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Today’s edition of quick hits.
* This is a case worth watching: “A civil rights group is challenging legacy admissions at Harvard University, saying the practice discriminates against students of color by giving an unfair boost to the mostly white children of alumni.”
* The latest on Baltimore’s latest mass shooting: “At least two people were killed ... in a mass shooting at a block party in Baltimore early Sunday, officials said. ... Police said 28 others were injured, three of them critically.”
* Biden’s new rules on drone strikes: “U.S. military and C.I.A. drone operators generally must obtain advance permission from President Biden to target a suspected militant outside a conventional war zone, and they must have ‘near certainty’ at the moment of any strike that civilians will not be injured, newly declassified rules show.”
* If only climate deniers were moved by evidence: “Evidence for man-made global warming has reached a ‘gold standard’ level of certainty, adding pressure for cuts in greenhouse gases to limit rising temperatures, scientists said on Monday.”
* The idea is sometimes referred to as solar radiation modification, while others call it solar geoengineering: “The White House offered measured support for the idea of studying how to block sunlight from hitting Earth’s surface as a way to limit global warming, in a congressionally mandated report that could help bring efforts once confined to science fiction into the realm of legitimate debate.”
* This was never going to work: “A federal appeals court in Washington swatted down a lawsuit Friday from three House Republicans who faced fines for violating a pandemic-era rule that required members to wear a mask on the House floor. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Ralph Norman of South Carolina.”
* It sometimes seems as if he’s trying to destroy the platform he overpaid for: “As thousands of Twitter users reported problems attempting to access the social media site Saturday, Elon Musk tweeted he is limiting the daily number of tweets users can read.”
* In related news: “Twitter’s U.S. advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times.”
* And as long as we’re on the subject: “All the money and trolling can’t hide what’s obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention to his Twitter tenure: Elon Musk is bad at this. His incompetence should unravel his image as a visionary. ... This reputation as a genius, more than his billions, is Musk’s real fortune; it masks the impetuousness he demonstrates so frequently on Twitter. But Musk has spent this currency recklessly.”
I’ll be off tomorrow for the July 4th holiday, but you can expect a normal publishing schedule to resume on Wednesday morning.