Nearly 17 months into President Donald Trump's second term, new state-level polling shows a map that follows familiar partisan lines -- but with noticeably weaker margins almost everywhere. read more
On a remote beach near Esperance, Western Australia, two sick seabirds have brought the bird flu crisis to Australia. Testing has confirmed highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 in a brown skua and a giant petrel. Both are species of seabirds commonly found in the Southern Ocean.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on a committee led by Rep. James Comer, R-Tompkinsville, wants Comer to arrange for members of the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance, to testify before the panel.
Now they're turning away. From Italy to France, nationalist leaders are reassessing their ties with the U.S. president as his brand sours across the EU.
Voters are increasingly upset over the cost of living, turning to candidates with scant political experience.
Why is the paint peeling off the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool? An investigation
www.scientificamerican.com
... Poor preparation and a failure to properly apply the coating may be just a few of the reasons why the Reflecting Pool's new paint job appears to be peeling off
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's makeover was supposed to inspire patriotism, but chunks of material peeling off the pool's surface have instead garnered more puzzlement and speculation.
President Donald Trump ordered the pool's renovation in April, and that order included painting its floor and walls blue. Yet within weeks of the work's completion, photographs and videos of floating chunks of a cerulean material that appears to have detached from the pool's walls have gone viral. This material is polyurea coating"a fast-curing and durable surface membrane that can seal in water and is often used to coat swimming pools.
We spoke to engineering and pool experts to find out what could be going wrong at the beleaguered monument.
For one, the blue material likely has no direct relation to the large algal blooms that are also plaguing the monument, according to Tim Auerhahn, chairman of the Aquatic Council. Nor is it merely a reaction to the hydrogen peroxide that the National Park Service (NPS) dumped into the water in an apparent effort to kill the algae"although that likely didn't help, either.
At this point, pinning the blame for the floating coating on any one factor would be premature, says David McFayden, CEO of the paint and coating inspection company KTA-Tator.
Auerhahn agrees: "The failure of the adhesion to the substrate of that product probably could have been caused by many factors," he says. Still, based on the videos of workers dumping hydrogen peroxide from the edges of the pool, he says that "it could have contributed to the issue, but it's probably not the only cause." The Department of the Interior, which oversees the NPS, did not respond to a request for comment.
Hydrogen peroxide can be used as a paint stripper, but the water in the pool would likely dilute it to the point that it couldn't cause the current level of damage, he adds. ...
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Ohio (1970)
www.youtube.com
A comment from the video...
... 50 years ago today. RIP Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Allison B. Krause, William Knox Schroeder, and Sandra Lee Scheuer. ...
Lyrics excerpt ...
...
"Ohio" is a 1970 protest song composed by Neil Young in reaction to the Kent State shootings, and performed by the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young quartet.
The incident took place on May 4, 1970 and became a sociopolitical symbolization during the Vietnam War. The sequence of events led to a nationwide anti-establishment student strike, forcing hundreds of colleges and universities to close.
The song was recorded a mere 17 days after the incident and, according to the recording engineer Bill Halverson, was done in (at most) 3 takes "with live vocal and live harmonies and everybody chiming in".
Side Note: Due to its "anti-war" and "anti-establishment" sentiments, the song was banned from some AM playlists in the United States.
[Chorus]
Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drummin'
Four dead in Ohio
[Verse]
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?
...
Speaking of numbers ...
Trump's newest obsession seems to be over the number 22 - but nobody knows what it means
www.independent.co.uk
... He has claimed the US destroyed 22 Iranian ships, said he proved 22 economists wrong and said he recently met with 22 medical specialists ...
He has also criticized The New York Times for placing a prescription drug story on page 22, complained that a hypothetical trip to Asia would require 22 hours of flying and referenced a swimming pool he constructed 22 years ago.
In some cases, the number has been used inaccurately. Trump stated the capital has 22 fountains; the city actually has 18.
At a Hanukkah reception in December, Trump said that U.S. pilots who took part in an attack on Iran told him: "We were practicing for 22 years."
On Sunday, the 80-year-old president wrote on Truth Social: "Lots of Killing going on in Chicago. 22 people shot." ...
@#39 ... I'll make a more general observation on Republicans and vaccines. Their general willingness to take an mrma vaccine is inversely proportional to their individual net worth. ...
I'm not yet convinced of that...
An older article ...
Antivaccination beliefs don't follow the usual political polarization (2017)
theconversation.com
... When health officials learned that the 2015 measles outbreak was caused by clusters of unvaccinated children, Americans once more wanted to understand why some parents do not vaccinate their children. In our highly polarized culture, media commentators and even academics began to connect opposition to vaccination to either the left or right of politics.
So a question arises: Who is more likely to be opposed to vaccination, liberals or conservatives? As a sociologist who studies infectious disease, I took a look at this. The answer seems to depend on what question you ask.
Because the outbreak started in the wealthy, liberal enclave of Marin County, California, and because some of the best-known "anti-vaxxers" are Hollywood actors, some right-leaning media outlets connected opposition to vaccination to liberals and related it to other "anti-science" beliefs like fear of GMOs, use of alternative medicine, and even astrology. Other writers have opposed such a caricature and have argued that opposition to vaccination is actually either bipartisan or a specifically conservative problem. Academic research on the topic is also conflicted.
While historians have shown that there is a long history of opposition to vaccination in America, the contemporary anti-vaccination movement got its major boost in 1998 when Andrew Wakefield published faulty research in The Lancet that falsely claimed that the mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) vaccine was related to autism.
As to whether liberals or conservatives are now more likely to be opposed to vaccination, some researchers have suggested that, while anti-vaccination beliefs have spread to libertarians on the right, the anti-vaccination movement originates and finds its strongest support in the political left.
A later article by the same researchers similarly argues that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) evidence shows that states that voted for Obama in 2012 have higher rates of nonmedical vaccination exemptions. ...
@#6 ... The real challenge is what do we do when AI figures out liberals with theit DEI and Immigration are true engines of economic growth, while Republicans with the racism and relentless pursuit of profit over people is actually bad for the economy. ...
That depends upon how AI is ~trained.~
For example ...
Police tweak 'biased' facial recognition software (March 2026)
www.bbc.com
... A police force has paused the use of live facial recognition (LFR) cameras after a study found it was statistically more likely to identify black people than other ethnic groups.
Essex Police has used the technology since summer 2024, but the study identified "a potential bias in the positive identification rate" of black people over white people on its watchlist. ...
Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool - Events
en.wikipedia.org
...Events
The area of and around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been the site of many historic events, including:
- - - In 1939, singer Marian Anderson was denied permission to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington because she was African American. An open-air concert was held on Easter Sunday, with a crowd of over 75,000 people.[37]
- - - On August 28, 1963, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom used the area for its Civil Rights rally. It was there that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered to a crowd of 250,000 people.[4]
- - - On October 21, 1967, 100,000 anti-Vietnam War protesters met at the pool and memorial to begin the March on the Pentagon.[38]
...
More from the article in #12 ...