For those who erroneously wander into the belief that lame language like "democratic socialist" and "social democrat" signifies enfeebled versions of the original, revolutionary Marxist spirit... Take heart in the recent platform commitments of the DSA. A fascist capitalist society of the West may discourage newer collectivist organizations since the 1980s from adopting "communist" directly into their names, but it can't take that classic social-utopian mission out of its members.

The DSA continues to recognize (as the Red Army Faction did back in the 1970s), that police are a brutal agency of oppression against the people, taking even its apostle Mamdani to task for duplicity in this area:

• NYC-DSA chides Mamdani for increasing NYPD headcount (excerpt): The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America made its strongest criticism of Mayor Zohran Mamdani to date on Friday, when it signed on to a statement criticizing the mayor’s plan to increase the New York City Police Department’s headcount. [...] Recently, many in DSA have argued that support for the NYPD is fundamentally incompatible with socialist politics. Earlier this month, DSA’s National Political Committee approved a revised national platform for the organization, which includes an explicit call to (eventually) abolish the police: “Demilitarize police departments, disempower police unions, and redirect police and prison funding to public services as steps towards abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state.”

In the spoiler below is what the Twin Cities chapter recently espoused with regard to its locality. This is merely the outline. Read the details beneath each in the article should the promises cynically resonate with the unreliable assurances of the usual, slow-moving cowardice of progressives in the Democrat Party (i.e., be enlightened otherwise).
And as can be expected, the capitalism-groveling media tries to sprinkle some water onto the fire and fury of the revived, anti-fascist revolution...

• The Democratic Socialists of America are leaving it all on the field in NYC (excerpt): For the DSA, any momentum stands to be blunted, however, by a torrent of old social media posts from Avila Chevalier. In her since-deleted missives, she denigrated Democratic politicians, the police, Israel and private property. The posts have surfaced since Mamdani and the DSA got behind her. Espaillat and super PACs that support him have seized on her social media history, airing ads that characterize her past online screeds as evidence she’s too extreme.

Finally... but also a horror of horrors to have to resort to a publication of the MONSTERS, because MSM seems to shy away from particulars (barring the Minneapolis Times above), here is a summary of general DSM rectifications slash objectives. Beware of any subtle biases and flagrant distortions that the MONSTER fascists may have planted...

• The Democratic Socialists of America just adopted a radical new platform
  https://www.city-journal.org/article/dem...serve-more
  
  EXCERPT: DSA leadership added four amendments: one on “real democracy”—calling for the replacement of “the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress”—another on police and prison abolition, a provision explicitly naming Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, and a ranked-choice voting section. [...] Milner, who supported the carceral abolition amendment, acknowledged that this position was far removed from the current practices of DSA candidates and elected officials, but maintained the demand was still important for defining the organization’s political direction. [...] Sidney Carlson White, a member of the Marxist Unity Group, argued that the amendment’s drafters had given elected officials room to work toward its stated goals, including demilitarization, weakening police unions, and redirecting police and prison funding toward public services.

SABINE HOSSENFELDER
https://youtu.be/k5dZmMa0OIA

VIDEO EXCERPTS: "So, math is cooked. I’ll say it a second time, Math is cooked.”

This was the physicist and computer scientist Alexander Wissner-Gross commenting on the AI-takeover of maths. He’s not the only one who sees it coming, and things are moving quickly now. [...] Two weeks ago, for the first time, a Large Language Model solved a reasonably well-known maths problem.

[...] “We’re cooked. This is the best proof to come out in a year. We’re completely f*cked”. And the computer scientist Scott Aaronson relates: “I heard the news maybe an hour after it broke, when some UT grad students came to my office to tell me. For what it’s worth: these students were morose, musing about how everything might soon be over for young scientists and mathematicians like themselves.”

This is what makes academia special. In industry, people worry that AI will take their jobs. In academia, they worry that AI will take their jobs before they ever get jobs. What I find most interesting about this recent proof is that for all I can tell most mathematicians thought that Erdos’ conjecture was correct. And the counterexample which the AI came up with is the kind of unintuitive slightly ugly construction that humans are unlikely to think of. It’s not that the machine is smarter, but that it has worse taste.

That said, rumours of the demise of mathematics have been somewhat exaggerated because it took only a few hours until someone – and I mean: a human being -- improved the OpenAI result.

There has also been a lot of pushback on the idea that maths is over. A group of 150 mathematicians signed a declaration, warning that “These developments put the autonomy of mathematics under threat.” And “There is currently a strong commercial incentive on the part of the technology industry to overstate the capabilities of their products.“

The latter quite plausibly answers the question of why the US media makes such a big deal of this when usually they can’t be bothered writing about maths at all. It’s a kind of sabre rattling for the Chinese, basically. Personally I think what’s going to happen is not that mathematics will end. What we will see instead is that a lot of mathematicians will shift to AI-supported techniques...

The end of mathematics? ... https://youtu.be/k5dZmMa0OIA

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/k5dZmMa0OIA

Lifestyle factors may influence prostate cancer risk in Indian men
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1132597

EXCERPT: The analysis revealed that coffee consumption and meat intake were associated with lower odds of prostate cancer. After adjustment for potential confounding factors, coffee consumption was associated with approximately 65% lower odds of prostate cancer, while meat consumption was associated with approximately 48% lower odds.

In contrast, no statistically significant associations were observed for alcohol consumption, tobacco chewing, smoking, tea intake, or farming occupation after adjustment for other variables. Although smoking and tobacco use initially appeared to be associated with higher odds of prostate cancer, these relationships were no longer statistically significant in the adjusted analysis.

The investigators also discussed several biological mechanisms that could potentially explain the observed findings. Coffee contains bioactive compounds such as cafestol, kahweol, caffeine, and antioxidant polyphenols that have been studied for anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anti-cancer properties. Certain compounds found in meat, including trans-vaccenic acid, have also been linked to immune responses that may influence cancer biology.

However, the authors emphasize that the relationship between diet and prostate cancer remains complex. Previous studies have produced conflicting findings regarding the effects of coffee, meat, tea, alcohol, and tobacco on prostate cancer risk. The researchers note that their study evaluated overall consumption patterns and did not distinguish between different types of meat, preparation methods, or levels of intake... (MORE - no ads)

PAPER: http://dx.doi.org/10.18632/oncoscience.657

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1132161

INTRO: Carnegie Mellon University and University of California, San Francisco researchers found that childhood trauma, poverty, social isolation and other adverse life experiences are associated with brain changes linked to schizophrenia-spectrum disorders — findings that could help researchers identify people at risk earlier and develop interventions before severe symptoms emerge.

The idea that social determinants of health — non-medical conditions in which people are born, grow, live and work — have an out-sized role on our health is not new. In fact, some studies estimate that such conditions can account for between 30 and 55 percent of health outcomes. But how these factors impact downstream mental health conditions such as schizophrenia remains poorly understood.

“What we want to know is how these environmental factors, such as stress, trauma and poverty, get under the skin, so to speak, and affect our biology,” said Kaitlyn Dal Bon, a Ph.D. student in cognitive neuroscience in CMU’s Department of Psychology.

To better understand what is currently known about these links, Jessica Hua, a clinical psychologist at the San Francisco VA Health Care System and UCSF, and Dal Bon co-wrote a systematic review of 114 scientific studies that looked at early life adversity, social disconnection, racism/discrimination, poverty and food insecurity in more than 10,000 participants with schizophrenia or at risk for developing psychosis. Their findings were published today in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Psychiatry.

Overall, the researchers found evidence that greater exposure to adverse conditions early in life is associated with differences in brain structure, brain function and neurochemistry – all of which have been previously linked to schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.

To be clear, no one factor is known to cause schizophrenia... (MORE - no ads)

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1132140

EXCERPTS: Climate change could push UK rivers to dangerous extremes and see more frequent rapid swings between wet and dry conditions - a phenomenon known as hydroclimatic whiplash - according to research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Researchers analysed almost 700 river catchments across the UK to project how river flows may change at 2°C and 4°C of global warming. The results reveal stark regional contrasts and growing challenges for communities and water managers trying to plan for flood and drought risk - particularly in areas that will increasingly experience both.

Publishing their findings today in the journal Earth’s Future, the authors also warn of more intense river flooding during extreme rainfall events in western and northern parts of the UK and longer dry spells and lower river flows in southern and eastern England, regions that are already water‑stressed.

The authors say the findings underscore the need for regionally tailored adaptation, including enhanced flood-risk management and greater capacity to store water during wetter periods in western and northern parts of the UK, and strengthened water-supply resilience and demand management in southern and eastern England.

[...] Dry-to-wet hydroclimatic whiplash - sudden shifts from dry to wet conditions - may increase the risk of flash flooding, water quality deterioration and soil erosion, while wet-to-dry shifts can make drought planning harder because preceding wet conditions may create a false sense of security before a rapid move into drought.

Projected changes under both 2°C and 4°C warming scenarios show widespread increases in the frequency of both types of whiplash events. For dry-to-wet whiplash, increases are projected across most of the UK. In some catchments, the number of events rises from around four over a 30-year period in the 1981–2010 baseline to around seven to nine under 4°C warming.

Overall, stronger increases can be observed in South Wales, Northern Ireland, Northern and Western England and parts of southeast England... (MORE - no ads)

Teen contact with the legal system is associated with mental health symptoms
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1131667

PRESS RELEASE: Youth who have contact with the US legal system may be at increased risk of mental health symptoms including anxiety, depression, hostility, and psychoticism, according to a study published in the open access journal PLOS One by Raquel V. Oliveira and Elizabeth Culatta from Augusta University, US.

Prior research indicates that both adults and youth with mental health issues are overrepresented in the criminal legal system. For example, while 15-22 percent of all US youths are estimated to have a diagnosable mental health condition, between 40 and 80 percent of incarcerated youths do.

To better understand how contact with the criminal legal system is associated with mental health, the authors of this study analyzed data from the Pathways to Desistance study, which followed 1,354 youths who had faced an adjudication from a judge in Phoenix, AZ and Philadelphia, PA. The participants were first interviewed between November 2000 and January 2003, when the teens were between 14 and 18 years old, and follow-up interviews were then conducted over a seven-year period. The authors explore if different types of contact with the legal system, including arrest, court appearances, and institutionalization were associated with anxiety, depression, hostility, and psychoticism symptoms.

The experience of being arrested was associated with worse short-term mental health, including more symptoms of anxiety, depression, and psychoticism. Being institutionalized was also associated with increased symptoms of depression, hostility, and psychoticism in the short-term. While court appearances only had a short-term association with decreased anxiety (perhaps indicating relief from the uncertainty of the build-up to the appearance), they had significant long-term associations with increases in anxiety, depression, and psychoticism.

The authors found in their analyses that having two or more concurrent contacts with the legal system is associated with more consistent long-term effects on mental health symptoms. They also note that, unsurprisingly, other factors associated with worse mental health symptoms included substance use and participating in crime, as well as taking mental health medication (likely prescribed to help treat these symptoms).

The Pathways to Desistance study limited the number of male drug offenses it included, making it less representative of all offenses nationwide. Additionally, the study can only identify associations rather than any causative factors. Nonetheless, the authors suggest that contact with the criminal legal system might be a stressor for youth, that can affect mental health symptoms, which can persist years into the future.

The authors add: “Our findings are aligned with prior research and highlight the importance of continued focus on diversion programming and adequate mental health support of youth coming into to contact with the criminal legal system”.

But there are hordes of non-Muslims doing this in California. It's not some exclusive migrant activity, it's a fully home grown hobby inherent in the current citizenry. And they're just casually shoplifting in the applicable US states, no need to hide it anymore, no arrests. Still, it is astonishing how many items these remarkable women in the UK can tuck into those pockets. Mind boggling.
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TAL ORAN
https://youtu.be/1xiuThjBMFA

VIDEO EXCERPTS: They're not Arab, by the way. Whoever said they're Arab here, they were not Arab. I couldn't pick up on the language. They were either Afghani, Pakistani, something. I'm not totally sure. I don't want to say Kurdish because I don't think it was Kurdish, but they were not Arabs.

Arabs, let's be honest. Arabs are not going to be caught dead doing this kind of ####. No way. Arabs kill you. They don't steal shampoo at supermarkets in the UK. Arabs are on a different level in the UK.

They're not doing that low-level mischief anymore. They've already progressed to high level mischief of taking your political positions and blowing themselves up in mosques. They're not terrorizing you financially, fiscally terrorizing you like this. Arabs on a different league of terrorism now.

[...] They tell us that it's racist or bigoted to not want them to wear these things [ironically allowing us to] identify who they are. And then they use it to hide a pocket inside to steal goods from your economy. How many millions of Muslims in the UK are doing this? These were just three caught. How many millions are doing this? Never to be caught...

I'm a Muslim, you can't arrest me ... https://youtu.be/1xiuThjBMFA

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/1xiuThjBMFA

https://aeon.co/essays/the-strange-rocks...without-us

EXCERPTS: As a geologist, I have studied various types of natural rocks, but recently I have become interested in ‘anthropogenic geomaterials’ – things like industrial slag – and how they become entwined in geological and environmental processes. I came to Workington originally to look at the slag...

[...] For geologists who study rock day in day out, it’s such a foundational concept that we rarely stop to ask what’s the actual definition of a rock. So I quizzed a few, in a non-statistical, non-exhaustive informal survey of geological friends and colleagues. When asked, hardness featured heavily in people’s definitions, and most agreed that a rock is a substance made of minerals. There was less agreement with the dictionary when it came to size though – the OED and Cambridge definitions point to rock being a large mass or even the whole Earth, but some geologists would argue that a grain of sand could be considered a rock. It is, after all, hard and made of minerals, like quartz or feldspar.

Perhaps the most debated part of the definition, and the one most relevant to this essay, is whether a rock must be natural. The overwhelming majority of rocks on Earth form through natural geological processes such as solidification of molten lava flows, or compression and compaction deep within the Earth. However, everyday materials created by humans such as pottery, concrete or bricks are made of minerals. Are these rocks? Many would say not. Perhaps that’s because these materials are processed, manufactured, and more often found in the built environment rather than in wild landscapes. As we discovered at Workington, though, the border between natural and human is more difficult to draw.

If you were to tell anybody about a pile of thousands of tonnes of industrial waste, most people’s reaction would probably be to recoil in disgust. In many cases this holds true, such as when old landfills of municipal waste are exposed through coastal erosion, resulting in old rags, sanitary products and medical waste leaking onto coastlines. There’s something about a wet muddy bit of fabric on the beach that just gives you the ‘ick’. However, the vast majority of visitors to a place such as Workington would be none the wiser that they were in the proximity of a huge volume of industrial waste.

[...] Human beings have created slag for thousands of years, ever since people started working with metals. While in the past it was simply dumped, today the material is often reused in other settings, such as cement production, road construction, agriculture, or along railway lines as ballast.

[...] Once the slag that makes the cliff was poured and solidified, human involvement in the story ends. Workington is quite an exposed coast, with storms rolling in over the Irish Sea. The waves crashing against the slag cliffs causes them to erode – just like natural coastal cliffs – chipping off small, angular pebble-sized pieces. The wave and tide action then rounds off the corners.

[...] Anthropogenic rock formation is a frontier research area with relatively few examples documented. However, once we understood what was going on at Workington, we were able to identify the same process occurring in other places where iron and steel slag had been dumped historically, with examples in northern England and southwest Scotland. We also started to find evidence of ‘rocks’ forming from other human-made materials, or where human processes had been key.

[...] Geologists are also learning that the more ‘solid’ examples of industrial waste can actually bring many benefits. Slag has carbon dioxide mineralising properties – essentially scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere, giving it the opportunity to help us in our fight against anthropogenic climate change. Additionally, old slag banks are known to be havens for rare species of plants and invertebrates – their gravelly and alkaline nature makes them an unusual habitat. However, if the gravelly slag has fused together into a rock, it may be more difficult for ecological colonisation. The study of such anthropogenic materials is a frontier area of research and there remain many unknowns.

In our discipline, we geologists are used to looking back into the distant past, perhaps to learn lessons about what our geological future might look like. With these anthropogenic rocks it is difficult to do this, as no ancient analogues exist... (MORE - missing details)