(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . 7 stories to know: Trump's unhinged weekend, a solar power boom, and the worsening internet [1] ['Daily Kos Staff'] Date: 2024-06-24 “7 stories to know” is a new Monday series showcasing stories that may have been ignored in the crush of news over the past few weeks, and stories that have continued to evolve over the weekend. Expect to read coverage about health, science, and climate that frequently take second chair to what’s happening at the top of the page, plus information from local sources that the national media may have overlooked. 1. Trump’s weekend of madness, and the media’s continued silence Donald Trump spoke to the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference at the Washington Hilton on Saturday. The next day, Trump held a sparsely attended rally in Philadelphia, which he described as “one of the most egregious places anywhere in the world.” Between those two events, Trump delivered moments that should have been the end of any campaign. But because the media has decided that Trump gets a special exemption from either the truth or making sense, don’t expect to see pundits reviewing these statements on Monday morning. Some of those clips involved the sort of nonsensical rambling that fills so much time at Trump rallies, like this extended riff on lather, showers, his hair, and why “they don’t want you to have any water.” Other moments were the stuff of absolute nightmare fuel, as in this moment when Trump threatened to take off his clothes and reveal his “beautiful, beautiful body” along with the stigmata of his struggles with justice. “I’ve taken a lot of wounds, I can tell you,” he said. “More than I suspect any president ever.” And there was Trump’s proposal for pitting migrants against each other in an arena for amusement. “It’s not the worst idea I ever had,” Trump said. Amazingly, that’s true, but only because he’s had some really terrible ideas. Finally, there’s the moment where Trump told the Faith and Freedom crowd that they have to get out and vote this time, but in four years … don’t worry about it. "In four years, don't vote. I don't care,” he said. “But we'll have it all straightened out so it'll be much different." This is far, far from a comprehensive list. Both of Trump’s speeches included other moments when he seemed to be going simply off the rails or when he expressed his usual lies about the economy, crime, and the 2020 election. But this cluster of statements should be more than enough to disqualify anyway. Anyone without special treatment. 2. Plunging prices are generating a solar power boom For months now, fossil fuel companies have been trying to push what might be one of history’s most ridiculous ideas: The U.S. needs to give up on renewable energy and burn more coal because we need that power to drive the massive server farms behind AI. Not only is burning up the planet for better chatbots right up there in the annals of foolishness, but any claim that we absolutely have to use fossil fuels to meet increasing energy demands is also more than a little suspect. Because right now we’re looking at a solar energy boom that exceeds all expectations. As the Rocky Mountain Institute reports, the world is experiencing one of those rare moments when complementary technologies become radically cheaper and more available at the same time, leading to a “cleantech revolution.” If you’ve been feeling pessimistic about the climate crisis, take a moment to read this report. This is a story of reality beating the most optimistic projections, and of a technological solution that keeps breaking through every projected barrier. The biggest problem with solar at this moment might be that it is too cheap. Prices have plunged below $0.10 per watt as rapidly increasing production capacity for solar panels has exceeded the ability to plan and install more capacity. What’s most striking about the findings of this report—other than just how rapidly solar power and battery storage are expanding—is how the message of “there’s no point in us doing anything when China is going to keep generating dirty electricity” has kept the U.S. rooted in place while China has surged ahead in solar power. Propaganda is always harmful. 3. Steve Bannon isn’t getting the lux accommodations he expected Trump adviser Steve Bannon is slated to head to prison on July 1, but he made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court on Friday after an appeals court turned down his request to stay out of prison pending another round of appeals. But unless Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito shelter him in their ethics-free arms, Bannon will either have to turn himself in next week or visit his friends in some foreign autocracy. There’s a reason why Bannon might be more desperate than he was a week ago: He’s not getting the federal tennis camp he wanted. Instead of a minimum-security prison camp, where many nonviolent offenders serve their time, Bannon—now a right-wing podcaster with a following of loyal Trump supporters—is set to report next month to the low-security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, one of the sources told CNN. Bannon isn’t eligible for the lowest level of federal prison because he’s still facing charges for his “We Build the Wall” scam. A low-security prison in Connecticut doesn’t sound like it’s quite going to sweating in the fields at Angola. Still, there is probably a lower grade of toilet chardonnay. But the best part of this story may be what was in Bannon’s appeal. Bannon’s lawyers have written to the DC US Circuit Court of Appeals that his imprisonment shouldn’t happen this summer, as the trial-level judge has ordered, because he would be behind bars “for the four-month period leading up to the November election, when millions of Americans look to him for information on important campaign issues,” according to a recent filing for Bannon. That is … sad? Is it sad? I think there has to be another word. Maybe “hilarious.” 4. Alzheimer’s research is full of huge hopes and repeated failures It sometimes seems impossible to go a week without news of an apparent miracle in the treatment of Alzheimer’s. That was certainly the case last week, as a team of Japanese researchers reported on a treatment that didn’t just slow the heartbreaking progress of the disease but actually reversed its effects. Not only did researchers successfully reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and restore both memory and ability, but they were also able to achieve this with treatments of a synthesized peptide, which was easily administered because it can readily cross the blood-brain barrier. And the only problem with this miracle is that it took place … in mice. The whole history of Alzheimer’s is absolutely replete with potential treatments that worked wonders in vitro, repeated those miracles in animal models, and then went crashing down as either ineffective or actively harmful in human trials. As Vox reports, a string of recent failures with widely heralded drugs, and a series of what seemed to be breakthrough papers that have now been withdrawn, suggest that Alzheimer’s research is several steps away from the kind of solutions we need. In particular, one 2006 paper appeared to identify exactly what needed to be fixed to cure Alzheimer’s: amyloid plaques. But drugs targeting the formation of plaques or attempting to remove them have shown little effect on the course of disease. After two decades of throwing work at that target, researchers are now facing the awful truth that it was simply wrong. The 2006 paper had appeared to be an important breakthrough in our understanding of how Alzheimer’s works, providing the precise mechanisms that undergirded the prevailing theory of the disease. But that was, as we now know, a fraudulent discovery. Instead, the retraction adds to the nagging doubts that we may be somehow misunderstanding this most pernicious of afflictions. I’m pulling for the Japanese researchers, I really am. Maybe this is the breakthrough we’ve needed. Maybe it is the rare drug that will be as effective in humans as it was in animal models. But while researchers certainly are not back at square one, real victory over Alzheimer’s seems further away than it has in decades. 5. How drivers beat Uber and Lyft in Minnesota If you check out the video at the end of this article, you’ll run into the highly technical science of “enshitification”—the process by which online services get progressively worse over time. That process doesn’t just hurt consumers, it also hurts those involved in making these services run, and in the case of both Uber and Lyft that has meant regularly tightening the screws on drivers so that they get to keep less money while meeting ever higher standards. And always, always putting drivers in a position of being contractors rather than employees. But, as NPR reports, drivers in Minnesota outlasted the companies, despite a hardball campaign in which both customers and state lawmakers were warned about rising prices and threatened with a cut off in service. Spokespeople for Uber and Lyft say the proposed minimum wage would have left the companies unable to sustain their businesses in the state. Uber says it would have made Minnesota “one of the most expensive markets in the country,” and Lyft says it would have made “prices rise so much that we would have seen a 51% decrease in ride requests.” In other states, this argument—and huge amounts of lobbying money, including $108 million in California—gained the companies carve-outs that prevented them from having to pay their drivers. In Washington, they even got state legislators to come back to give them a special exemption after a law was passed that was designed specifically to deal with online service workers. But in Minnesota, despite the extensive lobbying effort and the pressure from companies, the drivers won. That is, until the legislation got to the desk of Gov. Tim Walz. Days before the anticipated signing, the companies rolled out a tactic they’d used in California, New York, Texas and other states: They threatened to leave the state if the bill was signed into law. It worked. Walz vetoed the legislation. But even being forced back to the beginning didn’t stop the drivers. Seriously, go read the whole thing if you want to be frustrated, excited, frustrated again, then feel triumphant. Because—spoiler alert—eventually the drivers did win, the companies did stay, and everyone was happy except the executive at the rideshare companies who missed all that sweet undeserved profit gained by underpaying workers. Now, about those other states … 6. Maybe scientists can figure out how memory works … with your help It’s been several years since I aimed the Daily Kos community at the wonder which is Zooniverse, a site where ordinary people can pitch in to assist with breakthrough research. Its projects have included finding comets, translating ancient texts, and recovering the history of forgotten Black communities. I once got to name a chimpanzee after I watched her teach an infant to use stone tools through a trail camera 5,000 miles away. This is all possible because of the researchers at Zooniverse who make information accessible to non-specialists. A few hours of training can have you recovering data from old ships’ log books or helping to verify planets around distant stars. And, yes, humans can still do this work better than AI. The latest project is Synapse Safari, which represents a dataset from the Rosalind Franklin Institute and the Center for Development Neurobiology to determine how neuron networks are formed. That might sound intimidating, and you might not have the slightest idea what a ”synaptic vesicle” is, much less how to identify it in an image. But don’t worry about it. Go through the tutorial and give it a try. And don’t worry about being right all of the time. Just do your best. For science! 7. You’re not wrong. Everything on the internet is getting worse Whenever a new online service is introduced, it has to be significantly better—or at least sound significantly better—than how things worked in the past to catch people’s attention, attract those sweet investment dollars, and eventually allow the founders to cash out with enough money to join Elon Musk’s billionaire boys club and dine with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. More caviar? Don’t mind if I do. But somewhere between a fresh, exciting startup and an established service that you use every day but hate lies the process of “enshitification.” Here’s why things that start off good almost always get worse. 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