The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to temporarily block a court order to fully fund SNAP food aid payments amid the government shutdown, even though residents in some states already have received the funds.

A judge had given the Republican administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But the administration asked an appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund, and instead allow it to continue with planned partial SNAP payments for the month.

After a Boston appeals court declined to immediately intervene, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued an order late Friday pausing the requirement to distribute full SNAP payments until the appeals court rules on whether to issue a more lasting pause. Jackson handles emergency matters from Massachusetts.

Her order will remain in place until 48 hours after the appeals court rules, giving the administration time to return to the Supreme Court if the appeals court refuses to step in.

And hours later it’s reversed by Scotus temporarily.

The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to temporarily block a court order to fully fund SNAP food aid payments amid the government shutdown, even though residents in some states already have received the funds.

A judge had given the Republican administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But the administration asked an appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund, and instead allow it to continue with planned partial SNAP payments for the month.

After a Boston appeals court declined to immediately intervene, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued an order late Friday pausing the requirement to distribute full SNAP payments until the appeals court rules on whether to issue a more lasting pause. Jackson handles emergency matters from Massachusetts.

Her order will remain in place until 48 hours after the appeals court rules, giving the administration time to return to the Supreme Court if the appeals court refuses to step in.

The ruling is for many if you read it:

The courts also found that the USDA has $23 billion in Section 32 funds that it could use for SNAP. Today, the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island ruled that the administration must immediately restore full benefits to families, including the 5.5 million California recipients.

SOI has an archive of all their live streams on YouTube. I think this guy cut the portion of it they are referring to in the article.

The AP News article might be a bit more readable.

Democrats on Tuesday won governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, the only states electing new chief executives this year. They also swept a trio of state Supreme Court contests in swing-state Pennsylvania and ballots measures from Colorado to Maine.

…

Trump and his Republican allies have been especially focused on immigration, crime and conservative cultural issues.

But voters who decided Tuesday’s top elections were more concerned about the economy, jobs and costs of living. That’s according to the AP Voter Poll, an expansive survey of more than 17,000 voters in New Jersey, Virginia, California and New York City suggesting that many voters felt they can’t get ahead financially in today’s economy.

Ironically, the same economic anxieties helped propel Trump to the White House just one year ago. Now, the economic concerns appear to be undermining his party’s political goals in 2025 — and could be more problematic for the GOP in next year’s midterm elections, which will decide the balance of power for Trump’s final two years in office.

That’s even as Trump regularly brags about stock prices booming and boasted about leading a new renaissance of American manufacturing.

About half of Virginia voters said the economy was the most important issue facing their state while most New Jersey voters said either taxes or the economy were the top issue in their state. Just over half of New York City voters said cost of living was their top concern.

…

Zohran Mamdani was elected New York City mayor Tuesday, capping his meteoric rise to national prominence. The 34-year-old democratic socialist will make history as the city’s first Muslim mayor - and its youngest in more than a century.

…

In Pennsylvania, Democrats swept all three elections for state supreme court justices. The wins could have implications for key cases involving redistricting and balloting for midterm elections — and the 2028 presidential race — in the nation’s most populous swing state.

Conservative causes struggled on ballot questions in other states as well.

Maine voters defeated a measure that would have mandated showing an ID at the polls while approving a “red flag” rule meant to make it easier for family members to petition a court to restrict a potentially dangerous person’s access to guns.

Colorado approved raising taxes on people earning more than $300,000 to fund school meal programs and food assistance for low-income state residents.

California voters approved new congressional district boundaries Tuesday, delivering a victory for Democrats in the state-by-state redistricting battle that will help determine which party wins control of the U.S. House in 2026

…

Assault with a deli weapon! Our Hogie hero!

Requisite link: https://deflock.me/

I see… The Cheeto in Chief is attempting to invoke crime so he can deploy troops huh?

Just a guess, but tis the first thing that comes to mind. He’s about the least Christian person I could imagine. And we soon will be in the Christmas giving season… But only for cronies.

Even though its data would be stored in Google and Amazon’s newly built Israel-based datacentres, Israeli officials feared developments in US and European laws could create more direct routes for law enforcement agencies to obtain it via direct requests or court-issued subpoenas.

An aerial view of a five very long, two-story buildings alongside what looks like a human-made lake.

With this threat in mind, Israeli officials inserted into the Nimbus deal a requirement for the companies to a send coded message – a “wink” – to its government, revealing the identity of the country they had been compelled to hand over Israeli data to, but were gagged from saying so.

Leaked documents from Israel’s finance ministry, which include a finalised version of the Nimbus agreement, suggest the secret code would take the form of payments – referred to as “special compensation” – made by the companies to the Israeli government.

According to the documents, the payments must be made “within 24 hours of the information being transferred” and correspond to the telephone dialing code of the foreign country, amounting to sums between 1,000 and 9,999 shekels.

Under the terms of the deal, the mechanism works like this:

If either Google or Amazon provides information to authorities in the US, where the dialing code is +1, and they are prevented from disclosing their cooperation, they must send the Israeli government 1,000 shekels.

If, for example, the companies receive a request for Israeli data from authorities in Italy, where the dialing code is +39, they must send 3,900 shekels.

If the companies conclude the terms of a gag order prevent them from even signaling which country has received the data, there is a backstop: the companies must pay 100,000 shekels ($30,000) to the Israeli government.

Stephen Miller soon joined a growing list of senior Trump-administration political appointees—at least six by our count—living in Washington-area military housing, where they are shielded not just from potential violence but also from protest. It is an ominous marker of the nation’s polarization, to which the Trump administration has itself contributed, that some of those top public servants have felt a need to separate themselves from the public. These civilian officials can now depend on the U.S. military to augment their personal security. But so many have made the move that they are now straining the availability of housing for the nation’s top uniformed officers.

Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, moved out of her D.C. apartment building and into the home designated for the Coast Guard commandant on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, across the river from the capital, after the Daily Mail described where she lived. Both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live on “Generals’ Row” at Fort McNair, an Army enclave along the Anacostia River, according to officials from the State and Defense Departments. (Rubio spent one recent evening assembling furniture that had been delivered to the house that day.)

The reported noted that the moves aren’t entirely unprecedented, as national security officials have previously rented homes on bases “for security or convenience.”

Ah, but rented vs rent-free… With little proof of actual risk.

Study: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00127-020-01966-x

Abstract

Purpose  The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently ranked air pollution as the major environmental cause of premature death. However, the significant potential health and societal costs of poor mental health in relation to air quality are not represented in the WHO report due to limited evidence. We aimed to test the hypothesis that long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with poor mental health.

Methods  A prospective longitudinal population-based mental health survey was conducted of 1698 adults living in 1075 households in South East London, from 2008 to 2013. High-resolution quarterly average air pollution concentrations of nitrogen dioxide ­(NO2) and oxides ­(NOx), ozone ­(O3), particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter < 10 μm ­(PM10) and < 2.5 μm ­(PM2.5) were linked to the home addresses of the study participants. Associations with mental health were analysed with the use of multilevel generalised linear models, after adjusting for large number of confounders, including the individuals’ socioeconomic position and exposure to road-traffic noise.

Results  We found robust evidence for interquartile range increases in ­PM2.5, ­NOx and ­NO2 to be associated with 18–39% increased odds of common mental disorders, 19–30% increased odds of poor physical symptoms and 33% of psychotic experiences only for ­PM10. These longitudinal associations were more pronounced in the subset of non-movers for ­NO2 and ­NOx.

Conclusions  The findings suggest that traffic-related air pollution is adversely affecting mental health. Whilst causation cannot be proved, this work suggests substantial morbidity from mental disorders could be avoided with improved air quality.

Now we finally know why so many city dwellers are depressed — and no, it’s not because of your failing local sports teams.

A new study from King’s College of London found that even tiny increases in vehicle emissions in highly polluted neighborhoods were correlated with shockingly high rates of clinical depression among residents — even when the researchers controlled for common environmental contributors to mental health conditions, like lack of access to mood-boosting green space or substandard housing.

Though all the regions the researchers studied had high rates of vehicle-related pollution, people who lived in neighborhoods that had just 3 micrograms of nitrogen dioxide more per cubic meter had a stunning 39 percent higher risk of a depression diagnosis, when compared with the residents of neighborhoods with the lowest levels of NO2, which is commonly found in diesel exhaust emitted by heavy trucks.

…

In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security—which oversees the US Coast Guard (USCG)—Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) pointed to Noem’s policy of personally reviewing and deciding whether to approve any contract exceeding $100,000 in value, an indication that the secretary signed off on the new procurement of private jets from Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation.

I’m sorry Mr. Cheeto did you really say No? Oh… Red huh… We see what Espstein taught you.

The day was not only nonviolent but also historic. The estimated nearly 7 million who showed up across America marked the second-largest one-day protest in U.S. history, surpassed only by a very different type of event, the first Earth Day in 1970. That was roughly 40% largest than the first “No Kings” event in June, and in talking to protesters Saturday it seemed the turnout was only boosted by the right-wing rhetoric, that anti-Trump protesters must be some kind of domestic terrorists.

…

The official White House reaction, as related to one reporter, was “Who cares?” But guess what? They clearly cared, a lot. You could see that in the week leading up to the demonstration, with the increasingly insane rhetoric and warnings about “antifa” — a tiny, unorganized sliver of young rock-throwing radicals who were nowhere in sight Saturday — that aimed to neutralize the reality that millions of everyday Americans are sick of seeing a masked secret police snatch people off the streets.

In a maneuver that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un must have surely applauded, Trump’s Pentagon fired some artillery shells over a closed I-5 in the heart of Southern California’s anti-Trump rally as the protests were taking place — ostensibly to mark the 250th anniversary of the armed forces, but alsoas a reminder of the regime’s military might as Trump weighs invoking the Insurrection Act.

After hitting more record highs in early October, the equity markets look to be pausing in light of a weakening labor market and new trade tensions with China. Over the last week, markets have seen a mild sell-off. The question is: Is this the start of a long overdue market correction, or just another mild stumbling in this market juggernaut.

While economic data like the CPI and PPI and other critical information collected by the BLS won’t be available if the shutdown continues to the end of the month, there is enough private sector data that says the economy is slowing. This is especially true for employment and housing. Even before the shutdown, the official unemployment rates (U3 and U6) had risen to their highest level in four years. Nearly every private sector employment indicator showed up weaker in September. And the consumer appears to have responded by tightening their purse strings. It is likely that the Fed will lower rates by 25 basis points at its end of October meeting.

He suggests that original releases often included more “Easter eggs” or hidden features that were omitted in later, re-released versions. This implies that while the physical cost of the DVD might not have changed significantly, the value or content provided in re-releases was reduced.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is clearing the ranks of the military’s lawyers to “get them out of the way” of possibly illegal moves, according to current and former defense officials.

Hegseth fired Lt. Gen. Joe Berger, the Army’s top uniformed lawyer, early this year on the advice of the right-wing social media account LibsOfTikTok and he then removed the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General, Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer, describing both as “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander-in-chief,” reported CNN.

“I see this as part of a grander plan to remove lawyers from the [military’s] operational forces and get them out of the way,” said a former senior defense official.

…

Oh I agree, it will go up. But having lived through the dotcom boom, I’m a bit more skeptical especially when I start seeing “OpenAI unveiled a “Central Park–size complex” in the Texas scrublands and disclosed plans to construct roughly a dozen more of them, a build-out that will cost $1 trillion.” when their revenue just cross $10 billion earlier this year. It’s not a linear growth, sure, but can you cite anything that indicates AI is describing a logarithmic growth rate?

What I’m reading in forecasts indicate a growth of the entire market of somewhere between 2.5 trillion and 4.8 trillion. So building a single data center (That’s just OpenAI, Microsoft, Orcale, etc are also building more) which is planned to cost somewhere over a half to a quarter of the total market grown estimate in 10 years is tech & investors who haven’t learned from history.

Remember that the dotcom’s were convinced that laying fiber across the US was a good bet at $100 billon (around $190 billion today), but it took another decade to actually use that fiber and start recouping the cost.

So sure, there’s growth and it’s likely to continue as products improve. However as an avid tester of narrow ai’s in various paid methods, I can say they are not justifying a doubling or tripling in subscription cost yet. They aren’t yet worth a human in many ways.

(Cite things and argue with me please! I’m happy to be wrong.)

To me, this is striking:

“I had previously assumed a 10-year depreciation curve, which I now recognize as quite unrealistic based upon the speed with which AI datacenter technology is advancing,” Kupperman wrote. “Based on my conversations over the past month, the physical data centers last for three to ten years, at most.”

In his previous analysis, Kupperman assumed it would take the tech industry $160 billion of revenue to break even on data center spending in 2025 alone. And that’s assuming an incredibly generous 25 percent gross margin — not to mention the fact that the industry’s actual AI revenue is closer to $20 billion annually, as the investment manager noted in his previous blog.

Meaning that currently his guess is that at current revenue, it’ll take 8 years to break even… So maybe they’ll get two years of profit at max, or be underwater by five years and $100 billion. Current revenue is going to change, but they’ll have to triple it in short order or be at risk… And that seems somewhat unrealistic with the lack of success in the AI products.

From https://hbr.org/2025/08/beware-the-ai-experimentation-trap apparently 95% of AI projects piloted by businesses have produced no measurable return.