DL Open Thread: Monday, May 5, 2025
Trump Abandons Any Pretense Of Ethics, Rakes In Dirty Money From All Over. Trump Cryptocurrency. Trump’s Corrupt Kids:
A contest of sorts has played out across Europe, the United States and the Middle East in recent days as President Trump’s two older sons have pursued a blitz of family moneymaking ventures capitalizing on their father’s name and power, each seemingly trying to outdo the other.
It is a rush to cash in that involves billions of dollars with few precedents in American history.
A luxury hotel in Dubai. A second high-end residential tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Two cryptocurrency ventures based in the United States. A new golf course and villa complex in Qatar. And a new private club in Washington. In many cases these new deals promoted over the last week will personally benefit not only Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., but also President Trump himself.
I’m certain, certain, that the Democrats have raised all kinds of hell about that. Right? Uh, right? No? Guess they’ve given up on going after Trump’s serial corruption. Silenced by Hunter’s laptop? Or, just cowardice?
Could Trump Influence The Election Of The Pope?:
As Catholic cardinals prepare to choose a successor to Pope Francis, church leaders, politicians and pundits blasted President Donald Trump on Sunday for sharing an AI-generated image of himself on a throne in the cassock and miter of the pontiff.
“This is an image that offends believers, insults institutions and shows that the leader of the global right enjoys being a clown,” former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi wrote in a social media post Saturday.
The pope is the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. The image, shared late Friday by both Trump and the White House, drew quick condemnation.
Of course, not all Catholics are offended:
Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a historian of U.S. Catholicism at Notre Dame, said Trump’s post reflects the support and trust that Trump enjoys among millions of Catholics.
“It makes sense in Trumpworld. He has been empowered by Catholics,” she said. “This might be new levels of audacity and disrespect, but many American Catholics have ceded a great deal of power and moral authority to the current president. Whether that makes sense to others, it’s true.”
“So they trust Trump more than the pope. It’s mind-boggling but part of the reality.”
Cummings said the post marks the dramatic shift in U.S. history from a time just a half-century ago, when Catholic politicians had to emphasize that they would be loyal first to the United States, not the pope.
“It’s almost absurdist to get to this point so quickly,” she said. “Now [some Catholics] are insanely loyal to the president to the point that they think this is a great idea despite the clear disrespect.”
Trump Not Sure He Needs To Follow The Constitution. It’s not like he swore an oath or anything…:
The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment says “no person” shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”; it does not say that person must be a U.S. citizen, and the Supreme Court has long recognized that noncitizens have certain basic rights. Trump has also said that while “we always have to obey the laws,” he would like to see some “homegrown criminals” sent to El Salvador as well, a proposal that was widely panned by legal experts.
When Welker tried to point out what the Fifth Amendment said, Trump suggested that such a process would slow him down too much.
“I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said. “We have thousands of people that are — some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.”
“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he added.
Israel Plans To Capture All Of Gaza. Why not? They’ve killed almost everybody who lives there:
Israel approved plans Monday to capture the entire Gaza Strip and remain in the Palestinian territory for an unspecified amount of time, two Israeli officials said, a move that, if implemented, would vastly expand Israel’s operations in Gaza and likely bring fierce international opposition.
Israeli Cabinet ministers approved the plan in an early morning vote, hours after the Israeli military chief said the army was calling up tens of thousands of reserve soldiers.
The new plan, which the officials said was meant to help Israel achieve its war aims of defeating Hamas and freeing hostages held in Gaza, also calls for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to move to Gaza’s south — which would likely lead to their forcible displacement and exacerbate an already dire humanitarian crisis.
The war has already displaced more than 90% of Gaza’s population, often multiple times, and turned many parts of it into an uninhabitable moonscape.
Everybody OK with this?
What? I’m supposed to not include this??
Charter School of Wilmington has been named the national winner in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow STEM competition on April 28. After pitching their own STEM solution to judges in Washington, D.C., the student team earned a $100,000 prize package with the national title.
The problem? Delaware’s physician shortage. The solution? An AI-powered smart bandage.
The competition challenges public middle and high school students to create a tool or project to solve a problem in their communities using STEM – or a fusion of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. In Wilmington, that was the “AKQUA-Gel” hydrogel bandage.
It’s an artificial intelligence-powered smart bandage with “IoT sensors and 3D-printed components that monitor wound healing in real-time.” Linked to a mobile app, it can track biomarkers like moisture, pH and more, according to students, then provide data to patients and doctors.
“Our bandage has the most potential to create change in our heath care system,” one student team member, Niharika Addagada, said in a promotional video students had to create to pitch their project.
The Delaware charter school joins only Arizona’s Bentonville West High School and Indiana’s Bloomington High School South as national winners. They rose to the top among thousands of entries, then 300 state finalists, then 50 state finalists and just 10 national finalists.
Delaware’s team members are Aishwarya Reddy, Asvika Gobinathan, Elaine Zuo, Anna Huang, Arya Anilkumar, Subiksha Srinivasan Vidya and Niharika Addagada, while the team is moderated by teacher Cindy Tanzer.
What do you want to talk about?
“monitor wound healing in real-time”
It would be great if this technique can reliably log the progress of wound healing.
Patients in long-term care such as nursing homes are plagued by bedsores, which are caused by pressure and are hard to heal, but can be prevented by staff frequently turning and repositioning the patient. But that level of attention can be inconsistent, to put it charitably.
If this technique can reliably log healing of bedsores and provide actionable evidence, I’m betting the nursing home industry will fight implementation.