Articles of Distraction

[Angrboda]

[Paraselene]

It should be concerning to citizens of all the things wrong in this country, he wants to focus on that.

[Angrboda]

There was a quote in the news about how this is emblematic of his presidency as a whole. I half hope he completes this ballroom so that it will serve as a perpetual reminder to Americans about what happens when you give power to the right. Every election that happens, there will be the reminder.

[Angrboda]

Legal scholars said the contrast was troubling.

“The prospect of the United States agreeing to spend taxpayer dollars to settle President Trump’s questionable legal claims is all the more galling given how hard it is for ordinary people to obtain compensation when they are actually abused by federal officials,” said Alexander A. Reinert, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

“American citizens wrongfully detained by ICE officers, or law-abiding individuals subjected to excessive force by federal law enforcement agents,” Professor Reinert added, “face significant hurdles even getting their claims heard in court.”

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch pondered the point in June in a Supreme Court decision as he delivered an incremental interim victory to a traumatized family whose home was wrongly raided.

Could such people sue the federal government for damages? Justice Gorsuch asked. “The answer is not as obvious as it might be,” he wrote.

Indeed, said Joanna C. Schwartz, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She called the Federal Tort Claims Act a “hyper-technical statute riddled with exclusions” that made it difficult to win even when federal law enforcement engaged in clear wrongdoing.

The law protects law enforcement officials who have exercised discretion, a high bar that suits rarely clear. (That provision was at issue in the June case, when the court unanimously ruled that the family should have another chance to make the difficult showing required by the law.)

As a result, Professor Schwartz said, even U.S. citizens who have been wrongly arrested and detained by ICE agents in recent months may struggle to win relief.

Unlike Trump, Most Who Seek Money for Official Misconduct Face Long Odds

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Historically, the East Wing is the province of the First Lady. It would be just terrible if she was in her office when the wrecking ball came through. Like, just…awful.

Boru

[Angrboda]

Identifying the factors that contribute to psychopathology and increase the risk of experiencing specific mental health conditions is a long-standing goal for many psychology researchers. While past studies have highlighted the crucial role of some experiences, particularly challenging events unfolding during childhood and adolescence, in the development of mental health disorders, their influence is often difficult to quantify and differentiate from other factors that could contribute to psychopathology.

Recent technological advances, particularly the development of increasingly sophisticated machine learning and computational analysis tools, have opened new possibilities for the study of mental health disorders and their underlying patterns. When used to analyze the large amounts of data collected by mental health services and professionals over the past decades, these methods could help to uncover correlations between specific variables and hidden trends that are associated with psychopathology.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Washington University School of Medicine recently set out to explore the possible contribution of different factors to poor mental health among teenagers using data mining techniques (i.e., computational approaches to uncover patterns in data). Their findings, published in Nature Mental Health, suggest that social experiences, particularly conflicts between family members, bullying or a loss of reputation among peers, are the strongest predictors of psychopathology in adolescents.

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"Our results consistently revealed that social conflicts were the strongest predictors of psychopathology, especially family fighting and reputational damage between peers," wrote the authors. "Sex differences also emerged as a critical factor for predicting long-term mental health outcomes. Neuroimaging-derived metrics were consistently the least informative."

Family and peer conflicts predict teenage mental health issues, study finds

[Angrboda]

[A] new study from researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the consulting group Brattle suggests that, counterintuitively, more electricity demand can actually lower prices. Between 2019 and 2024, the researchers calculated, states with spikes in electricity demand saw lower prices overall. Instead, they found that the biggest factors behind rising rates were the cost of poles, wires and other electrical equipment — as well as the cost of safeguarding that infrastructure against future disasters.

Electricity prices are climbing, but not for the reason you think

[Fake Messiah]

Tell them Brigitte

Famous actress, 91, responds to report claiming she died: ‘Idiot’

Brigitte Bardot released a statement on Wednesday confirming she is not dead after a French influencer claimed she died in the South of France. The 91-year-old movie star and singer was recently hospitalized, but assured fans she’s alive and well.

"I don’t know who the idiot is who started this fake news about my disappearance this evening, but know that I am fine and that I have no intention of bowing out. A word to the wise," Bardot wrote in French on her official X account Wednesday.

According to the Daily Mail, the “idiot” in question is Aqababe, a popular influencer who specializes in celebrity news. Aqababe, whose real name is Aniss Zitouni, claimed to have “exclusive information” that Bardon had died.

“Her coffin was ordered in Saint-Paul-de-Jarrat in the 09 (Ariège) department. An icon has passed away, leaving behind an unforgettable legacy and an eternal imprint on the hearts of the French,” said Aqababe in a since-deleted post.

https://www.syracuse.com/celebrity-news/...idiot.html

[Angrboda]

If you’re looking for a new pot or frying pan these days, prepare to get bombarded by terms like “nontoxic,” “PFAS-free” and “PTFE-free.”

But these labels don’t necessarily mean what you might think. In 2023, the popular cookware brand HexClad was sued by a group of consumers for this very reason. They claimed several of the company’s pans were labeled nontoxic but contained a chemical called PTFE, commonly marketed as Teflon, which can release toxic fumes when overheated.

Hexclad denied wrongdoing but agreed to pay a $2.5 million settlement.

How Nontoxic Is ‘Nontoxic’ Cookware?

[Angrboda]

Grokipedia, Elon Musk’s AI-generated answer to Wikipedia, is about as deranged as you’d expect — and you don’t have to dig very deep to see why.

We could, of course, start by examining how Grok, the chatbot responsible for writing the site built by xAI, tackles talking about its creator, something that hasn’t always been a flattering exercise for Musk in the past. But instead we turn to the official entry on the Tesla Cybertruck, the indefensibly bad excuse for a pickup truck that more than anything has come to totally symbolize Musk’s waning vision and all the bonkers political baggage he comes with.

The human-written Wikipedia entry on the Cybertruck — which, like on other Grokipedia pages, Grok heavily cribbed from — begins by describing the controversial EV as a “battery-electric full-size pickup truck manufactured by Tesla,” ending the first sentence there.

But the Grokipedia article — “fact-checked by Grok,” we’re assured by a message on the top — frontloads its take with technical details that are clearly supposed to make the truck sound as awesome as possible.

“The Tesla Cybertruck is a battery-electric full-size pickup truck manufactured by Tesla, Inc., characterized by its polygonal, low-polygon aesthetic and an exterior structural exoskeleton composed of 3-millimeter-thick ultra-hard 30X cold-rolled stainless steel,” it enthuses in language that sounds more like an advertisement than an encyclopedia entry, “which provides corrosion resistance comparable to 316L marine-grade steel and is claimed to be seven times stronger and more scratch-resistant than conventional automotive exterior steels.”

Things get really good when we get to the parts where Grokipedia tackles the public reception to the Cybertruck, like in one section called “Media Narratives, Regulatory Scrutiny, and Bias Claims.” The section accuses “left-leaning outlets” like CBS News of unfairly emphasizing how the truck’s stainless steel exteriors quickly began to rust after being delivered to their owners, while not as heavily covering recalls by legacy automakers like Ford.

It also brings up claims of “systemic media bias” against Tesla — describing its critics as “linked to institutional left-wing leanings skeptical of Musk’s non-conformist approach” — by citing discussion in “owner forums.” This barrage of anti-Cybertruck hate, the entry laments, comes “even as empirical delivery data shows sustained demand post-issues.”

Grokipedia’s Article on the Cybertruck Clearly Shows Why the Whole Project Is Doomed