Vesper

here is an injury stat Stones has not started 6 consecutive games since 2017-2018

Stones off here comes the stretcher

Stones injured

Dias roasted he has been obverall pretty poor this season

1 nil Mbappe super goal

nil 1 Salah

https://www.vipleague.pm/football-sports-stream https://redditsoccerstreams.org/ https://soccer-100.com/league/uefa-champions

https://www.vipleague.pm/epl/aston-villa-vs-liverpool-1-live-streaming https://www.vipleague.pm/epl/aston-villa-vs-liverpool-2-live-streaming https://redditsoccerstreams.org/event/aston-villa-liverpool/1507688

https://www.vipleague.pm/champions-league/borussia-dortmund-vs-sporting-cp-1-live-streaming https://www.vipleague.pm/champions-league/borussia-dortmund-vs-sporting-cp-2-live-streaming https://redditsoccerstreams.org/event/borussia-dortmund-sporting-cp/1506905

Chelsea view Enzo Maresca’s style as a route to success – and they’re building the club around it https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6143724/2025/02/19/Chelsea-enzo-maresca-style/ A particular S-word was notably prominent in the stated rationale of Chelsea’s co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart when Enzo Maresca was announced as the club’s new head coach on a five-year contract last summer. “We are delighted to welcome Enzo to Chelsea,” they said in quotes published on the club’s official digital platforms. “He has proven himself to be an excellent coach capable of delivering impressive results with an exciting and identifiable style.” Style. Maresca’s achievement in guiding Leicester City to promotion from the Championship as champions impressed Chelsea’s senior leadership, but what helped set him apart from the other candidates to succeed Mauricio Pochettino was the manner in which his team did it: playing a style of football that offers control, balancing chance creation with defensive solidity. A style of football heavily influenced by Maresca’s mentor Pep Guardiola, the most consequential coach of the modern era. A style of football that Chelsea believe suits the players they have signed and the ones they intend to sign in the future. A style of football they believe offers the best chance of transforming this vast recruitment project into a consistent winner on the pitch at the highest level. Eight months in, Chelsea under Maresca are a long way from that and trending alarmingly in the wrong direction. Two wins in nine Premier League games have dropped Maresca’s young team, depleted by injuries to several key players, from second to sixth and many of the performances have indicated that their style of play is malfunctioning. Without a recognisable No 9 in their last two matches against Brighton, other words beginning with S came to mind watching Chelsea’s attempts to play Marescaball: sluggish, stale, sterile, spiritless, self-defeating. Many of the supporters who twice made the miserable trip to the Amex Stadium would probably venture a few more, not suitable for print. Chelsea have been in difficult form recently (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images) If there is a continuation away at Aston Villa on Saturday it is highly conceivable that Chelsea’s next outing at Stamford Bridge — against Southampton next Tuesday — will feature Maresca facing noises of disquiet from the stands, similar to those aimed at Maurizio Sarri. Sarri was the last Italian who attempted to implement a grand, progressive idea of football at a club that has spent most of this century defining itself in opposition to philosopher coaches like Guardiola and Arsene Wenger. Sarri’s appointment was the clearest manifestation of previous owner Roman Abramovich’s own Guardiola fascination, but ultimately for the Russian the glorious end always superseded the stylistic means. All the signs are that Clearlake Capital’s commitment to the school of football represented by Maresca is much deeper and all-encompassing. There were three significant BlueCo coaching hires last summer. Maresca was by far the most high-profile appointment, but former Benfica academy coach Filipe Coelho was also recruited from Estoril Under-23s to establish the principles of possession-focused, positional play in Chelsea’s development squad. Sister club Strasbourg replaced Patrick Vieira with Liam Rosenior, a bright coach highly regarded by Winstanley and Stewart who was tasked with developing young talent within a dynamic, progressive style of football. Clearlake want all aspects of the BlueCo operation to have a coherent on-pitch identity. This is the one they have chosen and it extends to the younger age groups of Chelsea’s academy under the leadership of Glenn van der Kraan, appointed academy technical director in October after four years spent as head of youth coaching at Manchester City. Within that context, hiring Maresca is a far bigger and more important bet by this Chelsea ownership than the appointment of Graham Potter, their ill-fated first attempt to find an emerging project coach to lead the post-Abramovich era in September 2022. One of the leadership’s regrets about turning to Pochettino in the summer of 2023 is that it was a half-measure that delayed the pivot to this long-term direction. Their full-throated conviction on Maresca was underlined by the tabling of a five-year contract with the option to extend by a further year — offered in part due to the consideration that the Italian might be on City’s wish list to succeed Guardiola if he had chosen not to extend his stay until 2027. Commitments of this scale and substance are not typically undone by a bad run of form. Behdad Eghbali and Chelsea’s other co-owners are committed to the style in many ways (Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images) Chelsea want Maresca to be their long-term leader and he is less than halfway through what is regarded at Stamford Bridge as effectively a double season, with two Premier League campaigns book-ending the inaugural expanded Club World Cup in the United States. The next Pochettino-style review led by Winstanley and Stewart — who retain the full trust of ownership, despite the criticism frequently directed at them from supporters — has always been projected to take place in the summer of 2026, and there is no appetite to bring that forward. But the eternal truth of football is that results and performances shift more than fan sentiment. Maresca’s public insistence that his job is not contingent on Champions League qualification is technically true, but it does not reflect the strength of the desire and the sense of urgency at every level of Chelsea to see the club back at Europe’s top table as soon as possible. More of that desire and urgency must be seen on the pitch in the final 13 matches of the campaign, even in the face of a daunting injury situation. Last summer, Chelsea fully expected teething problems and difficult moments during the adaptation process to Maresca’s style of football. There was also a strong belief going into the campaign that the talent level of the first-team squad was worthy of a top-four finish. Maresca will likely need to get creative with his tactics to halt Chelsea’s slide and keep pace with a resurgent City, Bournemouth and Newcastle United — particularly up front, where Nicolas Jackson’s absence radically changes what the team can and cannot do in the final third. But even Guardiola’s dominant run in England has been underpinned by a willingness to evolve and adapt his approach to different personnel, circumstances and opponents. Premier League football is an ever-shifting landscape, as the City manager referenced in a recent interview with TNT Sports. “Today, modern football is the way that Bournemouth play, that Newcastle play, like Brighton play,” he said. “Liverpool is a bit like that, like we were (before the injuries). It’s modern football. It’s not positional — you need to rise the rhythm (to an) unbelievable (level).” Chelsea’s “rhythm” has deserted them in the last nine matches, but the style Maresca was hired to implement is one they are determined to master.

Arsenal and Chelsea told eye-watering price tag for Borussia Dortmund star Jamie Gittens has continued to impress with Borussia Dortmund and the young English winger is being eyed by the likes of Arsenal and Chelsea - who will need to cough up big money to land him https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/arsenal-Chelsea-dortmund-gittens-price-34698384 The likes of Arsenal and Chelsea have been told by Borussia Dortmund that it will take upwards of £80million to land Jamie Gittens this summer. The English winger has enjoyed a breakout year with the German side and a number of clubs in the Premier League are now looking to bring him home. Gittens has 16 goal involvements across his 33 appearances with interest in him growing. Dortmund have endured a poor season and are in the bottom half in the Bundesliga having recently sacked Nuri Sahin as manager. It means failing to qualify for the Champions League could force them into selling one of their prized assets. Bild though reports that those at the club won't be letting Gittens leave on the cheap and are likely to demand a fee of around €100m (£83m) if they are to see the 20-year-old, who was in Chelsea and Manchester City's academies, leave the club. Dortmund have continued to be shrewd sellers over the years with their top talent being moved on for sizeable fees. In recent summers they've seen both Jude Bellingham and Erling Haaland leave the club. Those two transfers landed them more than £100m in profit. They've also shown that they have an eye for English wingers with Jadon Sancho, who was signed from City as a teenager, going to the club and becoming a huge hit before Manchester United came in and bought him for £73m. Gittens scored a stunning solo goal earlier this season against Bayern Munich, earning his side a point, with Sahin saying about the winger: "When he gets rolling, he's a fantastic player. He's also made huge strides defensively." Former Dortmund striker Karl Heinz-Riedle told The Sun earlier this season that Gittens has the potential to emulate the likes of Sancho and Bellingham. He said: “Jamie is still not 100 per cent what we expect from a world-class player - but he has all the talent to become one of those. He can become the next Sancho, Erling Haaland or Bellingham.” Gittens, who was in the Manchester City academy with Cole Palmer, has continued to enjoy a rapid rise and came off the bench in last season's Champions League final. A reunion with Palmer at Chelsea would likely require the Blues to first sell such is the size of their squad. Arsenal meanwhile are under pressure to add more attacking depth with Gittens potentially on the market.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/trump-living-costs-crisis/681669/ Woe to the American consumer. The price of groceries, gas, housing, and other goods and services jumped 0.5 percent from December to January; the cost of car insurance is up 12 percent year over year and the price of eggs is up 53 percent. “On day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again,” President Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail. That is not happening. Worse, the White House’s early policies are making it more likely that the country’s cost-of-living crisis will endure for years to come. Voters’ dissatisfaction with inflation delivered the White House to Trump; Americans cited the economy as their No. 1 issue, inflation as their No. 1 economic concern, and Trump as their preferred candidate to handle it. On his first day in office, Trump ordered the government to deliver “emergency price relief” by figuring out ways to expand the housing supply, streamline the health-care system, eliminate climate rules on home appliances, and expand energy production. Each of those policies would bring down costs, if enacted, as would Trump’s deregulatory agenda. But as a general point, the White House has fewer ways to quickly temper consumer prices than it does to, say, bolster or lower demand—a problem that bedeviled the Biden administration too. The Federal Reserve controls borrowing rates. The housing and child-care shortages are the products of decades of underinvestment, the former also heavily influenced by municipal policies that Washington has no say in. The trillions of dollars spent by billions of consumers on billions of products generated by millions of firms—the gravitational forces of supply and demand, settled on liquid international markets and affected by government policies only on the margin—are what determine how much people pay at big-box stores and the gas station. The policies the Trump White House has enacted are likely to make the cost crisis worse. Trump has described the word tariff as “the most beautiful” one to appear in the dictionary. He insists that adding levies to the goods produced by foreign companies will boost national industry and keep American households from getting ripped off. But economists from across the political spectrum agree that tariffs are taxes paid by domestic consumers. They increase prices. Trump has backed away from the tariffs he proposed on Mexico and Canada in his first weeks in office. Yet he has implemented new levies on Chinese goods, spurring Beijing to retaliate with levies on American natural gas, oil, and farm machinery. This week, Trump also announced new steel and aluminum tariffs, raising costs for American automakers, energy companies, construction firms, and other businesses working in heavy industry. If Trump ends up implementing trade restrictions on Canada and Mexico as originally proposed, or ones of similar scale, the effective tariff rate on American imports would increase from 3 percent to 10 percent—the highest in seven decades. Studies of the tariffs Trump implemented in his first term demonstrate what will happen. By the end of 2018, Trump’s trade policies were costing Americans an additional $3.2 billion a month at grocery stores and malls, while also reducing the variety of goods American consumers could purchase. And those tariffs were far more limited than the ones he has promised to impose this time. On top of making imports more expensive, Trump is raising the cost of hiring workers and doing business in the United States by cracking down on the flow of migrants. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has amped up its raids; Trump is also attempting to end birthright citizenship and close the borders. Fewer undocumented workers will enter the country, and fewer will remain. Undocumented workers, and immigrants in general, are crucial to millions of American businesses, particularly farms, construction firms, child-care providers, and delivery services. If you get rid of workers, production will go down and prices will spike. One new study found that the increase in deportations during the Obama administration led each average-size county in the country to forgo “the equivalent of an entire year’s worth of additional residential construction”—meaning 1,994 new homes—over three years. As a result, home prices jumped 10 percent. At the same time, Trump is silencing the country’s contagion-monitoring system during a bird-flu outbreak, meaning farmers might end up culling millions more chickens and dairy cows. (Bird flu is the reason egg prices are up so much to begin with.) He is also rattling the markets, leading companies to pull back on the kind of investments that would increase domestic production—presenting “a compelling case for taking some chips off the table,” as Tiffany Wilding and Andrew Balls of Pimco put it in a note to investors. All in all, Trump’s policies should add 0.5 percent to consumer costs this year, Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics told me, slowing GDP growth by 0.2 percent this year and 0.5 percent next year. He said he did not expect the country’s growth to be “derailed, given the economy’s strong underlying fundamentals and Trump’s willingness and ability to pivot on policy.” But it “will be meaningfully diminished.” America is lucky that its underlying fundamentals are strong. The stock market is high; unemployment is low; wages are going up; businesses are generating big profits. Still, people are struggling with a dire housing shortage, bruising out-of-pocket medical costs, and a severe undersupply of early-childhood-education options—as well as expensive eggs and unaffordable car and home insurance. Trump has yet to put out a policy agenda that would tackle those problems in the long term, and is backing away from his campaign promise to make America affordable again in the near term too. He seems to be betting that voters don’t care as much about the economy as they said they did. “They all said inflation was the No. 1 issue,” Trump said after his inauguration. “I said, I disagree. I think people coming into our country from prisons and from mental institutions is a bigger issue.” He added: “How many times can you say that an apple has doubled in cost?”

the youngest:

Ground defence: best U23 midfielders worldwide https://football-observatory.com/WeeklyPost492 Using technical data collected by our partners Wyscout, the CIES Football Observatory has developed various synthetic indices on a base of 100 to measure the level of performance of players in six areas of the game (more details ici). This Weekly Post presents the hundred U23 midfielders from 46 leagues around the world with the highest values in ground defence (see below). Borussia Mönchengladbach's Rocco Reitz has the highest score. The German is ahead of another big-5 league player, Barcelona's Spaniard Marc Casadó, and Genk's Guinean Ibrahima Sory Bangoura. After a season in the reserve team, Bangoura is emerging as a potential transfer candidate to an even bigger club. Two other players from outside the big-5 are in the top 10: Amine Lachkar (Willem II) and Nick Fichtinger (Zwolle). Tenth overall, Las Palmas' Portuguese Dário Essugo (on loan from Sporting CP) has the highest score among players who have not yet celebrated their twentieth birthday. The three youngest players in the top 100 are Frenchmen Ayyoub Bouaddi (LOSC Lille) and Warren Zaïre-Emery (Paris St-Germain), as well as Swede Lucas Bergvall (Tottenham). Of the 46 leagues analysed, 32 are represented by at least one player in the top 100. The ground defence index is calculated by adding up the defensive duels won by players below elbow height, pass interceptions and anticipations on loose balls (without clear possession) in relation to the average values measured at team and position level (on a pro rata basis of the different positions played). The value obtained is corrected by the success rate of ground duels undertaken and the sporting level of the matches played. Ground defence index, best U23 midfielers At least 450 domestic league minutes, season 2024/25 until 12/02/2025, 46 leagues worldwide

“A New Academic Publishing Model”: Right-Wing Dark Money Group Launches Fringe Medical Journal The right-wing RealClear Foundation’s foray into public health has been called “a mockery of scientific process.” https://www.importantcontext.news/p/a-new-academic-publishing-model-right This piece has been updated with research assistance from the Center for Media and Democracy. Last month, a prominent right-wing dark money group launched its own Academy of Public Health, complete with a new medical journal. At first blush, the RealClear Foundation’s foray into public health research looks like a serious venture. The academy’s webpage claims it is an “international association of public health scholars, researchers and practicing professionals in the field of public health and its many specialties,” and declares that “members are united in their commitment to open discourse, intellectual rigor and broad, equitable access to scientific discovery.” There is even a constitution and bylaws linked. The new journal’s website looks professional and makes four commitments—to “open access,” “open and rigorous peer review,” “rewarding reviewers,” and “a timely and efficient publishing process.” According to the site, the journal will cover “all aspects of public health, including epidemiology, environmental health, occupational health, behavioral health, pharmacoepidemiology, community health, global health, disease surveillance, biostatistics, medical informatics, health services, health policy, health economics, medical ethics and public health education.” But many of the names behind the new venture and publication have long histories of promoting COVID-19-related misinformation and contrarian medical positions, including questioning long-established pandemic mitigation strategies and the safety and efficacy of the mRNA vaccines. Several played a real role in politicizing the U.S. government’s response to the pandemic. Important Context has covered new right-wing groups with prestigious-sounding names that push out propaganda and launder the reputations of political operatives. In November, we reported on how the so-called American Academy of Sciences and Letters, seemingly named to echo long-established reputable organizations, was giving awards to fringe figures from the right alongside more credible academics. In our piece, we noted how the venture was backed by the foundation of an investment fund CEO who has been funding right-wing beachheads at prestigious universities. Another backer of the AASL—to the tune of $75,000–was the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a major funder of right-wing causes. Since the COVID pandemic hit, right-wing groups have been working to undermine public health institutions over their support for economically-disruptive interventions. Increasingly, medical contrarians and anti-vaccine scientists backed by right-wing money have been wading into the world of medical publishing. The anti-vaccine Brownstone Institute, for example, which is a central hub for those voices, calls the blog on its website a “journal.” Over the weekend, Important Context reported that Health and Human Services nominee and anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy Jr., had cited a flawed vaccine study during his Senate confirmation hearings that was funded by an anti-vax dark money group and published in a new scientific journal from an anti-vax LLC. The strategy of creating official-sounding front groups to peddle propaganda and muddy the waters around science is not new. Corporate interests have been using this tactic for decades to undermine the science and government response to problems like climate change and, more recently, COVID and pandemics. The new RealClear journal appears to be another example of this trend. “It is a common tactic to exploit the veneer of scientific credibility to push discredited theories,” said biologist Mallory Harris, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Maryland who studies the interplay between human behavior and infectious diseases. “Unfortunately, given this group's extensive political ties, I expect to see this ‘journal’ used to justify dangerous health policy unsupported by the body of actual evidence.” Harris was not alone in her misgivings about the new journal. Evolutionary biologist Carl T. Bergstrom of the University of Washington offered a similar assessment, noting on BlueSky that “the bylaws reveal a wild sort of National Academy of Sciences cosplay, dialed up to eleven and designed to exclude everybody except fellow...er...contrarians. Only members can publish, new members are brought in by existing ones, and the editor-in-chief cannot reject members' [papers].” The journal’s founding editor-in-chief is none other than Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician whose career trajectory has taken him from the vaunted Harvard Medical School to the anti-vaccine Brownstone Institute, where he served as the scientific director in 2022, bringing home over $100,000. Kulldorff is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which articulated an unprecedented herd immunity strategy to deal with the COVID pandemic. It urged governments to “focus protection” on the elderly and vulnerable while allowing businesses and schools to remain open in order to deliberately allow the virus to mass infect the population in order to quickly achieve herd immunity with minimal disruption. The document was widely rebuked by public health experts, including the director-general of the World Health Organization, who called it “unethical.” In a January 30 article on the journal’s website, Kulldorff outlined the alleged need for the new publication, bemoaning the problems with traditional academia and publishing. “Scientific journals have had enormous positive impact on the development of science, but in some ways, they are now hampering rather than enhancing open scientific discourse,” he wrote, adding that he proposed “a new academic publishing model.” Joining Kulldorff on the editorial board are a number of his contrarian allies, including names affiliated with the Great Barrington Declaration. The board includes the other co-authors of the document, health economist Jay Bhattacharya, a Brownstone alum who is now President Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health, and theoretical epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta of Oxford. There is also Scott Atlas, a radiologist and COVID herd immunity advocate who, as a Trump administration science adviser, assisted with preparations for the conference out of which the Great Barrington Declaration emerged. Atlas was tapped for his administration role following a push by the billionaire-funded dark money group Job Creators Network, which Trump megadonor Bernie Marcus founded. He is credited with selling the White House on herd immunity and inaction, downplaying the need for masks, lockdowns, and testing the height of the pandemic. The RealClear journal board also includes declaration signatories Günter Kampf is an associate professor of hygiene and environmental health at the University of Greifswald, Germany and Helen Colhoun, a professor of medical informatics and epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Bhattacharya is not the only Trump appointee represented on the editorial board. Marty Makary, a surgeon turned medical critique and wellness influencer, was chosen by Trump to lead the Food and Drug Administration. Like Bhattacharya, Kulldorff, and Atlas, Makary has cast doubt on the safety of COVID vaccines and downplayed the need for pandemic mitigation measures. Makary has ties to Brownstone too, joining Kulldorff and Bhattacharya, both of whom have had official roles at the institute, on a team of contrarian medical voices the group organized to advise a potential GOP-led congressional inquiry into the pandemic. Another Brownstone-affiliated journal editorial board member is Tom Jefferson, a UK epidemiologist who is a contributor to the conspiracy-promoting dark money group where he has written on topics like vaccine injury. Jefferson was the lead author of the controversial Cochrane review of the efficacy of masking against COVID. While Cochrane reviews are generally regarded as the gold standard, the 2023 mask review was marred by controversy due to Jefferson declaring that “there is just no evidence that [masks] make any difference”—a statement not supported by his own research. The Cochrane Library’s editorial-in-chief, Dr. Karla Soares-Weiser, even came out and rebutted the claim in a statement. “Many commentators have claimed that a recently-updated Cochrane Review shows that ‘masks don’t work’, which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation,” she said. Another notable name on the RealClear public health journal’s editorial board is Dr. John Ioannidis, a physician scientist and Stanford professor who famously co-authored an influential COVID seroprevalence study with Bhattacharya that was later revealed to have significant flaws, from methodological issues to undisclosed funding from the anti-lockdown founder of JetBlue. The journal’s other editor-in-chief is Andrew Noymer, an associate professor of Population Health & Disease Prevention at UC Irvine. Noymer has supported and defended COVID mitigation measures but advocated the lab leak explanation for the SARS-CoV-2 virus’ origins. Zoonosis remains the most likely and expert-favored pandemic origin story. In October, Noymer participated in a controversial health policy symposium organized by Bhattacharya, whose nomination he has supported, at which he suggested that Fauci had embraced premature reopening in order to cover up his involvement in gain-of-function research that allegedly created the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Another connection between the editorial board and the Stanford public health conference runs through David Livermore, a semi-retired honorary professor of medical microbiology at the University of East Anglia. Livermore is on the editorial board of Collateral Global, a UK-based anti-lockdown group Bhattacharya and Gupta were affiliated with as recently as last year that also has ties to anti-vaccine groups. The organization funded the Stanford health policy conference Bhattacharya organized this past fall. Harris told Important Context that despite the website’s sleek design, the journal and the individuals behind it “are making a mockery of the scientific process.” “As far as I can tell, many of the people involved with this project are close ideological allies operating far outside of the scientific community,” she said. “They complain about censorship and gatekeeping but it is also the case that it is sometimes hard to publish shoddy work based on bad ideas. Most of us don't create a fake journal to cope with that.” That sleekness cost money—something the right-wing RealClear Foundation has in spades. The foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit affiliated with the RealClear Media Group, has long been backed by a number of groups affiliated with major right-wing families like Uihlein, Koch, and Mellon. Important Context has previously reported on its funding. Last year, the foundation brought in more than $8.5 million in contributions and grants. Major backers included the Bradley Foundation ($250,000) and its affiliated donor-advised fund, the Bradley Impact Fund ($110,000). The Thomas W. Smith Foundation, the private foundation of hedge fund manager and right-wing mega-funder Thomas W. Smith of Prescott Investors, gave $500,000. Meanwhile, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Allegheny Foundation, both affiliated with the old Mellon family, gave $300,000 and $200,000, respectively. The Searle Freedom Trust, of the Searle pharmaceutical family, donated $200,000. Smaller contributions came from the Robert and Ardis James Foundation ($50,000), begun by the prolific quilter Ardis James and her husband, the State Policy Network ($50,000), which supports a right-wing dark money network across America, and the Dunn Foundation ($19,000). Founded by William A. Dunn, former founder and head of the investment firm Dunn Capital Management, the Dunn Foundation has been a major funder of groups in billionaire Charles Koch’s political influence network. RealClear also received a significant portion its fundraising haul in untraceable donations through DonorsTrust, a right-wing donor-advised fund popular among Koch network donors. The fund funneled more than $5.8 million to the foundation. The board chair of DonorsTrust, Kimberly Dennis, is also the executive director of Searle. Last year, the RealClear Foundation gave Bhattacharya its inaugural Samizdat Prize, an official-sounded annual award reserved for “for journalists, scholars, and public figures who have resisted censorship and stood for truth.” In 2022, represented by a Koch-funded lawfare dark money outfit, Bhattacharya and Kulldorff sued the Biden administration, alleging that it had coerced social media companies into censoring their content. The case failed at the Supreme Court last June.

Heads up... Trump just took control of independent federal agencies by executive order... https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/18/2304692/-Heads-up-Trump-just-took-control-of-independent-federal-agencies-by-executive-order Trump signed one of his most outrageous executive orders to "bringing independent agencies under the control of the White House." Which agencies? The actual executive order does not appear to name each agency. Federal employee firings already took place at FDIC and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which were considered independent. It's hard to believe that Speaker Johnson is letting Trump getting away with this power grab. Hopefully, federal employees unions or other parties will file an injunction lawsuit.

Musk and Trump Are Causing the Dumbest Imperial Collapse in History Empires have fallen before. But it’s never been this purely idiotic. https://prospect.org/world/2025-02-19-musk-trump-causing-dumbest-imperial-collapse-in-history/ A month into the second Trump administration, I think it is fair to conclude that the American empire in its current form is collapsing. The post-1945 global order, with the United States at its apex, is no more. America itself is not going anywhere—at least not yet—but the foundation of the empire, namely its structure of alliances and partnerships, has been dealt irreparable damage. Western Europe, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and especially Canada now view America with suspicion if not outright hostility, and they are right to do so. Now, the history of empires is the story of their rise and inevitable fall. As Herodotus wrote about Greek city-states, “most of those which were great once are small today; and those which used to be small were great in my own time.” But nobody has matched this current downfall for sheer egregious stupidity. Indeed, it’s hard to think of even a single competitor for that title. There have been, to be sure, many idiotic imperial leaders throughout history who helped blow up their empires through bungling and mistakes. Tsar Nicholas II was an incompetent boob whose closest adviser was a charlatan mystic, and he personally led the failed military effort during the First World War that eventually destroyed his regime. Yet Russia bore only a small share of the blame for starting the war in the first place, and other much better-governed empires like Germany and Austria-Hungary, which shared much of that blame, also collapsed because of the war’s strains. The eventual collapse of the Western Roman Empire began when a large Roman army was heavily defeated by Goths, who had adopted many Roman military tactics. The Eastern European Empire persisted for another thousand years, but it too eventually collapsed following military defeat at the hands of the Ottomans. That is how empires tend to fall. Either they are defeated in battle, and are conquered or collapse, or they suffer a succession crisis and fall apart (both often enabled by corruption and mismanagement). Or they are simply eclipsed by another power, as happened when the British Empire fell short and the U.S. succeeded it. President Trump, by contrast, was handed an empire in splendid condition. The core alliance of NATO was stronger than it had been in decades, as Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine pushed Sweden and Finland to join. Thanks to President Biden’s policies, the American economy was the envy of the world, with a post-pandemic recovery that outstripped any peer nation. The dollar was still by far the most important reserve currency, and the U.S. still had control over global financial pipelines. No serious threats were on the horizon, either. In its war with Ukraine, Russia has burned through most of its gigantic stockpile of Soviet-era military hardware, taken perhaps 800,000 casualties, and put its economy under terrific pressure. China, while the only peer competitor the U.S. has faced since 1991, is saddled with deep economic difficulties and looking down the barrel of population collapse. But Trump and Musk are blowing America’s imperial foundations to kingdom come. Take USAID, which as the largest distributor of humanitarian aid in the world, has both done a tremendous amount of good work and also served as a carrot for America’s global predominance—until now. The agency has been all but dismantled, unleashing havoc all over the globe. HIV and drug-resistant tuberculosis are now spreading unchecked in many countries reliant on USAID medication, both proving America cannot be trusted and threatening outbreaks of those diseases in the U.S. itself. Both Trump and Musk have attacked NATO; Trump has reportedly said he wants to withdraw from the alliance, while Musk has said it “needs an overhaul” and he wonders why it “continued to exist.” More importantly, Trump has repeatedly suggested annexing Canada, a NATO member. The enormous implications of this threat are clearly not getting through to many American elites. At The New York Times, Peter Baker has a column blithely speculating about which way Canadians might vote should they be annexed, concluding that Democrats would likely benefit. But this is not a political parlor game for Canadians. They are incandescently furious, and they are right to be. Canada stood shoulder to shoulder by America through the great bloodbaths of the 20th century. Since then, it has been a quietly loyal neighbor, making not a peep of trouble along the world’s longest land border, and providing a vast supply of energy, mineral, timber, and other exports to fuel the American economy. And this is the thanks they get: A senile fascist American president who suggests a war of conquest—and make no mistake, that is what it would take—because he wants to make America look big but doesn’t understand how the Mercator projection exaggerates the size of northern land masses—which, it’s been reported, is one reason for his coveting Greenland, too. Baker’s witless speculation isn’t even correct. Canadians, if they got to vote under American occupation—a big if—would obviously elect a Canadian nationalist party. Trumpism strikes directly at the heart of American power projection: trust. NATO members and other partners go along with the American-led order because it has been a pretty good deal, all things considered. Rather than exacting imperial tribute, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and the others were encouraged to develop and become rich. In return, they allowed the U.S. to develop overwhelming military dominance, and played along with our control over the global financial system. Threatening unprovoked war on a NATO ally for no reason destroys this trust—indeed, it makes clear that America is now a rogue state, led by erratic, violent madmen. Even Hitler felt he had to make up some lying pretext about German minorities being oppressed before he stole the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Trump just saw a map and thought, “I’ll have that.” Something similar is true of Trump’s threatened tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and Europe. We have pre-existing trade agreements with those countries—indeed, the one with Canada and Mexico was signed by Trump himself. Yet Trump will break his word on a whim. Again, the lesson is clear: America cannot be trusted, and all its former allies should start preparing for the worst, including developing their own nuclear deterrents in case of war with the U.S. itself. Some reserve currency replacement must be found, and new supply chains not reliant on the U.S. set up. Crash military buildups must be carried out to replace American security guarantees. You’d be a fool to rely on any American promises whatsoever, including ones made by Trump or Musk. These men lie as easily as they breathe. Now, should it annex Canada, Greenland, and/or anywhere else that catches Trump’s fancy, America would set up a new and different empire, much smaller and weaker, based around explicit violent threats rather than alliances. But it also might just fall to bits. Musk and his DOGE neo-Nazi teens have been firing tens of thousands of federal workers willy-nilly. The results have not yet been catastrophic domestically: utter chaos at national parks, an apparent sharp increase in airline crashes, and other problems. But the DOGE Muskjugend recently illegally fired many of the workers who secure America’s nuclear arsenal, apparently by accident, and they are rooting around in the IRS and the Social Security Administration (prompting the head of the latter agency to resign), which hold much of the most sensitive data in the government. It’s not hard to imagine this going world-historically bad. America suffered no military defeat. We were not outstripped economically by a bigger or better-organized competitor. Rather, we elected an insane tyrant who is blowing up the foundation of our international power for no reason, all while he lets a South African immigrant ultra-billionaire and his crew of teenybopper fascists tear the wiring out of the federal government—again, for no reason. Never underestimate the destructive power of stupidity.

Elon Musk’s DOGE ‘Savings’ Aren’t Really Savings DOGE is axing billions worth of federal contracts and leases — but that money is still allocated to specific agencies. https://www.notus.org/policy/doge-savings-congress Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency says it’s saving taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. In reality, none of the money has gone back to taxpayers yet — nor has it been cut from the federal budget. The cost-cutting blitz has already halted the spending of more than $55 billion, according to DOGE, although that number is difficult to verify as DOGE only lists around 20% of its line-item spending reductions on its website. That includes canceling programs ranging from billion-dollar IT-support contracts to $32,200 set aside for two students interning at the Treasury Department. “More of your tax dollars saved,” Musk posted on X after DOGE claimed credit on Thursday for saving $115 million in canceled contracts. A Trump administration official told NOTUS that “Depending on the funds” the money is “either repurposed or returned to the Treasury Department.” But it’s unlikely the White House will be able to unilaterally direct congressionally appropriated funds away from agencies, multiple federal budget experts told NOTUS, meaning those tax dollars aren’t likely to make their way directly back into taxpayers’ pockets or be used to pay down the national debt. Under the process for appropriating federal dollars, the funds are likely still sitting in government agencies’ coffers. “OK, we’re not going to spend it on this one project. Well, it’s still in this pool of money that the agency could spend for other projects that were similarly appropriated,” said Zach Moller, the director of the think tank Third Way’s economic program. “If that’s the situation, then there’s probably not going to be any savings.” Congress’ power of the purse allows it to dictate appropriations to federal agencies — including moving those appropriations around or rescinding them. Federal officials who decide to spend less than the congressionally appropriated amount — or want to cut spending altogether — must provide notice to Congress. Congress, in turn, has 45 days to pass a law allowing the rescission of funds. If Congress doesn’t pass a law, the funds must be spent as appropriated. Spending on contracts that agencies are obligated to must also be completed. The White House declined to say whether it sent a request to Congress to rescind money from federal agencies. “That’s sort of the general procedure that should be followed. It’s not being followed,” said Steve Redburn, a former senior government official in the Office of Management and Budget and now-lecturer at George Washington University. “Congress hasn’t, as far as I know, hasn’t received any requests from the administration to actually rescind the money, so it’s possible the money is simply being delayed by the disruption and will eventually be used as intended by Congress,” he continued. Neither DOGE nor the office of Speaker Mike Johnson responded to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the House Budget Committee deferred to the White House. But House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said in a Tuesday post on X that he wants Congress’ budget resolution to include “passing into law @DOGE’s identified waste in government.” And Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview on Fox News last week that DOGE’s work was “long overdue.” “It’s going to take somebody, probably from the outside, somebody like Elon Musk, to be able to do it and do it right,” Thune said. “Obviously they’re going to identify some things that, you know, perhaps can’t be changed or fixed, but there’s a ton of stuff out there, I think, can be done better.” Asked if Musk or others from DOGE have contacted Thune about rescinding funding, a spokesperson for Thune directed NOTUS to the Fox News interview. Without involving Congress in the process, it’s doubtful that DOGE can actually significantly cut government spending in a way that boosts savings for Americans. “Even to move stuff around in the various accounts in a particular department or agency will often require a reprogramming,” one House Democratic lawmaker told NOTUS. “That sometimes involves congressional assent.” The view from inside the Office of Personnel Management is that the DOGE team is focused on cutting what they can with little regard for where the appropriated money ends up. “It doesn’t seem like they’ve gotten that far,” one OPM employee told NOTUS. “They don’t appear to be considering the consequences of what they’re doing as a whole.” It’s unclear how long DOGE could continue to circumvent the process for reducing or stopping spending agencies. Multiple outside groups have accused Trump and his administration of executive overreach in lawsuits, citing the failure to reach out to Congress. Democratic lawmakers have signaled that Trump and Musk’s actions are likely to lead to more litigation that centers around laws on impoundment. Because of the legal requirements for rescinding funds, many of DOGE’s claims about saving taxpayer money are simply hypotheticals, according to Bobby Kogan, the senior director for federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress. “If they illegally cause us to not spend, then that means we have a smaller deficit. But it’s not like your taxes were any lower, right? You paid the same taxes,” Kogan told NOTUS. “The next step that I think is really important is that, because this is illegal, they’re not going to succeed at … lowering the deficit eventually.” There are still plenty of question marks around what happens next when it comes to axed appropriations. “We’re still trying to figure out what authority Elon Musk has in this process,” Moller said. “It’s unprecedented, it’s bizarre and it’s scary.” —

Anyone who gives Trump, at this point, any benefit of the doubt, after decades of skulduggery, corruption, olympian level lying, fraud (34 felony convictions, and multiple civil judgments againt him), an attempted coup d'état............... and now a staggering amount of unconstitutional actions that are putting the entire US system of governance in peril............ is simply being wilfully ignorant and/or a member of the MAGA cult.

What Gasperini said... "Lookman was not supposed to take that penalty, he is one of the worst penalty takers I've ever seen," Gasperini said after the 5-2 aggregate defeat. "He has a frankly terrible record even in training, he converts very few of them. Retegui and De Ketelaere were there, but Lookman in a moment of enthusiasm after scoring decided to take the ball and that was a gesture I did not appreciate at all."

Hands-On The Bulova Oceanographer GMT The "Devil Diver" has been issued a passport. https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/the-bulova-oceanographer-gmt Over the past few months, I have hinted at another value-packed travel watch soon to hit the market. As of last week, the wait is over as Bulova has announced the latest evolution of their vintage-inspired Oceanographer line via the new Oceanographer GMT. Taking the format of the brand's well-loved "Devil Diver" to new heights – in this case, cruising altitude – this new flyer GMT comes in three versions, costs well under $1,500, and there's a lume dial option with a dive bezel. Our own Erin Wilborn did a lovely job introducing these new models last week, so I don't have to belabor the specs. All three versions of the Oceanographer GMT have 41mm steel cases that measure 14.6mm thick and 45.2mm lug-to-lug. Lug width is 20mm, water resistance is 666 ft (~200 meters), the domed crystal is sapphire, the steel case back is closed (with room for an engraving, no less), and the movement in use is Miyota 9075, which offers local jumping travel functionality. With the specs out of the way, we can focus on the general execution of the three versions, which include a steel "Pepsi" GMT with a 24-hour bezel, a rose gold-tone "root beer" model with a black/brown 24-hour bezel, and finally, a Dive-GMT with an IP-treated dark metal case hosting a lume dial and a luminous dive bezel. Oceanographer GMT with Lume Dial Mechanically, all three versions are the same, with the 9075 offering a second timezone via a small "GMT" hand that coordinates with either the 24-hour bezel on the travel models or the 24-hour dial markings on the lume dial diver. Both of the travel models have full steel bracelets, while the diver has a rubber strap, and both the bracelets and the rubber are fitted with quick-change spring bars. For those uninitiated, the Miyota 9075 is a 4 Hz automatic movement with hacking, hand winding, and a date display. Miyota is part of the Citizen family of brands, and it offers a full "flyer GMT" function, where you can land in a new timezone and use the crown to jump set the main hour hand to a new timezone without affecting the rest of the timekeeping. If you cross midnight, the date corrects forward and backward. For accuracy nerds, Miyota lists a range of -10 to +30 seconds a day. For an anecdotal single point of data, I put one of these Bulovas on my timing machine, and it measured at +12 seconds/day, averaged across six positions. For those curious (as I was), Bulova has done a lovely job on the bezels, as the two models with 24-hour bezels are also fitted with a 24-click bi-directional mechanism. Conversely, the dive-specific model has a 60-click unidirectional action. Regardless of the format, the bezels feel great and have fully luminous markings. The 24-hour models have a heavy action with a very muted click while the dive watch is a bit clickier and also has a lovely action that feels better than I expect for this price point (especially when compared to the less tactile action of a watch like the Seiko SPB381). On wrist, you might be surprised by how the Oceanographer GMT feels compared to its measurements, this is thanks to its cushion-shaped case. As with past models of the Oceanographer and indeed similar case shapes from brands like Doxa or Zodiac, the 41mm sizing and not inconsiderable thickness of 14.6mm is well balanced by the very short lug-to-lug length of the case. All three versions wear smaller than I expected, and the stacked case design (where the crystal sits atop the bezel structure, which in turn sits atop the case) helps to keep the Oceanographer GMT from feeling slab-sided. Again, very Doxa-like, but that's not surprising given that the Sub 300 and the Oceanographer (or the Snorkel before it) both hail from the same era at the end of the 1960s. Case finishing is simple and largely polished, and that finish is mirrored on the outer link elements for the bracelets. The bracelets are also quite nice for the price point, with solid quick-change end links, split-pin construction (easy to resize with an inexpensive tool), and push-button safety clasps that have both three points of pin-set micro adjust and fold-out wetsuit-style extensions. In gold tone or steel, the bracelets taper from 20mm to 18mm at the clasp and come with plenty of extra links for big wrists. I removed seven links from these loaners to suit my 7-inch wrist. Weight once sized is 144g on steel and 104g on the rubber. Once sized, the bracelets feel thin but well-made, and they suit the look and feel of the watches rather nicely. I am very, very picky when it comes to rubber straps, and I would describe this option from Bulova as being fine. It is soft and comfortable while being quite sturdy at the mounting points, but I didn't warm up to the carbon-style imprint design, and I found that I very much preferred the lume dial diver on either a vintage-style Tropic strap (completing the '60s vibe) or a simple NATO (though I'll admit it will be tough to match the case finish with NATO hardware). Finally, we get to the Oceanographer's calling card – its unique dial design that features the distinctive and loveable three-dimensional cylindrical hour markers. When you mention this model, it's the first thing I think of and is as much a signature design element as it is part of the Oceanograph's vintage inspiration. Matched with those markers, all three versions of the Oceanographer GMT feature oversized and rather stubby hour and minute hands, tiny GMT hands, a simple seconds hand, and a date at three that is magnified via an internal cyclops fitted to the underside of the crystal (more vintage charm). The date is nicely done, with black text over white and a metal surround for the aperture. Finally, the dial text is not overdone, and you get some fun font elements with color for the "GMT" text and a special font for "Snorkel." The Bulova nameplate is applied below the 12 o'clock marker along with "Oceanographer," which remains one of my favorite names in all of watches. On the topic of the applied metal branding, as with past re-issues from the Snorkel and Oceanographer lineage, the brand signature retains the small connective elements between the letters of Bulova. Before I took the photos of the watch and started to work on the edits for those photos, I barely noticed this. In the images, it's much more noticeable than it is in person. Oceanographer GMT with Blue Dial Of the three versions, it's likely of little surprise that I prefer the lume dial dive-GMT iteration as I am 5 years old on the inside and will forever love a lume dial. That said, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the two 24-hour GMT versions, specifically the warm blue tone of the dial of the steel model and the full gold effect of the case and bracelet for the "root beer" colored model. All three have their own charm, and while I'd love to see a lume dial version with a brushed steel case, my fingers are most tightly crossed for an orange dial version that captures the look of the vintage Devil Divers. Lume on all three looks great, with the obvious showboat being the lume dial varient, which still manages excellent legibility thanks to the dark grey surrounds of the hour and minute hands. Also, extra points all around for the luminous bezel execution, the fully-lumed 0-15 track on the diver, and for how the hour markers work in conjunction with the lume and the 24-hour markings on the dial. Okay, we get it, a trio of nicely made, good-looking, and fun flyer GMTs – but what's the price? Well, the range starts with the diver at $1,295, while the steel "Pepsi" model bumps up to $1,350, and the gold-tone tops the range at $1,395 – and all three are currently exclusive to the Hodinkee Shop. While I plan to follow up soon with the GMT buying guide I mentioned in my recent review of the Longines Spirit Zulu time 39mm, for those that follow my GMT musings, the value statement for these is pretty clear. It's a flyer GMT for under $1,500 from a well-known brand. No, it's not the most inexpensive application of a 9075 (which can be found in watches under $700). Still, the Oceanographer GMT offers a lot of travel-friendly appeal while also pulling at the vintage heartstrings of the devil diving Snorkel. Obvious competition at this price point comes from another Hodinkee Shop exclusive, the Mido Oceanstar GMT LE for Hodinkee. It's also a bit under $1,400, has a flyer movement (in this case, from ETA) with somewhat better specs, and is 40.5mm wide and a bit thinner than the Bulova. That said, it's offered only as a 24-hour travel watch, with no option of a dive-bezel. Compared at a finer level, the Bulovas have better bezel action and grip, better lume, and more traditional bracelet options (the Mido comes with a steel mesh, leather, and a nylon strap – all quite nice). I prefer the dial design of the Mido, which is somewhat more refined when you get into the fine details. That said, the Bulova has those killer markers. What a time to be into travel watches. We have waited a long time to see the flyer functionality filter down into lower price points and that both ETA and Miyota have finally started to apply next-generation alternatives to the caller-spec 2893. From the Lorier Hydra SIII and the Seiko Prospex and SSK GMTs to the Mido, these Bulovas, several recent Citizens, and even multiple new options from Longines, it feels like a solid new GMT option is announced every other week from a variety of brands. To put a bow on this one, I think Bulova has done a lovely job of adding a travel complication to an already qualified dive watch design that maintains the brand's work in the space while also creating a new option for those who want a bit of late-60s style that is sporty, casual, distinctive, and ready to travel. Hit the comments below to let me know which of the three versions you like the best and where you'd love to take one for a full test in a different timezone.

dangerous insanity from Trump........... Trump says Ukraine 'should have never started' the war with Russia https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-ukraine-never-started-233129075.html