While it’s not directly-related to this news item, I was reading the text, and the next news item in the CNN feed on the conflict has Iran warning Israel that it cannot attack Iranian diplomatic facilities, as they are inviolate. That caught my eye:

Iravani also “strongly” warned against “any attack on [Iran’s] diplomatic premises and representatives in violation of the foundational principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises.”

I think, from memory of reading the Vienna Convention for some other conflict, that that’s not an obligation on parties other than the host state. The host state (the Lebanese government) commits to not entering Iranian diplomatic facilities when it permits establishment of same, but I don’t believe that other countries hold any obligations towards Iranian diplomatic facilities in Lebanon.

kagis

https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf

Article 22

1. The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.

2. The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.

3. The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.

kagis more

This Reddit comment from several months back does seem to agree, and is talking about this conflict:

https://old.reddit.com/r/internationallaw/comments/1btv5f7/embassy_protections_in_war/kxpg19y/

First of consulates and embassies are protected under different Vienna conventions, respectively the Vienna convention on Consular Relations of 1963 and the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations of 1961. They confer broadly similar, but not identical, protection to embassies and consular premises.

Both of theses conventions confer on the receiving state an obligation to protect the embassies and consular premises cf. on diplomatic relations art.22 and 45(a), on consular relations 27(a) and 59, but impose no duty on any third party to protect or respect these premises.

Therefore Israel has no obligations towards the Iranian embassy/consulates other than those conferred generally to civilian objects under Jus ad bellum and IHL. Neither IHL nor Jus ad bellum has any special protection of embassies or diplomats.

Regarding locations in third countries it would be a violation of the sovereignty of the third country to conduct millitary operations on their territory (definition of aggression (A/RES/3314, as reflecting customary law art.3(b)). An embassy could be a legal millitary target under IHL, but attacking it would constitute a violation of the sovereignty of the third country.

On the other hand allowing your country, including embassies on your territory, to be used for acts harmful to a country, outside of those acts generally accepted under under customary law applicable to neutral states, would be a violation of the sovereignty of the country injured. Those two countries have a duty to peacefully resolve that conflict and not resort to armed conflict. It could, if severe enough, constitute aggression on the part of the state hosting the embassy cf. A/RES/3314, as reflecting customary law art.3(g and f).

Israel would be obligated to not violate Iran’s embassy in Israel, though (though I doubt that those two have diplomatic relations).

kagis

Yeah, looks like they don’t have diplomatic relations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Iran

Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the two states become hostile and the current Iranian government does not recognize the existence of Israel. The back covers of Iranian passports read: “The holder of this passport is not entitled to travel to occupied Palestine”. Both countries have severed their diplomatic and commercial ties with each other. Iran does not recognize Israel and refers to it as a Zionist entity or a Zionist regime.

So the Iranian-embassy-in-Israel situation probably wouldn’t come up; no Iranian embassy in Israel for it to affect.

That being said, if Israel were to hit Iranian diplomatic facilities in Lebanon, it’d presumably tick Iran off, but I don’t believe that it’s an issue from an international law standpoint; it’d be like any other building in war.

The prophecies say that one day, all vehicles in the region will be parked at the Pawnee County courthouse.

Note, just to be clear, that this is federal legislation, not Oregon state legislation.

Ah, okay, fair enough.

It’s not in some counties in Nevada.

But everywhere else in the US, this is a no-no.

Yeah, I have family who say that they’re gonna be out for an estimated three days. But, hey, that’s doable. They’re gonna lose climate control for a few days, lose stuff in a refrigerator or freezer. But it’s not too bad.

I’m assuming from the fact that you can post that you still have some form of Internet access going. IIRC cell towers have diesel generator backups that come on automatically. And a lot of folks out there have some kind of emergency inverter generator, cars can provide a small amount of accessory power (maybe 100W or more) and lithium batteries, and small solar panels are more widespread than they were just a few years back. Not enough to do a lot of things, but getting light and communications is a lot easier, even in power outages, than it once was.

Hmm. I haven’t been following it, but was Hezbollah really that centralized? It seems like a super-bad idea if you’re aiming to fight guerrilla war.

EDIT: This says ~300:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-09-28/ty-article/these-are-the-command-centers-and-buildings-attacked-by-the-idf-in-beirut/00000192-385f-dc91-a1df-bedf69f10000

The Israeli army carried out an airstrike on Hezbollah’s central command in southern Beirut on Friday, killing its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with approximately 300 people, including other members of the group.

I mean, that’s obviously still a really successful strike, but you’re talking maybe an order of magnitude fewer people.

I don’t know whether Altman or the board is better from a leadership standpoint, but I don’t think that it makes sense to rely on boards to avoid existential dangers for humanity. A board runs one company. If that board takes action that is a good move in terms of an existential risk for humanity but disadvantageous to the company, they’ll tend to be outcompeted by and replaced by those who do not. Anyone doing that has to be in a position to span multiple companies. I doubt that market regulators in a single market could do it, even – that’s getting into international treaty territory.

The only way in which a board is going to be able to effectively do that is if one company, theirs, effectively has a monopoly on all AI development that could pose a risk.

https://viewer.weather.noaa.gov/water#layers=42904+40090+42133+41707+41708+41709+41631&x=-92.96832&y=40.68848&z=8.4&panel=legend

Has kind of a nice visualization of the flooding and related information.

$100 crude target

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that that probably wasn’t a number resulting from a bunch of economists and computers spending a long time crunching numbers to try to produce an optimal target for Saudi Arabia anyway.

I don’t know about that. It seemed to have a pretty rapid impact on the phone in that video, and it’s not like those are exactly open. And they weren’t pressurizing it.

Hydrogen

This says that hydrogen isn’t just a problem, just helium:

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/669763/why-is-a-mems-device-affected-by-helium-but-not-hydrogen

It seems that MEMS is very sensitive to helium, but only helium. This Link stated that hydrogen does not affect MEMS, which surprised me.

Hmm.

That seems like it’d open a lot of potential abuses.

I wonder what the failure mode of various electronic locks is when they’re exposed to helium?

I’d be fine with hissy fits if they were about something real.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Stop_Oil

In April 2022, it was reported that Just Stop Oil’s primary source of funding was donations from the US-based Climate Emergency Fund.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aileen_Getty

Aileen Getty is an American heiress and activist. She is a member of the Getty family, the granddaughter of J. Paul Getty. She co-founded the Climate Emergency Fund in 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Paul_Getty

Jean Paul Getty Sr. (/ˈɡɛti/; December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an American-born British petroleum industrialist who founded the Getty Oil Company in 1942 and was the patriarch of the Getty family.[1] A native of Minneapolis, he was the son of pioneer oilman George Getty. In 1957, Fortune magazine named him the wealthiest living American,[2] while the 1966 Guinness Book of Records declared him the world’s wealthiest private citizen, worth an estimated $1.2 billion (approximately $8.6 billion in 2023).[3] At the time of his death, he was worth more than $6 billion (approximately $25 billion in 2023).[4] A book published in 1996 ranked him as the 67th wealthiest American who ever lived (based on his wealth as a percentage of the concurrent gross national product).[5]

So she assuages her guilt for having a huge oil inheritance by donating some of it to encourage other people overseas to go to jail protesting other people doing what her grandfather made his money doing. Great.

He fought to keep his job on First Amendment grounds.

looks dubious

One of the exceptions to “the government cannot restrict your right to speech” is the government acting in a “government-as-employer” role. There, they can act like any other employer, and don’t have special constraints just because they’re the government. Employers can normally let people go because they think that they’re bad for their image, and that’s what the article said happened here.

…university leaders said he sullied the school’s reputation and had to go.

https://www.nyclu.org/resources/know-your-rights/speaking-out-public-employee

Different rules apply if you are making these comments in your personal time as a private individual. Generally, your statements about topics that are of general interest to the public, including current events, are protected by the First Amendment. However, a public employer in New York may discipline you if your comments either disrupted its work or have the potential to disrupt its work, including by affecting public perception of your employer if you frequently interact with members of the public in your job.

Now, I suppose you can ask whether the professor publicly releasing porn videos of himself is actually damaging to public perception of the university, but the rationale they used is a legit rationale.

?

Plastic recycling isn’t fake. It’s often not been economical, so it often doesn’t make any sense to do it. But you can recycle plastics.

They are worried about social decline, war, or not being able to find a home. The result is noteworthy because the job prospects for young people in Germany have not been this good in years due to the baby boomers reaching retirement age.

I don’t think that there’s any country that doesn’t have media trying to run doom-and-gloom appeals aimed at the young, and I don’t think that that’s a new phenomenon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn't_Start_the_Fire

“We Didn’t Start the Fire” is a song written by American musician Billy Joel. The song was released as a single on September 18, 1989, and later released as part of Joel’s album Storm Front on October 17, 1989. A list song, its fast-paced lyrics include brief references to 119[3] significant political, cultural, scientific, and sporting events between 1949 (the year of Joel’s birth) and 1989, in mainly chronological order.

Joel conceived the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a recording studio and met a 21-year-old friend of Sean Lennon who said “It’s a terrible time to be 21!”. Joel replied: “Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y’know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful”. The friend replied: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties”. Joel retorted: “Wait a minute, didn’t you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?” Joel later said those headlines formed the basic framework for the song.[4]

And making an argument that Germany needs more economic strength is hardly in line with also targeting less immigration:

With provocative messages such as “Germany is going bankrupt,” or proclamations that the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz “hates you,” they play on fears that many young people have. And then they immediately offer a solution: the AfD.

Plus, is this sending my data to HP to be processed remotely as a cloud service, or is this AI stuff being run locally? I don’t especially want to have the contents of my print jobs being sent to HP.

I haven’t been following this or US politics much, but looking at other stories, it looks like “manhunt” may be a bit over the top. It sounds like this relates to serving a subpoena:

https://www.newsweek.com/fani-willis-nathan-wade-missing-1959447

“The committee issued the subpoena on Friday, attempted to serve the subpoena to Nathan Wade’s lawyer, who declined, and subsequently the committee tried to serve the subpoena via email through Nathan Wade himself, never heard back. As a result the committee had to use the assistance of the U.S. Marshals, who have also not been able to find Nathan Wade,” Dye told Newsweek via phone Wednesday evening.

The committee spokesperson also told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the Republican-led committee has “served over 100 subpoenas this Congress. We have done so, for the most part, without controversy or the need to use the U.S. Marshals.” He added that “Nathan Wade’s evasion of service is extremely unusual and will require the Committee to spend U.S. tax dollars to locate him.”

Newsweek reached out to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office for comment via email on Wednesday afternoon.

Andrew Evans, Wade’s attorney, and Dye have differing views on what transpired over the past few months as the committee has tried to get Wade to testify. Evans told Newsweek in a phone interview on Wednesday that his client previously “voluntarily agreed to go up to Washington, D.C., and the Republicans canceled it.”

Like, I don’t think that normally having a process server involved is described as a “manhunt”.

If you remember, Rudy Giuliani had been very openly dodging process servers for while until a few months ago, and I don’t think that anyone called it a “manhunt”:

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/18/giuliani-birthday-indictment-papers-00158783

Rudy Giuliani received a different kind of surprise at the end of his 80th birthday bash Friday night when he was served with a notice of indictment in Arizona’s 2020 election subversion case after weeks of successfully evading the state’s prosecution.

Arizona prosecutors had been attempting to locate the former Trump attorney since his indictment at the end of April, along with 17 other Trump allies, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and lawyers John Eastman and Boris Epshteyn. The indictment, which also names former President Donald Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator, includes felony counts of conspiracy, fraud and forgery.

In a since-deleted post to X in the middle of the celebration, Giuliani taunted: “If Arizona authorities can’t find me by tomorrow morning: 1. They must dismiss the indictment; 2. They must concede they can’t count votes.”

But around 11 p.m. as the festivities wound down for the night, agents from the AG’s office arrived and served Giuliani with indictment papers outside the house, causing several of the guests to express outrage.