Author: sauer@technologists.com

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Jennifer Rubin: The ‘buck stops’ nowhere

President Harry S. Truman had a sign on his desk that read “The buck stops here.” President Carter actually borrowed Truman’s sign. President Barack Obama said “The buck stops with me” after a failed terrorist attack. President Joe Biden said the same about the messy end of the war in Afghanistan. But in Donald Trump’s regime, bucks never get near the Oval Office. If you listen to the MAGA cult, neither Trump nor any regime official is responsible, accountable, or to blame for anything.

The killing of one national guardsman and severe wounding of another in D.C. was a tragedy and an outrage. The killer, of course, should be punished to the full extent of the law. But to ignore Trump’s egregious decision-making that brought us to this point of reckless political violence is to invite further tragedies and condone grievous incompetence.

No matter how furiously Trump and his minions try to spin the narrative, Biden cannot be blamed for this one. Trump’s crew granted asylum to the suspected killer this April. Most importantly, Trump and MAGA governors who comply with the president’s whims and who send national guardsmen around the country willy-nilly for tasks they are not trained to perform are responsible for their safety. The guardsmen who were attacked should never have been there.
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Rebecca Solnit: Solidarity Stitches Us Together: Today, World AIDS Day, Is Also the 70th Anniversary of Rosa Park’s Historic Protest

… Seventy years ago today in Montgomery, Alabama, a Black civil rights activist and seamstress famously refused to yield her seat on the bus, which got her arrested, which got the town’s Black community organizing, which got a young minister there named Martin Luther King involved in political activism in a whole new way, which begat the Civil Rights Movement, which didn’t just change the United States but forged essential tools for rights and justice movements all over the world ever since. …
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Joyce Vance: The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come

“You must refuse illegal orders.” That’s what was said in the video made by six Democratic members of Congress. Trump accused them of seditious behavior. The FBI launched an investigation.

Then, on Black Friday, the Washington Post ran with an exclusive story about the September 2, 2025, attack on a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, the first of a series of attacks that have involved strikes on at least 23 boats to date. The Post reported that in advance of the strike, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody.’”

That’s what the special operations commander overseeing the attack did. After the initial hit, live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to the wreckage. The commander “ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions … The two men were blown apart in the water.” …
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Morgaan Sinclair, Ph.D.: Venezuela: It’s the Oil, Folks. Like it was with Trump Wanting Canada.

Venezuela has 10x more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. They’ll be wanting a piece, too.
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Dispatch: The 19th-Century Influencer Who Invented Thanksgiving

How Sarah Josepha Hale used fashion, fiction, and sheer persistence to give America its beloved holiday.
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By the time Lincoln read her letter in September 1863, the country was exhausted. Gettysburg had ended two months earlier with unimaginable casualties. Families were fractured, states were bitterly divided, and the very idea of a United States felt fragile. Hale’s proposal arrived not as a domestic nicety but as a cultural intervention—a way to call a bleeding nation to the same table, if only for a day. In a world where families were split by battle lines, the image of a shared feast—of turkey, pies, and a moment of gratitude—offered unity where politics could not.

In October 1863, Lincoln issued a proclamation establishing a national day of Thanksgiving. Lincoln’s own language echoed Hale’s persuasive vision: He called the nation to give thanks “with one heart and one voice,” inviting citizens in every corner of the Union—including those “at sea” and “sojourning in foreign lands”—to pause together. He urged Americans not only to offer gratitude but also to “commend to [God’s] tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers” in the war, and to implore divine help “to heal the wounds of the nation.” In the middle of brutal civil strife, Lincoln took up Hale’s idea that gratitude to God and for each other could be a form of national repair.
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James Eagle: The US lags badly on emissions trading coverage

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Germany and Austria now cover more than 75% of their emissions under trading systems. South Korea is above 50% and China has passed 40% with a national market that continues to expand. Even the wider EU average sits at 33%. These systems matter because they put a real price on pollution and create incentives for cleaner technology which is why so many countries treat them as the backbone of their climate strategy.

The United States by contrast covers only 7% of its emissions. That is not due to a lack of innovation or economic capacity. It reflects decades of political division inconsistent federal action and a heavy reliance on state level policies. The result is a fragmented system that does not match the scale of the challenge or the ambition seen elsewhere.
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Steven Beschloss: Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation

On October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation. He soberly acknowledged that he was doing so “in the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity.” And he reflected on “the lamentable civil strife in which we are engaged” leading to the many “who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers.”

But despite his honest depiction of our nation’s tragedy, America’s 16th president was also able to see beyond it. He described “the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies” and asked Americans to look ahead and “expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.” (He had signed the final Emancipation Proclamation nine months earlier.)

On that October day, Lincoln proclaimed that Americans should “set apart and observe the last Thursday of November…as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” In what reads like a prayer, he concluded with his hope for “the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it…to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”

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Raven Nightshade: Deportation on the Rich Man’s Runway

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Their vans crept down the road: a death-march of the American Dream.

Why I Was There

Because silence is complicity.

Because witnessing is the smallest possible act of courage in a country addicted to looking away.

Because our relatives have stood here before, on this exact land, swallowed by the same machine of American cruelty.
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We like to pretend these things happen in the shadows.

They don’t.

They happen right next to us at the airport where we pick up loved ones, at the hangar where the rich store their toys, at the same gates where the American Dream pretends it can be reached with enough hard work and TSA-approved liquids.

Yesterday, I watched that dream die again.

And the worst part?

Most people will never know.

Many people will never care.

But some of us will remember. Some of us will speak.

Because someone has to.
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James Eagle: The AI infrastructure boom is here, but will it last

What this chart shows is how imports of data centre equipment have jumped dramatically, while other equipment imports have risen more modestly.

This explosive growth represents just another way to understand the infrastructure demands of artificial intelligence. While the dotcom bubble saw steady increases in tech infrastructure, today’s AI revolution is driving imports at nearly twice the historical rate. The gap between data centre equipment and other imports has never been wider, reflecting the extraordinary computing power required to train and run large language models. Unlike previous tech cycles, this isn’t just about connectivity or storage. It’s about raw processing capability on a scale we’ve never seen before.

Is this infrastructure buildout sustainable, or are we witnessing the early stages of overcapacity?
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Aaron Parnas: Major MAGA Accounts on Twitter Exposed as Foreign Actors

… A new transparency feature on Twitter is revealing that many loud, “patriotic” voices in the MAGA ecosystem aren’t actually located in the United States at all. Instead, a surprising number are operating from places like Russia, Nigeria, India, Thailand, and other countries.
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The tool, called “about this account,” became available to users on Friday. It shows key information about any profile, including where the account is based, when it was created, how often its username has changed, and how the X app was originally downloaded. Within hours of its launch, users began uncovering major right-wing accounts that appear to have misrepresented their origins.

I have reviewed dozens of accounts, and it confirmed long-held suspicions that some of the most aggressive MAGA voices were actually foreign-run. The tool has now exposed that many of the accounts pushing some of the most prominent MAGA propaganda are actually simply foreign actors. As a result, what you have is an ecosystem on Twitter where Republican politicians in the United States, including the President of the United States, are unknowingly sharing foreign propaganda.
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