Two Australian mathematicians have called into question an old adage, that if given an infinite amount of time, a monkey pressing keys on a typewriter would eventually write the complete works of William Shakespeare. read more
A psychiatrist who helped craft the 1973 "Goldwater rule" that has kept many mental health professionals from opining on Donald Trump for nearly a decade said that it was not intended as a hard-and-fast prohibition, and that if he were Trump's doctor, he would order a full battery of tests to determine the cause of what he believes could be the former president's dementia. "He seems to be progressively cognitively impaired," said Allen Dyer, a retired George Washington University psychiatry professor. read more
In early September 2020, wildfires tore through eastern Washington state, obliterating tens of millions of dollars of property, displacing hundreds of rural residents and killing a 1-year-old boy. But then-President Donald Trump refused to act on Gov. Jay Inslee's request for $37 million in federal disaster aid because of a bitter personal dispute with the Democratic governor, an investigation by POLITICO's E&E News shows. Trump sat on Inslee's request for the final four months of his presidency, delaying recovery and leaving communities unsure about rebuilding because nobody knew if they would get federal help. Trump ignored Inslee's 73-page request even after the Federal Emergency Management Agency found during weeks of inspection that the wildfires easily met the federal damage threshold for disaster aid. read more
President Joe Biden plans to formally apologize Friday for the U.S. government's role in running hundreds of Indian boarding schools for a 150-year period that stripped Native American children of their language and culture in a systematic effort to force them to assimilate into White society, according to administration officials. read more
Donald Trump's ground game in Arizona and Nevada may be undercut by canvassers working for America Pac using GPS spoofing to pretend they have knocked on doors when they haven't, according to multiple people familiar with the practice and a leaked how-to-fake-location video. The ramifications for Trump may be far reaching, given America Pac has taken on the bulk of the Trump campaign's ground game in the battleground states, and the election increasingly appears set to be decided by turnout. A bootleg how-to-spoof video, made by an America Pac canvasser in Nevada and obtained by the Guardian, shows the apparent ease with which locations can be changed to fake door-knocks, calling into question how many Trump voters have actually been reached by the field operation. read more
"L'Etat, c'est moi!"