If we forced gun owners to insure their weapons for liability, the insurance industry would explain - in dollars and cents - how dangerous having a gun in your house is versus NOT having a gun.

If every gun purchaser had to also purchase liability insurance for their death machine (that's what guns literally are), far fewer of them would purchase guns - because they couldn't afford the insurance bite.

I wonder if that's why we've never forced the owners of a device designed to KILL people to take FINANCIAL responsibility for their possession. Cars kill people BY ACCIDENT yet we're all forced - by law - to insure ourselves in case something UNEXPECTED happens.

The gun industry has bamboozled America to literal death.

Scott Joplin, christened the “King of Ragtime,” is a luminary in American music. Born in the late 1860s in Northeast Texas USA, Joplin's journey in music was both a personal odyssey and a reflection of the transformative era in which he lived.. His compositions—- a fusion of myriad influences—-were profoundly influential and his legacy continues to reverberate through contemporary music.

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Image: Joplin painting by Sidney Holmes

Germany's anti-discrimination commissioner says federal government should no longer communicate via platform X

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/antidiskriminierungsbeauftragte-ataman-bundesregierung-sollte-nicht-mehr-ueber-die-plattform-x-kommu-100.html

The University of Pennsylvania is acting proud of Katalin Karikó now that she's won a Nobel. But they kicked her out of her research assistant professor job when she insisted on doing the work that won her that prize:

"She recalls spending one Christmas and New Year’s Eve conducting experiments and writing grant applications. But many other scientists were turning away from the field, and her bosses at UPenn felt mRNA had shown itself to be impractical and she was wasting her time. They issued an ultimatum: if she wanted to continue working with mRNA she would lose her prestigious faculty position, and face a substantial pay cut.

”It was particularly horrible as that same week, I had just been diagnosed with cancer,” said Karikó. “I was facing two operations, and my husband, who had gone back to Hungary to pick up his green card, had got stranded there because of some visa issue, meaning he couldn’t come back for six months. I was really struggling, and then they told me this."

"While undergoing surgery, Karikó assessed her options. She decided to stay, accept the humiliation of being demoted, and continue to doggedly pursue the problem. This led to a chance meeting which would both change the course of her career, and that of science."

Elsewhere she recalled:

“I thought of going somewhere else, or doing something else. I also thought maybe I’m not good enough, not smart enough."

She's now an adjunct in UPenn's neurosurgery department. Will they fast-track her for tenure now that she has a Nobel, or just live with the shame?

Both quotes here come from interesting stories. The first is from here:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfizer-biontech

The second is from here:

https://billypenn.com/2020/12/29/university-pennsylvania-covid-vaccine-mrna-kariko-demoted-biontech-pfizer/

Via Kyle Cheney:

NEW: #JackSmith: #Trump's implied threat to #Milley is a new reason to impose a gag order on him…also say they fully intend to link Trump to the violence on #Jan6…say even under highest standard Trump says is neces to gag him— "clear & present danger" —Trump's attacks meet the standard. "No other criminal defendant wd be permitted to issue pub statements insinuating that known witness in his case should be executed; this defendant should not be either"
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/29/trumps-attack-on-milley-fuels-special-counsels-push-for-a-gag-order-00119253

Imagine having a house worth $300k but telling a bank it was worth over 2800% more — over $8.5 million — to trick the bank into giving you cash.

That’s what Donald Trump did in fraudulently overvaluing Mar-a-Lago.