That's cynically unsurprising.
Even Trump's most determined enemies are likely afraid of the potential fallout if it becomes widely known that the incoming PotUS deliberately and systematically stole sensitive documents specifically in order to sell access to them to foreign powers.
Of course, burying that fact also has consequences...
Oh look - a prisoner of a regime known to regularly torture prisoners has said precisely what the regime would want him to say.
Imagine that.
And as is always the case with such things, the upshot of it all will be that a handful of companies will have to pay fines that will amount to only a small portion of their profits and nothing will actually be done about the problem.
So for all intents and purposes, all it is is the federal government demanding, and receiving, a cut of the action.
This pretty much sums up the future.
In order to further and protect his own privilege and that of his ruling class cronies, Zuckerberg has to make it possible for right wing grifters and shills to thrive on Facebook.
And in order to make it possible for right wing grifters and shills to thrive on Facebook, lying has to be normalized. There can be no expectation of truth, because truth is not and cannot be a part of their message.
If you think about it, Trump is really a sort of simple and easily understood person.
He has no firm foundation for his ego, but since he's been pampered and coddled all his life, it's never faced any significant challenges either. So he's ended up with this grossly overinflated and terribly fragile ego, and it's basically a full-time job just keeping it inflated and protecting it from harm.
It's going to be up to future generations to deliver the full weight of the condemnation those fucking animals deserve, because unfortunately, the positions of power in the West today are held almost exclusively by psychopathic fuckwads and craven cowards who don't have the integrity and/or courage to make a stand.
More than any other time in my life, I find myself wishing right now that Hell is a real place, because the entire IDF, virtually every Israeli politician, a terrifying percentage of Israeli citizens and damned near every western politician of any note deserves nothing more than to burn in it for all eternity. They are each and all unforgivably evil.
I don't have any expertise with which to answer your question definitively, but I wanted to chime in to say that my first thought was exactly this: "hands that are gripped together are unable to present a threat to you, so it is a signal of voluntary vulnerability."
And rather than vulnerability, it might be more accurate to say that it represents submission, which would tie in with your second question, so it's not so much that one is signaling that one is not a threat to the god(s), but that one submits.
And in that context, it's likely noteworthy that the most common example of clasped hands outside of prayer is when one is earnestly begging something of someone else, and especially a favor or a certain inconvenience.
If the US had a caste system, and it was a legitimate reflection of individual worth, drug company executives would be at the bottom.
Oh look - bullshit from the NYT.
There are no meaningful "hopes" for a cease-fire, because everyone who's actually involved or even just honestly paying attention knows full well that Israel is never going to agree to one - that their one and only goal from the beginning was and is the annexation of the entirety of Gaza, and they're not going to stop murdering Gazans until they achieve that goal (if they ever atop at all).
This is just shallow propaganda to try to distract from the fact of Israel's malevolence and the complicity of its western allies, and most notably of the US.
The death of a civilization is inevitable just as the death of an individual is inevitable. Just like individuals, civilizations have a life span - they're born, then they live, then they die.
And there's a significant fact about civilizations nearing collapse that the cited author apparently neglects to note, and that unfortunately completely negates the "we need dramatic social and technological changes" prescription: due to the concentration of wealth and power in a relatively few hands (which the author does note, though only in passing), the populations of terminally ill civilizations can be roughly divided into two groups - the poor and powerless many who would make changes but can't, and the rich and powerful few who could make changes but won't.
Yes.
The goal - and this was already obvious long before the election to anyone with a functioning brain and a speck of intellectual integrity - was and is to destroy the last vestiges of American representative democracy and institute a kleptocratic oligarchy.
Is NBC News actually just now catching on?
NOT the DiCaprio one - I like this one much better.
A hotshot car racer persuades the class president of a small Minnesota high school to gamble on illegal car races to raise money for their school facing closure.
Part teen rom-com and part racing flick, and Stephen Sommers' directorial debut. Good cast - Matt Lattanzi as the caustic, moody and unexpectedly studious racer/delinquent and Loryn Locklin as the beautiful-under-the-frumpy-exterior class president, and the always-great M. Emmet Walsh as local villain Johnny "The Fat Man" Phatmun. Good cheesy fun.
A child witnesses drug dealers murder his parents. He escapes and grows up wild in the city's slums. Years later he emerges to help the residents of the area who are being terrorized by street gangs and drug dealers.
Stylish mid-80s cheese with a screenplay by the legendary John Sayles, a score by George Clinton and a pretty solid cast.
Gotta love the irony of a song that condemns having to "pick a tribe and hate the other side" that still can't manage to refrain from doing exactly that.