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Dec. 23rd, 2025 11:00 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
atrios_feedChristmas eve eve.
atrios_feedMeta Is Using The Linux Scheduler Designed For Valve's Steam Deck On Its Servers
Dec. 23rd, 2025 06:10 amphoronix_feedAn interesting anecdote from this month's Linux Plumbers Conference in Tokyo is that Meta (Facebook) is using the Linux scheduler originally designed for the needs of Valve's Steam Deck... On Meta Servers. Meta has found that the scheduler can actually adapt and work very well on the hyperscaler's large servers...
Linux Sensor Monitoring For ASUS ROG MAXIMUS X HERO, Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WIFI A
Dec. 23rd, 2025 05:59 amphoronix_feedFor those currently owning an ASUS ROG MAXIMUS X HERO or ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WIFI A motherboard, Linux sensor monitoring support will be in place for the next kernel release...
What I Saw at a Maternity Ward in Kenya After the U.S. Cut Off Food and Foreign Aid
Dec. 23rd, 2025 11:00 ampropublica_feedIn August, I traveled to Kakuma, Kenya, to try to understand what happened when the U.S. cut off food to the world’s third-largest refugee camp.
Soon after President Donald Trump froze foreign aid on his first day in office, my colleague Brett Murphy and I began hearing from government experts. We learned that despite explicit promises from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that food and other life-saving care would continue during the administration’s review of foreign aid, programs were shutting down, putting millions of lives at risk. I’ve covered health in the U.S. and abroad for 15 years, and Brett has covered both the State Department and public health in the U.S. Brett and I teamed up, interviewing dozens of government officials and aid workers, and pouring over reams of internal government documents. Then, we traveled to Kakuma (and South Sudan) to see for ourselves how these policies were affecting people.
In an investigation we published last week, we wrote about how food rations were slashed throughout the camp of more than 308,000 people. We learned first-hand how the Trump administration’s decision to withhold funding for the World Food Program’s operations in Kenya led children to starve and forced thousands of families to make impossible decisions. One of the groups hit hardest by the cuts was pregnant women.
We arrived on a hot, dry day in August with Kenyan photographer Brian Otieno and went straight to the camp’s only hospital, which is run by the International Rescue Committee. The only physician working the hospital’s wards at the time, Dr. Kefa Otieno (no relation to the photographer), gave us a tour.
As we entered the maternity unit, a large yellow room with around 45 beds, the majority of them occupied, the doctor explained that the aid cuts were causing an epidemic of life-threatening pregnancy complications. Starving women were giving birth to premature babies. Even those who made it to term were often dangerously underweight. The hospital was understaffed, and people in the camp were so anemic that they couldn’t get enough blood donations. Otieno had twice donated himself while he was midsurgery in order to save a pregnant woman’s life.
Off one side of the maternity ward was a small, stark room with a bench along one wall and two wheeled, metal beds. Otieno called it the kangaroo room. Inside were moms and premature babies too small to safely return home. The hospital had no functional incubators, so medical staff ascribe to a method called kangaroo mother care, where moms hold their babies against their skin to keep them warm and help them grow.
There, we met Monica and her baby Mary, and Binti and her son Nuru. Both women had difficult pregnancies that the medical staff ascribed to malnourishment. Both had given birth prematurely to underweight babies. And when we visited, both had been trapped in the room for weeks, desperately trying to help their babies gain weight.
Monica, 21, is funny, with a dry, sharp wit. She met her husband Ramazani at church, when she was singing in the choir. They’d dated for a couple of years before she found out she was pregnant in December last year. They were both scared and excited to be parents, but the timing of the pregnancy was unlucky: As Monica’s belly grew, food rations shrank.
Monica began struggling with anemia and high blood pressure. Otieno told me the roots of these complications were undernourishment.
Monica doesn’t remember going into labor. Ramazani found her collapsed on the floor when he returned from one of the camp’s community showers. She was having seizures, and it took a few hours before they got her to the hospital. Medical staff rushed her in for an emergency cesarean section; she was in such dire shape that staff thought they were going to lose both Monica and her baby. When we met three weeks later, Monica still struggled to speak, her tongue contorted and swollen from biting on it for so long during the seizures.
Still, she was able to tell me about her pregnancy, including a time when she was about five months along and hadn’t eaten for two days. She went to a nearby vendor to beg for a samosa on loan, promising to pay him back later in the day. She then hid in her house for several days, pretending no one was home when he came by to collect the few cents she owed. (Ramazani eventually paid him back.)
At age 28, Nuru was Binti’s third child. She’d had no complications with her previous pregnancies, but with Nuru, she barely gained weight. Binti had come to Kakuma in 2016 after fleeing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. When she first arrived at the camp, there was always food.
“I had other kinds of stress, but never with food,” she said one afternoon while sitting on the floor sewing curtains for the sparse hospital room.
But during this pregnancy, she said, food was all she thought about. She was so anemic and hungry that she resorted to eating clay, digging out the top layer of earth to get to the cleaner soil below, and charcoal. Her chart showed she gained fewer than 10 pounds during her entire pregnancy. Her baby, Nuru, was born at 33 weeks, weighing about 3.5 pounds.
Otieno wanted the babies to weigh 4 pounds before they went home, enough that they’d have a fighting chance against infection. Hospital staff put the babies on a scale every two days, and before each weigh in, Binti would get herself hyped up: “I can feel it, today is the day we are going home,” she said one afternoon. Monica tried not to think about what the scale would say. Both she and Mary had dropped weight in the preceding weeks. After so much loss, she didn’t want to get her hopes up.
But, while Binti and Monica were desperate to get out of the hospital and home to their families — Binti to her other children and Monica to her two younger siblings — leaving would come at a cost. If and when they went, they’d be cut off from food again.
At the hospital, staff brought around three simple meals every day, typically lentils and rice or sorghum porridge. Outside the hospital, they’d have almost nothing.
Facing dwindling supplies, WFP, which provides food for the camp, made the dramatic decision to only give rations to about half the camp’s residents in August. Families were placed into groups based on rough estimates of need. Even though Monica and Binti were stuck in the hospital precisely because they didn’t have enough to eat, Binti and Ramazani had both been placed in categories that meant they would get no food. Monica and her younger siblings were set to receive just 420 calories a day each.
In the meantime, Binti and Monica bonded: They told stories and held one another’s babies while they showered or went to the bathroom. They took turns sleeping on the bench so the babies could have one of the beds. Monica and Ramazani, who spent almost every night at the hospital, made sure that a tiny copy of the Bible was always placed next to baby Mary’s head.
One Saturday morning, Otieno came in to weigh the babies. Binti bounced back and forth on her feet like a boxer preparing for a bout. Nuru weighed in at just under 4 pounds. Binti raised her arms in victory: They could go home.
Then it was baby Mary’s turn. “This baby is refusing to gain weight,” Otieno mumbled, trying to still her wiggly legs to get an accurate measurement. Mary had gained 10 grams, equivalent to two-thirds of a tablespoon of water. After days of losing weight, it was perhaps a small victory, but not one that Monica would celebrate. She picked up Mary, held her against her chest, and sat back down on the bench.
I asked Monica about her hopes for the future. She said all she wanted was to be resettled in the U.S. with her siblings and Mary, so they could all go to school and have enough to eat. “Fill your notebook with that,” she said. “It’s the only thing I want.”
At the end of September, the administration gave WFP’s Kenya operations $66 million, 40% less than the U.S. gave in 2024 and nine months into the year. WFP has said the funds will be enough to provide food to the camp through March, though rations are still far below what humanitarians consider the daily minimum of calories.
In response to a series of questions, a senior State Department official told us that the U.S. still gives WFP hundreds of millions a year and the administration is shifting to investments that will better serve both the U.S. and key allies like Kenya over time.
The official also said that the Office of Management and Budget, not the State Department, has ultimate authority to approve new foreign aid money. When we asked OMB about the delays, communications director Rachel Cauley told us: “That’s absolutely false. And that’s not even how this process works.” She did not clarify what was false.
The post What I Saw at a Maternity Ward in Kenya After the U.S. Cut Off Food and Foreign Aid appeared first on ProPublica.
propublica_feedA Minnesota senator wants to strengthen state laws meant to hold adults entrusted with children’s safety accountable for failing to report suspected child abuse, after an investigation by the Minnesota Star Tribune and ProPublica found that the leadership of a church in Duluth for years protected a child sex predator.
Sen. Erin Maye Quade, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party from suburban Minneapolis, said she’s focused on situations where such an adult has concrete knowledge that a specific person is abusing children and nonetheless stays silent, allowing the abuse to continue.
“If you know an adult who is committing child sexual abuse, you need to report that,” she said. “For that, the penalties could be a lot higher.”
The Star Tribune-ProPublica report found that preachers in Duluth’s Old Apostolic Lutheran Church knew for years about allegations that a member, Clint Massie, had been sexually abusing young girls in the congregation. Instead of reporting it to police, church leaders encouraged some of the victims to take part in sessions where they were pressured to forgive Massie. They were then told never to speak of the abuse.
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In one case, preacher Daryl Bruckelmyer facilitated a meeting with Massie and a young girl, still in the first years of grade school, in his business office. The girl had recently told her parents that Massie groped under her shirt and touched her genitals, according to her account of the incident to investigators 15 years later. In front of the girl, her father and Bruckelmyer, Massie asked her for forgiveness, she told law enforcement. Then the girl’s dad and preacher allowed Massie, who had been sexually abusing her since kindergarten, to hug her.
Massie, now 50, pleaded guilty last year to four counts of felony criminal sexual conduct with victims under the age of 13 related to abusing girls in the church. In March, a judge sentenced him to 7 1/2 years in prison. Bruckelmyer declined to comment, but a spokesperson for the church has said that its preachers followed the law in the Massie case. In interviews with police, Bruckelmyer said that the church encouraged victims to go to police but that ultimately it was up to them to do that.
Under Minnesota law, mandatory reporters — including clergy, doctors, teachers and day care providers — can already be charged with a misdemeanor if they do not make a report to authorities when they believe a child has been maltreated within the past three years.
Some legal experts said the criminal statute has proved an ineffective mechanism for holding accountable people who violate it. Out of 28 people who have been charged with violating the statute over the past 15 years, only six have been convicted, according to data reviewed by the Star Tribune and ProPublica. All but one resulted in probation, suspended jail sentences or options to perform community service and fines of $85 to $385.
What’s more, Minnesota courts have repeatedly blocked lawsuits from people who’ve tried to pursue damage claims from adults or institutions that stayed silent. In one key 2007 case, the state Supreme Court said that even if mandatory reporters are rarely prosecuted, courts cannot create a civil right to sue simply because the criminal law is weakly enforced. “We leave it to the legislature with its fact-finding power to determine whether civil liability is appropriate,” Justice Paul Anderson wrote in a position adopted by a majority of the justices.
The result is a system where the strongest legal motivators for compliance — civil liability and the threat of damages — simply don’t exist.
Maye Quade said she is studying changes the Legislature can make this session, beginning in February. She is asking Senate research staff to begin looking into where the gap is occurring in the law.
“Honestly, we should have looked at it before,” she said. “These victim survivors coming forward and sharing their stories — it would just be wrong to not respond to that.”
Law Lacks Teeth, Experts Say
Prosecutors in St. Louis County, where Duluth is located, said the church community’s lack of cooperation was a major factor in the delay in bringing charges against Massie. Yet none of the preachers have been charged for failing to report the abuse, even though clergy are mandatory reporters under state law. Kimberly Lowe, a lawyer for the church, said its preachers are unpaid. She said this raises questions as to whether they are subject to the mandatory reporting law, which specifically cites clergy “employees.” A prosecutor in the case said his office and police decided instead to try to “educate” church leaders about their legal responsibility to report sexual abuse.
In general, holding people accountable for violating the mandatory reporting statute is challenging, said Robert Small, executive director of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association, which represents county prosecutors across the state. To convict someone, prosecutors must prove the person knew or had reason to believe the child was neglected or sexually abused.
In the cases where people in Minnesota have been convicted, the penalties were often minor. In one case in 2022, a police officer in Wright County was convicted of a misdemeanor after a 14-year-old told him and others she’d been molested and he didn’t report it. He was sentenced to one day of probation and a suspended jail sentence, meaning he didn’t have to serve any time.
Victor Vieth, a former prosecutor who now trains child-abuse investigators nationwide and is based in Minnesota, said it’s difficult to know how often mandated reporters stay silent. Many victims delay disclosure for years, and, by then, the three-year statute of limitations usually prevents prosecuting the mandatory reporter who failed to report.
When failures do surface, he said prosecutors often face a catch-22. The mandated reporter who didn’t report may have critical evidence, and prosecutors may decide they need their cooperation more than they need a low-level conviction for failing to report.
But mandatory-reporting laws have been on the books nationwide since the 1960s. Over the past half-century, reporting duties have been embedded across American life, in schools, hospitals, churches and child care centers, and training on the obligation to report suspected abuse is now routine — often required as a condition of employment or licensure. Every state has its own laws to comply with the federal legislation passed in the 1970s that provided funding and guidance for protecting children, said Toby Briggs, co-founder of Simple Learning Systems, a California-based company that creates training software for mandatory reporting.
Briggs said he doesn’t see a lot of cases for failure to report, but high-profile lawsuits have led to stricter rules and more required training for mandatory reporters.
“You have these huge, high-profile examples like Boy Scouts and Catholic Church that have been sued and that did not train their folks and the financial cost is enormous,” he said.
A few states, including Washington, let victims sue people or institutions if they fail to report abuse and the harm continues. This pushes schools and hospitals to train workers better and thoroughly investigate reports.
Because Minnesota doesn’t allow those civil suits, the state hasn’t seen the same attention to the issue, said Jeff Anderson, one of the nation’s most prominent clergy-abuse attorneys, who is based in St. Paul. He described the statute as “a tool nobody uses” and said he believes mandated reporters know there is almost no chance of criminal or civil accountability if they stay silent.
The post Lawmaker Calls for Stronger Mandatory Reporting Rules Following Our Investigation Into Church Abuse Case appeared first on ProPublica.
propublica_feedAs the Connecticut legislature overhauled the state’s towing laws last spring, lawmakers came up with a hopeful idea: gather towing companies, consumer advocates and state officials to hammer out a few arcane details that could have big implications for some Connecticut drivers whose cars are towed.
The ambitions of the task force, convened in response to a Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica investigation, grew quickly as it began to meet in September to come up with recommendations for the legislature. Perhaps they could make it easier for low-income people to get their towed cars back or prevent them from being towed at all. Maybe they could change the administrative process that sometimes made it hard to find owners of the cars, which frustrated drivers and towing companies alike.
But with a Feb. 1 deadline looming for its recommendations, the panel has made little progress on reaching a consensus.
That could pose hurdles for lawmakers who say towing practices are still unfair and want to pass more reforms during the legislative session that starts in February.
“We’re still anxiously, eagerly awaiting word from the working group on their recommendations,” said state Sen. Christine Cohen, D-Guilford, who co-chairs the Transportation Committee.
Until a few months ago, Connecticut residents’ cars were towed from their own apartment complexes without warning over minor issues like an expired parking sticker.
When those residents went to pick up their vehicles, towing companies often refused to take credit cards or even let owners get their belongings from inside their cars.
And if the owners didn’t have cash to pay the fees, which mounted every day, towing companies could ask the Department of Motor Vehicles for permission to sell some vehicles after just 15 days.
Much of that changed after a new law went into effect in October following the CT Mirror and ProPublica investigation that exposed how the state’s laws had come to favor towing companies over vehicle owners.
Towing companies must now give people warning before removing vehicles from apartment parking lots unless there’s a safety issue. The towers must accept credit cards and let people get their belongings. And although the sales process can begin after 15 days for vehicles worth less than $1,500, towers must wait 30 days before selling them.
Part of the new law also required that a DMV task force examine the process companies use to get rid of towed cars. Lawmakers said they especially wanted the group to look at what happens to profits from the sales of the towed vehicles. Currently, towing companies are supposed to hold onto proceeds for a year so owners or lenders can claim them. After that, any unclaimed funds, minus the towing costs and fees, are required to be turned over to the state. But CT Mirror and ProPublica found that hasn’t happened in part because the DMV never set up a system to collect the money.
The working group has met four times. They’ve talked about stopping towing fees from accumulating once vehicle owners indicate they want their cars back. They’ve also debated changing the way towing companies value cars, which determines how soon towers can start the sales process. DMV Commissioner Tony Guerrera proposed scrapping the valuation system and letting companies sell all vehicles after 30 days.
And both consumer advocates and towing representatives complained about the process for notifying owners that their cars have been towed or are about to be sold. The system relies on the vehicle’s registration, which can often have out-of-date addresses. CT Mirror and ProPublica interviewed several people, particularly lower-income residents, who said they were never informed that their cars would be sold.
Yet at the most recent meeting Dec. 15, task force members couldn’t even agree on how many letters needed to be sent to vehicle owners. The meeting got heated on several occasions even as Guerrera warned the deadline to complete a report was approaching.
The working group hasn’t discussed how any proceeds should be given to the state.
Still, in an interview, Guerrera projected confidence that they would reach a compromise.
“You’ve got two sides here that are very passionate about what they believe in, and like any good piece of legislation that people try to draw up, it takes many times at the table to craft something that you can have individuals sign off at the end,” he said.
At Monday’s meeting, consumer advocate and attorney Raphael Podolsky said he was concerned the committee was missing some key issues including making sure people can get their vehicles back.
“I’m more concerned not how do you sell the car, but how do you make sure it never gets to that point?” Podolsky said.
Members of the towing industry argued against a DMV proposal that would mandate that companies send car owners a second certified letter when their vehicles are going to be sold, informing them of the date and location of the auction.
Eileen Colonese, secretary of the industry group Towing & Recovery Professionals of Connecticut, said more letters won’t resolve the issue of addresses being wrong.
“You have to find out who the owner of the car is,” said Colonese of Farmington Motor Sports. “If we don’t solve that problem, all the rest of this is really a waste of everybody’s time and money.”
Towers and Guerrera proposed creating a DMV portal where towing companies would list every car towed and where it was being held.
Colonese said it’s difficult for the towers to agree to most of the proposals because they would add costs to companies. Transportation Committee ranking member Rep. Kathy Kennedy, R-Milford, is considering this question as well; “it’s their livelihood,” she said of the towing companies.
Cohen and her co-chair, Rep. Aimee Berger-Girvalo, D-Ridgefield, said they also want to see more transparency from the DMV after the news organizations found that a department employee faced little consequence for five years after an internal investigation found he had abused his power by trading favors for steep discounts on towed cars. The employee was fired last month. He appealed the decision and said he had done nothing wrong.
Guerrera said he wants the working group to have at least three recommendations before the legislature begins its three-month session. He said the group may have to meet twice more in January to come to an agreement. He warned if the group doesn’t reach a consensus, neither side will be happy with the report he plans to submit and what the legislature does from there.
“I’m going to submit the report after the next meeting or two meetings, and they can come back and go to the legislature and say, ‘I still don’t like it,’” Guerrera said. “But I am going to put down what I believe is something that is fair.”
The post A Connecticut DMV Task Force Was Asked to Develop Towing Reforms. As Deadline Looms, Members Struggle to Agree. appeared first on ProPublica.
In a surprise announcement, Tory Bruno is out as CEO of United Launch Alliance
Dec. 22nd, 2025 11:51 pmarstechnica_feedTory Bruno, a veteran engineer and aerospace industry executive, has resigned from the top job at United Launch Alliance after more than a decade competing against the growing dominance of SpaceX, the company announced Monday.
The news of Bruno's sudden resignation was unexpected. His tenure was marked by a decline in ULA's market share as rival SpaceX competed for and won ever-larger US government launch contracts. More recently, Bruno oversaw the successful debut of ULA's Vulcan rocket, followed by struggles to ramp up the new rocket's launch cadence.
Bruno had a 30-year career as an engineer and general manager for Lockheed Martin's ballistic missile programs before taking over as president and CEO of United Launch Alliance in August 2014. He arrived as SpaceX started making inroads with its partially reusable Falcon 9 rocket, and ULA's leading position in the US launch market looked to be in doubt.
Call of Duty co-creator and Battlefield lead Vince Zampella dies in car crash
Dec. 22nd, 2025 09:35 pmarstechnica_feedVince Zampella, a video game developer who has co-created or helmed some of the most popular franchises in the world, died in a car crash on a Los Angeles highway at 12:45 pm Pacific time on Sunday, December 21. He was 55 years old.
According to the California Highway Patrol, Zampella was in a car on Angeles Crest Highway when the vehicle veered off the road and crashed into a concrete barrier. No other vehicles were reported to be part of the crash.
A passenger was ejected from the vehicle, while the driver was trapped inside after the vehicle caught fire. The driver died at the scene, and the passenger died after being taken to the hospital. The report did not indicate whether Zampella was the passenger or the driver.
Safety panel says NASA should have taken Starliner incident more seriously
Dec. 22nd, 2025 09:11 pmarstechnica_feedFor the better part of two months last year, most of us had no idea how serious the problems were with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft docked at the International Space Station. A safety advisory panel found this uncertainty also filtered through NASA's workforce.
On its first Crew Test Flight, Boeing's Starliner delivered NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the space station in June 2024. They were the first people to fly to space on a Starliner spacecraft after more than a decade of development and setbacks. The astronauts expected to stay at the ISS for one or two weeks, but ended up remaining in orbit for nine months after NASA officials determined it was too risky to return them to Earth in the Boeing-built crew capsule. Wilmore and Williams flew back to Earth last March on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
The Starliner capsule was beset by problems with its maneuvering thrusters and pernicious helium leaks on its 27-hour trip from the launch pad to the ISS. For a short time, Starliner commander Wilmore lost his ability to control the movements of his spacecraft as it moved in for docking at the station in June 2024. Engineers determined that some of the thrusters were overheating and eventually recovered most of their function, allowing Starliner to dock with the ISS.
World’s largest shadow library made a 300TB copy of Spotify’s most streamed songs
Dec. 22nd, 2025 07:34 pmarstechnica_feedThe world's largest shadow library—which is increasingly funded by AI developers—shocked the Internet this weekend by announcing it had "backed up Spotify" and started distributing 300 terabytes of metadata and music files in bulk torrents.
According to Anna's Archive, the data grab represents more than 99 percent of listens on Spotify, making it "the largest publicly available music metadata database with 256 million tracks." It's also "the world’s first 'preservation archive' for music which is fully open," with 86 million music files, the archive boasted.
The music files supposedly represent about 37 percent of songs available on Spotify as of July 2025. The scraped files were prioritized by popularity, with Anna's Archive weeding out many songs that are never streamed or are of poor quality, such as AI-generated songs.
US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified
Dec. 22nd, 2025 06:29 pmarstechnica_feedOn Monday, the US Department of the Interior announced that it was pausing the leases on all five offshore wind sites currently under construction in the US. The move comes despite the fact that these projects already have installed significant hardware in the water and on land; one of them is nearly complete. In what appears to be an attempt to avoid legal scrutiny, the Interior is blaming the decisions on a classified report from the Department of Defense.
The second Trump administration announced its animosity toward offshore wind power literally on day one, issuing an executive order on inauguration day that called for a temporary halt to issuing permits for new projects pending a re-evaluation. Earlier this month, however, a judge vacated that executive order, noting that the government has shown no indication that it was even attempting to start the re-evaluation it said was needed.
But a number of projects have gone through the entire permitting process, and construction has started. Before today, the administration had attempted to stop these in an erratic, halting manner. Empire Wind, an 800 MW farm being built off New York, was stopped by the Department of the Interior, which alleged that it had been rushed through permitting. That hold was lifted following lobbying and negotiations by New York and the project developer Orsted, and the Department of the Interior never revealed why it changed its mind. When the Interior Department blocked a second Orsted project, Revolution Wind offshore of southern New England, the company took the government to court and won a ruling that let it continue construction.
Odyssey trailer brings the myth to vivid life
Dec. 22nd, 2025 05:43 pmarstechnica_feedDirector Christopher Nolan won two well-deserved Oscars for 2023's Oppenheimer, and Hollywood was soon buzzing about what his next project might be. A vampire period piece, perhaps? Or maybe a reboot of 1983's Blue Thunder or British 1960s spy series The Prisoner? Instead, Nolan chose to adapt one of the greatest epic sagas in history: Homer's Odyssey. At long last, Universal has released the first official trailer for Nolan's The Odyssey, starring Matt Damon as the wandering Ithacan king. Frankly, it looks appropriately epic.
Most of us read some version of The Odyssey in high school, so we're familiar with the story: Odysseus, legendary Greek king of Ithaca, begins the long journey home after 10 years of fighting in the Trojan War. (We actually catch a glimpse of the famous Trojan horse in the trailer.) But the journey does not go smoothly, as Odysseus and his men encounter the cyclops Polyphemus, the Sirens, and an enchantress named Circe, among other obstacles. Meanwhile, his long-suffering wife Penelope is warding off hundreds of suitors eager to usurp Odysseus' position.
It's difficult to overestimate the tremendous influence Homer's epic has had on global culture. Nolan himself recalled seeing the Odyssey performed as a school play when he was just 5 or 6 years old. "I remember the Sirens and him being strapped to the mast and things like that," he recently told Empire. "I think it's in all of us, really. And when you start to break down the text and adapt it, you find that all of these other films—and all the films I've worked on—you know, they're all from the Odyssey. It's foundational."
Apple hit with $115M fine for “extremely burdensome” App Store privacy policy
Dec. 22nd, 2025 04:29 pmarstechnica_feedApple was hit with a $115 million fine Monday after Italy's competition authority alleged the tech giant was abusing its dominant position to harm third-party developers in its App Store.
In a press release, the Italian Competition Authority said that an "App Tracking Transparency" (ATT) privacy policy that Apple introduced in 2021 forced third-party developers to seek consent twice for the same data collection.
Requiring such "double consent" was "extremely burdensome" and "harmful" to some developers—especially the smallest developers, the regulator said. Many developers struggled to earn ad revenue after the policy was introduced, as users increasingly declined to opt into personalized ads.
NASA rewraps Boeing Starliner Astrovan II for Artemis II ride to launch pad
Dec. 22nd, 2025 04:20 pmarstechnica_feedArtemis II, meet Astrovan II.
NASA's first astronauts who will fly by the moon in more than 50 years participated in a practice launch countdown on Saturday, December 20, including taking their first trip on a transport vehicle steeped in almost the entire span of US space history—from Apollo through to the ongoing commercial crew program.
Artemis II astronauts (from right to left) Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen pose for photographs before boarding the Astrovan II crew transport vehicle for a ride to their rocket during a rehearsal of their launch-day activities at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025.
Credit:
NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Christina Koch (all with NASA) and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, an astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency, began the rehearsal at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, proceeding as they will when they are ready to fly next year (the Artemis II launch is slated for no earlier than the first week of February and no later than April 2026).
Power outage paralyzes Waymo robotaxis when traffic lights go out
Dec. 22nd, 2025 02:52 pmarstechnica_feedSan Francisco was affected by a massive power outage over the weekend. It started with a fire at a substation in the city on Saturday afternoon, causing a blackout that at times affected as much as a third of the city, leaving more than 130,000 homes without power. Among the city's affected critical systems were the traffic lights, which paralyzed Waymo's fleet of robotaxis, stopping them in their tracks and clogging traffic.
Any recent visitor to San Francisco can't help but notice the profusion of sensor-festooned autonomous vehicles on the roads, especially the all-white Jaguar I-Paces that belong to Waymo. The robotaxi company has more than 800 AVs in its Bay Area fleet; that can feel like a conservative estimate when you see five or six at a time—invariably with no occupants—within a block.
The cars navigate the city, combining high-resolution maps with inputs from lidar, optical, and other sensors on the upfitted Jags. The cars drive conservatively, but they can get confused in edge cases—earlier this month, Waymo issued a recall to fix a problem in which its robotaxis would illegally pass stopped school buses.
No one loves President Trump more than FCC Chairman Brendan Carr
Dec. 22nd, 2025 02:34 pmarstechnica_feedBefore he became chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr seemed to be a big believer in the agency's role as an independent branch of the federal government. According to the pre-2025 version of Brendan Carr, the White House interfered with the agency's independence when a Democratic president publicly urged the FCC to adopt net neutrality rules.
When the Biden-era FCC reinstated Obama-era net neutrality rules in 2024, Carr alleged that President Biden "took the extraordinary step to pressure the FCC—an independent agency that is designed to operate outside undue political influence from the Executive Branch." As evidence, Carr pointed to a 2021 executive order in which Biden called on agency heads to "consider using their authorities" for various types of pro-competitive policies, including the adoption of net neutrality rules.
Carr said that President Obama similarly "pressure[d] an independent agency into grabbing power that the Legislative Branch never said it had delegated." Obama's intrusion into this independence, according to Carr, came in November 2014 when the president released a two-minute video urging the agency to implement net neutrality rules and reclassify broadband providers as common carriers.
When clouds flock together
Dec. 22nd, 2025 12:15 pmarstechnica_feedCaroline Muller looks at clouds differently than most people. Where others may see puffy marshmallows, wispy cotton candy or thunderous gray objects storming overhead, Muller sees fluids flowing through the sky. She visualizes how air rises and falls, warms and cools, and spirals and swirls to form clouds and create storms.
But the urgency with which Muller, a climate scientist at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria in Klosterneuburg, considers such atmospheric puzzles has surged in recent years. As our planet swelters with global warming, storms are becoming more intense, sometimes dumping two or even three times more rain than expected. Such was the case in Bahía Blanca, Argentina, in March 2025: Almost half the city’s yearly average rainfall fell in less than 12 hours, causing deadly floods.
Atmospheric scientists have long used computer simulations to track how the dynamics of air and moisture might produce varieties of storms. But existing models hadn’t fully explained the emergence of these fiercer storms. A roughly 200-year-old theory describes how warmer air holds more moisture than cooler air: an extra 7 percent for every degree Celsius of warming. But in models and weather observations, climate scientists have seen rainfall events far exceeding this expected increase. And those storms can lead to severe flooding when heavy rain falls on already saturated soils or follows humid heatwaves.
Discworld, Daleks, and Deep 13: A geeky holiday TV and movie watchlist
Dec. 21st, 2025 06:02 pmarstechnica_feed'Tis the season for all kinds of festive titles to start appearing in our to-watch queues. For folks who celebrate Christmas in any form, there are a million different movies and TV specials vying for your attention. There are the beloved favorites that we'll make the time to revisit year after year, plus the seemingly endless number of new titles arriving on the various streaming services this season.
But in all honesty, most of these movies are made for and by the mainstream. So if you don't want a broad family slapstick or yet another big city girl going back to her small town to learn the meaning of Christmas, here are a few options to bring some geekiness to your screen. Make the season nerdy and bright!
Let's get it out of the way immediately: Star Wars Holiday Special
It's almost too bizarre to be believed, but yes, this was a thing that existed, and it lives on in legend. The cast of Star Wars returned for this TV special, where the gang goes to the Wookie planet Kashyyyk to celebrate Life Day. They're joined by some surprising guests. Golden Girls icon Bea Arthur is in it alongside The Honeymooners' Art Carney, acclaimed multi-disciplinary performer Diahann Carroll, and the band Jefferson Starship.
Intel Linux Driver Preps For Up To 13 Different Panther Lake H SoCs
Dec. 22nd, 2025 08:15 pmphoronix_feedIt looks like the upcoming Intel Panther Lake H SoCs for the next-gen premium/high-end performance laptop market there could be quite a few different SKUs. A new patch for an Intel open-source driver expands the Panther Lake H line-up from three to 13 different IDs...
Trump's personal pollster may find himself on the boss' naughty list
Dec. 23rd, 2025 01:01 amdailykos_feedPresident Donald Trump's own pollster released a survey finding that voters want Democrats to control Congress by a 7-point margin—a spread so large that it would cost Republicans the House and put the Senate in play.
The pollsters, Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward, tucked the finding in a memo that advised Trump and the GOP to regulate artificial intelligence at the federal level in order to build electoral goodwill.
The memo claims that if Republicans protect kids from the potential harms of AI, it could help turn a loss in the 2026 midterms into a massive victory. That is obviously farcical, and informed ballot questions—such as the one the pollsters asked—are good at message testing but are not at all predictive. It’s a sure bet that regulating AI for kids is not what the 2026 election will hinge on, as most Americans are telling pollsters that it’s the economy and cost of living that are most important to them.
Yet nestled in the data from Trump’s pollsters is a finding that if the midterms were held today, 45% would vote for the Democratic nominee while 38% would choose a Republican. Among "swing voters," Democrats' margin expands to a whopping 15 points, with 37% saying they would vote for the Democratic candidate and just 22% choosing the Republican.
Those findings are dismal for the GOP.
A 7-point generic ballot spread is close to the 8.4-points Democrats won the 2018 midterms by—when Democrats gained 40 seats in the House and took back control of that chamber for the first time in nearly a decade.
If 2026's results are similar, it would be more than enough for Democrats to flip the three seats they need for a majority in the House, and would even put control of the Senate up for grabs.
The fact that Trump's own pollster sees such a big Democratic generic ballot lead is likely why Republicans are in panic mode about the midterms.
After terrible recent performances in blockbuster gubernatorial elections in November and equally bad performances in special elections across the country, Republican lawmakers are now heading for the exits in record numbers.
GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik decided next year's elections were looking so bad that she ended her doomed bid for New York governor on Friday and said she wasn't even going to seek reelection in her district, which Trump carried by more than 20 points.
“While we would have overwhelmingly won this primary, it is not an effective use of our time or your generous resources to spend the first half of next year in an unnecessary and protracted Republican primary, especially in a challenging state like New York,” Stefanik said of why she bowed out of the gubernatorial election she was almost certain to lose.
Related | 'We need to sound the alarm': GOP panics as election losses pile up
Even the Republican National Committee chair said things are bad, predicting his own party's demise.
“The chances are Republicans will go down and will go down hard," RNC Chair Joe Gruters said in a radio show appearance earlier this month.
Political handicappers agree.
“The Republican Party doesn’t do well in elections in which President Donald Trump is the focus. And by nature of his personality and being the incumbent president, the GOP is on track for that scenario to repeat itself,” Nathan Gonzales, Roll Call elections analyst and publisher of the political handicapping outlet Inside Elections, wrote in a recent column.
There’s a long way until next November, but as Americans’ views on the economy sour, no amount of gaslighting from Trump or AI regulation could change the GOP’s fate.
The Recap: Epstein files sure make Trump look guilty, and Kash Patel's sweet new ride
Dec. 22nd, 2025 08:58 pmdailykos_feedA daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know.
Climate research is Trump's latest casualty
Only Trump can somehow make this petty.
CBS bows again to Trump by shelving critical '60 Minutes' story
This is straight-up censorship.
We’d rather get coal.
Trump gives masterclass with Epstein files on how to appear very guilty
If it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck …
Kash Patel gets himself a fancy new ride, thanks to taxpayers
Only the best will do for the world’s worst FBI director.
Nope, Trump hasn't given up on one of his dumbest obsessions
Dec. 23rd, 2025 12:01 amdailykos_feedPresident Donald Trump has triggered yet another round of international criticism of the United States after he announced on Monday that he has appointed Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry as special envoy to Greenland.
Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory that is a part of the kingdom of Denmark. Trump’s announcement is part of his years-long obsession with making Greenland a part of the United States. The U.S. has never before had an envoy to Greenland and previously had good diplomatic relations with Denmark.
In a joint statement, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark and Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen of Greenland rebuked Trump’s actions.
“You cannot annex other countries,” they wrote, adding, “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders, and the United States must not take over Greenland.”
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission also slammed Trump, writing, “Territorial integrity and sovereignty are fundamental principles of international law. These principles are essential not only for the European Union, but for nations around the world. We stand in full solidarity with Denmark and the people of Greenland.”
In his statement responding to the announcement, Landry said he was happy to serve in a “volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the U.S.”
Trump has been fixated on pushing his strange idea about annexing Greenland and has refocused on it since he returned to the White House in January. Trump even dispatched Vice President JD Vance to visit Greenland in March, where he received a cool reception from residents.
Officials in Denmark and Greenland have repeatedly said the territory is not for sale or available for annexation.
Related | Trump’s Greenland delusions of grandeur are based on a deceiving map
Trump has been pushing the idea since his first term, first floating the notion back in 2019—possibly due to him misunderstanding how maps work to exaggerate Greenland’s size.
A poll of Greenland residents taken in January showed enormous opposition to Trump’s proposal. In that survey for the Danish newspaper Berlingske, 85% of Greenlanders said they were outright opposed to an American annexation. Only 6% favored Trump’s position while 9% said they were undecided.
Prior to Trump’s rhetoric, America enjoyed a strong relationship with Denmark and other international partners. Trump has constantly clashed with international leaders as he did in his first term. Trump has riled European allies, particularly over his tariff policies, and been in feuds with America’s closest neighbors—Mexico and Canada.
Trump’s default position is antagonizing the nations who have historically stood shoulder-to-shoulder with America in the past.
nashvillebanner_feed
Investigators from the law firm Butler Snow delivered a report to Metro officials last week essentially clearing the Metro Nashville Police Department of a wide range of misconduct allegations made by a former insider in April 2024. They concluded in most cases that there was either no evidence the alleged misconduct had occurred or that the alleged conduct did not violate MNPD policies.
“While I will continue to review in depth for any possible after-action items, I appreciate the thorough report from attorneys Ed Stanton and Keenan Carter,” Metro Director of Law Wally Dietz told the Banner in a statement. “It’s clear they reviewed a lot of documents and interviewed relevant witnesses. Their report is clearly presented; we now hope to turn the page.”
See the full Butler Snow report here.
The long-awaited report — which included 15 witness interviews and cites 39 documents — comes after an investigation that lasted more than 18 months and cost the city upwards of $500,000. Mayor Freddie O’Connell tapped former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton and Butler Snow to handle an inquiry into claims made in a 61-page complaint by former MNPD Lt. Garet Davidson, who retired in January 2024. The status of the Butler Snow investigation has been the subject of regular intrigue in Metro circles, as investigators declined to provide updates.
The allegation that has reverberated the most in Davidson’s 2024 complaint was his claim that top MNPD officials worked with Republican state legislators on a 2023 state law that eliminated civilian oversight boards across the state. That law effectively gutted the Nashville board created by a citywide referendum in 2018. According to the Butler Snow report, investigators “did not find any evidence to support the position that MNPD participated in the legislative process and/or lobbied in support of” the legislation. The report goes on to say that in interviews with investigators, Deputy Chief Chris Gilder and Assistant Chief Mike Hagar — the two MNPD officials named by Davidson — “categorically denied any involvement/participation in the legislative process.”
The report notes that Gilder and Hagar’s official duties did “include researching new legislation and providing an annual update to the Department to the extent that any new legislation has the potential of impacting MNPD’s operations.” It also describes how the MNPD manual allows officers to engage in political activity in their capacity as private citizens and explains that Gilder and Hagar would not have been in violation of department policy “unless they engaged in such activities while ‘acting as an agent of the department, wearing a Department uniform, or displaying any credential or insignia of the department.’”
In many instances, investigators concluded that the conduct alleged by Davidson occurred but did not violate MNPD policy. In response to Davidson’s claim that higher-ranking department officials often interfered with investigations by the Office of Professional Accountability — the MNPD’s internal review unit — the report concludes that the “MNPD Manual encourages and even requires the involvement of command staff in the OPA’s investigations.” In response to various allegations from Davidson describing unfair or inconsistent disciplinary actions, the report highlights how the MNPD manual “gives command staff broad discretion when investigating, charging, and disciplining employees accused of misconduct.”
Elsewhere, as in relation to the allegation that the MNPD often transfers supervisors rather than formally investigate or discipline them, the report concludes simultaneously that there is no evidence of the alleged conduct and that it would not be a policy violation anyway. Another such example is Davidson’s allegation that department officials used disciplinary case settlements to unfairly benefit higher-ranking officers. The report says that MNPD policy favors settlements in such cases and that “evidence shows that settlement benefits both lower and higher-ranking employees.”
The Butler Snow report does make modest recommendations in relation to two of Davidson’s allegations. In response to Davidson’s claims about fairness in disciplinary settlements, the firm “recommends that MNPD improve its recordkeeping practices regarding settlement” to “help aid and inform the disciplinary process.” Davidson’s complaint also said that the department was regularly failing to address misconduct revealed by monthly audits of officers’ body-worn and in-car cameras. Butler Snow investigators write that MNPD “policy does not require supervisors to discipline an officer who is seen engaging in minor misconduct during a BWC/ICC audit” but suggested that the department provide clarity or a change in the policy to spell out what conduct is considered egregious.
Although the report says that allegations that MNPD supervisors are discouraged from giving failing scores to poorly performing officers, it also says that there “appears to be some corroborating evidence to support the contention that some under-performing officers are not evaluated accurately.”
Davidson’s complaint also criticized the MNPD for allegedly failing to truly implement or enforce a “zero tolerance” policy for sexual harassment and misconduct. The MNPD denied that claim, but agreed to adopt a new policy proposed by the Community Review Board earlier this year.
Reached for comment about the report Monday afternoon, an MNPD spokesperson said the department “appreciates the thoroughness and professionalism of the Butler-Snow team.”
In late 2024, the CRB said that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation raided Butler Snow and that their questions about the action had gone unanswered. Butler Snow’s report details that the firm was served with two search warrants in September and October 2024 that required them to produce all documents and information provided by Davidson, “or any other complainants and/or informants.” But, it clarifies that the search warrants were carried out like a subpoena and that law enforcement “never raided or invaded Butler Snow’s offices.”
The report went on to say that the search warrants caused a delay of “several months” in Butler Snow’s investigation, and that once they were able to resume, questions regarding the Covenant School shooting were off limits.
In May, Davidson was arrested and accused of illegally stealing and leaking internal MNPD documents, including some related to the Covenant shooting investigation. Davidson’s attorney called his arrest “a transparent attempt to discredit and silence a whistleblower.” Charges are still pending.
The post Long-awaited Report into Misconduct Allegations Essentially Clears Metro Nashville Police Department appeared first on Nashville Banner.
How Nicki Minaj went from music superstar to MAGA sycophant
Dec. 22nd, 2025 10:00 pmdailykos_feedNicki Minaj joining Erika Kirk on stage to praise President Donald Trump might not have been on your 2025 bingo card, but those who were watching saw clear signs of her unexpected journey.
The rapper has fully embraced the MAGA movement in recent months, but her descent into the depths of the right has been a long time coming.
In November, Minaj stood by the president's remarks on the alleged slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, appearing at the United Nations soon after.
And seemingly in the blink of an eye, the artist went from being out of the political conversation to touting her admiration for Trump and JD Vance, even admiringly calling the vice president an “assassin” during an awkward interview with Kirk, whose husband Charlie was shot and killed in September during a college campus appearance.
“This administration is full of people with heart and soul, and they make me proud of them. Our vice president, he makes me ... well, I love both of them,” Minaj said on Sunday at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix.
“Both of them have a very uncanny ability to be someone that you relate to,” she added, calling Trump a “handsome” and “dashing” role model for young men.
Minaj sang a very different tune before Trump entered politics. She once criticized the fame-hunry businessman and chastised misogynistic culture by citing the former reality TV star’s lifestyle compared to entrepreneur Martha Stewart.
“Donald Trump can say ‘You’re fired,’” she said in a 2010 clip. “Let Martha Stewart run her company the same way and be the same way! ‘Oh evil bitch!’” she observed., “But Donald Trump, he gets to hang out with young [bleeped expletive] and have 50 different wives and just be cool.”
But the way Minaj fell fully into the MAGA movement might sound familiar if you look closely.
When Trump announced his first bid for the White House, Minaj implied that the two Queens locals had more than a childhood neighborhood in common.
“There are points he has made that may not have been so horrible if his approach wasn’t so childish,” Minaj told Billboard in 2015.
Related | Pedro Pascal is the latest superhero conservatives love to hate
Like many other people who ultimately came to support Trump, she openly disagreed with certain policies he ran on. However, her distrust in the government surfaced and eventually boiled over during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The artist attached herself to anti-vaccine rhetoric, even tweeting in 2021 that the jab made her cousin’s friend “impotent.” A mistrust in medicine paired with prominent figures on the right embracing “big pharma” skepticism created a health-focused pipeline for untold thousands of people across the country to fall into supporting Trump.
Despite denouncing tactics like immigrant family separation and his mass deportation agenda, more focused topics that seemed to impact Minaj allowed her to ignore what she didn’t like about Trump and voice support for some of his policies.
Minaj might be just the latest celebrity who stepped onto a political soapbox, but her choice to fixate on “relatable” causes while ignoring the many heinous aspects of Trump’s agenda is a song we’ve heard before.
Product Review: Simply Wize Gluten Free Puff Pastry – 540g
Dec. 23rd, 2025 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mergatrude posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
gluten_freeSimply Wize are an Australian company who make a range of gluten-free products that are available in supermarkets and delis.
Their gluten-free puff pastry comes in a packet of four sheets and retail for AUD$11. These are about half the size of your standard frozen sheets of pastry.
I wanted to make a spinach pie (my recipe is loosely based on spanikopita) and so I rolled out two sheets so they were big enough to fit my rectangular baking tin (27.5cm x 17.5cm x 3.5cm). This made them quite thin and almost filo pastry-like. I did not blind bake, and made sure to drain the spinach really well so that the filling was not too moist. I brushed the top with a little melted butter and it cooked well, had a nice, golden colour and tasted like pastry should. It was not too flaky and the leftovers held together after being in the fridge and reheated.
Aside from the cost, the reduced size of the sheets made it a little awkward to use, but the taste and texture were good.
Mods, I note there is no "!: yeast-free" tag.
Their gluten-free puff pastry comes in a packet of four sheets and retail for AUD$11. These are about half the size of your standard frozen sheets of pastry.
Ingredients & Allergens
Starches (Potato, Tapioca, Corn), Water, Vegetable Oil (Soy), Egg, Stabilizers (415, 412), Anticaking Agent (460), Raising Agents (450, 500), Sugar, Salt, Soy Flour, Emulsifiers [322 (Soy), 471], Acidity Regulator (330). Contains Egg, Soy. May contain Milk, Sesame, Hazelnut.
I wanted to make a spinach pie (my recipe is loosely based on spanikopita) and so I rolled out two sheets so they were big enough to fit my rectangular baking tin (27.5cm x 17.5cm x 3.5cm). This made them quite thin and almost filo pastry-like. I did not blind bake, and made sure to drain the spinach really well so that the filling was not too moist. I brushed the top with a little melted butter and it cooked well, had a nice, golden colour and tasted like pastry should. It was not too flaky and the leftovers held together after being in the fridge and reheated.
Aside from the cost, the reduced size of the sheets made it a little awkward to use, but the taste and texture were good.
Mods, I note there is no "!: yeast-free" tag.
Google Taps More Performance Out Of AMD Zen CPUs With BPF-CCX Scheduling
Dec. 22nd, 2025 04:06 pmphoronix_feedFor helping with thread placement on modern AMD Zen systems with multiple CPU core complexes, Google has been developing "BPF CCX" that leverages the Linux kernel's eBPF capabilities paired with a user-space agent for fine-grained thread control. Google has found very positive performance results out of their use of this alternative means of high performance scheduling for achieving even greater performance on AMD processors under Linux...
Jim Beam closing Kentucky distillery for a year as Trump tariffs hit hard
Dec. 22nd, 2025 09:29 pmdailykos_feedBourbon maker Jim Beam is halting production at one of its distilleries in Kentucky for at least a year as the whiskey industry navigates tariffs from the Trump administration and slumping demand for a product that needs years of aging before it is ready.
Jim Beam said the decision to pause bourbon making at its Clermont location in 2026 will give the company time to invest in improvements at the distillery. The bottling and warehouse at the site will remain open, along with the James B. Beam Distilling Co. visitors center and restaurant.
The company's larger distillery in Boston, Kentucky, will continue to operate, the company said.
“We are always assessing production levels to best meet consumer demand,” the company said in a statement that added they were talking with the distillery’s union to determine whether there will be layoffs or other reductions.
Bourbon makers have to gamble well into the future. Jim Beam's flagship bourbon requires at least four years of aging in barrels before being bottled.
Whiskey makers are dealing with back-and-forth arguments over tariffs in Europe and in Canada, where a boycott started after the Trump administration suggested annexing the country into the U.S.
Overall exports of American spirits fell 9% in the second quarter of 2025 compared to a year ago, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. The most dramatic decrease came in U.S. spirits exports to Canada, which fell 85% in the April-through-June quarter
Related | Kentucky is about to get screwed by Trump—again
Bourbon production has grown significantly in recent years. As of January, there were about 16 million barrels of bourbon aging in Kentucky warehouses — more than triple the amount held 15 years ago, according to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association.
But sales figures and polling show Americans are drinking less than they have in decades.
About 95% of all bourbon made in the U.S. comes from Kentucky. The trade group estimated the industry brings more than 23,000 jobs and $2.2 billion to the state.
RADV Adds Support For New Performance Counters To Help Game Developers
Dec. 22nd, 2025 03:34 pmphoronix_feedSamuel Pitoiset of Valve's open-source Linux graphics team has landed improvements for the Mesa 260 RADV driver to support new performance counters in conjunction with AMD's Radeon GPU Profiler 2.6 release...
Amtrak, some commuter lines going nowhere fast; overhead electric wires just did not last
Dec. 22nd, 2025 09:26 pmuniversal_hub_feedNBC Boston reports Amtrak has had to halt all its service to and from Boston because some of the overhead wires that power the trains fell to the tracks. The MBTA is reporting delays on some of its lines that use those tracks out of South Station as well, such as the Providence, Needham, Framingham and Franklin lines.
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Free tagging:
universal_hub_feed
A Suffolk Superior Court clerk magistrate set bail today - and an Oct. 19, 2026 trial date - for a New Jersey police chief accused of physically attacking his then girlfriend after an argument on a trip up to Boston to take in a Sox game.
A friend of Carmen Veneziano, 47, police chief in Totowa, NJ for the past five years, paid the $25,000 cash bail and the chief was allowed to return to New Jersey - wearing a GPS monitor and with orders to stay away from his ex-girlfriend's hometown - according to court records.
According to the Suffolk County District Attorney's office:
Assistant District Attorney Ian Polumbaum said Veneziano and the victim visited Boston on September 13 and attended a Red Sox game. Veneziano left the hotel room after the two got into a verbal argument late Saturday night. He returned to the hotel early Sunday morning to find that the victim had locked him out of the room. He remained in the lobby for a half hour. Hotel security arrived and the victim allowed him back into the room. While in the room Veneziano became physically abusive, Polumbaum said. He headbutted the victim, dragged her by her feet, held her down on the bed and prevented her from leaving the room. Veneziano also applied painful "pressure points" on the victim's body and threw water on her, Polumbaum said.
The two then returned to New Jersey, but a few days later, the woman contacted Boston Police, Polumbaum said. That led to an investigation and, on Thursday, Veneziano's indictment by a Suffolk County grand jury on one count of kidnapping and three counts of domestic assault and battery.
Polumbaum did not disclose the name of the hotel.
Veneziano voluntarily surrendered on Friday and waived extradition so that he could be arraigned today. His attorney, Paolo Corso, said his client is innocent and noted that several people traveled to Boston from Totowa to support him today.
He is next scheduled to appear in a pre-trial session on Feb. 10 - but likely via a Zoom hearing.
Totowa's mayor announced Sunday he had suspended Veneziano pending the outcome of the criminal case.
Innocent, etc.
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Neighborhoods:
Stuff I produced or guested on in 2025
Dec. 22nd, 2025 03:54 pmjmacdotorg_feedWell, I had a fairly productive year in the realm of small-stakes media. I got to guest twice on one of my favorite long-running game podcasts, and produced six more episodes of my own show. I also invested significant time into new audio production skills, though I don’t have much to show for it just yet. And I waded around a bit with freelance article writing for the first time in many years.
The Short Game
I guested on two episodes of The Short Game:
Episode 430, a general chat about the Steam Deck game console, for which I am known to have a certain affinity. (Also on YouTube.)
Episode 443, discussing fan-made remakes and remixes of older commercial games that are playable on the Steam Deck. (Also on YouTube, or you can just skip to my cat interrupting us.)
The Short Game has been one of my favorite podcasts for some ten years now, ever since they started covering IFComp, during the brief window I was in charge of that annual competition. It’s literally the only game-related media I have consistently followed over this whole span. The chance to be a part of it like this—twice!—was an absolute delight. The show just today returned to the air after a half-year hiatus, and I hope I can revisit its virtual studios soon.
Venthuffer
I recorded another six-episode season of Venthuffer, my strictly-audio-only podcast that was originally about the Steam Deck, but clearly wanted to be more about video games in general, or even just topics tangential to the way that I approach video games. I count the final two episodes—a profile of game auteur Jeff Minter, and a genealogical dive into “Halstrick”, my chosen gaming handle—among the best self-contained works of audible media that I have ever made.
I really do want to get back to Venthuffer, and I even know what I’d like to record next. However, an unexpected late-summer opportunity temporarily redirected my energy and attention for audio production into another outlet, as follows.
Audiobooks
I’ve long been interested in developing more audio narration skills, particularly with audiobooks. After serendipitously gaining a new mentor in this field in August, I spent the final third of the year pouring much of my attention into audiobook production, by way of ACX. From September through December, I recorded the following, each after a successful ACX audition:
A very short self-help book.
Another short book about generative AI, which I didn’t realize was itself absolutely AI-generated until halfway into the project.
An anthology of two dozen essays from professional horror-genre authors, sharing stories and advice on the craft of writing fiction, and the science of selling it.
The first two audiobooks have now been published—the second under a pseudonym—but I’ve chalked them up as educational experiences that I need not name, let alone link to. They have each sold one or two copies, and I’m fine with that.
The third audiobook is still under review by its rights-holder, so I can’t name it yet either. But I do very much hope for its publication early in the new year. When that happens, I plan to share far and wide. It’s gonna be a good one.
Linux Magazine and LWN.net
I had three paid articles published in Linux Magazine, which has kindly allowed me to host and share PDFs of them:
A profile of the Steam Deck from the perspective of a Linux user curious about exploring the machine’s open-source underpinnings, using only the software and services that the game console ships with.
A guide to finding, installing, and using “mods”—fan-made software that modifies the behavior of commercial games—on your Steam Deck.
A high-level overview of creating parser-based interactive fiction games using Inform on Linux.
I also wrote one article for LWN.net about Memcached.
I enjoyed working with both of these publications. My time and attention for this sort of writing got absorbed by job hunting and then BumpySkies in the latter part of 2025. I look forward to writing more articles about doing interesting things with Linux, once I have enough attention freed up for it.
To that end, I intend to be kind to my attention span in 2026—which is to say, I intend to meter it out with fiercely guarded care, so that I can keep working with brilliant people to put small and interesting things out into the world. May the new year bring you, too, enough of a peaceful reset to let your attention remain sovereign.
Probably Because Of Mean Things Said On An Incredibly Influential Baby Blue Blog
Dec. 22nd, 2025 06:30 pmatrios_feedIf voters put you in mostly because they hate the others guys, you have about 3 months to make them happy before they turn on you, which in the US system is basically impossible.
Heading into a year with midterm elections, 18 percent of voters approve of the way the Democrats in Congress are handling their job, while 73 percent disapprove, which is a record low job approval rating for them, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll of registered voters released today.
See, for example, the UK Labour party, though they get 5 years, while the Dems only get 2 and will be going into a presidential election year.
Kash Patel gets himself a fancy new ride, thanks to taxpayers
Dec. 22nd, 2025 08:00 pmdailykos_feedFBI Director Kash Patel continues to be staggeringly bad at his job, but staggeringly good at his grift. Hey, you should always play to your strengths, right?
In his latest cash grab—your taxpayer dollar cash, that is—Patel got himself a fancy new ride. In the past, FBI directors have been driven around in Chevy Suburbans by their security detail, but is that an appropriate vehicle for a man so flashy he has his own tacky clothing line featuring Trump-themed Christmas hoodies and tacky custom challenge coins? No sir, it is not.
So, no Chevy for Kash. Instead, he needs a high-end armored BMW X5 because … it is less conspicuous than a Chevy Suburban, apparently?
An FBI spokesperson told MS NOW that the FBI was absolutely totally already planning on buying upgraded vehicles, and the armored BMW was the cheaper option, but of course, the spokesperson declined to show his work. The government doesn’t have to tell you anything any longer, including how your money is spent.
MS NOW noted that the State Department contracts with BMW for armored sedans, but that’s for diplomats in high-risk overseas locations. Unless Las Vegas, Nashville, and wherever else Patel’s girlfriend is plying her trade as a fake country music superstar are suddenly high-risk locations, an armored BMW seems kinda like overkill.
Nonetheless, Patel is wholly committed to making the FBI his own personal luxury transportation empire. Honestly, he’s doing much better at that than he is at performing the tasks of his actual job, like trying to capture mass shooters.
Sure, the FBI director is botching major investigations, but at least he has the FBI acting as an an Uber service for the country-music-wannabe girlfriend and her drunk friends. Listen, everyone knows you have to take care of your fake-starlet companion and her friends. It’s like job number one for the FBI.
Related | FBI agents now reportedly acting as Kash Patel’s personal Uber
Patel is currently using the FBI Gulfstream jet on the regular to get to work, because he does not live in Washington, the place where his job is. He also uses it to go see his girlfriend perform at various low-rent sporting events, because that is how you keep America safe.
Perhaps because he’s been racking up so many frequent flier miles on the taxpayer dime, that Gulfstream has begun to feel old and busted. That would explain why earlier this year, he tried to get the FBI to buy him a newer, presumably more luxurious jet. That effort failed, with four people telling MS NOW that the idea was abandoned after learning it would have cost between $90 million and $115 million to snap up a new plane for Patel.
Not fair! Why can’t Patel have one lousy measly new luxury jet when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem just got two new ones?
The FBI probably has some extra scratch these days, what with the imminent departure of Deputy Director Dan Bongino. Soon, the Bureau will not need to pay for both Bongino and Bongino’s babysitter, Co-Deputy Director Andrew Bailey, though that probably isn’t going to quite cover an eight- or nine-figure plane.
Wait! What if the FBI buys Patel his new plane and then he can just give his sad old worn-out Gulfstream to his girlfriend? Problem solved, everybody wins!
Well, except for all of us, who get to continue to pay for the continued care, feeding, and coddling of one of the least competent and least effective people in an administration full of feckless nitwits.
Elementary OS 8.1 Switches Over To Wayland Session By Default
Dec. 22nd, 2025 01:38 pmphoronix_feedThirteen months after the release of Elementary OS 8.0, Elementary OS 8.1 is now available for this Ubuntu 24.04 LTS based Linux distribution that focuses on ease of use and usability. With Elementary OS 8.1 they have transitioned to using the Wayland session by default...
Trump gives masterclass with Epstein files on how to appear very guilty
Dec. 22nd, 2025 06:30 pmdailykos_feedThere is a concept in the legal world called "consciousness of guilt," which in layman's terms means that if a defendant acts guilty after committing a crime, prosecutors can use that behavior as evidence to prove guilt. The Trump administration's behavior with the Epstein files release is a great example of that legal concept.
Over the weekend, the Department of Justice—which has been bastardized into President Donald Trump's personal legal team and revenge squad rather than an independent law enforcement agency—deleted at least 16 of the Epstein files that had been released. One of those deleted files depicted Trump himself.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche tried to defend the deletion of the photo, but ended up making things even worse for himself and Trump.
"You can see in that photo there are photographs of women. We learned after releasing it that there were concerns about those women," Blanche told NBC's Kirsten Welker as to why the image—which was a picture of photographs in a drawer that showed Trump—was deleted.
"Are you saying that one or more of those women is a victim of Epstein?" Welker asked, catching Blanche in a bind, as that means Trump was included in photos with Epstein victims.
The deletion of files came after the DOJ did not follow the law and only released some of the documents relating to the late accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein—even though the bill Congress passed compelled the administration to release all of the files it possessed.
That was predictable, as Attorney General Pam Bondi had telegraphed after Congress’ bill passed that the DOJ would not be complying with the law.
Even more egregious is that the DOJ redacted mentions of "politically exposed individuals and government officials" in the files, according to Fox News, which likely would protect Trump, who we know was mentioned multiple times in the documents.
It also appears some of the redactions were done to make certain people look guilty.
For example, a photo of former President Bill Clinton, late pop icon Michael Jackson, and singer Diana Ross was included in the files. That image had big squares blacking out images of other people in the photo, implying that the trio was with victims of Epstein's abuse. However, the photo had been public for decades, and the redacted faces were of Ross' and Jackson's children—making the image deceptively redacted to imply guilt in a despicable politicalization of the files.
Of course, Trump has been acting guilty about his ties to Epstein for months.
He refused to release the Epstein files himself, vowing revenge against any Republican lawmakers who would join Democrats to force the documents to be released. In fact, his once close relationship to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) went up in flames after she helped force the Epstein files vote.
Ultimately, now that the administration is playing fast and loose with the law, Democrats and Republicans alike are vowing to seek punishment.
Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY)—who authored the legislation that forced the files to be released—said they will seek to hold Bondi in contempt.
“Unfortunately, @AGPambondi is breaking the law. Epstein survivors aren't satisfied with the DOJ's incomplete and redacted Epstein files disclosures, and neither am I,” Massie wrote in a post on X. “Congress should assert its ability to hold Bondi in ‘inherent contempt’ to get justice for the survivors.”
And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he is introducing legislation to "initiate legal action against the DOJ for its blatant disregard of the law in its refusal to release the complete Epstein files."
Russian and Saudi butchers are our best buds, but, sure, the homeland is threatened by windmills
Dec. 22nd, 2025 06:41 pmuniversal_hub_feedThe Department of the Interior today ordered the immediate shutdown of Vineyard Wind, which is already generating electricity, and four other wind-power systems because they pose a dire national-security threat that is so horrible the regime can't really explain it to us, because we might spill the beans to our enemies (Ukraine and Canada, we assume) but it has something to do with radar in a way that does not affect any of the turbines in the country's largest wind-generating state do not (don't mess with Texas wind) .
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Lua 5.5 Released With Declarations For Global Variables, Garbage Collection Improvements
Dec. 22nd, 2025 12:25 pmphoronix_feedFive years after releasing Lua 5.4, Lua 5.5 debuted today as the newest version of this lightweight and embeddable scripting language...
universal_hub_feedA federal appeals court last week upheld the multi-year prison sentences two state troopers got for their participation in an overtime scheme, no, not the one on the turnpike but the one involving bogus time records for sobriety checkpoints.
The court did grant a bit of a financial victory to one of the troopers, however, ordering a lower-court judge to revisit the $177,600 reimbursement the judge in their case ordered him to pay to the private Belmont Hill School for tuition for his sons. The appeals court said he should only have to repay the amount in financial aid he got by lying that he was too poor to afford the school, via bogus tax returns for his job as a state trooper and his private security company, the one he acknowledged in a separate case that he had filed fake returns for.
The ruling means that former Sgt. Daniel Griffin will have to finish out his five-year federal prison sentence, and former Trooper William Robertson his three-year sentence, for their role in an overtime scandal in a State Police unit that used federal funds to conduct sobriety checkpoints and do patrols looking for people not wearing seatbelts.
Griffin is currently housed at a low-security federal prison in Ashland, KY, with a scheduled release date of June 22, 2028, while Robertson is in a residential re-entry program in Atlanta in preparation for his planned May 17, 2026 release. Both men were also ordered to pay restitution - $142,774.77 for Robertson and $329,163.77 for Griffin, now minus whatever sum a district-court judge reduces Griffin's Belmont Hill School repayment by.
In a 96-page ruling, the three-judge appeals court concluded both men got fair trials, that prosecutors provided more than enough evidence that they defrauded the state and federal government through such means as putting in time sheets for full shifts when they left or arrived early - or sometimes for double-billing both State Police and the federal program for time - and that the judge did nothing wrong in calculating their punishments, save for the question of how much Griffin would have to repay the school.
And, the court concluded, the judge did nothing wrong in disregarding arguments that the two men should get lesser sentences because troopers involved in other State Police overtime scandals either got shorter sentences - or were never charged to begin with. The judges concluded the cases were simply not the same, and so there was no apples-to-apples comparison:
Or more colorfully, if Griffin's an apple and the other sentenced troopers are oranges, the uncharged troopers are salmon -- part of an entirely different food group.
Unusual for a judicial dissertation, the ruling discusses the grimdarker Batman comics and one Batman movie, in a footnote related to the "breath alcohol test" camper - known as the "BAT mobile" - that troopers in the unit would use to hold alleged drunk drivers at sobriety checkpoints before driving them to a nearby barracks for booking:
We assume that the name of the "BAT Mobile" finds its origins in the famous vehicle of the same name owned by the Caped Crusader and Dark Knight himself: the DC Comics superhero "Batman." We'll note that corrupt coppers also play an important part in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008), but thankfully, the inappropriate conduct of the MSP troopers in this case doesn't come close to matching the deep-rooted corruption and greed in the Gotham Police Department on display throughout the legendary film.
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CBS bows again to Trump by shelving critical '60 Minutes' story
Dec. 22nd, 2025 04:30 pmdailykos_feedCBS News is facing accusations of censorship in favor of the Trump administration after editor-in-chief Bari Weiss decided to shelve a “60 Minutes” segment that was scheduled to air on Sunday night.
Earlier in the week, CBS had touted an upcoming report on the notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo prison, known as CECOT, in El Salvador, where the Trump administration has sent several migrants like Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Three hours before airtime CBS pulled the segment.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one,” reporter Sharyn Alfonsi wrote in an email to other CBS correspondents after the decision.
Weiss reportedly claimed that the story needed comment from the Trump administration, even though they had been offered a chance to respond to the story and had declined.
In her email Alfonsi said, “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”
The New York Times reported that Weiss gave “60 Minutes” staffers personal contact information for White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, suggesting that he should be sought out for comment on the report. Miller is the racist architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, and it is notable that he is apparently close enough with Weiss for contact information to be exchanged.
The scandalous development comes after Paramount, CBS’ parent company, personally paid President Donald Trump a $16 million settlement for a lawsuit that most media/legal experts said was frivolous. After the payoff, CBS also announced it would cancel “The Late Show” hosted by longtime critic Stephen Colbert. The Trump administration then approved Paramount’s merger with media production company Skydance.
In November, Trump did an interview with “60 Minutes,” and the network chose not to air a comment from Trump referencing his payoff.
“Actually, ‘60 Minutes’ paid me a lot of money, and you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t want to embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not,” Trump said in the segment—accurately predicting what would happen.
Weiss is a conservative activist who runs the right-wing site The Free Press and was installed to oversee CBS News as the network’s coverage shifts to the right. Recently Weiss aired a “town hall” with Erika Kirk, head of racist conservative pressure group Turning Point USA and widow of bigoted activist Charlie Kirk. The program was a ratings flop but CBS continues to bend to the right.
Mainstream media institutions have shifted to the right over the last year, from CBS News to previously revered outlets like the Washington Post. MAGA media means a less-informed public, but these institutions do not appear to be interested in serving the public.
Cartoon: Christmas wish lists
Dec. 22nd, 2025 04:29 pmdailykos_feedA cartoon by Mike Luckovich.
Related | 'You can give up pencils': Trump tells you how to survive his economy
Linux 6.19's Significant ~30% Performance Boost For Old AMD Radeon GPUs
Dec. 22nd, 2025 10:14 amphoronix_feedFor those still using old AMD GCN 1.0 "Southern Islands" or GCN 1.1 "Sea Islands" graphics cards, the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel is a wonderful holiday gift. With Linux 6.19, the GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs are now defaulting to the modern AMDGPU kernel driver in place of the legacy "Radeon" DRM driver that has been the default for GCN 1.1/1.0 and other ATI/AMD graphics processors of the past 2+ decades. In this article is a look at the performance benefit of now AMDGPU being the default as well as now enabling RADV Vulkan support out-of-the-box.
universal_hub_feedA Boston man is being held in lieu of $25,000 cash bail on charges he ran down two women on South Huntington Avenue in Jamaica Plain in October, leaving one to die.
Jose Peguero, 36, was arraigned Friday in West Roxbury Municipal Court on charges of motor vehicle homicide, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, leaving the scene of a crash causing personal injury and death, reckless operation and a crosswalk violation, according to court records, which show that Judge John McDonald Jr. ordered him sent to the Suffolk County Jail when he couldn't make bail.
Boston Police report that Peguero hit two women in a marked crosswalk near the Back of the Hill trolley stop in his Chevy Trailblazer shortly after 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 5, that he never stopped and that after he abandoned his SUV after the crash, never attempted to recover it.
The victim who died was 77 and was using a walker at the time.
Peguero is next scheduled for court on Jan. 20 for a probable-cause hearing.
Innocent, etc.
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Holiday Schedule
Dec. 22nd, 2025 04:30 pmatrios_feedLike many people, I do try to enjoy the holiday season a bit, with various things keeping me busy. Blogging will be more irregular than usual over the next couple of weeks. Or not! You never know.