Dairy cows must be tested for bird flu before moving across state lines under a federal order to be issued Wednesday, as evidence mounts the virus is more widespread than feared among cows in the United States.
Biden administration officials said the move is meant to contain transmission of the virus known as H5N1 and to reduce the threat to livestock, but they maintained that the risk to humans remains low.
I wonder if I should be more worried about this than I am? H5N1 is now in cows, chickens, eggs, milk, and one person.
But it's spread to people before—hundreds of them, in fact, over the past couple of decades. So this is nothing new. Still, I wonder how many mutations away it is from learning how to spread via humans?
This is tentative. We won't know anything for sure until we get the results of the PET scan at the end of next month. But it strongly suggests that my prostate cancer hasn't spread to the lymph nodes.
This is very good news. Once prostate cancer has metastasized to the lymph nodes it becomes very difficult to treat.
We still don't know if the cancer has spread to my bones because the bone scan was inconclusive. The "suspicious" activity it detected might be from the prostate cancer or it might be picking up the bone lesions I already have from multiple myeloma. Or it might be nothing but age-related degeneration. We'll have to wait for the PET scan to know for sure.
The Texas-based car company reported net income of $1.1 billion for the January-to-March period, down 55% from the year prior. Revenue fell 9% to $21.3 billion, reflecting a decline in both vehicle prices and deliveries.
Tesla’s operating margin narrowed significantly, dropping to 5.5% in the first three months of the year, from 11.4% a year earlier. Adjusted earnings per share of 45 cents missed Wall Street’s expectations.
....Tesla sells five passenger models—fewer than many other automakers—and earlier this month reported an 8.5% decline in first-quarter deliveries.
....Tesla’s free cash flow turned negative in the first quarter, bleeding about $2.5 billion as the company invested in artificial-intelligence infrastructure, and unsold-vehicle inventory climbed to 28 days of supply, from 15 days the year prior.
....Tesla reiterated Tuesday that growth in 2024 might be “notably lower” than it was the previous year.
Naturally Tesla stock was up 10% in after-hours trading.
The vote was 3-2 in favor of banning noncompete agreements for new workers and voiding them for all existing workers (except C-suite executives). This will eliminate the ridiculous practice of fast food chains hiring sandwich makers and then prohibiting them from quitting and going to work for a different fast food chain—and giving their valuable, proprietary sandwich making expertise to the competition.
Corporate America has only itself to blame for this. Noncompetes used to be limited to high-end jobs like coders or lawyers. But then, as usual, some bright boys got the idea of expanding the idea to poor shlubs working minimum wage jobs. That was outrageous enough that it finally produced support for killing noncompetes completely.
A Labor Department study published in June 2022 estimated that 18 percent of Americans are bound by noncompete agreements, while other research suggests it could be closer to 50 percent. They are used in a wide range of industries, including technology, hairstyling, medicine and even dance instruction, while imposing restrictions on both high- and low-wage earners.
The FTC estimates that banning noncompete agreements could create jobs for 30 million Americans and raise wages by nearly $300 billion per year.
All good free-market capitalists—as opposed to those who are merely shills for big corporations—should be happy about this. The United States will do nothing but benefit from it.¹
¹Assuming, of course, that it holds up against the inevitable Chamber of Commerce court challenge in the northern district of Texas.
According to the BLS, only 70.2% of college graduates who received bachelor's degrees in the spring of 2023 were employed by October. This is the lowest non-recession number in recent years.
In the Trump hush money trial, David Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer, testified today about paying off informants to hush up sex scandals:
Before court adjourned for the day, Mr. Pecker testified that Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump had asked him what he and his magazines could do “to help the campaign,” a crucial statement that supports the prosecution’s argument that the men were not just protecting Mr. Trump’s personal reputation, but aiding his presidential bid.
This is critical. The prosecution is arguing that Trump paid off Stormy Daniels for her silence, but that's not illegal. They're also arguing that the Trump Organization eventually logged the payments as "legal expenses" in the company's books. That's potentially illegal but only barely.
The key to the prosecution is why Trump did all this. They've continued to be a little cagey about their plan, but apparently they intend to argue that it was all done to help Trump's presidential campaign, which would make it an illegal campaign contribution that he then covered up. That's a federal offense and makes the recordkeeping violation a felony.
This is more or less what prosecutors tried to pin on John Edwards a decade ago over payments to keep his affair with Rielle Hunter secret. It was a novel interpretation of the law back then, and the jury didn't buy it. They couldn't reach a verdict and eventually the charges were dropped.
Will it work better this time? Is it even what the prosecutors have in mind? Or are they going to argue something a little different? Stay tuned.
Donald Trump might be stuck in court for the next few weeks, but that doesn't mean there's no good news on the horizon. On Tuesday, after the closing bell on Wall Street, he will qualify to receive another 36 million shares of his social media company. Hooray!
Here's the thing to watch. All those additional shares dilute the stock: there will be 172 million shares outstanding instead of 136 million. Under normal circumstances, this would mechanically reduce the share price by 21%. But will it? Or will the poor suckers who own the stock just merrily ignore this and keep the share price where it is?
Who knows? This whole billion-dollar scam is already so far into bizarro land that it's impossible to know what will happen next. It's unfathomable that somehow the whole thing is legal.
Big news today: San Francisco's $1.7 million bathroom finally opened and it ended up costing only about $700,000. What's more, the toilet itself is a prefab unit that was donated by a Nevada company, so the city's net cost clocked in at only $200-300,000.
And it's a good thing it was donated. Nevada is one of 22 states that San Francisco refuses to do business with because of its inadequate abortion and LGBTQ+ policies. However, apparently San Francisco doesn't object so much that it won't accept a gift from Nevada. So everything worked out.
The (formerly) $1.7 million toilet in San Francisco's Noe Valley neighborhood.
Settlers are not “civilians” in the sense of international law.... Resistance comes in all forms—armed struggle, general strikes, and popular demonstrations.
"Resistance" includes armed struggle and Israelis are not civilians. There may not be any explicit mention of Hamas here, but this is pretty obviously a defense of Hamas slaughtering civilians on October 7. In other places "the resistance" is used as a synonym for Hamas.
Avoiding explicit references to Hamas is plainly political. Jodi Dean, who was famously suspended from Hobart and William Smith Colleges for her "comments" on the Gaza war, is more explicit:
The images from October 7 of paragliders evading Israeli air defenses were for many of us exhilarating.... Although imperialist and Zionist forces try to condense the action into a singular figure of Hamas terrorism...the will to fight for Palestinian freedom precedes and exceeds it.
These are the paragliders who sailed into Israel and butchered more than a thousand civilians, including hundreds of kids at the Re'im music festival. This was "exhilarating."
The struggle for Palestinian liberation today is led by the Islamic Resistance Movement — Hamas. Hamas is supported by the entirety of the organized Palestinian left. One might have expected that the left in the imperial core [i.e., the United States] would follow the leadership of the Palestinian left in supporting Hamas. More often than not, though, left intellectuals echo the condemnations that imperialist states make the condition for speaking about Palestine.
In other words, American lefties feel like they "have to" condemn Hamas to maintain their credibility. But Dean is having none of it:
Defending Hamas, we take the side of the Palestinian resistance.... Which side are you on? Liberation or Zionism and imperialism? There are two sides and no alternative, no negotiation of the relation between oppressor and oppressed.
That's clear enough. It's worth noting that even after writing such an explicit defense of killing civilians, Dean's suspension was condemned by nearly everybody as a breach of academic freedom. Maybe that's correct. But after reading her entire essay, I have to wonder whether she can be trusted to treat all her students fairly and maintain an evenhanded approach in her lectures.
It's wise for most Palestinian resistance groups in the US to avoid being as clear as Dean. After all, most Americans, no matter whose side they're on, still think of Hamas as a brutal terrorist group. But even though the resistance groups try to keep things fuzzy, there's not much question that most of them think Hamas is just doing what has to be done and October 7 is therefore to be celebrated. After all, it was nothing more than a necessary step toward eliminating the settler colonialist Israelis once and for all.
POSTSCRIPT: And what about Israeli killing of civilians in Gaza? Is that just a necessary step toward eliminating Hamas? There are many who think so. I'm not one of them, but it's sophistry nonetheless to pretend these are the same things. Hamas invaded Israel for the express purpose of slaughtering civilians. Israel may be guilty of not caring enough about civilian deaths in Gaza, but they are fundamentally fighting against a terrorist group which has the announced aim of destroying Israel.
This is not some mushy, hair-splitting distinction that's blind to Israeli behavior. It's fundamental to the most minimal conception of human decency.
