You don’t need to freak out about Boeing planes (but Boeing sure does)

“Ah, it’s a Boeing Max,” I exclaimed to my travel companions after we boarded our plane a few weeks ago. I looked to see if we were seated next to a hidden door plug panel like the one that blew out on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in January. We weren’t, but joining a trend on social media, we cracked a few jokes at Boeing’s expense: “Maybe they can charge extra, saying it’s potentially an even bigger window seat.”

A message between water worlds

NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, headed to Jupiter’s ice-covered moon Europa in October 2024, will carry a laser-etched message that celebrates humanity’s connection to water. The message pays homage to past NASA missions that carried similar messages.

California judge right to disbar Trump lawyer John Eastman

A California State Bar judge has recommended the disbarment of former Donald Trump adviser John Eastman, a onetime fringe academic — among his longtime obsessions partly overturning the 14th Amendment to kill birthright citizenship — who came to occupy a central role in the former president’s efforts to undo the 2020 election.

Why a TikTok ban isn’t what we need

The House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill in March threatening to ban TikTok unless its parent company ByteDance sells the app. It may take the Senate months to address the legislation, which faces some opposition, so a ban is not imminent. But the relative success of this approach highlights the narrow, problematic pathway for data security reform in the U.S. as we continue to avoid real oversight.

A perfect date for Trump’s trial

In setting defendant Donald Trump’s felony trial date for three weeks hence on the Stormy Daniels hush money/election inference case, Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said last Monday that Trump’s delays to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution were all done. So ordered.

Ideology over medicine: Arguments against mifepristone for abortions are pretext

For more than two decades, the pharmaceutical mifepristone, used in tandem with misoprostol, has been allowing Americans to have safe and effective medication abortions at home, saving the expense and complexity of clinical visits. Medically speaking, the compound has side effects so infrequent that it is statistically safer than common over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol.

I’m a political scientist and I’m putting myself on a politics diet for the 2024 election

As a political scientist, I’ve long believed political competition to be the keystone of representative democracy. Yet in the 2024 election cycle, I’m consciously limiting my time, attention and contributions to politics. I’ve turned off the news and social media app notifications on my phone. I plan to visit two or three trustworthy news websites only once a day. And I’ve unsubscribed to candidate fundraising emails.

More free stuff

Bernie Sanders emerged from the land of the sugarplum fairies earlier this month to advocate for a 32-hour work week — all with no reduction in pay.

We are seeing a lethal shift in America’s gun violence crisis

While gun violence declined last year, a closer look at the data reveals a striking and surprising trend. While the total number of shootings is going down, the lethality of shootings — the odds of someone dying in a shooting — seems to be going up. If that trend holds, it could have massive consequences for gun violence in America, with hundreds or thousands more homicides per year.

HECO failed to disclose ties to HEP

Hawaiian Electric is asking its customers on the Big Island to conserve electricity usage due to generation supply shortages that the utility blames on an “independent” power producer. The power producer being blamed happens to be an affiliate of the utility itself.

Read it at Reddit: A right way for social media

Congratulations to the newly minted multimillionaires who made bank last week with the IPO of Reddit stock. Under the ticker RDDT on the New York Stock Exchange, the now-public company can fairly be considered one of the giant social media platforms.