Thomas Barrabi, reporting for The New York Post:

The protesters have demanded that Google pull out of a $1.2 billion “Project Nimbus” contract — in which Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services provide cloud-computing and artificial intelligence services for the Israeli government and military.

Critics at the company raised concerns that the technology would be weaponized against Palestinians in Gaza.

Reasonable.

“This evening, Google indiscriminately fired 28 workers, including those among us who did not directly participate in yesterday’s historic, bicoastal 10-hour sit-in protests,” the workers said in the statement.

Unreasonable.

“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers — the ones who create real value for executives and shareholders.”

Fuck israel (an illegitimate country made up of land gifted by actual world powers to the biggest losers of any war in history, who now want to act like big shots).

Oh and also, fuck these google execs. Eat the rich.

From CNN’s coverage of the conflict in the middle east:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday the US has spent the past 36 hours “coordinating a diplomatic response to seek to prevent escalation” following a retaliatory Iranian attack on Israel this weekend.

“Strength and wisdom need to be different sides of the same coin,” Blinken said in a seemingly implicit call for Israel to exercise restraint in its response. Blinken noted he has been in contact with counterparts in the region “and will continue to do so in the hours and days ahead.”

“We don’t seek escalation but will continue to support the defense of Israel and protect our personnel in the region,” Blinken said in his first public comments about the attack this weekend.

Why? We shouldn’t. They attacked another country’s sovereign territory, we defended them completely (for some reason) when that country shot back, and now they act like they’re the tough guys, even though they always come crying to daddy for more money.

As CNN reported, President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US would not participate in offensive moves against Iran.

GOOD.

But, he added that "what this weekend demonstrated is that Israel did not have to and does not have to defend itself alone when it is the victim of aggression, the victim of an attack."

Couldn’t care less.

israel is a shit ally and an illegitimate nation, and we shouldn’t support them in any way, much less continuing to support their arrogant, dehumanizing, dictatorial antagonization of their neighbors.

This all really makes me wonder why the U.S. (or any developed nation) cares so much. Can we just hurry up with the transition to clean energy and leave the caveboys to fight in the sandbox alone? The whole conflict, for decades if not centuries, has been a waste of the world’s time.

Patricia Mazzei, for The New York Times:

The Florida Supreme Court overturned decades of legal precedent on Monday in ruling that the State Constitution’s privacy protections do not extend to abortion, effectively allowing Florida to ban the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy.

But in a separate decision released at the same time, the justices allowed Florida voters to decide this fall whether to expand abortion access. The court ruled 4 to 3 that a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to abortion “before viability,” usually around 24 weeks, could go on the November ballot.

Florida taking away people’s rights isn’t the interesting part here: the thing to watch is the ballot measure that could guarantee abortion access in the state. Across the country, abortion access has consistently driven turnout, even in very red states. The fact that this is on the ballot this fall should be a boon to democrats. There’s no way to know if it will be enough, but coupled with the fact that Florida also has a ballot initiative to legalize recreation marijuana… Man, wouldn’t it just be delectable if Trump lost the election (again) because his home state of Florida (shout to to DeSanctimonious, who seems like the biggest high-heel-wearing loser in the country) voted to legalize weed and protect abortion access after his stacked court overturned Roe.

I’m really not a Beyonce fan, but I liked this album more than any of her others. She’s got an undeniable set of pipes, but I’ve never connected much with her lyrics or style. “Halo” is probably my favorite song of hers, and one of the only ones I listen to with any frequency. Recently though, she hasn’t really appealed to me at all. “Lemonade” nor “Renaissance” did nothing for me, unfortunately: literally not a single song. But “Cowboy Carter,” while I think it suffers from being too long and having too many transitional tracks, does have a few that I can’t get out of my head, and I wanted to give credit where it’s due.

Before I get into the specific songs I liked — a fairly brief list —I did want to talk about the record as a whole for a moment. To me, the album doesn’t really sound like country; while some songs do, the overall sound doesn’t lend itself to being classified as a country album. That said, I do like how she incorporated artists with country backgrounds, even if some of the songs felt a little off and their contributions at times seemed like they were just there to perform country music fan service (though I doubt many typical country music fans are listening to this album). Including icons like Dolly and Miley was a fun choice, but some fell a little flat for me: Beyonce’s cover of “Jolene” just felt a bit unnecessary.

I did really love the song with Post Malone (“LEVII’S JEANS”) and the one with Miley (“II MOST WANTED”). They’re still in my head, and I’ve played them many times since I first listened. Those were the highlights of the album for sure, but I did enjoy “YA YA” and “AMERICAN REQUIEM” as well. When it comes to the singles, “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” was alright, but “16 CARRIAGES” really seemed like a swing and a miss, especially for a lead single.

After reading three or four bullshit, AI-written articles (the sort which detail the specifics of your question ad nauseam without ever answering it) while searching for the answer to what I thought was a straightforward query (‘can I read books on my Kindle through the digital library service ‘hoopla” (the answer is ‘no,’ btw)), I stumbled upon this gem of an “article.” Note that there are as many gaudy ads above the fold as there are words of actual content, and this is AFTER dismissing a full-screen popup ad.

The web developers who build these sites not only have no capacity to balance profit with design, they seem to genuinely loathe their readers. Web hosts, CDNs, and ISPs should really start looking into sites like this and refusing to service them, for the sake of their own reputations. I’m surprised Cloudflare would support such undeniable web litter like this in any manner.