To quote the related NYT article, "The order means the prosecution of Donald J. Trump in Georgia is effectively frozen, at least through the presidential election."

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I was posting this in another discussion today and thought others might also enjoy it.

This is easily the most informative – and moving – piece I have ever read on Haiti. It began as a journalist’s attempt to tally the actual numbers involved in all the money that has left Haiti over the centuries in unjust "reparations" to France -- essentially, having the slaves that freed themselves repay the value of their own bodies and labor to France -- and ended up being a great deal more.

This article also explores how it wasn’t just the loss of Haiti’s cash to France that has vastly impoverished Haiti and prevented its growth at the same rate as its Caribbean neighbors, but the parallel loss of not having any of that cash invested in its own people, commerce, or society: it was a crippling double blow that has gone on for centuries.

While this is a very long read, it is a deep and accurate dive into the French history, endless threats of war and repayments, and then the US coming into take whatever was left in the 20th century. And the pictures and illustrations are also incredibly good, especially the ruins of La Citadelle in the fog having just read exactly what it was there for.

If you're interested in Haiti and the chaos that is going on there right now, this is an invaluable read.

Suggesting that Americans inject disinfectants into their veins. Declaring that people believe he’s been treated worse than Abraham Lincoln. Claiming wind turbines are killing whales. Saying environmental regulations are forcing people to flush their toilets “10 times, 15 times as opposed to once.” Over the course of Donald Trump’s 77 years on earth, he’s had a lot of uniquely bizarre comments come out of his mouth. That streak continued over the weekend, as he reportedly suggested to a group of billionaires that Joe Biden had literally shit on a piece of White House furniture.

Archive link to above Vanity Fair article

From the original NY Times article quoted by Vanity Fair:

Mr. Trump blamed his successor, Mr. Biden, for the influx of migrants and mocked him and aides for what Mr. Trump said were bad decisions made around the Resolute Desk, which has been used by two dozen presidents.

“The Resolute Desk is beautiful,” Mr. Trump said. “Ronald Reagan used it, others used it.”

He then denigrated Mr. Biden, sounding disgusted, according to the attendee: “And he’s using it. I might not use it the next time. It’s been soiled. And I mean that literally, which is sad.”

The attendee who witnessed the moment said that dinner guests laughed and that Mr. Trump’s remark was interpreted as the former president saying that Mr. Biden had defecated on the desk.

Archive link

Excerpt:

It’s extremely difficult to square this ruling with the text of Section 3 [of the Fourteenth Amendment]. The language is clearly mandatory. The first words are “No person shall be” a member of Congress or a state or federal officer if that person has engaged in insurrection or rebellion or provided aid or comfort to the enemies of the Constitution. The Section then says, “But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such disability.”

In other words, the Constitution imposes the disability, and only a supermajority of Congress can remove it. But under the Supreme Court’s reasoning, the meaning is inverted: The Constitution merely allows Congress to impose the disability, and if Congress chooses not to enact legislation enforcing the section, then the disability does not exist. The Supreme Court has effectively replaced a very high bar for allowing insurrectionists into federal office — a supermajority vote by Congress — with the lowest bar imaginable: congressional inaction.

This is a fairly easy read for the legal layperson, and the best general overview I've seen yet that sets forth the various legal and constitutional factors involved in today's decision, including the concurring dissent by Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson.

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Brett Kavanaugh, the US supreme court justice, will “step up” for Donald Trump and help defeat attempts to remove the former president from the ballots in Colorado and Maine for inciting an insurrection, a Trump lawyer said.

“I think it should be a slam dunk in the supreme court,” Alina Habba told Fox News on Thursday night. “I have faith in them.

“You know, people like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place, he’ll step up. Those people will step up. Not because they’re pro-Trump but because they’re pro-law, because they’re pro-fairness. And the law on this is very clear.”

The senior employees described Altman as psychologically abusive, creating chaos at the artificial-intelligence start-up — complaints that were a major factor in the board’s abrupt decision to fire the CEO

Gift link to article: https://wapo.st/3RyScpS

Sam Altman has been fired as CEO of OpenAI, the company announced on Friday.

“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the company said in its blog post.

EDITED TO ADD direct link to OpenAI board announcement:
https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition

EDITED November 28, 2023 to add:

I resolved it, but only by purchasing a "known good" driver-in-kernel wifi adapter from the list at:
https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/main/home/The_Short_List.md

The one I got was the "ALFA Network AWUS036ACM Long-Range Wide-Coverage Dual-Band AC1200 USB Wireless Wi-Fi Adapter w/High-Sensitivity External Antenna - Windows, MacOS & Kali Linux Supported" off Amazon (non-affiliate link) which was one of the few available as many of the chipsets included in the kernel are older and no longer for sale. But this one ticked all the boxes, came in at under $50, and when I plugged it into my Zorin box after booting it was recognized immediately and connected without a hitch.

So now it's in a box and on its way to BIL, who can now use it to test distros. Win/win. To all who responded, thanks for all your help!

First, my sincere apologies if this is a stupid noob question. I have a lot of tech experience but virtually none with Linux, so keep that in mind: I really have zero idea what to expect as I go along.

So I've been trying out multiple distros on my old mid-2010 MacBook, and have not had any problems at all: they have all seen my Broadcom wifi chip out of the box and just worked without a hitch.

On the other hand, my BIL (who heard about what I was up to and is now also trying out various distros via LiveUSB sticks I send him) has a MacBook Pro one year older, and NONE of the distros he's tried even see the onboard wifi. No wifi icon, no wifi in settings, it's like wifi doesn't exist. Ethernet shows up just fine, though.

When I looked into it further and had him do a specific lspci query to find out exactly what chipset he has, turns out he has a known problem: his particular MacBook Pro uses a Broadcom BMC4322 (432b) chip, which has only limited support under Linux via "wl" and maybe a "brcmsmac" driver written for legacy Broadcom wifi chips.

That's fine once he installs Linux, if he does, but right now he's just doing LiveUSB trials. We don't want to change anything on his existing hardware or HDD.

Okay, so maybe I can add some driver files to the LiveUSB or something? . . . nope. Not a good idea, because the other part of the whole fix is installing firmware, which has to be in place before the drivers will work -- but this chip is also still being used by the onboard Mac OS.

Needless to say, we can't do anything that might break his current Mac install. So anything involving firmware is not a good plan. Not only that, but I'd be doing separate drivers for every distro he wants to try.

Also, the house router is in a really inconvenient place, and without going into details, physically wiring him up via Ethernet isn't an option. If he wants networking, it has to be wifi.

So then I thought that since USB wifi dongles are cheap, we could just get him one, which would allow me to personally test it out and do whatever needs to be done on the driver side before he ever even sees it.

There's a little Netgear one that's under $40 that I have my eye on; it has to be physically tiny so he can still use the only other USB port tight up against it for the LiveUSB stick, and this fits the bill. They're handy to have, so even if he never goes full Linux we'd just keep it as a backup for ourselves. Win/win.

So here's my question for you good people. Keeping in mind he's still trying distros and has not even begun to settle on one, will a secondary USB wifi dongle allow him to test distros with wifi via LiveUSB sessions?

Are most standard USB wifi dongles supported out of the box by mainstream Linux distros?

Does anyone else have any suggestions on how to get wifi going via LiveUSB just long enough for him to try individual distros?

Many thanks for any help you can give.

This might be a really stupid noob question, but I am looking to move to Linux from Windows/Mac, and am about to install an SSD into my very old test machine for Linux distros.

You might have seen my recent post asking for recommends: it has the hardware specs of my test box, and I've updated it with the list of distros I intend to try.

My test box still has a working HDD in it, so no action is required immediately.

But my question is: once I decide on a distro and start moving machines over to Linux, what kind of manual care do I have to put in to maintain my SSD drives, if any?

For each box with a SSD drive and Linux as the OS, do I need to do TRIM manually, do I need to turn it on for a "set and forget" type scenario, or are recent and regularly upgraded distros able to spot a SSD and do the necessary without my intervention?

I guess what I'm really asking is: is SSD TRIM support pretty much standard now across distros, or is it something I need to investigate individually for each distro I install?

I recognize I may just need to ask this again once I settle on a distro, but since I'm trying so many -- and may fully install more than one -- I thought I'd get a jump on it.

EDITED TO ADD: Many thanks to all who took the time to answer. Now I know exactly what to read up on, and if necessary, look up how to do manually for whatever distro(s) I settle on. I -really- appreciate the help. Thank you!

Hi all, I'm dipping my toes into Linux again after almost 30 years, and I'm looking specifically for any distros that will run on a mid-2010 Macbook (Intel Penryn-3M Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM and a 1T HDD). Video is integrated Nvidia GeForce 320M.

I've already tried Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon booting off USB (but not installing) and it runs well, even wifi and video, no hitches at all. And going forward I'd be fine with Mint from what I've seen so far.

But before settling in on one distro, I'd like to try as many as will run on this ancient Macbook, because my endpoint is to eventually convert my much newer Windows machines to Linux, so I'm not just deciding for the Macbook. I am, however, limited to that as my test machine for the moment.

I'm not at all new to tech, but consider me a noob to Linux, esp Linux GUIs: last time I ran it in the early 90s it was text only. I don't even remember what flavor it was, lol. So yeah, I'm starting from scratch here but can pick it up quickly if I'm pointed in the right directions.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

--------------------------

Many thanks to everyone who gave me their time and made suggestions. I was looking for myself as well, so now I have many distros to try, lol. I have checked the system requirements and install directions for each of the following, and here is the list I have so far of distros that will work on this old MacBook (not in any particular order):

Will definitely try
Linux Mint 21.2
OpenSUSE Leap 15.5
AntiX 23
Debian 12 "Bookworm" with Xfce
Peppermint OS
Linux Lite 6.4
MX Linux 23 (after RAM upgrade)
Pop! OS 22.04 (after RAM upgrade)

Might also try, but might not (various reasons):
Zorin OS 16.3 Core and Lite
Solus 4.4 "Harmony" with Budgie (after RAM upgrade)
Fedora with Xfce

Thanks again!