OUR PICKSFlesh-Eating Drug | ‘Patriotic Hacking’ | Politicizing Science, and more

‘Patriotic Hacking’ Is No Exception  (Jason Healey and Olivia Grinberg, Lawfare)
Ukraine’s offensive cyber hacking against Russia, though perhaps for aims that the international community may agree with, is nonetheless a violation of cyber norms—which should be enforced without exceptions.

Capitol Rioter, a ‘One-Man Wrecking Ball,’ Gets 7-Year Term  (Associated Press)
A judge sentenced a Capitol rioter to seven years in prison Tuesday, calling the Iowa man a “one man wrecking ball” who helped in a sustained assault on a police officer.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Kyle Young in U.S. District Court in Washington to the long term, noting he had admitted to helping in the assault of a police officer during the January 6, 2021, riot. She gave him credit for the 17 months he’s been held since his arrest, meaning he likely will serve nearly six years in prison.
“You were a one-man wrecking ball that day,” Berman Jackson told Young.
The sentence is among the longest handed down so far in the riot, which halted the certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory and sent lawmakers running for their lives. The harshest sentence of 10 years behind bars was given to a former New York City police officer who assaulted an officer at the Capitol with a metal flagpole. About 900 people have been charged in the Capitol attack and more than 400 have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial.

Q&A: CDP Superintendent Tony Russell Discusses Training First Responders to Face the Worst  (HSToday)
“The training offered at the CDP matters and every member of the CDP family takes great pride in that fact.”

ISIS Cites Mar-a-Lago Search, Quotes Trump in Declaring U.S. a ‘Banana Republic’ Ready for ‘Islamic Storm’  (Bridget Johnson, HSToday)
The terror group said that “failure in the domestic level” and “severe frustration” from citizens could work to their advantage.

Get Used to Close Elections with Huge Consequences  (Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine)
We may have entered a new era of political gridlock in which swing voters are scarce and evenly matched parties clash again and again.

The Danger of Politicizing Science  (Jonathan Rauch, Persuasion)
Should academic journals appoint themselves social justice gatekeepers?Nature Human Behaviour, a respected member of the Springer stable, thinks so.
The insinuation of political agendas into science is nothing new; I wrote about it in my 1993 book Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought.” Back then, factions like creationists, Afrocentrists, and Marxists were hawking alternatives to mainstream biology, math, and social science. Today, the political right is hard at work scrubbing school libraries and curricula of what they deem to be critical race theory (whatever that is) and LGBT “grooming” (whatever that is).
Still, groundbreaking or not, Nature Human Behaviour’s manifesto deserves attention, because it represents an explicit endorsement of social-justice gatekeeping by a respected scientific journal. In its specifics, it is riddled with problems.

How to Protect Puerto Rico’s Power Grid from Hurricanes  (Anna Blaustein, Scientific American)
Energy experts say localized solar plants could strengthen Puerto Rico’s dangerously fragile grid.

The Terrifying Flesh-Eating Drug Meant for Horses That Is Now Hitting the Streets of America  (Alex Oliviera, Daily Mail)
‘Tranq dope’ Xylazine accounts for a third of OD deaths in Philadelphia - and causes festering wounds when injected.