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The Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention got wild yesterday. As wild as a gathering of right-wing lawyers can get, anyway. Actually, I guess the wildest a gathering of right-wing lawyers can get was January 6, so this was just slightly less than the wildest a gathering of right-wing lawyers can get.

Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones took the opportunity of sitting next to Georgetown University Law Center Professor Steve Vladeck to go, I believe the technical term is “absolutely bonkers.” An eye-popping and eye-rolling meltdown from a federal judge.

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In the first month of its electric train service, Caltrain saw over 753,000 passengers — a 54% increase from October 2023 and its best ridership numbers since the coronavirus pandemic, according to new figures released by the transit agency.

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FDJ-Suez saw a major boost to its bold plan to win the Tour de France Femmes with Demi Vollering.

The French squad confirmed this week that co-backers FDJ and Suez both extended their financing commitments through 2028.

The long-term backing will give the team all the financial flex it needs in its mission to become a bone fide “super team” led by new-signed Dutch superstar Vollering.

It’s also expected that the squad will soon confirm it will switch to Specialized bikes for 2025.

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A bollard at the Lidl supermarket in Netherfield has been painted again after cars kept crashing into it. The post, rapidly becoming infamous amongst the population of the Nottinghamshire suburb, was collided with on a regular basis by customers of the shop.

It was previously bright yellow and four-feet tall, having replaced a smaller bollard that was removed and increased in size to make it more visible. But the size increase clearly wasn't enough - and now, black hoops with a fluorescent trim have been added to its design in a further attempt to curb the repeated incidents.

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Bollards provide the least expensive way to begin to unravel routes for motor vehicles from those for cycles. Bollards offer one of the simplest and most effective cycling measures. But it must be remembered that there is no single technique which works everywhere. Doing this is a first step applicable in some places but you need to also do all the other effective things to achieve a high cycling modal share. ...

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As bitter adversaries, the Trump administration and Maduro regime didn’t agree on, well, anything. Except for the fact that the US government wanted Maduro gone.

After that UN meeting, the Trump administration amped up its efforts around the world to isolate and depose the Venezuelan leader, including by levying additional punishing sanctions against his regime. Much of that diplomatic maneuvering played out in public. But the administration also put into motion another, very much secret prong to the US’s regime-change campaign: a covert CIA-run initiative to help overthrow the Venezuelan strongman.

That campaign would pull off at least one disruptive digital sabotage operation against the Maduro regime in 2019. But the CIA-led initiative—alongside the Trump administration’s wider efforts to get rid of Maduro—would fall well short of its ultimate goal. The story of that secret anti-Maduro effort also lays bare the tensions between an administration with hardliners laser-focused on deposing the Venezuelan autocrat and a CIA deeply reluctant, yet nevertheless obligated, to follow White House orders. It shows the limitations of covert, CIA-assisted regime change schemes, particularly when they are not aligned with larger US foreign policy objectives. And it provides new insights into how a second Trump administration—or a Harris presidency—might still try to dislodge the Venezuelan strongman, whose latest sham reelection in July 2024 has again thrust his country into chaos.

The details of that covert CIA-assisted campaign, told exclusively to WIRED by eight Trump administration and former agency officials with knowledge of the anti-Maduro operation, are reported here for the first time.

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I voted for Megan Barry.

Hi, I’m a fool who is setting myself up to get fooled again, who has apparently not learned any lessons, and I’m here to eat a little public crow.

A year ago, I said I wouldn’t vote for Megan Barry in Tennessee's 7th Congressional District race, that I’d just write someone else in. But when I was actually standing there at the ballot screen, I poked her name with the coffee stirrer they handed me at the check-in station.

Opinion: Nashville's former mayor announced her candidacy for U.S. Congress. Have we forgotten how her term ended?

Nothing about my opinion on Barry has changed. She pleaded guilty to a felony. She’s lucky she didn't face prison time. And I personally find the enthusiasm about her candidacy shameful and confusing. But she’s not Mark Green. She’s not on the record voting for the cruel, anti-regular-person agenda of the Republicans. She’s not going to give a shit about who is doing what in my vagina, and she’s not going to vote to force women to serve as the mausoleums of dead fetuses. Plus, she’s not Trump’s buddy.

I can’t say the same about incumbent Mark Green.

I also voted for Harris. I’m not excited about her. Watching her slide right to pander to a bunch of Republicans who want to be lied to that they’re still important and someone still thinks they’re smart and worthwhile, and that once the Trump fever dream has ended, they can go back to being in charge of the Republican party makes me want to vomit. It’s so typical of the Democrats to try to build coalitions with people who hate them.

And I have lefty friends who aren’t going to vote for Harris because she won’t take a decisive stand on Israel and our nation supplying weapons that Israel is using to attack hospitals and kill children. And I get it. I do. Seeing all the images of dead children, it’s just not bearable. Seeing that guy hooked up to an IV, burning alive in a hospital bed?

The conservative Republican's divorce scandal further demonstrates what we already knew about the congressman's cruelty

But will there be fewer of those atrocities if Trump gets back in office? Is America going to become less hateful? How can we say we’re on the side of the downtrodden and vulnerable and then stand back and not do the one thing that would prevent Trump from implementing his evil plan to deport everyone he doesn’t like?

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — During the six decades since United Record Pressing stamped out the Beatles’ first U.S. single, the country’s oldest vinyl record maker has survived 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, Napster, iPods and streaming services. Now, the Nashville-based company has rebounded so dramatically that some of its equipment and technology has been retrofitted to keep pace with an ever-growing demand for old-school vinyl.

The 75-year-old company has adjusted its business from filling jukeboxes to helping DJs spin and stocking shelves despite a pandemic. On shelves in its warehouse are master versions by Johnny Cash, Kanye West and The Black Crowes.

When Mark Michaels bought the company in 2007, vinyl was fading — its 38 employees mostly made singles for rap artists, often promos for clubs. Michaels wanted a hands-on chance to build a business and thought he could keep this one steady, but not grow it substantially. It also came with a rich history as the first record pressing plant in the South, including an apartment atop the factory that housed Black artists and music executives during segregation.

“You walked into this building and you just felt 50, 60 years of history and just the importance of what it stood for,” said Michaels, the company’s CEO and chair. “And yeah, you you get choked up, you get gooseflesh just experiencing that.”

Today, United Record Pressing runs a newer factory six times bigger than what Michaels bought, with about 125 employees who make up to 80,000 records a day.

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In April, Gov. Bill Lee signed into law House Bill 843, which mandates that “materials in a library collection must be suitable for the age and maturity levels of the students who may access the materials and must be suitable for, and consistent with, the educational mission of the school.”

The full text of the bill and those suitability requirements can be found here.

As a result, schools have begun removing from their shelves books students have read for decades. At a school board meeting in Wilson County on Thursday, Director of Schools Ed Luttrell included in his report a full list of 390 books that have been banned by the county. The titles include “The Green Mile” by Steven King, “Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold, “Wacky Wednesday” by Dr. Seuss, “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline, “The Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead and more.

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