🎸 Legendary singer-songwriter-guitarist David Crosby has died at the age of 81 years old. He was a founding member of two of the most popular bands of all time, the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash (later Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young). If you’re reading the Redacted newsletter then you know we speak out against war, hypocrisy, and government overreach. One of Crosby’s best songs does it better than we ever could. It deserves a play today. Here is “Long Time Gone” which urges us to speak out against the madness “if you dare.”
🎥 Actor Alec Baldwin will face criminal charges for involuntary manslaughter for the fatal shooting on the set of his movie, according to the Santa Fe District Attorney. The armorer from the set will face the same charges. Baldwin agreed to a settlement with the victim’s family last year.
✈️ The FAA says that last week’s system outage was caused by a contractor who accidentally deleted important files. Every domestic flight was grounded as a result.
🏛️ The Supreme Court says that it was not able to identify the person who leaked the draft opinion of the court’s ruling that overturned abortion laws in the U.S.
🤦🏻♂️ Ukrainian President Zelensky says he won’t negotiate with Russian President Putin because he’s not even sure if Putin is alive anymore.
🇵🇪 Thousands of people clashed with police in Peru to protest the government and new President Dina Boluarte.
🌎 Former Vice President Al Gore appeared at the WEF in Davos and claimed greenhouse gasses are trapping as much heat as “600,000 Hiroshima class atomic bombs every single day on Earth.” It looks like he said this with a straight face.
MARKETS
Gold
$1,931.87
+0.01%
Silver
$24.01
+0.58%
Bitcoin
$20,952.25
+0.90%
Dow
33,044.56
-0.76%
S&P
3,898.85
-0.76%
Nasdaq
10,852.27
-0.96%
*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 5:00pm AM.
The Lead: The U.S. Breaks a New Record, Not a Good One
senator rand paul stands with the 4,155 page budget. credit: wsj
The U.S. Treasury now has to resort to “extraordinary measures” to meet its financial obligations after hitting the debt ceiling on Thursday.
Lawmakers will have to agree on raising the debt ceiling yet again but Republicans in the House say that they will not do this unless some spending cuts are agreed upon. Democrats do not seem willing to concede to this.
So what are these “extraordinary measures”? Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says that the government may have to cut contributions to retirement plans. So, take from the people in order to meet debt obligations?
If the U.S. cannot meet its debt obligations, it risks the nation’s credit rating being downgraded, which would affect its ability to borrow more in the future.
This panel called “Ready for Brain Transparency” at the Davos World Economic Forum made us pretty nervous and it turns out, with good reason.
In this panel, Duke University researcher and self-described "futurist" Nita Farahany predicts that in the future, even healthy adults will use implanted technology in order to collect data from their brain for insights and convenience. Like, “Hey, if I can implant this device that plays music and takes calls directly into my brain, I won’t lose it and that’s convenient. And also, upload my private thoughts to a server. I’m sure that’s fine.”
Farahany presents this nice use case: brain technology can decode your ATM passwords so you don’t have to remember it. Also, the implants can be the primary way we interact with all of our technology instead of a mouse.
If we hand over the data from our brains, researchers will get better at decoding complex thought, she says. She calls for something called “cognitive ergonomics” in the workplace. Like, “Let's make sure work is comfortable for your brain by letting us in there.”
Farahany admits there is a dystopian element to all of this because if it is “done poorly, it could be the most oppressive technology we’ve ever introduced in a wide scale across society.”
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The U.S. is trying to privatize the refugee crisis by asking citizens to sponsor refugees. The program is called Welcome Corps.
U.S. citizens can request to be matched with refugees who have been approved for resettlement in phase one. In phase two, the private sponsors “will be able to identify refugees to refer to the [program] for resettlement and support the refugees they have identified.” Meanwhile, these refugees will be able to apply for permanent status. This is a much better deal for Ukrainians who are currently offered two years of residency through Uniting for Ukraine.
Refugee centers in the U.S. are packed, even though the U.S. has resettled the lowest number of refugees since 1980. So can this program improve through privatization? The State Department calls this “the boldest innovation in refugee resettlement in four decades.”
Andy Murray is trending because he played a match at the Australian Open that lasted five hours and 45 minutes. He requested a pee break at 3 a.m. and it was denied and he was pissed off. Get it? Pissed off?? He did eventually win the match.
Taco Bell rat poisoning is trending because a man in Colorado was hospitalized after eating at the fast food restaurant and claims that his food contained rat poisoning. That has yet to be confirmed.
Ted Lasso is trending on news that Season 3 will premiere this Spring and this first look at what is coming.
News By The Numbers
23. That is how old Spike is. He was recently named the world’s oldest living dog.
37 million. That is how many T-Mobile users had their data stolen in a breach that the company admits happened last November.
180,000. That is how many excess deaths occurred in Germany during the three years of the pandemic.
4%. That is how much inflation rose in Japan last month, hitting a 41-year high.
Can we talk about gender pronouns for a minute? I can’t stop thinking about this story about a deceased woman whose husband transitioned to a woman after her death. Is it right to call the woman “her wife” given she was never married to a woman? Can we assign someone a same-sex marriage posthumously?
This is a news article about a man whose wife died of breast cancer. He calls her death his “eureka moment” and decides to start living as a woman because he has always wanted to BE his wife. In telling this story, the author repeatedly refers to the deceased woman as “her wife.”
It is the journalistic integrity that I cannot reconcile. She was never “her wife.” She was “his wife.” Is it ethical to rewrite her story to validate his? Whose story do we respect? The living or the dead?
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This newsletter is written and researched by Natali Morris. Please feel free to reach Natali at [email protected] for any editorial feedback.
