The Weird and Wonderful (World) of AI Art

Kind of reminds me of the works of Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag (whose work I adore, by the way).

If you like the look of this, check out The Electric State (Netflix) and Tales From The Loop (Amazon Prime); both projects where Stålenhag was directly involved. And Tales also features the music of Philip Glass. 😉

Quote Of The Day

Trump is reportedly furious that the Russians may have intercepted the US's classified war plans because he prefers to reveal them to Putin himself." ~ Andy Borowitz

A Blue Banded Blood Moon

A Blue Banded Blood Moon
Image Credit & Copyright: Zixiong Jin

What causes a blue band to cross the Moon during a lunar eclipse? The blue band is real but usually quite hard to see. The featured HDR image of last week's lunar eclipse, however — taken from Norman, Oklahoma (USA) — has been digitally processed to exaggerate the colors. The gray color on the upper right of the top lunar image is the Moon's natural color, directly illuminated by sunlight. The lower parts of the Moon on all three images are not directly lit by the Sun since it is being eclipsed — it is in the Earth's shadow. It is faintly lit, though, by sunlight that has passed deep through Earth's atmosphere. This part of the Moon is red — and called a blood Moon — for the same reason that Earth's sunsets are red: because air scatters away more blue light than red. The unusual purple-blue band visible on the upper right of the top and middle images is different — its color is augmented by sunlight that has passed high through Earth's atmosphere, where red light is better absorbed by ozone than blue.

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Area Fascist Demands Voters Show Their Papers

From Mock Paper Scissors:

Yesterday, Lord Damp Nut signed another Executive Order, this time demanding that the states surrender election control to the federal government or else he will pull funding to the offending state, which is impoundment and is patently illegal:

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a sweeping executive action to overhaul elections in the U.S., including requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and demanding that all ballots be received by Election Day.

The order says the U.S. has failed "to enforce basic and necessary election protections" and calls on states to work with federal agencies to share voter lists and prosecute election crimes. It threatens to pull federal funding from states where election officials don't comply.

The move, which is likely to face swift challenges because states have broad authority to set their own election rules, is consistent with Trump's long history of railing against election processes. He often claims elections are being rigged, even before the results are known, and has waged battles against certain voting methods since he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden and falsely blamed it on widespread fraud.

[Before we fall too far into the rabbit hole, remember the executive orders are essentially memos, and not laws. And duh, a memo that instructs someone to break a law is definitionally not allowed. ]

We've covered the civics of elections before, our pals at Electoral-Vote explain to us why this memo is stupid:

Broadly speaking, this XO is mostly bark, and not a lot of bite. The federal government has very little role in administering elections, and so has little right to dictate terms under which elections are conducted. Indeed, even the provision of federal law that prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections, which was only adopted in 1996, might not be legal—it just hasn't been tested in court. Whoever it is that is writing Trump's XOs for him clearly knows all of this, which is why "enforcement" of the order rests not in any existing legal authority, but instead in the threat that if states don't do what they are told, they will lose federal funding.

The emptiness of the order is best illustrated by looking closely at the portion that made all the headlines yesterday, namely the part about proving one's citizenship in order to be able to vote. Since there is absolutely no way that blue states are going to go for that (as doing so would effectively justify Republicans' phony arguments about mass voter fraud), what the order actually does is order the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to change the federal voter registration form to include a proof-of-citizenship requirement.

There are many problems here from the vantage point of the Trumpers. First, the EAC is an independent agency, and not subject to presidential orders. Further, like the FEC, it is deliberately set up to have an equal number of Democratic and Republican commissioners (2 of each in the case of the EAC; 3 of each in the case of the FEC). So, there is no reason to think the EAC is going to play ball here. And even if they do, then people who don't have proof of citizenship, or don't feel like proving their identity just 'cause The Man says so, will just use their state's registration form. And all of this is before we talk about the lawsuits that are coming, and that the administration will lose. Oh, and if Trump does try to yank funding in order to punish a state for not following his decrees, that's a different set of lawsuits, since that would be impoundment, which is illegal.

So we've seen this movie before, we know the ending. I'll add to the mix that the Constitution very clearly gives election management to the individual states, and to change that it would require an amendment to the Constitution, requiring ⅔ of both houses of Congress to approve and ¾ of the States to ratify.

You Can't Make This Shit Up! 🤣 🤣 🤣

From Politico:

Judge targeted by Trump is assigned to Signalgate lawsuit

Judge James Boasberg will preside over a case alleging that Trump administration officials violated federal record-keeping laws when they used Signal to discuss military plans.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg — the object of President Donald Trump's fury for blocking his effort to summarily deport Venezuelan nationals using wartime powers — just got a second crack at the administration's handling of national security: Signalgate.

Boasberg on Wednesday morning was assigned to preside over a lawsuitalleging that Trump cabinet secretaries and national security aides violated federal record-keeping laws when they used a Signal chat group to discuss a planned military strike in Yemen — and inadvertently included an Atlantic journalist in the group.

The twist of legal fate arrived just as the scandal exploded further with the Atlantic's release of the full text exchange — in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth previewed, with specific references to timing and weapons, an attack on Houthi militants. The exchange, initiated by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, included Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

A spokesperson for Boasberg confirmed that the case was assigned to him through the court's typical random assignment process. There are 20 judges on the federal district court bench in Washington, D.C.

The assignment of the case to Boasberg comes just two days after the Trump administration, in the Venezuela deportation case, invoked the "state secrets" privilege to refuse to share details with the Obama-appointed judge about the timing of deportation flights to El Salvador.

Boasberg is pressing the administration for details about the flights to determine whether officials violated his order earlier this month barring Trump from deporting people under the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law last invoked during World War II. But administration lawyers argued that "disclosure would pose reasonable danger to national security and foreign affairs."

Rubio, notably, submitted a declaration to Boasberg justifying the state secrets invocation, saying that sharing details about the flights with Boasber—even under seal or in a classified setting—would endanger national security.

"The more widely information is shared the greater the risk that the information will reach the public (even if unintentionally)," Rubio wrote.

Now, Rubio is a defendant in the Signalgate lawsuit brought by American Oversight, a left-leaning government watchdog group. He is being sued not only for his involvement in the text exchange but also for his dual position as acting head of the National Archives, which is responsible for preserving records used by government officials in the course of their work. The Atlantic reported that Waltz set the text thread to automatically delete.

Boasberg prompted a furious backlash from Trump and his allies when he halted the administration's deportation efforts earlier this month, ruling that the administration appeared to be violating due process requirements by tagging Venezuelan nationals as terrorists and rushing them onto planes with virtually no chance to contest the designation.

Trump called for Boasberg's impeachment, a call that was echoed by some members of Congress, and has unleashed near-daily attacks on the judge