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Why lonely Republicans are even glummer than Democrats
The Promise We Made to Americans with Disabilities Is Under Attack
In the past, Americans with disabilities were sent off to large, isolating, state-run institutions as a matter of course. In overcrowded, understaffed facilities, residents were too often neglected and stripped of privacy, autonomy, or any meaningful connection to their communities. When these conditions were brought to light, they sparked national outrage. That reckoning helped galvanize the deinstitutionalization movement, a decades-long push to create services that support people with disabilities in their homes and communities.
Decades of advocacy to “deinstitutionalize” have fortunately transformed quality of life for people with disabilities, but it wasn’t until just 27 years ago that the Supreme Court's 1999 decision in Olmstead v. Lois Curtis made it so disabled Americans could rest easy knowing forced segregation wasn’t inevitable.
For much of our history, few options existed between mass institutionalization in expensive and confining facilities on one end of the spectrum, and fully independent living absent any supports on the other end of the spectrum. The legal precedent rooted in Olmstead, plus the proliferation of once-nonexistent community-based services, changed that.
Now, however, the foundation that underpins our nation’s wide spectrum of community-based services is crumbling.
Olmstead affirmed that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) grants people with disabilities the right to live, work, and participate in their communities with the supports they need. That’s why we found it especially egregious that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released a legal memo last month coinciding with the decision’s anniversary, calling into question the established right of people with disabilities to receive services in the most integrated setting possible. The memo doesn’t change the law, but it seeks to erode decades of settled civil rights protections.
The DOJ memo follows a range of other actions by the Trump Administration, including significant cuts to federal Medicaid spending set to go into effect next year and the withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for community-based services in the name of protecting program integrity. In July 2026, the administration paused more than one billion dollars in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota, citing fraud but offering little specificity to support their claim. Taken together, these moves seem to falsely imply that home- and community-based services (HCBS) are wasteful, rather than essential.
The Trump Administration has repeatedly questioned the value of HCBS by suggesting that Medicaid is paying professionals to carry out responsibilities families should simply provide themselves. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy told lawmakers that the waivers pay family members “for picking up the groceries, for driving somebody to a doctor’s appointment,” insisting that these family members are “getting paid to do things that they used to do [...] for free.” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz has echoed that message, describing personal care services as helping “Medicaid patients do something that our families would normally do for us, like carrying groceries.”
Statements such as these have real-world implications and could serve to justify gutting these HCBS services—potentially forcing people with disabilities back into large public institutions, while pushing family caregivers and direct support professionals out of their respective workforces and into poverty.
The debate over how we invest in Medicaid cannot be separated from the debate over civil rights for people with disabilities. Olmstead’s promise of community living is only meaningful if people have access to the services that make community living viable. For millions, Medicaid is a lifeline. It funds the direct support professional who helps someone get dressed each morning. It funds the job coach who helps build skills needed to succeed in the workforce. It funds transportation to medical appointments, support to navigate public transportation, and countless other activities that enable people to participate fully in community life.
These activities are neither optional nor negotiable—they’re the foundation of the inclusion that this country promised through the ADA.
The notion that families should provide care without additional support is unrealistic and shortsighted, especially for families of people with highly complex medical or behavioral needs. Direct support professionals are trained to implement individualized care plans with a person-centered approach, respond to behavioral crises, administer medications, and more.
Moreover, this thinking also ignores reality. For instance, many disabled adults’ parents are elderly or deceased. Many of their spouses work full time, sometimes in multiple jobs to meet their families’ financial needs. Many of their siblings are in the same boat but may live hundreds of miles away. Some have no family to fall back on at all.
Suggesting that people don’t have the right to community-based support while insisting families provide needed care for free risks undoing more than a quarter-century of civil rights progress made possible by Olmstead. Furthermore, dismantling the spectrum of community-based services is expected to have negative down-the-line ramifications. We anticipate that more families will languish on states’ waiting lists for longer, more providers will reduce services or go out of business altogether, more professionals will leave the workforce to fill caregiving gaps, and more people with disabilities will be left with no other choice but expensive, isolating institutions.
All of this threatens to devastate families and local economies. If protecting taxpayers is truly the goal, community-based services shouldn’t be slashed—they should be upheld as the gold standard, especially given the dramatic cost savings they make possible. Supporting someone with an intellectual or developmental disability through home- and community-based services costs about $70,500 per year, versus more than $395,000 annually in a public institution.
While the DOJ’s memo and the administration’s other actions don’t overturn Olmstead, they do place another crack in the fragile foundation on which community living for millions of Americans is built. As we wrote last summer on the 35th anniversary of the ADA, we must reaffirm, not reinterpret or undo, the rights Olmstead upheld.
The Guardian view on AI money in US politics: not the way to hold an urgent democratic debate | Editorial
Amid public concern over the impact of new technology, Silicon Valley’s use of its wealth to influence specific election races is an unwelcome development
As the huge societal ramifications of artificial intelligence have become clear, some of the tech industry’s most senior figures have taken to writing thinkpieces on what comes next. The latest to do so is Mark Zuckerberg, who this week published 6,500 words making the case for a laissez-faire approach to AI development. Worrying too much about regulation, Meta’s CEO unsurprisingly opines, could lead to the United States falling behind in the race to own the future.
Mr Zuckerberg’s plea for maximum autonomy is, of course, self-serving. Much of his essay – which airily envisions “invention superpowers” for every entrepreneur and “an abundance of jobs in the future” – reads like unadulterated tech-utopianism. But the lobbying at least has the merit of being out there in the open. As midterm elections loom in the US, darker arts are also being used to counter popular concern about what AI will mean for a host of topics, from the labour market to child safety, the environment and cybersecurity.
Continue reading...WATCH: The rising cost of college move-in day
Ideological battle in Wisconsin as Democrats choose between Francesca Hong and David Crowley
Houseplant hacks: can willow water act as a rooting hormone?
This is one of those rare homemade concoctions that works, though it might not outperform a good commercial product
The problem
Propagation is where good intentions go to die. You take a cutting, pop it in water and wait. Sometimes you are rewarded with roots, sometimes not. So the internet offers an organic aid that sounds almost too folkloric to be true: brew your own rooting hormone from a willow tree.
The hack
Willow contains indolebutyric acid, auxin (a plant hormone that is the main active ingredient in commercial rooting powders), along with salicylic acid, better known as the basis of aspirin.
Salad is supposed to be good for you – so what’s behind all the cases of lettuce poisoning?
Iceberg lettuce has been blamed for a surge in American cases of the parasitic illness cyclosporiasis. Symptoms include ‘frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements’
Name: Salad.
Age: Legend has it that in the Byzantine period, the Greek island of Kos was a centre for growing a long-leafed variety of lettuce that your grandparents might know as cos, though that variety is now more commonly referred to as romaine.
Continue reading...Copernicus! Tony Soprano! The inventor of the semicolon! The heroic obsessions of artist Isabel Nolan
Ireland’s artist at the Venice Biennale steals religious imagery for her secular celebrations of scientists and humanists, including an Italian punctuation master – and even TV’s famous mobster
It’s a long way to the Irish pavilion at the Venice Biennale. First, you pass through the biennale’s colossal central exhibition, housed in a sequence of cavernous medieval warehouses. After that, the route takes in a suite of national pavilions (the Philippines, Latvia, Timor-Leste, Morocco, Malta, Oman). By the time art-lovers reach Ireland’s presentation, they are frequently exhausted, if not delirious.
This year, Dublin-based artist Isabel Nolan has transformed the pavilion into a space of respite, both physical and intellectual – a secular chapel titled Dreamshook. Visitors emerge from darkness into a pale-yellow chamber flooded with daylight and face a radiant tapestry arched like a stained-glass window in a gothic cathedral. A cluster of archangel’s wings bearing books hovers before the vast orb of the sun above a fish-filled sea. Nolan works across sculpture, textile, painting, drawing and text, and Dreamshook is accordingly rich in colour and pictorial detail, including bent metal sculptures, tapestries and drawings. For the footsore and weary – ie everyone – she has even designed benches. Glory be.
Continue reading...Nimrods review – Green Day’s early years inspire teenage kicks in amiable punk road movie
San Francisco’s pop-punk pioneers Green Day loom large in this fun, puppyish film about a scrappy band desperate to meet their idols
Inspired by their own youthful rowdy escapades – “our early days of driving around in a van, tired, hungry, out of gas, out of money, struggling, creating trouble” – here is an amiable road-movie comedy about, soundtracked by and briefly featuring Californian pop-punk stalwarts Green Day. Like them, it is more pop than punk: a fundamentally sweet and puppyish teen comedy about dreaming big and following your heart, featuring three fundamentally decent, likable youths – for all that they indulge in some Superbad-style smutty banter, try to buy booze, steal the odd car, take magic mushrooms, skate, have green hair, get into mud fights and decline to tell their parents where they are going when they hit the road and head west from Kansas City to LA.
Mason Thames, Kylr Coffman and Ryan Foust star as 17-year-olds Tommy, Fred and Chad – two jokers and a nerd – who make music together as Analog Dogs in Tommy’s garage. When they are pranked into thinking their ageing idols have heard their demo cassette and want Analog Dogs to open for Green Day at the Hollywood Palladium on New Year’s Eve, the boys have mere days in which to beg, steal or borrow a way of getting there. Along the way, they encounter assorted oddballs and supportive adults, enter a battle of the bands contest, meet a cute girl who is also in a band, and learn a bit about the true meaning and importance of friendship.
Continue reading...Isaac Mizrahi on stage, style and the legacy of Unzipped: ‘Fashion has no real spine any more’
The designer defined the glory days of 90s style with a wit that made him every supermodel’s best friend. As he gears up for a new cabaret show, he’s as outspoken as ever
There’s a lot to look at in Isaac Mizrahi’s studio in New York’s Greenwich Village: sketches, bulletin boards, fabrics, memorabilia, heaps of books, a Golden Girls puzzle set. But my eyes lock in on two dolls, Snoopy and his sister Belle (who knew!), clad in ballet-style tutus and embroidered vests. “I think I designed those,” he says, joining me from his apartment upstairs. “I love the Schultz estate and they like me a lot. It was a minute ago, though, so I’m not sure if they still even know who I am.” I later learn he created them for a 2014 exhibition at the New Museum, in an example of the symbiotic relationship with pop culture the designer has been nurturing since his childhood in Brooklyn. When we meet, he’s busy working on one of its other facets, firming up the setlist for Hooray!, his latest cabaret act in New York. It runs for four nights at 54 Below, a midtown venue, this month.
“I say it all the time,” he says of the cheery title. With his lit-from-within smile, you believe it. The slight twist is the source of that cheer. Mizrahi has held two New York residencies for the past decade or so – winter at the Carlyle hotel, summer at 54 Below – but he’s not a fan of the hotter season, finding July to be “just the nadir of the world”. The happy mood of his upcoming show derives from the knowledge that, come August, the summer’s almost over. Another reason for him to celebrate is the departure of World Cup crowds from the city, which will make it into his act’s version of Cole Porter’s You’re the Top that he updates every year. (He can’t immediately recall the lyric, but it rhymes “Spanish” with “mannish.”)
Continue reading...Ханс Моравек ждал ИИ человеческого уровня к 2028 году. И почти угадал?
77-летний робототехник больше двадцати лет не давал больших интервью. Теперь он рассказал, почему верно оценил скорость развития ИИ, но совершенно иначе представлял сам машинный разум.
Ох ты ж....Fastest-growing Ebola outbreak in history has claimed 2,000 lives. Here's why it is hard to contain
What to Know About the Vaccines Targeted by Trump’s Executive Order
Florida paddleboarder rescues woman from alligator attack
Mike Heard used his paddle to strike gator that had latched on to swimmer in Silver River after hearing yells of ‘Gator!’
A Florida paddleboarder rescued a woman from an alligator attack in Marion county over the weekend.
On Saturday, an alligator bit the woman on the arm while she was swimming in the Silver River, according to local reports citing Marion county authorities.
Continue reading...Violators face hefty fines under new French law banning unsolicited telemarketing calls
What happens during a solar eclipse? Experts explain the awe-inspiring phenomena to expect on April 8
Top German General Says Russia Is Probing NATO Defenses With Hybrid Attacks
DE-3. Расследование Sentry инцидента. Бой с тенью
Инцидент Sentry. Как мы поэтапно наращивали мониторинг, локализовали первопричину и к каким решениям пришли
Читать далееUniversity of Michigan to switch to pass/fail grades for first-semester students
School said it is pivoting away from letter-grading system to ‘curb the mental health crisis’ among college students
The University of Michigan will pivot to a pass-or-fail-style grading system, instead of letter grades, for first-semester students in an effort to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals”.
The school said in a notice on Tuesday that its goal was “to help first-year students acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivations to guide personally meaningful academic journeys” and foster “a culture of connection and collaboration – rather than competition”.
Continue reading...Birmingham 2026: European Athletics Championships day two – live
Highlights are men’s 100m and women’s 100m hurdles
Hodgkinson up and running | Ticket backlash | Mail Billy
Women’s 5,000m: Koster starts to make a move towards the front and Britain’s 20-year-old Innes FitzGerald, a student at the University of Exeter, tries to go with her. Here comes García, who is joined at the front by her compatriot Idaira Ferrero. That has prompted Battocletti to move through the field too. 2,000m to go.
Women’s 5,000m: Bakraci is still leading the way but there is no gap to the rest of the field now. Healy is in a decent position on the shoulder of Koster near the front of the group. Battocletti, the best finisher in the field, is hanging around at the back. 3,000m to go.
Continue reading...Bumble drops women-first chat rule as dating apps seek engagement boost
Since Bumble’s launch in 2014, only women could initiate conversations in heterosexual matches on the app
Bumble on Tuesday said it would begin allowing either person in a match to send the first message, dropping the women-first messaging rule that has been a defining feature of the dating app since its launch in 2014.
The move comes as dating-app companies across the globe grapple with user fatigue toward traditional swipe-based platforms and slowing growth, prompting some, including Bumble and Tinder-owner Match Group, to roll out new features and artificial intelligence-powered tools aimed at improving engagement.
Continue reading...Advocacy groups sue Trump administration over targeting of International Criminal Court
Record-breaking El Capitan climber dies in Sierra Nevada fall
Jacob ‘Jake’ Whisenant died in Sequoia and Kings Canyon wilderness in ‘climbing-related incident’, authorities say
A 30-year-old California climber known for breaking speed records died after falling in the Sierra Nevada wilderness last week, according to authorities.
Jacob “Jake” Whisenant, from Mammoth Lakes, California, died in the Sequoia and Kings Canyon wilderness on 3 August, according to the Tulare county sheriff’s office coroner unit and the National Park Service (NPS).
Continue reading...Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from oil and gas assets since joining supreme court, analysis shows
Critics argue US high court justice should recuse himself from upcoming fossil fuel firms’ climate accountability case
The supreme court justice Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from his fossil fuel interests between 2005 and 2024, a new review of financial disclosures shows.
The analysis from the non-profit advocacy group and judicial watchdog Court Accountability, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found that even at the lowest range of estimates, Alito gained almost $400,000 from his oil and gas interests since being tapped for the high court by George W Bush in 2005.
Continue reading...Florida paddleboarder rescues woman from alligator attack
Mike Heard used his paddle to strike gator that had latched on to swimmer in Silver River after hearing yells of ‘Gator!’
A Florida paddleboarder rescued a woman from an alligator attack in Marion county over the weekend.
On Saturday, an alligator bit the woman on the arm while she was swimming in the Silver River, according to local reports citing Marion county authorities.
Continue reading...Bluesky’s active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app
Colombia searches for over 3,000 missing after powerful earthquake kills at least 179
What’s Scaleup Europe, the $5.7B fund that just backed satellite company ICEYE?
General Catalyst leads $1.1B round into 2-month-old River AI
Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s longtime COO, is leaving to ‘start something new’
Burnham urged by 50 police leaders to prevent early release of PC Harper’s killers
Letter signed by every chief constable in England and Wales warns freeing pair could weaken trust in justice system
Andy Burnham is facing an unprecedented mass call from police chiefs to block the early release of PC Andrew Harper’s killers, as unions warned his emergency plan to create more space in jails risked causing confusion or leading to prisoners being freed by mistake.
A letter signed by 50 police leaders across the UK, including every chief constable in England and Wales, called on the prime minister to do everything in his power to stop the killers benefiting from a programme designed to free up prison space, saying there was “a profound strength of feeling across policing” that this should not happen.
Continue reading...‘Abusive’ man found guilty of harassing Stella Creasy MP on tube train
Clifford Wilby, 63, blocked the Walthamstow MP from leaving, filmed her and talked about her ‘failings as a member of parliament’
A 63-year-old man has been found guilty of harassing the Labour MP Stella Creasy after he was “abusive and aggressive” to her on a tube train.
Clifford Wilby, of east London, saw the MP for Walthamstow in July 2025 on a Victoria Line train, Westminster magistrates court heard.
Continue reading...Will Andy Burnham’s everyday fixes be enough to get the public on his side?
The prime minister’s money-saving policies are popular but they are yet to convince voters he can take on the big things
It was last year that Martin Lewis, the money-saving guru, advised the government to find “100 small things that piss people off” and set about sorting them out.
That approach has been adopted almost immediately by Andy Burnham since entering office, as he began his programme of “everyday fixes” to tackle problems that can be dealt with through minor policy tweaks.
Continue reading...Alabama Republicans to pick nominee to challenge Democratic Rep. Figures in redrawn district
Приложение простояло 918 мс, а сборщик мусора отработал за одну: разбираемся, куда ушло остальное
Секундная пауза в Java‑приложении легко выглядит как проблема сборщика мусора, хотя сам GC может отработать за миллисекунду.
Разберём, как safepoint’ы заставляют JVM ждать отдельные потоки, почему профилировщик способен указать не туда и какими инструментами найти реального виновника.
Читать далееWill Andy Burnham’s everyday fixes be enough to get the public on his side?
The prime minister’s money-saving policies are popular but they are yet to convince voters he can take on the big things
It was last year that Martin Lewis, the money-saving guru, advised the government to find “100 small things that piss people off” and set about sorting them out.
That approach has been adopted almost immediately by Andy Burnham since entering office, as he began his programme of “everyday fixes” to tackle problems that can be dealt with through minor policy tweaks.
Continue reading...Infantino’s opponents developing new framework for running world football
Uefa, Concacaf and AFC working together on system
Fifa has ignored calls for an independent review
Gianni Infantino’s opponents are working together to produce a new framework for running world football to replace what they regard as a system of patronage that Fifa has adopted since he replaced Sepp Blatter as president 10 years ago.
Repeated calls from Uefa, Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation for an independent review of Fifa’s governance have been ignored by Infantino since his plan to sell off 21% of the World Cup was made public a fortnight ago, and the rebels are now understood to have taken matters into their own hands.
Continue reading...The brain may be about to have its Ozempic moment
Brazil election poll tracker: Who will be the next president?
University of Michigan to switch to pass/fail grades for first-semester students
School said it is pivoting away from letter-grading system to ‘curb the mental health crisis’ among college students
The University of Michigan will pivot to a pass-or-fail-style grading system, instead of letter grades, for first-semester students in an effort to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals”.
The school said in a notice on Tuesday that its goal was “to help first-year students acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivations to guide personally meaningful academic journeys” and foster “a culture of connection and collaboration – rather than competition”.
Continue reading...Luigi Mangione appears in pre-trial hearing before September trial begins
The U.S. Missile Stockpile Is Dangerously Low
How Iran Adapted Its Attacks as U.S. War Munitions Dwindled
At least 15 dead and dozens missing after ferry capsizes in Zimbabwean lake
Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs chooses former GOP Mayor John Giles as running mate
What effect will Donald Trump’s childhood vaccine recommendations have in the US and beyond?
Is there any science behind the recommendations? Will they result in lower vaccination rates? And will they cause a resurgence of preventable diseases?
A new executive order from the US president, Donald Trump, calls for sweeping changes to childhood vaccine recommendations.
His plans would result in fewer vaccines being recommended overall; the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine being replaced with three separate shots, and all childhood immunisations being administered during separate medical visits “to the maximum extent feasible”.
Continue reading...Всё, что вы хотели знать о локальном ИИ, но стеснялись спросить
Если вы когда-нибудь смотрели на HF и не понимали, что такое DFlash, квантизация и почему одна и та же модель лежит в десяти репозиториях от десяти разных людей — или давно собирались поднять LLM у себя, но всё не находили повода — выход Muse Glimmer 30B буквально лучший момент начать. Буквально со своего MacBook Air. Ага, да вот уже сейчас прямо.
Погрузиться в мир локальных моделейМысли ИИ научились читать с помощью другого ИИ. Внутри нашли чужие пароли и ключи
Внутренние рассуждения передовых моделей, которые провайдеры прячут от пользователя, можно прочитать целиком и дословно, причем не атакуя саму модель. Восемь исследователей, в том числе из ELLIS Institute Tübingen, Института интеллектуальных систем Общества Макса Планка, Tübingen AI Center, MATS и Snyk, 10 августа выложили препринт "Stealing Reasoning Traces from Proprietary LLM APIs" с работающей атакой на модели трех крупнейших поставщиков: Anthropic, OpenAI и Google. Попутно авторы прогнали свой метод по публичным репозиториям и достали из чужих зашифрованных блоков 62 ключа API, 33 пароля, 24 токена доступа и еще несколько сотен секретов, о которых их владельцы не подозревали.
Читать далееПроклятие незнания, или Неочевидная ошибка учителя
Через несколько лет преподавания я уткнулся в удивительную вещь, которую надо бы иметь в виду всем, кто занимается обучением людей. Если кто-то где-то это уже встречал в сформулированном виде, напишите плиз.
В детстве я получил задание вскопать участок 3×3, а попадающиеся камни сбрасывать вон в ту кучу. Я провозился на одном квадратном метре полчаса, углубившись на две лопаты. Я считал, что главный смысл моей работы в том, чтобы очистить землю от камней. А надо было просто вскопать участок (на одну глубину лопаты!) – подготовить его к посадке чего-то там. Камни уж постольку-поскольку.
Часто преподаватели/тренеры/руководители, давая задание, исходят из того, что студент/подчинённый понимает не только цель конкретно этого промежуточного задания, но и КОНЕЧНУЮ цель процесса, частью которого это задание является. Это описанная когнитивная ошибка: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Проклятие_знания
А потом ругаются: «Я вам сто раз объяснял». И вроде бы он всё верно объяснил, но не обозначил, что в задаче принципиально для конечной цели, а что не очень (для него-то ведь это само собой разумеется).
Читать далее