badbrainstorm

Should go without saying, but:

Telegram and Twitter were big spreaders of misinformation during the Russian coup attempt. Credit: Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The potential coup attempt in Russia by a paramilitary organization may already be over(opens in a new tab), but the misinformation sure did flow during the breaking global event.

On Friday, news quickly spread that the Kremlin-aligned private army known as Wagner Group, led by "Putin's chef" Yevgeny Prigozhin, was leaving the war in Ukraine and marching towards Moscow. This breaking news caught many by surprise, and people flocked to social media in an effort to make sense of what appeared to be a coup attempt.

However, with information sparse as events in Russia were still unfolding, misinformation and wild speculation ran rampant online, showing that modern day social media and internet news sources are still highly flawed and lacking.

A major issue with this particular event is that many of the most popular platforms in the country aren't ones that get much use in the western world. Telegram, for example, is extremely popular in non-English speaking countries like Russia. Much of the breaking news surrounding the coup attempt was first being posted there, and in Russian.

English speakers not only had to understand the language, but be familiar with which Telegram channels were legitimate sources of information. Due to lackadaisical moderation on the platform, many English-language users that are on Telegram tend to be far right-wingers and biased towards Putin's regime. These accounts are not the best sources of information, if they even have any actual on-the-ground info to begin with.

Much of what flowed on Telegram eventually did make its way to English-speaking users in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere via Twitter. And that poses yet another problem. Since Elon Musk acquired the platform, Twitter has gone through changes that don't exactly bode well for it as an invaluable breaking news resource like it once was.

For example, prior to Musk, the blue checkmark meant that a user was verified by Twitter as the journalist or expert that the individual claimed they were. Remember, the purpose of the checkmark was to make sure these users couldn't be impersonated. Now, however, anyone who pays $8 per month for Twitter's premium subscription service, Twitter Blue, gets a blue checkmark.

Furthermore, those paid blue checkmark users now get priority placement in Twitter's For You feed algorithm, and in the replies to other users' tweets. And, echoing the issue on Telegram, many Twitter Blue subscribers are not far, ideologically speaking, from the Putin regime.

​​"It's probably not good that during a major breaking news event, the ongoing Wagner mutiny in Russia, the majority of viral false and misleading claims are from accounts with Twitter Blue subscription, whose posts are promoted by Twitter's algorithm," observed(opens in a new tab) Shayan Sardarizadeh, a journalist that covers disinformation and conspiracy theories at BBC Verify.

The issues on Twitter became so obvious that they quickly even became meme-fodder(opens in a new tab) on the platform. For example, many blue checkmark users began spreading information in long tweet threads about the Russian coup, regardless of the fact that they had no expertise on the matter.

It also didn't help that Elon Musk, who owns the platform and has more than 144 million followers, decided not to use his reach to promote experts or journalists on the ground. Instead, Musk deemed(opens in a new tab) a cryptocurrency and tech entrepreneur who hosts larger Twitter Spaces audio chats, the provider of the "best coverage of the situation," and referred his followers to their account.

And unfortunately for those most affected, like people living in Russia, online information was hard to come by as well. Internet observatory NetBlocks reported(opens in a new tab) that the country's major telecommunications providers were blocking users from accessing Google's popular news aggregator, Google News.

Wagner Group now appears to have reversed course and will no longer march towards Moscow. Instead, the paramilitary group will join the Kremlin and again turn their focus to Ukraine, the country that Russia has invaded, to continue a war that has been subjected to its own disinformation campaigns. However, this potential coup, which lasted less than 24 hours, put a big spotlight on how the internet may be worse off than ever before when it comes to spreading accurate information during breaking global news events.

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Happy Gilmore is happy for Happy Gilmore.

On Friday, Adam Sandler congratulated the high school golfer who goes by the same name as Sandler's 1996 character in the movie after he announced his commitment to play at Ball State as a member of the Class of 2024.

"Go get em Happy," Sandler wrote on Twitter, quoting Gilmore's announcement post. "Pulling for you."

The real life Gilmore, who was born Landon James Gilmore, expressed excitement at getting a response from the movie star.

"My life is complete," he replied.

Live Leaderboard: US Open Tournament Scores, Schedules, Pairings and More

Per Golf.com, Gilmore, who attends Indiana's Bloomington High School South, earned the nickname "Happy" as a child because he can hit the long ball like Sandler's character. When he was nine, he won a long-drive contest at a junior event.

The name stuck and the senior plays it up. He enters all tournaments using the moniker and even posed for a picture wearing a Boston Bruins jersey like Sandler's character. Unlike Sandler's character, Gilmore does not play hockey.

Gilmore said people still get fascinated at his name, but he's risen on his own merit. Earlier this month, he tied for seventh in the Indiana high school state championship and helped his team to a fourth-place finish.

“I don’t think it adds any pressure to me,” Gilmore told the IndyStar. “But I do know that whatever I do is going to be seen. Especially as far as leaderboards when people are scrolling down and see ‘Happy Gilmore’ they are going to look at it, obviously. So I do know that, but I don’t let it get in my head or that I have to play good because of it. I just go out and do my thing.”

A San Jose physician was convicted of illegally prescribing and distributing large quantities of opioids without a legitimate medical purpose, including to one person who died of an overdose, federal prosecutors announced Friday.

Donald Siao, 58, a family physician, was convicted by a federal jury on Tuesday of 12 counts of distributing the controlled substances oxycodone and hydrocodone outside the usual course of his medical practice over a 12-month period between 2016 and 2017, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release.

After identifying Siao in a separate prescription fraud investigation, investigators discovered Siao had written 8,201 prescriptions for controlled substance medications in just the one-year period from May 2016 to May 2017, according to prosecutors. During the course of the investigation, Siao prescribed increasing amounts of opioids to four separate undercover agents posing as patients, even though in some instances they admitted to sharing the drugs with co-workers or friends.

Each of the 12 counts against Siao carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Ismail J. Ramsey, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, announced on Friday he would seek to have Siao’s medical license forfeited.

Calls to the U.S. Attorney’s office and to Siao’s lawyer were not immediately returned.

Eight of the 12 counts against Siao involved a mother and son identified in court documents as E.J. and A.J., respectively.

Both mother and son claimed to have lost or had pills stolen and Siao continued to respond with prescriptions, according to court documents.

Siao also ignored a warning from an insurer about potential fraud regarding E.J. and a notice that A.J. had previously been arrested for selling pills, prosecutors said in the news release.

A.J. overdosed twice but still received prescriptions from Siao, according to court documents. A.J. died from an overdose of opioids in December 2019. In addition, Siao did not comply with medical records requests from the coroner following A.J.’s death.

The last four counts against Siao were related to an operation conducted by an undercover interagency task force.

The California Department of Justice Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse, or BMFEA, was one of several agencies investigating Siao in 2017, according to court documents. In May of that year, the agency searched a state controlled substance database and found that Siao had written more than 8,000 prescriptions for controlled substances.

Many of those prescriptions called for 30 milligrams of oxycodone, which is at the higher end of dosage strength. The National Library of Medicine states, for instance, that immediate-release oxycodone tablets begin at 5 mg and top out at 30.

Along with oxycodone, Siao issued prescriptions for combinations of opioids, muscle relaxers and benzodiazepine, often known as the “Holy Trinity,” according to court documents. The Department of Justice has said the trio taken together “depress the central nervous system and the ability to breathe.”

The drug task force conducted an investigation from February to May 2018. Four agents visited Siao’s office multiple times to request prescriptions for controlled substances.

In one case, one agent known as A.M. pretended to be a retired football player who complained of pain in his shoulder, arm and elbow. He saw Siao three times, with each visit ending with a prescription.

In his third appointment with Siao in July 2018, A.M. admitted he had shared a portion of a previous 60-tablet, 30-mg strength oxycodone dosage, a potentially addictive controlled substance used for pain management, with a co-worker. The agent asked if Siao could increase the amount of pills to compensate for the borrowed cache.

Siao obliged and increased the total to 75 pills at an appointment that lasted approximately two minutes, according to court documents.

Another agent, identified only as E.T. in court documents, sought Siao for a prescription of Norco, a combination of hydrocodone and acetaminophen used for pain management.

The agent said he had previously purchased Norco at work for $10 a pill. Siao said, “That is nuts,” according to court documents. The doctor then added, “I’m not going to say anything. Some people try to make a business out of that; put it that way.”

The physician then prescribed 45 tablets of 10-mg strength after a first visit in April 2018, according to court documents.

Siao eventually increased the amount to 60 tablets upon E.T.’s second visit, prosecutors said. He also prescribed a cannabinoid, Marinol, at the agent’s request. The agent told Siao he was a marijuana user and needed to show his employer that any cannabis found in his blood stream through random testing was due to another drug.

Siao replied “gotcha” and filled out the prescription, prosecutors said.

Home decor color trends come and go, but classic white linens—like bedding, towels, and tablecloths—never go out of style. Sure, being a neutral color helps, but there’s a certain comfort that comes from being able to look at white bedsheets or a washcloth and immediately know whether they’re clean.

Unfortunately, getting to that point is easier said than done. Here are three mistakes to avoid when washing whites. Don’t make these mistakes when washing white linens

With more than 20 years of industry experience, Wayne “The StainMaster” Edelman, CEO of Meurice Garment Care, has successfully tackled the toughest of stains, and is a whiz at washing whites. Below are three common laundry mistakes, and his tips for dealing with them:

1. Thinking white is the absence of color

First things first: White isn’t the absence of color—it is a color. “Most think that fabrics are white at their core,” says Edelman. “But white textiles are dyed white, and fade like any other color.” 2. Using chlorine-based bleach

One of the first things people learn about doing laundry is that bleach is the most effective way to get whites sparkling clean. But bleach can cause the fibers in the fabric to deteriorate, and while it does remove stains, it can also leave your laundry more yellow than white.

“The best way to brighten and restore stained and darkened white linens or towels is to soak them in warm water [and] laundry detergent, and use a sodium-based bleach like OxyClean,” Edelman says. 3. Missing clear stains

Not all stains show up right away on white linens. “Clear stains like sunscreen, white wine, and glue, may not always be seen on your white furnishes or towels, but they, in fact, are sugar stains and will caramelize overtime,” Edelman explains. This is why a napkin or towel may be white after you wash it and put it away, then look yellow when you pull it out next.

To prevent this from happening, Edelman says that you should always pre-soak or treat white linens if you know something was spilled on them—even if you can’t see the stains.

Rep. Troy Carter wants the White House to pull two judicial nominees in his state that were OK’d by Louisiana’s GOP senators. | Mariam Zuhaib/AP Photo

Officially, House Democrats have no say over presidential nominations. Unofficially, they’re wading knee-deep into confirmations they think the party is botching.

Top Congressional Black Caucus members are steaming that the Biden administration isn’t adequately consulting them on judicial nominees. Swing-district Democrats want the Senate to pick up the pace on filling key vacancies. And progressives are furious that the chamber still hasn’t considered Julie Su’s nomination as Labor secretary.

The Senate broke for a recess on Thursday with no plans to vote on Su, whom Biden nominated in late February to be his administration’s first Asian American Cabinet secretary. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a member of the progressive “squad,” called it “racist” and “embarrassing” that the Senate hadn’t advanced her nomination.

“It’s once again the party harming itself,” he said, adding he hoped undecided senators will “get on board.”

It’s a reflection of House Democrats’ growing frustration in the minority, where the party and its powerful Black Caucus have little sway over legislation. Instead, they’re trying to exert power by catching the ear of the president, his top aides and the Democratic Senate — sometimes prompting intra-party tension as House lawmakers step into already crowded lanes.

Under split government, the Democratic Senate has spent much of its time this year on nominees, including an array of diverse judges with progressive bona fides as well as several with Republican backing. Still, House Democrats are smarting that their Senate colleagues aren’t more aggressive in their tactics. And senators are brushing off some of the suggestions from the lower chamber.

The Black Caucus met with White House chief of staff Jeff Zients last week and advocated for changes to Senate precedent that would make it easier to confirm defense and judicial nominees. They’re not yet convinced, though, that the White House will be receptive to their broader concerns about the lack of input top Black Democrats have on nominees.

“The proof will be in the pudding. The action — we haven’t seen that,” Black Caucus member Rep. Troy Carter (D-La.) said in an interview. “So we’re hopeful that we will get some action soon … but as of right now, we’re still waiting.”

Carter may best exemplify House Democrats’ frustrations. He wants the White House to pull two judicial nominees in his state that were OK’d by Louisiana’s GOP senators — a necessity under the current nomination process — and says he wasn’t properly consulted as the only Democratic lawmaker from the state.

Under Senate customs, home state senators are able to unilaterally stop a nominee by refusing to return what are called blue slips. On the Louisiana judgeships, the two Republican senators negotiated with the White House for two years before the nominations of Jerry Edwards Jr. and Brandon Scott Long were rolled out earlier this month.

“I’ve been very clear on my position of blue slips. I think they’re antiquated. I think they’re vestiges of Jim Crow, and they should be abolished,” Carter said.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who just returned blue slips for the two nominees, called Carter a “good man” but advised him to take his complaints to the White House. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who has rejected calls to scrap the blue slip process, said he would move forward on the confirmations.

“We went through the process honestly, directly as I had hoped they would. And I’m not going to back away from it at this point,” Durbin said.

Then there’s Scott Colom, a potential Mississippi judicial nominee, who is being denied a blue slip by Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.). Former Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) said he is encouraging Colom to keep fighting, hoping the Senate will find a way around one senator’s blockade.

“Maybe this is a circumstance where the blue slip should not be honored,” Jones said.

Senate Democrats’ refusal to change the blue slip process is aggravating members of the Congressional Black Caucus, some of whom hail from blue districts in Republican southern states who believe the deference to red-state senators deprives Democratic lawmakers of a voice.

“Durbin, as chair of the Judiciary Committee, has unilateral authority to change, reform, and at least modify the practices of the blue slip, and it’s in the administration’s best interest that they do it,” said Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), chair of the Black Caucus. Horsford is also pushing for a rules change to circumvent Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) hold on military promotions, though senators are trying to find another solution first.

Durbin acknowledged the concern about getting blue slips in red states and said he’s “frustrated because Republican senators aren’t moving quickly enough.” Still, he’s hardly alone in his reluctance: Many Democrats see the slips as a way to retain some influence the next time a Republican wins the White House. And for an often dysfunctional Senate, the Louisiana nominees are widely viewed as a success.

The level of House interest in Democrats’ nomination process is deep in the weeds. Just last week, a group of Democrats led by Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.) sent a letter to Biden urging him to nominate a new head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a job that’s been vacant after the withdrawal of Ann Carlson’s nomination. The White House confirmed to the group that they received the letter.

“It’s an important position to fill,” Lee said. “So I think it’s something that needs to happen sooner rather than later.”

For now, Democrats seem most concerned with Su’s stalled status, which is frustrating Senate and House progressives alike. Key senators, including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Angus King (I-Maine) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) remain publicly undecided on her nomination, leaving her in limbo.

“There are some people who think: ‘Don’t bring up anything unless you’re guaranteed the votes,’” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “That’s not my view. My belief is that under democracy, your constituents have a right to know where you come from.”

Sanders would be comfortable keeping Su in the job as an acting Labor secretary even if she falls short of confirmation. But the White House does not want to hold a failed vote on her nomination, according to a Democratic aide granted anonymity to discuss strategy.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in an interview that Su is “a great nominee and we’re still working it, the White House is working it.”

Schumer has touted the diverse slate of judges and nominees that have gone through the Senate in the past two and a half years. The Senate just confirmed Biden’s 100th district court judge, augmenting its 35 appeals court judges and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

White House spokesperson Emilie Simons touted Su’s credentials for the top labor job, including Democrats’ support for her deputy job and “support from business and labor groups across the spectrum.”

Biden’s lost some nominees to Senate politics, but overall his confirmation record in the chamber is strong given Democrats’ narrow majorities. But the victories aren’t enough to satisfy many House Democrats at the moment; they’re focused on the fight in front of them.

“I still remain confident that Julie is going to pull through,” said Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who’s helped lead the Asian Caucus’ advocacy for her.

The global economy will grow slower in the 21st century than economists have expected, a finding that has implications for our ability to adapt to climate change in the coming decades, according to new research.

A new study projecting the economic futures of four income groups of countries over the next century finds growth will be slower than predicted, with developing countries taking longer to close the wealth gap and approach the income of wealthier nations. What economists have thought of as a worst-case scenario for global economic growth may, in fact, be a best-case scenario, according to the new study published today in Communications Earth & Environment.

The findings suggest governments need to start planning for slower growth and wealthier countries may need to help lower-income nations finance climate change adaptations in the coming decades, according to the study authors.

"We're at a point where we maybe need to significantly increase financing for [climate] adaptation in developing countries, and we're also at a point where we might be overestimating our future ability to provide that financing under the current fiscal paradigm," said Matt Burgess, a CIRES fellow, director of the Center for Social and Environmental Futures, and assistant professor of environmental studies at CU Boulder who led the new study.

"We can now start to winnow down the range of possibilities and move forward in more tangible ways," said Ryan Langendorf, a postdoctoral scholar at CU Boulder and co-author of the new study.

In the new study, Burgess and his colleagues used two economic models to project how much the global economy will grow over the next century and how quickly developing countries will approach the income levels of wealthier nations.

Both models found the global economy will continue to grow, but that growth will be slower than most economists expected and there will be a larger income gap between wealthier and poorer nations. This means richer countries may need to help finance climate adaptations for poorer countries, and debt-ceiling crises, like what the United States experienced this spring, may become more common.

"Slower growth than we think means higher deficits than we expect, all else equal," Burgess said. "That means debt would likely become more contentious and important over time, and could mean more frequent debt-ceiling fights."

Similar to a flight emergency, where individuals should put their own oxygen masks on first, wealthier nations should focus on getting their own financial houses in order so they can be in a position to support lower-income nations in financing climate adaptations, according to the researchers.

"We're talking about relatively less growth, relatively more inequality, but we're still talking about a world that is richer than today and more equal across countries than today's world," Burgess said.

Still, many wealthy nations are accustomed to growing their way out of debt, but that may not be possible under the new scenario, according to Ashley Dancer, a graduate student at CU Boulder and co-author of the study.

"The next question is: what are some ways that we should be or could be helping [lower-income countries] adapt, if the expectation is that they're not going to meet the level of wealth that would allow them to do that quickly and aggressively?" Dancer said.

An artist's impression shows an immensely energetic explosion called a gamma ray burst. Astronomers studying a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB) with the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF's NOIRLab, may have observed the collision of stars or stellar remnants in the jam-packed environment surrounding a supermassive black hole at the core of an ancient galaxy.

International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick/M. Zamani/Handout via REUTERS

Very massive stars - more than 10 times the sun's mass - die in a supernova blast that leaves behind neutron stars or even denser black holes, whose gravitational pull is so strong no matter or light can escape

WASHINGTON, DC, USA – Astronomers have spotted an immensely energetic explosion emanating from an ancient galaxy, apparently triggered by a type of star destruction hypothesized for decades but never before observed. You might call it stellar death by demolition derby.

Researchers said the gamma-ray burst they observed may have been caused by the collision of two compact stars in the densely packed and chaotic environment near a supermassive black hole at the center of this elliptically shaped galaxy. They suspect the two doomed stars were neutron stars, which pack roughly the mass of our sun into a sphere only the size of a city.

“In order to explain the gamma-ray burst, it has to have been a compact star, so not one like the sun,” said astronomer Andrew Levan of Radboud University in the Netherlands, lead author of the research published this week in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe. They release more energy per unit time than any other known cosmic phenomena. So they are really superlative in their properties. Their name comes from the first type of light that we see, gamma-rays, but they actually emit across the electromagnetic spectrum,” said astrophysicist and study co-author Wen-fai Fong of Northwestern University in Illinois.

Immense gravitational forces exerted by the black hole at the galactic center may wreak havoc, perturbing the motion of nearby stars and other objects and increasing the chances of collisions – akin, the researchers said, to a demolition derby.

“Most stars in the universe die in a predictable way, which is just based on their mass,” Levan said. “This research shows a new route to stellar destruction.”

Very massive stars – more than 10 times the sun’s mass – die in a supernova blast that leaves behind neutron stars or even denser black holes, whose gravitational pull is so strong no matter or light can escape. Relatively low-mass stars like our sun puff up and blow off their outer layers, transforming into a stellar remnant called a white dwarf.

The new findings show another path to stellar demise.

“The idea that stars also can die through collisions in extremely dense regions has been around since at least the 1980s. So we’ve been waiting for 40 years for the signatures to be found observationally,” Levan said.

Debris recovered in Bataan likely from Chinese rocket – PH Space Agency

The researchers used data from orbiting and ground-based telescopes to study the gamma-ray burst in a galaxy about 3 billion light-years away from Earth, roughly in the direction of the constellation Aquarius. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

This ancient galaxy was populated primarily by stars several billion years old.

“The galaxy is what we call ‘quiescent’ – a galaxy that is not actively forming stars at a high rate and is past its heyday,” Fong said. “These quiescent galaxies are very massive and have built up large supermassive black holes in their centers, making them a perfect breeding ground for stellar collisions.”

The distance between our sun and the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is about 4 light years. This same expanse of space would be filled with perhaps ten million stars in a galactic core, with the supermassive black hole’s destabilizing influence stirring things up.

“You certainly wouldn’t want a front-row seat to one of these events,” Levan said.

“But, if you were close enough, you would see the two neutron stars get ever closer until their gravity deforms them and they begin to shred,” Levan added. “Then the cores of the stars would merge to make a black hole, surrounded by a disc of the remaining material. A fraction of a second later, this material would flow into the black hole, and a jet of material moving at 99.99% of the speed of light would launch,” representing the gamma-ray burst.

This week, I went to the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver, Colorado, where more than 11,000 scientists, artists, investors, and uncategorizable members of the psychedelic community gathered to both celebrate and scrutinize as the “walls of prohibition start to crumble,” in the words of Bia Labate, executive director of the Chacruna Institute. It’s likely the biggest psychedelics conference in history.

“Welcome to the psychedelic ‘20s,” cheered Rick Doblin, founder of the conference’s host, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, at the welcome address — while sporting an all-white suit that may as well have been plucked from Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test chronicler Tom Wolfe’s closet.

The psychedelic hype bubble is already concerning many in the community, so let’s not exaggerate the scale: Well over half a million people attended the recent parade celebrating the Denver Nuggets NBA finals victory over the Miami Heat. Comparatively, psychedelia remains relatively niche. But a sampling of 11,000 people from the psychedelic community punches above its weight in creating a palpable, colorful, and ever-surprising atmosphere. During Doblin’s opening address, a sort of collective effervescence buzzed through the auditorium. For many in the room, an above-ground psychedelic gathering of this size and stature was decades in the making. “I’m not tripping — culture is tipping,” said Doblin. Psychedelic culture is back, but it looks a little different

It’s tempting to write about all the oddities that come along with a mass congregation of psychedelic-curious folks. And there were plenty: attendees wearing sparkling dragon outfits; a ukulele band stationed in the main hallway attracting a rotating cast of passers-by into a sort of ecstatic but strangely relaxing dance; a “Deep Space” exhibit room — a neon-lit warehouse, really — with tea ceremonies and real-time painting. Outside the convention center, hundreds of people sat upon the patches of turf in every sort of posture you can imagine, with circles of police officers dotting the perimeter.

But the real story that strikes me is the sanity of it all. The conference logistics ran relatively smoothly. Audience members were mostly well-behaved. I haven’t been offered illicit substances even once (the press badge around my neck may have something to do with that). In part, that makes sense for a conference where the three-day tickets start at $805. For all the talk of inclusion, that’s a steep price of entry that surely screened out some of the fun. Nevertheless, this cross-section of psychedelia might optimistically suggest a synthesis between the bacchanalia of the ’60s and the straight-laced, bureaucratic vibe familiar to today’s conference culture.

During that ’60s era, psychedelia and government stood at odds. At Wednesday’s opening ceremony, Doblin was followed by former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, as well as current Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who voiced his support for pardoning all criminal convictions related to psychedelic drugs.

Next was Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. Promising results from clinical trials are recruiting governmental allies across the aisle, something the hippies lacked. Psychedelics are still illegal at the federal level, but that’s not stopping states from passing legislation that ranges from decriminalizing the cultivation, possession, and sharing of psychedelic substances, to regulated access at certified clinics for anyone over the age of 21.

Spread across the long halls of the Colorado Convention Center, sessions were grouped into one of 11 different categories, ranging from science and business to society and community. I bopped into a crowded room where Hamilton Morris (the journalist and chemist behind Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia) chronicled 90 years of tryptamine chemistry. The handful of psychedelic drugs we’re familiar with today — which have already caused such a ruckus — hardly scratch the surface of the thousands of psychedelic compounds chemists are discovering. Earlier this year, Jason Wallach, a pharmacologist at St. John’s University, filed for a patent on 218 novel psychedelic drugs, which he hopes will help fill out the inventory of mental health treatment options. (At a later session on AI-assisted drug discovery, Michael Cunningham, a research scientist at Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals, said that the number of potential small molecules yet to be discovered vastly outnumbers the quantity of stars in the observable universe).

In the afternoon, I moseyed over to hear Robin Carhart-Harris, a professor of neurology and a leading researcher in the psychedelic science realm. At the moment of my entrance, he was describing how brain activity grows more “entropic” on psychedelics. You might recognize entropy as what the second law of thermodynamics tells us the universe is tending toward: disorder. In terms of the brain, you can think of it as the unpredictability of electrical activity.

Entropy is also a fitting theme for the conference at large, which otherwise resists being packaged into a tidy narrative. Everything from the outfits to the art installations is spiced with unpredictability. Even the weather, which delivered a quick bout of hail Thursday night, was surprising. In the brain, heightened entropy can help shake up harmful patterns of thought and behavior. As a culture, psychedelia — at its best — can serve a similar function: shaking up settled patterns, inviting opportunities for new ways of organizing ourselves, our institutions, and maybe even our academic conferences.

Balancing the chemistry and neuroscience, the keynote stage featured speakers like football star Aaron Rodgers and the rapper/artist Jaden Smith (like psychedelics, he’s a little difficult to place). Asked about his first psychedelic experience, Smith shared that he did literally hug a tree, and in that moment, thought: “Oh, wow, there’s a lot going on inside of here.” Does psychedelic experience have broader political implications?

High-entropy psychedelic states that shake up settled patterns, alone, do not offer reliable pathways to making anything better. That’s why psychedelics are now often paired with therapy, which provides a structured experience to guide one toward beneficial outcomes. Is it possible to structure the cultural impact of psychedelics so that, this time around, it doesn’t plummet into moral panic and prohibition as it did in the ’60s?

The metaphor often deployed here is integration. For individuals taking psychedelics through clinical or legalized adult-use formats, a session with a therapist usually follows the day after the trip to integrate the experience. Across a number of panel discussions, participants have suggested that integrating psychedelic experience at the cultural scale requires wholesale systemic change.

Often, this sort of thing is usually followed by a few vague critiques of capitalism or the profit motive. “Don’t forget,” said Jamie Wheal, a writer and co-founder of the Flow Genome Project, “the set and setting of the psychedelic renaissance is free-market capitalism.”

Quibbles over the imprecision of calling the present economic paradigm free-market capitalism aside, the political implications of psychedelics are a rich and unsettled area of debate. “Our minds shape our social structures, and our social structures shape our minds,” said Justin Rosenstein, co-founder of Asana, during a talk titled “Rebuilding society in the light of mystical insight.”

There was no disagreement in the crowd when it comes to ending the prohibition on psychedelic drugs (though how that should be done is another story). The political interests of psychedelic discourse, though, tend toward far larger spheres. “If we’re going to have a conversation about drug policy endgame, the endgame is complete social transformation,” said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. What does that mean in practice?

The hippies also held a famously antagonistic view toward prevailing economic structures. But their engagement with policy discourse wasn’t up to the task of achieving meaningful change.

If the conference was any indication, this new iteration of psychedelic culture is more willing to speak the language of decision-making institutions (another source of polarized debate). There is a new dose of prudence in the air. Panelists discussed the absolute importance of informed consent, the slim-but-real risks of psychosis (particularly for those with a family history), and the value of clinical research. A keynote conversation between Michael Pollan and Bob Jesse (a behind-the-scenes driver of the movement for decades) was titled “Tempering psychedelics,” in which Pollan reflected on the virtues of opening conversations around psychedelics with their risks. But if psychedelic culture is an unpredictable force of entropy, you never know what turns it may take next.

The increasingly public feud between Russian military leaders and the head of a Russian paramilitary group escalated dramatically on Friday, when Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the paramilitary Wagner Group, accused Russian armed forces of attacking his soldiers and vowed retaliation. It was a shocking accusation, one with unpredictable consequences for Prigozhin, Russia, and the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The evil that the military leadership of the country brings forward must be stopped. They have forgotten the word ‘justice,’ and we will return it,” Prigozhin said in a recording published Friday on Wagner’s social media, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Russian Ministry of Defense denied Prigozhin’s allegations that the military had launched a strike on Wagner fighters, calling it a “provocation.” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said late Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “aware” of Prigozhin’s claims, and that the Kremlin was taking “all necessary measures.”

Shortly after, Russian law enforcement said that in response to Prigozhin’s statements, Russia’s security services, the FSB, have launched a criminal case over calls for an armed uprising. “We demand to stop these unlawful actions at once.”

Russia’s deputy head of military intelligence went as far as to call it a “coup” attempt in a video urging Wagner fighters to stand down. Russia’s prosecutor general also announced that Prigozhin was now being investigated “on suspicion of organizing an armed rebellion,” reports the New York Times. Prigozhin himself, for what it’s worth, denied he was carrying out a coup, calling it a “march of justice.”

Videos and images posted to social media late Friday showed Russian security forces patrolling the streets of Moscow and another Russian city, reportedly close to where Wagner troops are deployed in Ukraine.

Prigozhin, whose Wagner forces helped take the city of Bakhmut, has been increasingly vocal in his attacks against the Russian military’s leaders, posting more and more scathing criticism of the top brass over the war effort and accusing generals of denying Wagner the ammunition and support needed to fight effectively.

Prigozhin has generally avoided direct criticism of Putin himself, but earlier on Friday he had posted a video on Telegram with a stunning assessment of Russia’s war effort. In it, he attacked the Russian military’s — and, by extension, Putin’s — rationale for the war, basically saying the threat of NATO aggression through Ukraine was made up by Russia’s top brass and corrupt elites. The war, Prigozhin said, was “needed for a bunch of scumbags to triumph and show how strong of an army they are.” He included a diatribe against Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who Prigozhin claimed pushed for war to secure a promotion, and whose decisions led to the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers.

Prigozhin has taken a very public — and very risky — part in the war in Ukraine, and he may have finally crossed a line that he has been butting up against for many weeks. Yet this story is very much still developing, and both the Russian government and Prigozhin have an interest in pushing their own propaganda at this moment.

Prigozhin is a Putin ally and a political survivor, but those often have limits in Putin’s Russia. Still, whatever is unfolding is yet another crack in Russia’s war machine, and a window into some of the dysfunction of the Russian state — dysfunction, in part, of Putin’s own making. Who is this Prigozhin character, and what does he want?

Prigozhin, the man at the center of this, is an unlikely, and imperfect, challenger of Russia’s war effort.

Known as “Putin’s chef,” he has been something of a fixer for Putin’s regime. He isn’t exactly in Putin’s inner circle but has the skills and connections to make himself useful and needed. This may be setting up a troll farm to sow political discord abroad, including in the 2016 US elections, or acting as the frontman for Wagner, a private mercenary-like force to do the Kremlin’s bidding. In both cases, Prigozhin fulfilled the interests of the Russian state, but with just enough distance to offer Putin a measure of plausible deniability.

Prigozhin has claimed to be the founder of the Wagner Group, but the reality is likely much more complicated. He is more likely the convenient figurehead of the group, which Russia has relied on for years to do its bidding around the world in places where it did not want to openly commit troops or resources, and where it could operate in a kind of gray zone. That again granted Moscow a degree of plausible deniability as it exerted its influence and interests in other corners of the globe, from Syria to Mali to Venezuela. It also gave Putin a kind of independent power center, a paramilitary outside of the formal military structures.

That all started changing in Ukraine, where Wagner, and Prigozhin himself, took on an increasingly public role in the war.

Wagner filled a specific operational and public relations need for Russia. The group’s fighters — a portion of them convicts recruited from Russian prisons — bogged down and attrited Ukrainian forces at a time Russia’s military was in disarray. The group achieved its most substantial victory in Bakhmut, one of Russia’s main territorial gains since last summer. But that victory took months, and came at an astounding casualty rate.

But as the battle for Bakhmut ground on, Prigozhin got more and more outspoken about what he saw as the failures of the Russian military and its leaders. In one video Prigozhin posted in May, he stands in a field, apparently surrounded by corpses of dead Wagner fighters. “Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where are the fucking shells!” Prigozhin says, referring to the minister of defense and the military’s chief of the general staff. “They came here as volunteers and died so you could gorge yourselves in your offices.”

These kinds of critiques are frankly shocking for a guy who is largely dependent on Putin’s largesse; in a country where open criticism of the government, and especially the war, is often brutally crushed; and within a military apparatus where insubordination of this magnitude is rarely tolerated.

Some have interpreted Prigozhin’s braggadocio as an oligarch feeling himself, and seizing on the incompetence of the Russian military to create his own power center — maybe even playing the long game to challenge Putin.

But even before Prigozhin escalated his rivalry with the Russian military this week, experts I’ve spoken to really doubted Prigozhin was actually a Putin rival and could build his own power center in the Russian state. Instead, then, it made sense to look as Prigozhin as a functionary who was seizing an opportunity in an otherwise dicey environment.

There is a place — even within Russia’s controlled media environment — for a convenient foil, a guy to get out front and complain about Russian military incompetence. It focuses and puts pressure on the war’s generals, but not on the war’s mission or its necessity. It is not necessarily a permanent or stable spot to be in, and becomes even more precarious when Prigozhin outruns his usefulness.

Experts told me this spring that the worst thing for Prigozhin is for the Ukraine war to end. “Prigozhin clearly understands that there will be no safe retirement for him,” Sergey Sukhankin, a senior research fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, told Vox earlier this year. “He knows that if the current regime, or if his Wagner Group, goes down, he goes down with them.”

There were signs then, as now, that Prigozhin might overstep his ambitions. How that will play out for him — and for Russia right now — is extremely unclear, although the view from where Prigozhin sits looks pretty bleak. If the Russian military is launching attacks against him and his fighters, and if the security services are really investigating him, then any serious challenge to the Russian state or military looks pretty doomed right about now. But the fact that Russia had to rely on Wagner, and Prigozhin, to wage its war helps explain why Russia has struggled militarily since invading Ukraine, and that is unlikely to change, no matter what’s next for Prigozhin.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1470711

Nuclear bombs keep going off over the horizon of Asteroid City (population 87). “Another atom bomb test,” the characters declare, with some combination of intrigue and boredom. They trot out of the diner to look at the tiny mushroom cloud, snap a few pictures, and go back inside for more coffee. It’s 1955. This isn’t unusual anymore.

Living in the shadow of the bombs is what Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City is about — literal bombs, and also a host of other life-shattering things like loss, and existential dread, and a world changing so fast it’s hard to hang on to it. Real things, in other words, the kind everyone has to deal with. The emotions we can’t outrun, but we try to anyhow.

That Anderson set Asteroid City in 1955 is a bit of trickery, a degree of separation between the characters’ reality and our own. We live in (dare I say) uniquely frightening times, but so do these people, for whom the Cold War and a rapidly changing social order is their psychic wallpaper. Much of the movie is specifically set in September 1955, a month bookended by two events: the United States’ decision to embark on Project Vanguard, which would try unsuccessfully to beat the Soviets at putting a satellite into space; and the tragic car accident that took the life of James Dean, the iconic actor who embodied the rising rebellion of the youth. (I don’t think it’s an accident that a cop car in hot pursuit of a careening vehicle keeps rushing through the town’s one intersection.)

“If you wanted to live a nice, quiet, peaceful life, you picked the wrong time to get born,” General Gibson (Jeffrey Wright) exhorts a crowd of teenagers and their parents, assembled in Asteroid City to celebrate the landing of a meteorite there thousands of years earlier. The children have entered their wildly advanced science experiments in a contest, which the military plans to snap up; the space race is in their eyes. Later, when things go south, youths are interrogated in a manner suspiciously reminiscent of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Grown men fight, and others try to calm them down by reminding them, “We’re not in Guadalcanal anymore.” Two men point guns at one another against the backdrop of a desert. “We’re not in Guadalcanal anymore.” Focus Features

It feels reminiscent of something real, but this is also all fiction — as the movie’s narrator puts it, “an apocryphal fabrication.” Fiction puts a layer between us and real history, a way of looking at the past through different eyes. It has another function, too: Through fiction, we process our emotions by proxy, whether we’re the artists or the audience.

That’s the subject of Asteroid City, which nests fiction inside of fiction inside of fiction. (I promise it’s easier to watch than it sounds.) Here is the most succinct description of the levels of its made-up-ness: It is a scripted movie that pretends to be a TV show in which actors stage a fictionalized version of the making of a play telling the fictional story of a place that doesn’t exist. We also see the play, but it is shot like a movie. (I am Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole.)

The central, in-color plot of the film centers on the group gathered in Asteroid City for a three-day meteorite celebration when their lives are upended by a, shall we say, unexpected visitor. But Asteroid City actually introduces itself to us as an old-school anthology TV show, shot in black and white, hosted by a sonorous host (Bryan Cranston). What we’re about to see, he gravely tells us, is the story behind the making of a play called Asteroid City, about a place that doesn’t exist. It’s both an apocryphal fabrication and an “authentic look into the work of a theatrical production.”

What follows intercuts the color story — which turns out to be kind of a hyperreal version of the “play,” which we see shot as a film — and black-and-white scenes, often staged like little mini-plays, about various moments during Asteroid City’s production. (The play, not the movie we’re watching. If you need a walk or a stiff drink right now, that’s fine.)

This all means that in this movie Scarlett Johansson, for instance, plays an actress who plays an actress playing an actress. Similarly, Jason Schwartzman — the closest to a lead this absurdly stacked cast has — plays an actor who is desperate to figure out the motivations of his character, a war photographer who burns his hand on a sandwich iron. (Schwartzman is styled to reference several famous actors, perhaps most significantly a very famous photo of James Dean.) A fairground teeming with attractions and also signs that say things like “Alien Parking” and “Spacecraft Sighting.” Many classic theatre and movie references litter Asteroid City, including this one, which recalls Billy Wilder’s 1951 classic Ace in the Hole. Focus Features

Piling on these layers, each with its own combination of artifice and “authenticity,” is where Anderson shows what he’s doing. He’s interested in those piles. The impossible pursuit of authentic emotion through making art that can never really be all that “real” is one of Asteroid City’s themes; a fair amount of the film dwells on an acting class and its students, who are trying, in the style of The Actors Studio and “the method,” to find ways to give authentic performances in the very contrived medium of the theater.

But there’s an added layer to what Anderson’s after. Humans have always processed their feelings through art, but modernity adds a wrench to the whole existence thing. There’s an aspect of alienation — of feeling as if the machines and inventions we build, which are terrifying enough to be able to wipe us out (like the bomb) or seemingly to take over our world altogether (like, say, generative AI), are estranging us from one another and even from ourselves. Art has always been the counterbalance to this, which is in part why groups like The Actors Studio sprung up in the early part of the 20th century. If you are working at a desk all day clacking on a typewriter, or operating a machine, or building a bureaucracy that might work like a machine, then going to the theater is supposed to jolt you back to remembering that you, at least, are not a machine.

It’s tantamount to either a confession or an explanation from someone like Anderson, whose work employs considerable artifice in its pursuit of authenticity. I confess that I don’t really like Anderson’s style, and have not loved most of his movies. It took me two viewings to really figure out Asteroid City. But I do admire that he’s an artist whose aesthetic is so firmly defined that even non-cinephiles can make poor imitations of his work using AI; in fact, it’s those replicas’ inability to actually latch onto the emotion that powers his work (the melancholy, the grief, the impishness) that make me appreciate him more.

That’s what I came to appreciate about this movie, and the more I think about it, the more wise I think it is. In Asteroid City, Anderson builds several worlds mediated by layers of performance, artifice, and technology, in which nonetheless real humans grieve, long for one another, fall in love, get hurt, and feel wonder. The layers they’ve put between themselves and their emotions crack and crumble. Their worlds are rocked, which leaves them thinking about things like the meaning of life, the existence of God, and whether they’re as alone as they feel like they are. The answer, he suggests, is found by sinking into the apocryphal fabrications of the artist’s imagination. “You can’t wake up,” the characters chant near the end of the movie, “if you don’t fall asleep.”

Asteroid City is playing in theaters.

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In a rare public show of affection, Adam Sandler celebrated 20 years of marriage with Jackie Sandler by sharing earlier this week a heartfelt tribute online.

The pair married during a private ceremony attended by their celebrity friends at Dick Clark’s mansion in Malibu on June 22, 2003, according to People.

Sandler, who is known to be media-shy, commemorated the day by posting a photo from their wedding on Thursday. Sandler is wearing a suit and taking the hand of Jackie, who is dressed in a spaghetti-strap wedding dress with a flowing train, as the “Wedding Singer” actor stares intently at her.

“Happy 20th my sweet Jackie!” Sandler captioned the photo posted Thursday on his Instagram account. “Your ‘I do’ was the best gift of my life. My heart has been yours since the first second I saw you and I love and appreciate your devoted soul more and more each day.”

“Us. The kids,” the “50 First Dates” actor continued. “Lets keep going and going babe. Lots of love to give you. Always.”

The Sandlers first met on the set of the 1999 comedy, “Big Daddy,” in which Adam Sandler starred, and Jackie, née Titone, played a waitress, according to People. During their Malibu wedding, high-profile guests included Jennifer Aniston, Jack Nicholson, Rodney Dangerfield and Sharon Osbourne. Sandler’s English bulldog, dressed in a custom-made tuxedo, was also in attendance.

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The pair went on to have two children together, daughters Sadie, 17, and Sunny, 14. The family of four even appeared onscreen together in Sandler’s 2020 Netflix romantic comedy, “The Wrong Missy.”

“I love you both so much!” longtime friend and collaborator and their wedding guest Rob Schneider commented on the post. “Here’s to the next 20!”

Fellow actor Nick Swardson, who has also appeared in films alongside Sandler and was at the wedding, recalled the ceremony in a comment: “When you said ‘I saba doo,’ everyone wept. congrats. Love you both. Jackie is amazing. You sometimes smell. Blessings.”

Adam, Jackie and their children will also star together in the Netflix comedy, “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah,” based on the young adult novel of the same name by Fiona Rosenbloom. Idina Menzel also stars in the movie expected to be released later this year.

The “Uncut Gems” actor is carrying out his deal with Netflix that was first inked in 2014 and renewed in 2020. His 2022 sports drama for Netflix, “Hustle,” directed by Jeremiah Zagar, received critical acclaim and awards-season buzz. Sandler was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance.