Matthew Cantor

It’s January, the month of new year’s resolutions and other doomed efforts at self-improvement. And what better way to make more of one’s life than rising earlier to seize the day?

At least that’s what the voice in my head says as I hit the snooze alarm for the 10th time at 9.30am. Then it’s time to get up, racked with guilt at my laziness, as if sleeping in were some kind of ethical lapse.

It’s not, of course. People’s sleep/wake cycles are inherently varied, and if you, too, are a late to bed, late to rise person, you’re simply a night owl – or, in clinical terms, you have a delayed sleep phase.

It’s time for this circadian-rhythm-shaming to end. It’s nothing new – centuries ago, Benjamin Franklin made the shockingly biased claim that “early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”. In a 2018 essay in the Cut, Edith Zimmerman wrote that “waking up early gives you a surge of power; you feel superior, smug”. More recently, a Reddit user put it simply: “Night owls suck,” the person wrote. “Your sleep habits are an [obstacle] in the path of every plan that constantly needs to be worked around.”

But night owls, take comfort: as Robin Williams once said to Matt Damon, it’s not your fault. Your daily sleep-wake schedule, called your chronotype, appears to be mostly genetic. Assessments of how common it is to be a night owl vary: experts who spoke to the Guardian had heard estimates around 15%, while a recent study in Finland found 10% of men and 12% of women to be “evening types”. A 2007 study found that the most common chronotype, accounting for 14.6% of people, slept from 12.09am to 8.18am in the absence of “social obligations” – but half the population slept later. In any case, night owls: you are not alone.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jan/29/sleeping-late-isnt-a-sign-of-laziness-stop-the-circadian-rhythm-shaming

THANK YOU! I was born a night owl. You could ask my mother, were she still alive. Nothing she could do would fix that, even when I was a baby and toddler. School was hell until I was allowed to drink coffee, then classes before 10 am were at least possible if not enjoyable.

A nine-year-old girl who had a neighbor call the police on her as she worked to eradicate invasive insects from her home town has earned honors from one of the US’s most prestigious universities.

The Yale School of Public Health earlier this month held a ceremony citing Bobbi Wilson’s efforts to rid Caldwell, New Jersey, of the spotted lanternfly, according to university officials.

The 20 January gathering also recognized Bobbi for bestowing her personal collection of lanternflies to Yale’s Peabody Museum, which entered the collection into its database and listed the child as the donating scientist.

An assistant professor at the public health school, Ijeoma Opara, told those at the ceremony that she organized the event to bring attention to Bobbi’s “bravery and how inspiring she is”.

“Yale doesn’t normally do anything like this,” Opara said, according to the university. “This is something unique to Bobbi.”


https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jan/31/yale-honors-9-year-old-girl-wrongly-reported-police

A mystery is unfolding at the Dallas zoo as two emperor tamarin monkeys were reported missing on Monday in what is now the fourth recent incident involving animals at the popular attraction in Texas.

Previously a vulture was apparently killed and a clouded leopard escaped after its cage was cut open. Before that another monkey cage was deliberately damaged.

In the most recent twist of events, yet another enclosure appears to have been intentionally tampered with. Zoo officials confirmed a hole was found in the enclosure of the emperor tamarin monkeys and two are believed to have been stolen.

In a statement, the zoo said: “Emperor tamarin monkeys would likely stay close to home – the zoo searched near their habitat and across zoo grounds, and did not locate them. Based on the Dallas police department’s initial assessment, they have reason to believe the tamarins were taken.”

The series of events have stunned the institution.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/31/dallas-zoo-missing-monkeys

Is it an inside job, or is it PETA?

Two decades of misguided US dairy policies centered around boosting milk production and export markets have hurt family-scale farms and the environment while enriching agribusinesses and corporate lobbyists, new research has found.

The average American dairy turned a profit only twice in the past two decades despite milk production rising by almost 40%, according to analysis by Food and Water Watch (FWW) shared exclusively with the Guardian.

More milk has not meant more profits for most farmers – or cheaper prices for American shoppers – because production costs have risen while milk prices have remained low so US exporters can compete on the global market.

In the past 20 years, US dairy exports rose eightfold – more than almost any other commodity – which has coincided with rapid consolidation across the industry, according to the FWW report.

The US Dairy Export Council (USDEC) claims booming exports have helped farms of all sizes, but two-thirds of family-sized commercial dairies were lost between about 1997 to 2017 as factory farms, exporters and a handful of powerful cooperatives came to dominate dairy. Trade association executives are making huge salaries as ordinary farms go under.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/31/us-dairy-policies-hurt-small-farms-monopolies-get-rich

by Sophia Kovatch, Pamela Colloff and Brett Murphy


It’s been decades since the intersection of forensic science and criminal justice first became a pop culture phenomenon, popularized by countless TV shows, movies and books. But the public’s growing awareness of forensic techniques obscures a far more complex field that’s chock full of bogus science — and the people who champion it, often for profit.

For years, ProPublica has reported on these dubious techniques as they’ve wormed their way into every corner of our real-life criminal justice system.

So, what’s legitimate forensic science and what’s junk? Let’s start with the basics.

What Is Junk Science?

Junk science refers to any theory or method presented as scientific fact without sufficient research or evidence to support it. Some types of junk science have virtually no supporting evidence, while others are oversimplifications of real but complex science findings.


https://www.propublica.org/article/understanding-junk-science-forensics-criminal-justice

The state legislature has been consumed by a bizarre scandal after a lawmaker allegedly stepped way over the line and gave a staffer unsolicited advice on COVID vaccines and breast-feeding, including a suggestion that she suckle her husband.

State Sen. Julie Frye-Mueller, a Republican from Rapid City, was suspended from her committee assignments last week and stripped of the ability to vote after the incident was first reported to Senate leadership.

Frye-Mueller, who belongs to a far-right caucus, is now suing to get her voting rights restored—even as the unnamed staffer released jaw-dropping new details about their conversation on Monday.

In a statement, the staffer, who works for the Legislative Research Council, said Frye-Mueller and her husband came into her office on Jan. 24. She said that after discussing the draft of a bill, the senator asked about her baby son and whether she had been vaccinated.

“I told her ‘yes.’ Without allowing me to elaborate further, she proceeded to point her finger at me and aggressively say that this will cause him issues,” the staffer said. She said added that Frye-Mueller told her people are being used as “guinea pigs for Big Pharma,” warned that was she was “taking away God’s gift of immunity from your son,” and falsely claimed the child could get Down syndrome or autism or “die from those vaccines.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/south-dakota-sen-julie-frye-mueller-benched-in-suckling-advice-scandal

These people are crazier than s***house rats!

The Department of Education in Ohio is investigating the openly antisemitic and racist Nazi homeschooling group with thousands of members being operated by a couple from Upper Sandusky, Ohio, an official at the department told VICE News.

On Sunday, VICE News and the Huffington Post reported that Logan and Katja Lawrence were the operators of the neo-Nazi Dissident Homeschool group which now boasts over 2,500 members on its Telegram channel, based on the research from anti-fascist researchers at the Anonymous Comrades Collective. The group openly advocates white supremacist ideologies with the aim to make sure the children they teach “become wonderful Nazis.”

The Lawrences share their classroom schedules, homework assignments, and lesson plans with other parents in the group, the vast majority of which are infused with Nazi ideology or open praise for Adolf Hitler.

Katja Lawrence, 37, also shares examples of how her family embraces Nazi ideology, including baking a Fuhrer cake for Hitler’s birthday and sharing a recording of her children shouting “sieg heil.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgyb4k/ohio-nazi-dissident-homeschool

Follow up. At least Ohio is doing something right!

By Christopher Mathias

On Nov. 5, 2021, a married couple calling themselves “Mr. and Mrs. Saxon” appeared on the neo-Nazi podcast “Achtung Amerikaner” to plug a new project: a social media channel dedicated to helping American parents home-school their children.

“We are so deeply invested into making sure that that child becomes a wonderful Nazi,” Mrs. Saxon told the podcast’s host. “And by home-schooling, we’re going to get that done.”

The Saxons said they launched the “Dissident Homeschool” channel on Telegram after years of searching for and developing “Nazi-approved material” for their own home-schooled children — material they were eager to share.

The Dissident Homeschool channel — which now has nearly 2,500 subscribers — is replete with this material, including ready-made lesson plans authored by the Saxons on various subjects, like Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee (a “grand role model for young, white men”) and Martin Luther King Jr. (“the antithesis of our civilization and our people”).

There are copywork assignments available for parents to print out, so that their children can learn cursive by writing out quotes from Adolf Hitler. There are recommended reading lists with bits of advice like “do not give them Jewish media content,” and there are tips for ensuring that home-schooling parents are in “full compliance with the law” so that “the state” doesn’t interfere.

The Saxons also frequently update their followers on their progress home-schooling their own children. In one since-deleted post to Telegram, they posted an audio message of their kids shouting “Sieg Heil” — the German phrase for “hail victory” that was used by the Nazis.

Over the past year, the Dissident Homeschool channel has become a community for like-minded fascists who see home schooling as integral to whites wresting control of America. The Saxons created this community while hiding behind a fake last name, but HuffPost has reviewed evidence indicating they are Logan and Katja Lawrence of Upper Sandusky, Ohio. Logan, until earlier this week, worked for his family’s insurance company while Katja taught the kids at home.

The Anonymous Comrades Collective, a group of anti-fascist researchers, first uncovered evidence suggesting the Lawrences are behind Dissident Homeschool. HuffPost has verified the collective’s research.

The Lawrences did not respond to repeated requests for comment made via phone calls, text messages and emails. A HuffPost reporter also left a message in the Dissident Homeschool channel asking Mr. and Mrs. Saxon for comment about the Anonymous Comrades Collective’s research. That message was immediately deleted by the channel’s administrators, who then disabled the channel’s comment and chat functions.

A short time later, Katja Lawrence deleted her Facebook page.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/home-school-nazis-telegram-dissident-saxon_n_63d596c4e4b01a43638e6a0a

I am not anti-homeschooling, but I am anti-Nazi

ByJack Date

George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Laquan McDonald, and now Tyre Nichols -- all are part a growing list of people who have been killed by police.

The latest disturbing death of Nichols at the hands of Memphis police officers has renewed calls for police reform.

"The world is watching us," Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said Thursday as he announced charges against the five police officers who allegedly beat Nichols to death earlier this month. "We need to show the world what lessons we can learn from this tragedy."

But rather than looking inward, some experts say U.S. law enforcement officials may be better served by looking at the rest of the world for its lessons.

A recent report by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), an independent research organization that focuses on critical issues in policing, shows significant gaps in how police in the U.S. are trained when compared to their international counterparts.

According to the report, titled "Transforming Police Recruit Training: 40 Guiding Principles," training standards for the more than 18,000 police agencies in the U.S. are outdated and inconsistent, and often provide training that is too brief -- with an emphasis on weapons and tactics and too little focus on decision-making, communications and other critical thinking skills that officers use every day.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-training-us-falls-short-compared-rest-world/story?id=96729748

Daryl James
Marie Miller

Drivers who break traffic laws risk penalties. But innocence did not protect Mario Rosales when a police SUV pulled up behind his Ford Mustang at a red light on June 17, 2022, in Alexandria, Louisiana.

Mario signaled and turned left on green. He did not speed, litter, swerve out of his lane or drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol. He had done nothing illegal.

Neither had his girlfriend, Gracie Lasyone, who was in the passenger seat.

The Mustang was equally clean. It had current tags, working equipment and was not linked to any criminal investigation. The only thing conspicuous about the car was its red color and out-of-state plates, from New Mexico.

Officers had no good reason to initiate a traffic stop. Yet they flashed their emergency lights before the Mustang cleared the intersection. Dash-camera and body-camera video shows that Mario pulled over promptly, spoke in a respectful tone and obeyed all police orders. So did Gracie.

Nothing helped. Claiming that Mario had failed to activate his blinker, despite clear video evidence to the contrary, the officers ordered Mario and Gracie out of the car. Then the officers frisked Mario, took his phone, put it in the cab of the police vehicle, forced him to empty his pockets, and grilled him for 20 minutes about his personal life.

They also interrogated Gracie. When she asked—twice—if she could record the encounter on her phone, they refused to allow it. Ultimately, they cited Mario for three alleged infractions that the city eventually dropped.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/police-cant-just-make-up-reasons-for-pulling-people-over

I once had a cop tailgate me for about 6 miles, trying to get me to speed. I knew I was in a speed trap in the county next to where I lived and wouldn't be baited. When he got too close I signaled and changed lanes. He followed. He finally gave up after about 8 miles.