then the Democrats split about civil rights, and, uh, the Republicans took in the racists.

Anyway! US political history is sure a land of contrasts! Rich New Yorkers are traditionally Democrats! That is a point for Tony possibly being a Democrat, yes. Moving on!

But Tony is not just a random old-money New Yorker. He inherited Howard Stark's money and Howard Stark's company. And Howard was, well, a defense contractor. And so was Tony, until he stopped making weapons. And, uh, being a defense contractor is, um, one of those things that is extremely, extremely Republican. No, I don't have stats to back this up. Just trust me. So, yeah, he's a rich New Yorker -- but he's also a defense contractor from a family of defense contractors. I would be amazed if Howard Stark were anything other than a Republican. Which is not to say that Tony could not be a Democrat anyway, but the job does come with a certain predisposition.

(Incidentally, one of the other things Tony inherited from Howard was his membership in the Hellfire Club, which is one of those things I keep forgetting about until canon smacks me in the face with it every few years.)

We all know that the conception of Tony, as a character, is basically the fantasy of the Ethical Billionaire. He is The Best At Capitalism. He has money and he is not corrupted by it. He has money and he uses it to do the maximum amount of good in the world because that is what he really, deeply wants to do. He supports a large number of philanthropic causes! He has a foundation named after his mother! He funds programs for low-income youth! He runs a homeless shelter for women! Throughout his history, he has been consistently portrayed as a deeply, deeply kind human being, who wants to help people. A lot of people! People who aren't like him! People who might not even like him! That is just... who he is, as a person.

And these days we tend to associate that kind of push for systemic change and caring about social issues and remedying inequity with Democrats, but that wasn't always the case. I think it still would have been believable coming from a Republican, oh, around about the time Tony came into existence. He was created back when you could be an elected Republican and, uh, push social policies that I think these days we would consider progressive. I mean, Eisenhower was the one who started integrating schools, right? The Republicans are the party of Lincoln! It's not like Republicans are prevented from doing good things. And I think we need to keep in mind that Tony dates from the early 60s when socially-progressive was still a thing Republicans could conceivably be.

So, yes, Tony is very kind. It's nice. We all like that about him. But also many of the ways in which he is kind to people are very much Republican fantasies. Like, yes, he's a great boss. He's close to his employees. They're like family. If any of his employees have problems, he helps them out on a personal, individual level -- and that, as an ideal, seems very Republican to me. I mean, he's a CEO, right? He's owned a lot of companies. Are any of them unionized? Combing through Wiki, I find one reference to a union in ToS 63, which is really, really early -- you know, back when unions were more popular. I can't find anything after that. And nothing is coming to mind. So, I mean, yes, we have now established his employees were at one point unionized, but he's certainly not known for, say, running a union shop. Part of the fantasy of the Ethical Billionaire is the idea that Tony's employees don't need unions because Tony is so kind and so generous and so personally selflessly good that he takes care of everyone who works for him. And the thing is, Tony actually does do this. He is fictional and therefore capable of achieving perfection.

Okay. He's a fictional character. Let's step back a little and think about fictional characters, and specifically the way Marvel Comics depicts fictional characters interacting with well-known real people. Many real people from our Earth do seem to exist in 616. Earth-616 is not our Earth in a vast number of ways, but one thing it shares with our Earth is presidents. Whoever is the real-life president when a comic comes out is pretty much generally president on Earth-616 at the time. Yes, I'm going somewhere with this.

Now, for whatever reason, Marvel often does not canonically refer to presidents by their names in dialogue, but the artists pretty much draw whoever is president at the time when someone in canon needs to meet the president. (Captain America seems to get to meet the president a lot. I'm sure you're shocked.)

There are a couple exceptions to "everyone who looks like the president is the president,” namely that Marvel says that the villain who was Number One of the Secret Empire in Captain America v1 #175, who attempted to conspire with aliens to take over the Earth, whom Steve watched commit suicide -- anyway, the official Marvel word is, I believe, that this guy is not Richard Nixon, but Steve Englehart, who wrote the comic, says it absolutely was:

And, yes, this is the incident that causes Steve to lose faith in America and become Nomad. You can kind of see why that would be traumatic. Marvel clearly had some feelings about Watergate they needed to process.

Anyway, I just wanted to put in a picture of that time Ronald Reagan was turned into a snake person. It's Captain America v1 #344:

I love comics.

More recent presidents still make appearances in the comics, and they are the president who was the real-life president at the time. For example, the president who pardons Steve for all his SHRA-related crimes in Who Will Wield The Shield is definitely Obama:

And that means that I must also unfortunately inform you that Hydra Steve also received a presidential pardon:

Though the issue in question (Captain America v9 #8) does not specifically name the president, following the "whoever is the actual president is the 616 president" rule, the president who canonically pardoned Hydra Steve is... Donald Trump.

Let's just pause here to contemplate this. Take as long as you need.

(I was today years old when I learned that Hydra Steve has been dead in comics for over a year. Since the issue in which he was pardoned, actually. Which is an issue I am sure I read the day it came out, but somehow I missed the four entire pages where Hydra Steve is set on fire and burns to death while hailing Hydra with his last breath. I guess it wasn't memorable! I mention because I am pretty sure I am not the only one who missed this.)

Anyway. I do have a point to make here, and my point is this: Tony has received political appointments. Two of them, in fact. In the 2003-2004 Iron Man arc "The Best Defense," Tony becomes Secretary of Defense. He does get Senate confirmation; it's not a deputy appointment. He actually gets unanimous confirmation. And I know that Tony had this job is a fact that everyone knows about Tony, but I feel like a lot of people may not be totally conscious of the timeframe involved here, and by that I mean that he is absolutely, positively, the Secretary of Defense for Earth-616's George W. Bush. Yes, I am sure of this.

Here is Tony with the president in Iron Man v3 #78, being told he got the job:

Yeah. That’s George W. Bush.

Can a Cabinet appointment cross party lines? I mean, sure, it's possible. I am not the kind of giant politics nerd who has this memorized, but there is in fact, a Wikipedia page for US political appointments across party lines. And it looks like there have been five cross-party Secretaries of Defense and five Secretaries of War. So, I mean, yes, it's happened, but it's fairly rare. None of the cross-party Secretaries of Defense (deputy secretaries excluded, since they weren't confirmed, obviously) were ever Democrats appointed by Republicans. And since we're looking at Dubya's administration specifically, it looks like only one of his Cabinet appointees (Transportation) was cross-party. So it looks like he in particular would not have been especially likely to appoint a Democrat to his Cabinet, since in real life he only had the one.

So to me it seems that the most likely party affiliation for Tony has to be Republican, because of this. Sure, the appointment could have crossed party lines. But I feel like it's just... not likely. Being a Republican Secretary of Defense in a Republican administration just seems way, way more possible.

(Also I'd like everyone to remember that Tony is replacing the previous Secretary of Defense because the previous Secretary of Defense was secretly the Red Skull and released an engineered flesh-eating virus at Mount Rushmore. Just, y'know, to set the mood.)

What's more, Tony gets a second political appointment from the Bush administration. It's not a Cabinet position, but he does become the Director of SHIELD in 2007. Here Tony is with the president, slightly earlier, in Civil War #1:

This is not really as good a likeness of Bush as the previous and I guess you could argue that the artist was drawing A Generic Politician but I feel like, y'know, it's probably still meant to be Bush. And Tony may not have wanted this particular job -- we know he definitely didn't -- but he absolutely wanted to be Secretary of Defense. So we know that he is definitely fine with serving in a Republican administration.

So, yeah, that's my argument: odds are pretty good that Tony has, at some point in his life, been a Republican. Maybe not right now. But probably in the past.

Having said that, given the way Marvel handles politics, I don't think it's likely to ever be much of an issue in canon; the Avengers mostly just tend to get to get along with whoever the president is at the time and I can't recall really anything about partisan issues. However, you're never going to convince me 616 Steve was anything other than a New Deal Democrat -- even though I know that in Cap #250 he turns down both the Democrats and the Republicans when they ask him to run for president -- because, I mean, come on. I assume that he and Tony probably try not to discuss politics ever anymore, because we all know how the SHRA went. They probably mostly agree, but when they disagree, people have a tendency to end up dead.

That was probably more than you ever wanted to know about my thoughts on this topic.

MASTERLIST + everything you need to know

sth about me :: 

hewwo there, i’m a ‘02 liner and you can call me seong (성). you can use any pronouns you want with me because my preferences literally change every few days - but I do prefer they/them over all of them. pansexual, ot8 stan, i love all of them but occasionally minho and chan jumps out of line and takes over my life

correction :: seungmin has now officially taken over my life and I’m ghosting minho on bubble more than chan has been ghosting us, so suffice to say my relationship with skz is going extremely well 

this blog is my contribution to stayblr and is largely skz-centric, though occasionally I might write for other groups as well, because if there’s one mark of a multi-fandom fan is that we’re fickle :’). skz is literally the only 4th gen kpop group I’m familiar with, so if you don’t want to see any 3rd gen group content floating around just tell me and,,,i’ll move them elsewhere.

what i mostly do in this blog :: 

post about stray kids and how wonderful they are, i.e. just screaming over them, rambling etc :> I occasionally write. only occasionally. 

also because I,,,do sadly have a life I only get my news about skz on this hellsite and possibly on ig, so yeah. pls don’t count on my blog as a reliable source of news because it really isn’t :’)

feel free to send in asks about literally anything! I promise I don’t bite (unless you violate my dni list) - it’ll be great to interact more with this community :D

(I also dabble infrequently in astrology so feel free to ask me about that too, I guess :p)

            COME JOIN MY 100 FOLLOWERS ASK GAME HERE!!

dni list :: 

— racists, islamphobes, anyone who believes that china is to blame for covid — homophobes, transphobes, terfs, literally if you’re anti-lgbtqa+ please get out — conservatives, trump supporters  — misogynists  — minors pls don’t interact with my 18+ posts, focus on school,,, (by minors I mean under the age of 18, even if your country’s age of consent might be 16) 

— STRAY KIDS (스트레이 키즈) 

SONG SERIES :: these are oneshots/drabbles inspired by skz’s lyrics or MVs, and are not entirely focused on relationships with the members. the reader may be present as the member’s partner, but only as a background or supporting character. the focus is on the member and the linkage with the song/MV. 

— MIXTAPE : OH (애) :: chan | minho | changbin | hyunjin | jisung | felix | seungmin | jeongin 

READER INSERTS :: 

bang chan

#4 :: angst | in which chan is there for you, despite it all | TW: depression

lee minho

seo changbin

hwang hyunjin

#2 :: angst | in which hyunjin helps you through your worst nightmare of losing him

han jisung

kim seungmin

#1 :: angst | in which seungmin finds you and lifts you up, even in your darkest moments | TW :: suicidal thoughts, depression

#5 :: fluff | in which seungmin gets jealous of you having fun with your friends, but makes up at the end

yang jeongin 

#3 :: angst | in which jeongin loses himself and you help him regain himself

SERIES :: 

MISFITS (reader x lee know) 

—  historical au! | enemies to lovers | adventure — rating :: pg (as of yet)  —  summary ::  in which you and minho are travelling bandits who steal things for a living, but he has an uncanny talent for getting in your way and finding where you are. also known as me speed-running the enemies to lovers trope and squeezing it into the span of god knows how many chapters. — schedule :: updates every tuesday  — chapter 1 | chapter 2 | chapter 3 | chapter 4 | chapter 5 | chapter 6

18+/NSFW READER INSERTS :: (minors pls don’t interact)

bang chan

#2 :: gender neutral!reader | size kink, pet names 

lee minho

#1 :: fem!reader | sex toys, edging, slight sadism, brat taming, overstimulation

#7 :: gender neutral!reader | revenge sex, degradation kink

seo changbin

#6 :: fem!reader | public sex, fingering 

#9 :: fem!reader | hate sex, choking kink

hwang hyunjin

#5 :: fem!reader | mirror-sex-but-not-really, corruption kink

#10 :: compulsion | gender neutral!reader | dom! reader x sub! hyunjin, bondage, dubcon, bdsm undertones, use of aphrodisiacs 

han jisung

#8 :: fem!reader | denial, fingering

lee felix

#3 :: gender neutral!reader | daddy kink, cock warming

kim seungmin

#4 :: fem!reader | sadism, deepthroating

yang jeongin