(02 Apr) 200,000 Rivets Secure the Ultra-Thin Aluminum Facets of ‘The Orb’ by Marc Fornes
Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY’s newest public work invites visitors to immerse themselves in a luminous installation.
https://s.faithcollapsing.com/8ms1q
Archive: ais: https://archive.md/wip/wKrJj ia: https://s.faithcollapsing.com/9qv89
#architecture #art #design #installation #marc-fornes #metal #public-art
#foto #fotografieren #mywork #Fotografie #Photography #fedibikes
Ha, freue mich schon auf den zweiten Teil. Nach #Ostern ist, neben dem #Radeln, genügend Zeit zur #Muße.
#Marc-Uwe #Kling @marcuwekling macht einfach tolle #Dinge. Danke!
Bleibt senkrecht und gesund!
Judge demands ‘some kind of evidence’ from Trump’s EPA to halt climate grants
Federal judge Tanya Chutkan issues restraining order pending new filings over billions in axed research grants
A federal judge considering the Trump administration’s abrupt cancellation of climate research grants worth billions of dollars
told government lawyers they had to produce
“some kind of evidence” of wrongdoing to back up such drastic actions.
Climate United, which coordinates investment in clean energy projects,
sued to seek access to $7bn that was frozen before it was cancelled on Tuesday night by #Lee #Zeldin,
the New York Republican congressman turned administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
In US district court in Washington on Wednesday, Judge #Tanya #Chutkan asked lawyers for the EPA:
“Can you proffer any evidence that [the grant] was illegal,
or evidence of abuse or fraud or bribery
– that any of that was improperly or unlawfully done, other than the fact that Mr Zeldin doesn’t like it?”
#Marc #Sacks, a government lawyer, said:
“The determination is based on the information contained in the termination letter.”
Chutkan said:
“That’s pretty circular,”
then asked if Climate United had violated federal regulations.
Sacks said:
“I think the agency cited both of those regulations within their termination letter.”
Chutkan said:
“I can cite cases all day long, but you have to have some kind of evidence or proffer to back it up.”
She also said:
“You can’t even tell me what the evidence of malfeasance is.”
There is plentiful evidence that Zeldin is implementing an assault on attempts to tackle the climate crisis.
The EPA issued a slew of rollbacks of rules to combat pollution on Wednesday.
Zeldin said he was “driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age”.
Climate groups reacted with horror.
#Jason #Rylander, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, told the Guardian:
“Come hell or high water, raging fires and deadly heatwaves, Trump and his cronies are bent on putting polluter profits ahead of people’s lives.
This move won’t stand up in court. We’re going to fight it every step of the way.”
Climate United is not the only group to have sued over access to grants.
In New York, the Coalition for Green Capital has sued over the cancellation of a $5bn grant,
an act it called “patently and plainly unlawful on its face”
and “arbitrary and pretextual”.
In Washington, lawyers for Climate United argued that the EPA had not followed the law,
meaning Chutkan could rule on the matter.
Lawyers for the government said it was a contract dispute, so she could not.
Chutkan said:
“The government didn’t decide who it wanted to contract with.
A new administration came in, didn’t like the contract any more.
That’s what new administrations do.
But there are procedures that have to be followed.
And it doesn’t appear, at least on the record before me, that those procedures have been followed.”
The hearing ended without Chutkan issuing a ruling or temporary restraining order,
but asking both sides to make 
new filings by Monday evening:
Climate United to amend its lawsuit
and the government to provide information about alleged wrongdoing.
“I don’t have the credible evidence that’s required,” Chutkan said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/13/epa-grants-trump-judge-tanya-chutkan?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
urgh, LOC MARC data is not working properly. And here's me uploaded two books to internet archive that could really have used better metadata
#MARC MARC Train - Update: MARC Penn Line - Service Remains Suspended Rail Advisory
Published: Fri, 14 Feb 2025 20:19:50 GMT
Summary: Penn Line service remains suspended due to police activity near West Baltimore Station. Penn Line trains will not operate between Washington Union Station and Baltimore Penn Station until service is restored. The extent of delay is not known. Updates to follow.
Marc Forgione’s Italian Restaurant One Fifth Is Closing in Greenwich Village https://www.diningandcooking.com/1894991/marc-forgiones-italian-restaurant-one-fifth-is-closing-in-greenwich-village/ #closing #eater #fifth #food #FoodTopics #forgione #FrontPage #greenwich #in #is #Italian #marc #ny #one #restaurant #RestaurantClosings #RestaurantNewsBusinessFoodIndustry #s #village
Tech billionaire
#Marc #Andreessen is reportedly getting involved with #DOGE.
He’s also invested in the “network state” movement led by #Balaji #Srinivasan, which aims 2 build crypto-based countries within existing states
via the creation of
“parallel institutions” like X.
Listen. 1/
https://bsky.app/profile/jennycohn.bsky.social/post/3lc4wwzofo22v
2021:
Five years after mocking India's colonial past, #Marc #Andreesen, one of Silicon Valley’s foremost venture capitalists and a member of Facebook’s board, now wants to make money off India’s fancy for cryptos.
Andreesen’s venture, #a16z [founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz], along with Coinbase Ventures, has invested $260 million in Series C round of CoinSwitch Kuber, the four-year-old Indian start-up which is an aggregator of crypto exchanges.
Existing investors Paradigm, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global have also participated in the round.
Following the massive fund infusion, CoinSwitch has become the country’s second crypto Unicorn, valued at $1.9 billion, after CoinDCX hit $1.1 billion after a $90 million Series C round in August.
https://www.fortuneindia.com/opinion/hi-pmarca-welcome-to-colonial-free-india/105990
I've been fooling around with a #Python script for converting #MARC bibliographic records to #Markdown for use with a static website generator. Probably only has an audience of one (me), but it's not complicated and it solves an interesting problem for private #librarians: how can we get our collections out there when LibraryThing isn't enough but a full OPAC is too much?
Library of Congress has been experimenting with using gen #AI to create #MARC records.
LCCNs and ISBNs extracted from ebooks at around 85% accuracy, but subject headings, genre, and dates were only generated accurately at or under 50% https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2024/11/could-artificial-intelligence-help-catalog-thousands-of-digital-library-books-an-interview-with-abigail-potter-and-caroline-saccucci/
Attendees, with white-and-red gift bags and lanyards, knew to be closelipped when approached by hotel interlopers
or by the Times reporter, who was not invited to the closed-press festivities.
But a copy of the agenda listed remarks by several tech billionaires, including the Anduril co-founder #Palmer #Luckey and the venture capitalist #Marc #Andreessen, who spoke about his support for deregulating technology
and the mixed reaction in Silicon Valley to his endorsement of Mr. Trump, according to attendees.
There were tech up-and-comers, too:
Donald Trump #Jr. announced at the welcome dinner that he was entering venture capital.
And days before the president-elect chose Robert F. #Kennedy Jr. for health and human services secretary,
Mr. Kennedy spoke extensively about his public-health work to a standing ovation.
Ms. #Wiles also led a session on “2024 Election Analysis,” where she gave a preview of Mr. Trump’s first days as president.
“It’s the domestic ‘Davos in the desert,’” said the Rockbridge backer #Omeed #Malik, referring to the annual business conference in Riyadh, and Donald Trump Jr.’s new business partner.
Rockbridge began with more humility.
Back in 2019, Mr. #Vance, then best known as the author of “Hilbilly Elegy,” and a conservative media figure named #Chris #Buskirk began informally hosting a series of small dinners
that would eventually become called Rockbridge.
The group drew early support from the venture capitalist #Peter #Thiel and eventually caught the attention of Donald J. Trump, who spoke at a few meetings.
Once in the fall and once in the spring, Rockbridge began to gather at places like the Four Seasons in Palm Beach, Fla.,
or the Ritz-Carlton in Dallas for three days of political panels and business networking.
Speakers included people like #Tucker #Carlson; the Thiel protégé #Blake #Masters; the casino mogul #Steve #Wynn; the investor #David #Sacks; and #Woody #Johnson, the billionaire owner of the New York Jets.
Not all attendees have politics at the top of their mind.
Some are primarily interested in business, seeing Rockbridge as a conservative-tinged version of the elite Sun Valley conference.
After Flurry of Cabinet Picks, Trump Rethinks Candidates for Treasury Secretary
Donald Trump is expected to invite the contenders for the role, including Kevin Warsh and Marc Rowan, to Mar-a-Lago this week
Trump is eyeing a new candidate for Treasury Secretary amid internal debate over who should have the role:
the former Federal Reserve governor #Kevin #Warsh.
Trump is also considering the Wall Street billionaire #Marc #Rowan.
He had been expected to pick either #Howard #Lutnick, the chief executive of the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald,
or #Scott #Bessent, the founder of the investment firm Key Square Capital Management and a former money manager for George Soros.
And he had been seen as likely to make the selection late last week.
But he has been having second thoughts about the top two candidates, and has slowed down his selection process.
He is expected to invite the contenders to interview with him this week at Mar-a-Lago.
Mr. Lutnick, who has been running Mr. Trump’s transition operation, has gotten on Mr. Trump’s nerves lately.
Mr. Trump has privately expressed frustration that Mr. Lutnick has been hanging around him too much and that he has been manipulating the transition process for his own ends.
A person familiar with the process, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the battle between Mr. Lutnick and Mr. Bessent as a "knife fight", with Mr. Lutnick as the primary aggressor.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/17/us/politics/trump-treasury-candidates.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Trump Boosters Expect Big Returns on Their Investment:
‘The Shackles Are Off’
Wealthy donors to the president-elect’s campaign anticipate a more business-friendly atmosphere,
including the firing of Biden-era regulators.
Limit the reach of federal regulations on artificial intelligence.Make room for cryptocurrencies to thrive.Ease the antitrust crackdown on big tech companies.Buy more military drones. And don’t raise taxes on billionaires.
The to-do list for President-elect Donald J. Trump from #Marc #Andreessen, the venture capital billionaire from California, is long, but quite specific.
Now, after donating big money to Mr. Trump, Mr. Andreessen is eager to see his candidate work through the list
“It felt like a boot off the throat,” Mr. Andreessen said about Mr. Trump’s victory during a podcast conversation this month with his business partner.
“Every morning I wake up happier than the day before.”
Mr. Andreessen’s excitement is a hint of just how broadly the victory by Mr. Trump has resonated with business executives who 
invested millions of dollars in his candidacy and now stand to profit from his policies.
Theirs is a circle of deep-pocketed industry winners that extends far beyond #Elon #Musk.
It is a more diverse group, at least in terms of business interests, than the one that surrounded Mr. Trump in his first administration, where executives from the oil, gas and coal industries were particularly dominant.
#Harold #Hamm, the billionaire founder of the Oklahoma-based 
oil and gas giant Continental Resources, is still in a position to benefit, from regulatory rollbacks that he and an affiliated trade association are already pushing.
But the list also includes:
#Joe #Lonsdale, a defense technology executive who wants to help the Pentagon revamp the way it fights wars;
#Cameron and #Tyler #Winklevoss, the twins who were known for their battle with Facebook, then became cryptocurrency investors and now want to shape the industry’s rules;
#Brian #Evans, the chief executive of Geo Group, the private prison giant that could benefit if Mr. Trump carries out his promise of large-scale deportations;
John Paulson, the hedge fund billionaire who could cash out of his investment in the federal government’s housing finance companies, Freddie and Fannie, if they are privatized under Mr. Trump.
“It will be a billionaires’ ball,” said Robert Reich, who served as secretary of labor during the Clinton administration and who has long been critical of the income disparity in the United States.
#BIBFRAME dilemmas for #libraries: Challenges and opportunities
By Richard Wallis
https://blog.metaphacts.com/bibframe-dilemmas-for-libraries-challenges-and-opportunities
Bei manchen #Bibliotheken kommt man dank Doku und Bsp. schon recht gut an die #Daten - und findet sich Momente später in verlassenen Wikis, verstaubten Excel-Tabelle und Webseiten des vergangenen Jahrtausends wieder, um irgendwie die Bedeutung der Felder zu dechiffrieren. Eine Möglichkeit, diesen Hermetismus aufzubrechen, besteht in der Umarbeitung des Dateiformats (#MARC -> semantisches JSON), was aber schlecht skaliert, kaum standardisierbar ist und Menschen nicht wirklich befähigt.
1/2
In September,
the day after the debate between Harris and Trump,
I spoke again with the lobbyist #Ed #Rogers.
“You know, I’m a Trump voter, a Trump donor,” he said,
“but I think Harris is going to win.”
Another Republican told me that, after Trump’s poor debate performance,
he had seen similar hand-wringing from other major donors:
“Can I stomach giving money to this guy and he keeps blowing it?”
In at least one notable case,
Harris managed to regain a major donor who had defected to Trump,
the Silicon Valley venture capitalist
#Ben #Horowitz.
Horowitz and his business partner, #Marc #Andreessen, who are both longtime Democratic givers,
had stunned the tech world in July by endorsing the ex-President,
citing, in part, Trump’s newfound support for the crypto industry.
But, in October, Horowitz announced that he and his wife planned to make a “significant donation” to Harris,
saying that, though the Biden Administration had been
“exceptionally destructive on tech policy,”
he had spoken personally with Harris, a friend from California,
and was “hopeful” that she would take a different approach.
“There was no real engagement by the Biden world with the business community,”
a Democratic donor who has spoken with the Vice-President told me.
“Harris has been very intentional about engaging.
She’s saying all the right things.”
Harris’s success with the moneyed class infuriated Trump.
“All rich, job creating people, that support Comrade Kamala Harris,” he wrote in a social-media post in September,
“you are STUPID.”
A couple of weeks later, he posted the
false claim that
Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan C.E.O., whom Trump had also mused about as a candidate for Treasury Secretary,
had endorsed him.
Not only was this untrue, as JPMorgan swiftly announced;
it turned out that Dimon’s wife had donated more than $200,000 to the Democratic ticket
and attended a dinner this summer with Harris.
As if to rebut the doubters,
Trump appeared in early October at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania,
the scene of the first assassination attempt against him,
alongside his wealthiest benefactor, Musk.
Trump had outsourced much of his campaign’s turnout operation
—the traditional preserve of the political parties and the candidates
—to Musk’s America pac.
Musk, whom the Times called “obsessive, almost manic” in his backing of the ex-President,
had all but relocated to Pennsylvania to oversee an effort to swing the crucial battleground state.
In Butler, he leaped around the stage in a black maga hat,
as the former President grinned with delight.
If Trump does not win, Musk told the crowd, “this will be the last election.”
A few days later, Harris’s campaign made a stunning announcement:
she had raised $1 billion in a matter of weeks,
the largest sum ever collected for an American politician in such a short amount of time.
Harris more than doubled Trump’s contributions in September alone.
Will it matter?
During the past two decades, the winner of the Presidential election has always been the better funded of the two candidates
—with the notable exception of Hillary Clinton, in 2016.
By Susan B. Glasser
October 18, 2024
Via #Georgia State Rep #SairaDraper @ 8:20pm EDT on Oct 15, 2024
The Georgia State Election Board’s hand count rule has been enjoined by #FultonCounty Judge #RobertMcBurney. Successfully blocked!
Addendum:
#Marc Elias and #DemocracyDocket @ 9:51pm
BREAKING: Georgia judge BLOCKS hand count rule passed by #MAGA members of Georgia State Election Board.
https://www.democracydocket.com/cases/georgia-cobb-county-state-election-board-rules-challenge/
Many technology companies would be more benign if they were owned and governed by their users.
Users have the most to lose from tech-driven addiction and automation,
and their data generate most of the companies’ value.
️User-owners would share in this value and have an incentive to keep companies from causing harm.
How might users come together to start and run more technology companies?
Bringing together a disparate and dispersed group of people is difficult;
-- economists call this the #collective #action #problem.
Influential nonprofits such as the Center for Humane Technology and Project Liberty can play an organizing role,
incubating a new generation of user-owned social media businesses.
While it’s a competitive field with entrenched players,
social media technology is not complex,
and there is a real hunger for more benign versions.
Existing firms can also be redesigned.
Instead of raising capital from profit-seeking corporations,
OpenAI could seek funding from users and give them representation on its board.
And with users on the board, the company might take more care to launch products safely
and dedicate resources to maintaining employment.
Most important, more of the financial gains of the AI revolution would flow to the people creating the value.
If #Keith #Gill,
also known as #Roaring #Kitty,
could organize retail investors to drive up the market value of #GameStop by $10 billion,
could a similar approach have been employed to acquire Twitter for users in 2022?
Given the millions of defections from the platform since Musk purchased it,
it may not be too late.
The government can also help if it’s not headed off by Big Tech political contributions.
The Small Business Administration,
the Department of Energy and
the National Science Foundation
should encourage user ownership of the companies they fund.
The venture capitalists of Sand Hill Road will of course scream that this is #socialism,
but they will be wrong.
It’s just business.
