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submitted by /u/Alaskerian [link] [comments] |
Thank you.
I live in a small cabin in the woods. Rodents and bugs are a constant problem. I'm getting them under control but mice had completely taken over my stove (your typical low-end GE range) and were stuffing every opening with nesting materials, making the whole thing smell like urine. Just a bad situation...
I made the best of the situation, threw it out, and bought a couple nice, easy-to-clean countertop burners that I actually much prefer to the old oven for day-to-day cooking. But I still want to be able to bake. I'll do the occasional pizza or casserole, but mainly I'm very picky about good results when baking bread. Good rise, even heat, yada yada.
I'm looking at a few different options. There's the typical wall-mounted, consumer-grade option, which would probably be about I'm used to. But it's a tiny kitchen, can I get similiar or better results with something smaller?
There are consumer countertop steam oven like this, but are there any that wouldn't feel like a downgrade from a full-size oven?
What's the downside of going for a countertop commercial convection oven like this?
Basically if you had to buy 1 device solely for producing the best loaf of bread once-a-week or so (while also working as a normal oven), what would it be? Budget preferrably not much higher than $1,000.
James Gilbert/Getty Images
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis met with prominent business leaders in London as a part of a four-stop international tour but leaders told Politico that his speech was less than exciting.
Multiple figures at the Friday event described the DeSantis as "low-wattage" and "horrendous."
One business person, who remained unnamed, told Politico that DeSantis's message wasn't "presidential" and said he stared at his feet in the face of UK industry titans.
Another said "nobody in the room was left thinking, 'this man's going places.'"
"There wasn't any stardust," the second anonymous attendee told Politico.
DeSantis is expected to announce his 2024 campaign for president next month, once a bill that would allow him to run while still holding office makes its way to his desk.
The observation that the high-profile Florida politician may not be charismatic, especially compared to other GOP politicians, is something that former President Donald Trump pointed out as early as January of last year, Axios reported.
Trump, who announced his third presidential campaign in November of last year, trashed DeSantis in private as someone with a "dull personality," according to sources close to the former president who spoke to Axios.
It seems Trump is sticking with that point, according to a report from Politico. Sources told the outlet in March that Trump's election team will be focusing on using DeSantis' "personality factor" in a political brawl between the two.
It's not just Trump either: GOP strategists have spoken to outlets decrying DeSantis' supposedly unlikable personality. Multiple people who spoke to Vanity Fair in September told the outlet his temperament would hinder his political chances on a national stage.
"The biggest complaint you hear about DeSantis is that he never says thank you," a veteran GOP strategist told Vanity Fair. "People host events where donors give him enormous sums of money, and he never says thank you."
DeSantis's polling numbers against Trump may be a reflection of his charm as well. Recent polling from Fox News shows Trump as a favored candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination, at 51% among GOP primary voters, compared to DeSantis's 30%.
When asked about his drop in the polls by The Wall Street Journal, DeSantis blamed it on the fact that he isn't a presidential candidate yet.
"I'm not a candidate, so we'll see if and when that changes," DeSantis said on Monday.
A representative for DeSantis did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Pic in comments
Nicolas Warmé, Inrap
A 2,000-year-old necropolis — a city of the dead — has been found in an excavation near Notre Dame Cathedral.
The remains of at least 50 men, women, and children were found in coffins discovered during a dig to expand an existing commuter train line in the former Gallo-Roman town of Lutetia, where the iconic Parisian cathedral stands today.
"What's so exceptional about this is that we have a window into our past, which is quite rare in this city," El Pais reported Dominique Garcia, president of France's National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), which led the project, said.
In the 2nd century, the living kept their distance from the dead, burying their loved ones in elaborate sprawling tombs, called necropolises, built to honor those who had passed on — and kept them detached from the cities of the living.
Camille Colonna, Inrap
"Drawing on their funeral rites, we can reach a kind of general vision of the people who lived in Paris in the second century," Garcia added.
At least half of the burial sites contained artifacts like cups, dishes, and other pieces of glass, according to a press release from INRAP. Others contained clothing, jewelry, pins, and belts.
"At that time, the feeling was that there was another life after death, so people placed things in the grave that would help the dead person to survive in the afterlife," El Pais reported Garcia said. "That's why objects from everyday life have been found, as well as pitchers that very likely contained food."
Camille Colonna, Inrap
In some coffins, the dead were buried with a coin placed in their coffin or in their mouth — "this practice, common in antiquity, is probably the obol of the ferryman of the underworld, Charon," according to INRAP.
One pit unearthed by the researchers contained the skeleton of a whole pig, though it is unclear what purpose it may have served.
Representatives for INRAP did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Nicolas Warmé, Inrap
According to Smithsonian Magazine, this isn't the first time the site, named the Saint-Jacques necropolis, has been unearthed by researchers.
In the 1800s, a portion of the ancient cemetery was unearthed by surveyors who were more concerned with the artifacts buried with the dead than the skeletons themselves. So they covered the site back up, only for it to be lost in time for two more centuries.
After a 2019 fire caused damage to the historic structure, the area surrounding the Notre Dame Cathedral has been the subject of recent archaeological digs. Last year, researchers unearthed — and opened — a mysterious, human-shaped lead sarcophagus discovered underneath the cathedral.
Inside were human remains, later identified as belonging to Antoine de la Porte, 83, a high priest who died in 1710. According to Smithsonian Magazine, archaeologists learned the man's identity and age from writing discovered on his coffin.
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I just sampled the beef jerky I’m making and it’s too sweet. How can I save the flavor? It’s about 3/4 of the way through with drying. It has room to be saltier. Would it be safe to rehydrate it with some soy sauce + water?
Runway AI // PIzza Later
The days of expensive commercial budgets, large teams of creatives and actors putting together scenes, and time-consuming delays over visual effects will soon be over. Maybe.
At a time when chatbots are sounding more human than ever and art generators can create images that look like photos, a YouTuber named Pizza Later proved that with a bit of creativity and know-how of various AI tools, you can make a commercial in under three hours that might get noticed by Twitter CEO Elon Musk and the official Pizza Hut account.
Pizza Later, who withheld his name to keep his online anonymity, told Insider that he works in motion graphics during the day. For almost a year, he's been tinkering with applications like Midjourney and Runway AI — a video generator — which is how he got the idea to create a commercial for a fictional pizza joint called Pepperoni Hug Spot.
Inspired by a "terrifying" AI clip of Will Smith eating spaghetti created on Runway, Pizza Later began putting together clips of people eating food to send to friends.
"And then from there, I just kind of sourced out the rest of the clips, just kind of imagining what else would be in a television commercial for a pizza place," he said.
He told Insider the entire process took three hours on Monday during a slow day at work. All the assets in the commercial were made with AI, from the resonant, professional-sounding voice-over to the bizarre clips insider the Pepperoni Hug Spot pizzeria.
"I'm old enough to remember a time before YouTube, and stuff used to be so time-consuming. And before my current job, I was actually in video production. I know how long it takes to set up lights and microphones and all that entails. So even though this stuff is really rough right now, it blows my mind."
Here's how you can make your own AI commercial.
The foundation of every good commercial is a script to guide the production. Pizza Later said he used GPT-4, the newest version of GPT, to create the dialogue for the voice-over. Since ChatGPT launched in December, there has been a rise in content creators using the application to make their jobs easier.
"I'm not much of a writer, so it would probably take me much longer to come up with a script," he said. "Even as simple as the few lines that are in there."
Runway AI // Pizza Later
The sentences in the Pepperoni Hug Spot commercial are noticeably grammatically incorrect and don't sound like something GPT would produce. Pizza Later said that he intentionally asked the program to write this way to add to the eerieness and humor of the commercial.
He also said the name "Pepperoni Hug Spot" was something he brainstormed with GPT.
"It doesn't mean anything obviously. But it sounds funny. So that was when I went with."
AI voiceover technology has become a pest in the music industry, as users online are releasing music pretending to be Drake, The Weeknd, and Travis Scott, as well as a meme online (like Joe Biden and Donald Trump yelling at each other through gaming headsets while playing Overwatch).
It's also helpful for creating a commercial without hiring a voice actor. Pizza Later told Insider that he used Eleven Labs to create the voiceover by plugging in the script created in GPT-4.
"I had it do three or four different reads because it varies in tone and sort of the speed with which it reads," he said.
The stills in the AI pizza commercial, including the final exterior shot of the phony pizzeria, were created using Midjourney, which Pizza Later described as "mind-blowing." To create an image, all you need is a descriptive prompt. According to an AI prompt engineer that previously spoke to Insider, this means using a thesaurus to modify phrasing, paying attention to the verbs, and specifying the intent of your prompt — like asking it to create images in the style of a certain art technique or film style.
Midjourney // PIzza Later
The most noticeable aspect of the Pizza Hug Spot commercial was the video clips created using AI. Yes, they were disjointed, disconcerting, and full of discrepancies, but to create original video clips out of nothing wasn't even possible even a few months ago, Pizza Later said.
For the Pepperoni Hug Spot commercial, Pizza Later also used Runway AI, a text-to-video generator, to create short clips to add to the commercial. He told Insider he wouldn't be surprised if video AI technology became just as real as image generators in the near future.
Even AI music generation is now a thing. The software used in the pizza commercial, Soundraw, creates custom music in various genres, moods, and lengths. It allows you to choose specific instruments as well.
Most of the results sound extremely bland and corporate, but that might be just what you need for a commercial.
The only part of the process that AI cannot do (yet) is video editing — in the commercial, the VHS filters, transitions, and some noises were all added in manually. However, Pizza Later said the AI made putting together the video much quicker.
"What I see in the future, and probably not too distant, especially if this progresses as quickly as something like Midjourney has, is let's say your favorite show comes out on Netflix or to your new favorite show, and it doesn't get renewed the next season. But I now have access to this video software or the software that allows me to generate video clips... all I have to do is ask it to create a 30-minute episode of my favorite show or an episode of 'Friends' that never existed before."
After releasing the commercial, Pizza Later said he was surprised by the widespread online reaction. Along with some humorous comments, he pointed out that many people did not even know some of this technology existed.
"I got a lot of really funny comments. Lots of like 'oh, this is nightmare fuel, but like the best kind of nightmare fuel.'"
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submitted by /u/LittleRickyPemba [link] [comments] |
I found a whole turkey in the freezer and I'm wanting to make a roulade. Ive just never done anything like this.
I'm cutting and deboning the turkey myself I feel comfy with that part.
Just how do make it dry and tips for the stuff I don't want to make it thanksgiving like
Mike Blake/Reuters
A 28-year-old writer for FX's award-winning series "The Bear" said he's looking for jobs at movie theaters as members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) prepare to go on strike Tuesday to demand better pay from studios.
Alex O'Keefe, one of seven writers for the comedy starring Jeremy Allen White, told The New Yorker that writing for an acclaimed show has not translated into a glitzy Hollywood lifestyle.
"It's a very regular-degular, working-class existence," O' Keefe, who has also worked as a speechwriter for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, told the magazine.
O'Keefe did not respond to a request for comment.
While writing for the show for nine weeks, O'Keefe lived in a small apartment in Brooklyn without heat, wrote at a public library when the power was out, and was never flown to the set, according to The New Yorker.
—Alex O’Keefe 🌻 (@AlexOKeefe1994) April 17, 2023
When the show was nominated for Best Comedy Series at the Writers Guild of America Awards in March, O' Keefe told The New Yorker he attended the ceremony with a negative bank account and dressed in a bowtie purchased with credit.
The writers won the Best Comedy Series award that evening, beating "Abbott Elementary" and "Barry."
"Unfortunately, I realized not all that glitters is gold," he said.
About 98% of eligible WGA members — representing thousands of TV and film writers — voted to authorize a strike if a deal is not struck with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) by their contract's May 1 expiration date.
The members' demands are better compensation and residual rates or pay for reusing a writer's work. Charles Slocum, an assistant executive director for the WGA west coast division, told Deadline part of the problem is streaming services decided to pay residuals at a lower rate than traditional broadcasting outlets.
As streaming services slash costs by removing shows from their libraries, writers are paid fewer residuals, the Associated Press reported.
The union also wants to address "mini rooms," which allow studios to pump out a script with fewer writers before a show is greenlit. There are also concerns about using artificial intelligence to produce material.
"The survival of writing as a profession is at stake in this negotiation," the guild said in an email to its members obtained by Deadline.
Spokespersons for WGA and AMPTP did not respond to a request for comment.
O'Keefe told The New Yorker that his compensation does not add up to much after accounting for representative fees and taxes. Agents or representatives who help clients obtain work and negotiate contracts typically take a percentage of a writer's check.
Television writers are paid weekly rates, according to WGA's compensation guide. A showrunner told Insider that first-time and newer writers could make around $40,000 to 60,000 for ten weeks of work.
O'Keefe said the experience has been disillusioning.
"A lot of people assume that, when you're in a TV writers' room, you sit around a table, and you just dream together," O'Keefe told the magazine. "With 'The Bear,' I learned from these masters that, if you are given a shit sandwich, you can dress that up and make it a Michelin-star-level dish. And they were consistently given shit sandwich after shit sandwich."
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Joe Raedle/Getty Images; Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images
Elon Musk is no longer the singular solution Jack Dorsey trusts to run Twitter.
At least, that's what the former CEO of the social media company posted online on Friday.
When users on Dorsey's Twitter-alternative site Bluesky asked if he felt Musk had proven to be the "best possible" steward for the site, the Twitter co-founder flatly said he was not.
"No. Nor do I think he acted right after realizing his timing was bad," Dorsey wrote of Musk. "Nor do I think the board should have forced the sale. It all went south."
Musk's behavior in the lead-up to the acquisition and since the purchase — from antagonizing advertisers to sweeping layoffs — has drawn criticism from industry leaders and Twitter users alike in the last year, with some boycotting the platform over his approach.
Dorsey added: "If Elon or anyone wanted to buy the company, all they had to do was name a price that the board felt was better than what the company could do independently. This is true for every public company. Was I optimistic? Yes. Did I have final say? No. I think he should have walked away and paid the $1b."
During the tumultuous acquisition process, Musk could have backed out of the deal, paying a break-up fee of a billion dollars. Instead, he ultimately completed the purchase of the social media company for $44 billion dollars in October. Dorsey retained his shares in the company.
The latest critiques of Musk are a striking reversal from Dorsey's lauding of the Tesla leader from a year ago.
In a series of tweets shared in April of last year, before the completed sale of the platform, Dorsey backed Musk's vision for Twitter, saying Musk's goal of making the social media platform "maximally trusted and broadly inclusive" is the "right one."
"In principle, I don't believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company," Dorsey wrote. "Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness."
Since acquiring the platform, hate speech has surged on Twitter and, while Musk promised he would create a content moderation council to determine how and whether to remove harmful posts — no such council has been announced. He also polled users about whether he should resign, saying he would abide by the results, but remains active as the site's current CEO.
Despite the chaos prompted by Musk's acquisition, the platform, which has long failed to maintain profits, has managed to break even, Musk said earlier this month.
Dorsey and Musk did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment. The Twitter press email sent an automated response to Insider's request for comment.
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I have done multiple recipes using a basic bechamel sauce and adding cheese to it (Mac and Cheese, Queso dip, scalloped potatoes au gratin…) and it seems like every time I add the cheese, it breaks. Is this a ratio thing, or too high/low temp?
I’ve used extra sharp cheddar, manchego, Colby and pepper jack in various combinations or on their own. I use whole milk 90% of the time, sometimes I add some heavy cream to the bechamel if I have any on hand.
Any tips would be appreciated
Lintao Zhang/Getty Images
The US and China are on the brink of war, warned billionaire and renowned China investor Ray Dalio.
Both sides are at severe risk of crossing each other's red lines, and diplomacy between them is clearly failing, Dalio wrote in a Thursday memo on LinkedIn.
"The United States and China are on the brink of war and are beyond the ability to talk," reads Dalio's grim message.
Dalio, who runs the biggest foreign hedge fund in China and has 40 years of experience investing in the country, said he penned his thoughts after recently meeting with policymakers, Chinese citizens, and China experts from around the world.
The billionaire fears conflict will escalate over several immediate flash points — quarrels over Taiwan, confrontations between American and Chinese aircraft and ships, the war in Ukraine, and threats of economic sanctions.
While China and the US know they need to deconflict, "there is growing belief that the unavoidable trajectory is toward war," Dalio said.
Washington and Beijing are showing they aren't able to talk these issues out, he added. Whenever they interact with each other, "discussions about big, important things have become exchanges of accusations that worsen relations rather than help them," he wrote.
So it's better if both sides don't try to discuss these issues at all, Dalio suggested.
The 2024 US election will also worsen tensions, Dalio predicted. Politicians seeking reelection will likely try to keep pushing limits with Beijing to appeal to anti-China sentiment from voters, said the billionaire.
"The hawkish political influences in the United States will exert more pressure on the relationship over the next 18 months because of the emergence of the 2024 election season," Dalio wrote. "That will be a very risky period because China and the US are now already on the brink of war."
An additional risk is that US leadership is "fragmented" in how it projects anti-China stances, Dalio said. He cited then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's August visit to Taiwan. Chinese leader Xi Jinping had personally asked President Joe Biden to block the trip, but Biden said he had no control over Pelosi's foreign diplomacy, The Washington Post reported.
And as both powers look to protect their sources of essential technologies and minerals, they're making countries around the world choose sides, Dalio warned further.
He cited the US seeking to stop South Korean chip producers from increasing sales to China if Beijing sanctions the Idaho-based Micron Technology.
Dalio also pointed to Saudi Arabia — traditionally a US ally — recently engaging in new deals with China and Russia, and French President Emmanuel Macron criticizing Washington for provoking China.
The US and China, he said, are "like two giants wrestling with each other six inches from the edge of a cliff and threatening to pull others into this dangerous fight."
"All things considered, I think that the greater provocations will most likely come from the American side, which I worry will cause a tit-for-tat crossing of the line," Dalio wrote.
Still, he doesn't believe those grievances will push China to declare war soon, or even in the next three years.
"I want to emphasize that by saying that they are on the brink, I don't mean to say that they will necessarily go over the brink," Dalio wrote.
The billionaire recommended several steps to de-escalate tensions. This included having Biden host Xi in San Francisco at the November APEC meeting, and sending key US policymakers and congressional leaders to visit China.
"Have all parties make clear that peace is better than war," Dalio said. "That working on agreeing on ways to reduce the probabilities of having the worst types of wars is a top priority, and that gradually building agreements to reduce the progressively less bad types of conflict would be the best path."
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I remember hearing someone speak of this as a positive quality, and mentioning that Coca-Cola is commonly thought of as one of the best examples of this.
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Photo of the damage: https://i.imgur.com/FBwFqDj.jpg
Ordered Japanese bread pans and one of them arrived as shown above. Shipping it back for a return+replacement is out of the question due to the shipping costs, so I'm looking for a way to salvage/fix it. The entire unit itself is still in good condition -- just that one wall is damaged.
My first thought is some sort of solder, but after some quick searches, most solders are probably not the move when it comes to something that touches food and goes into the oven? Welding seems like an option too, but I would need to know someone who can weld.
Riveting seems like an option too, but I'm not sure about the materials used to make rivets and if they can withstand oven temperatures.
Anyone know what are my safest options are?
Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto via Getty Images;Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images;Chesnot/Getty Images
Meta reported a 3% year-on-year revenue growth in the first quarter of 2023, reversing three consecutive quarters of revenue decline — and Mark Zuckerberg's crediting higher engagement in Reels for part of this growth.
On an earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said that time spent on Instagram had risen by 24% since the company launched its short-form video product Reels — a TikTok challenger.
"Reels also continue to become more social with people resharing Reels more than 2 billion times every day, doubling over the last six months," Zuckerberg said on the earnings call, per a transcript.
Zuckerberg also attributed part of the company's boosted earnings to AI — he lauded Meta's AI investments for helping to push Reels videos to users.
"Our investment in recommendations and ranking systems has driven a lot of the results that we're seeing today across our discovery engine, Reels, and ads," Zuckerberg said, per the transcript.
The company didn't break down the daily active users for its Reels product. But Meta said that monthly active users on the company's family of apps rose by about 5% year-on-year to over 3.8 billion. Facebook, meanwhile, saw a 4% year-on-year increase in daily active users to over 2 billion, the company said in its earnings release.
When asked by an analyst if she had a benchmark for the increase in time spent on Reels, Meta CFO Susan Li said the company isn't quantifying "expected engagement growth" but is "pleased" with the "incremental engagement" they've seen. Li added that "it's clear that people value short-term video" on the platform.
These comments from Meta's C-suite come after a rocky road in the company's foray into Reels. The Wall Street Journal reported in September — citing internal documents from Meta — that the Reels rollout was failing to capture market share from TikTok.
One of the reasons for Reels flopping was low levels of content creation. While there were roughly 11 million creators on the platform at the time, most Reels users got "no engagement whatsoever," per one of the Meta documents seen by The Wall Street Journal.
A Meta spokesperson disputed The Wall Street Journal's report but admitted to Insider that Meta still had "work to do" to keep Reels afloat.
Meta reported first-quarter revenues of $28.6 billion, up 3% year-on-year. These earnings bucked FactSet analysts' expectations of revenues of $27.7 billion, according to a Wednesday report from The Wall Street Journal. Meta also reported a net profit of $5.7 billion during the quarter, a 24% drop year-over-year — partly due to the company's restructuring.
Meta did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley took aim at President Joe Biden's age in a bid to undermine his campaign on Wednesday, predicting that he won't live until the end of a second term.
"I think we can all be very clear and say with a matter of fact that if you vote for Joe Biden, you really are counting on a President Harris," Haley said in an interview on the Fox News show "America Reports."
"Because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely," she told hosts Sandra Smith and John Roberts.
—The Recount (@therecount) April 26, 2023
Biden, who turns 81 in November, would be 86 by 2028 — the end of his second term, if he's reelected.
The president announced his reelection bid with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, just one day before Haley commented on Fox about his age.
Biden is the oldest sitting president in US history. A February memo from the White House physician states that Biden is being treated for acid reflux, spinal arthritis, atrial fibrillation, and high cholesterol.
Biden's health condition is stable, per the memo, which declared him a "healthy, vigorous, 80-year-old male" who exercises at least five days a week.
Haley, 51, previously called for mandatory "mental competency tests" for politicians older than 75, also taking a swipe at former President Donald Trump's age.
Trump, who is also running for president, would be 78 if he clinches the White House in 2024.
In Washington, US political leadership is becoming more advanced in age across the board. Insider's 2022 "Red, White, and Gray" series investigates the costs, benefits, and dangers of an America helmed by older politicians who must govern on issues central to the future of the country's youth.
Representatives for Haley and the White House did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.
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Hi! I just got an oven thermometer because I suspected my oven temp wasn’t accurate to what I set it to. I decided to test with a frozen pizza. When it was set to 375 it was at 350. So I set it to 400. Then it went to 375 and then to 400. How do I get it to be accurate? Is there a trick to get it where I want using the thermometer and some creative temp settings or do I need to get it repaired?
Thanks! Sorry if this question doesn’t fit the sub :)
I like soup, he likes soup, everyone loves soup! But my husband is allergic to 2 of the main ingredients in a soup base. I’ve tried in the past to make whatever recipe but omit the celery and carrot but it’s just not the same. At this moment, I have a ham bone in the freezer I would love to make a homemade split pea soup (his favourite!) Would any of the experts here have any ideas how I can bring the flavour back into my soups or sauces without carrots and celery? Im no culinary star and have two young kids on my hands so as simple as possible would be lovely. I’m in Canada, where the winters are long and cold… warm soup would make it so much more bearable. Thank you!
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The Supreme Court of the United States is facing a wave of recent scandals that has shaken public confidence in the court and raised questions and concerns about the powerful justices' lifetime positions.
The controversy primarily centers around Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving current justice now facing accusations of judicial misconduct following a series of ProPublica reports alleging he sold his childhood home to GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow without disclosing the sale and accepted decades of expensive — and undisclosed — vacations from Crow.
Thomas has defended himself from the spate of charges, arguing he was allowed to accept the gifts from Crow because the big-time political spender never had "business before the court."
But a Monday Bloomberg report found that an appeals case involving the Crow family business — Trammell Crow Residential Co., part of Crow's father's real estate business — did in fact go to the court in 2004, and Thomas did not recuse himself.
In response to the Bloomberg piece this week, Crow told the outlet that he has never discussed court business with Thomas or attempted to influence the justice, also telling the Dallas Morning News that the recent reports were a "political hit job."
"At the time of this case, Trammell Crow Residential operated completely independently of Crow Holdings with a separate management team and its own independent operations," the company said in a statement to Bloomberg.
Democrats have called for Thomas' impeachment — which legal experts have said is a nonstarter — and the Senate Judiciary Committee invited Chief Justice John Roberts to appear and testify about court ethics following the reports. Roberts declined.
Then, on Tuesday, another Supreme Court justice found himself in hot water after Politico reported that Justice Neil Gorsuch sold property to the head of a major law firm just days after being confirmed to the top court, declining to note the purchaser on his federal disclosure forms.
The Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.
The increasing issues have also prompted conversations around the justices' lack of accountability, particularly given their lifetime appointments. While the Supreme Court is the only court not bound by a specific code of ethics, all federal judges, including the top justices are expected to follow ethics statutes and are required to file financial disclosure forms. But the top court notably lacks disciplinary measures or enforcement policies.
Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law and author of the forthcoming book "The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic," told Insider that the recent controversy points to an enforcement problem within the court that is much larger than individual misconduct by justices.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What was your initial reaction to Monday's Bloomberg report regarding the 2004 appeals case that Justice Thomas failed to recuse himself from?
The context is the problem. There are examples of cases where justices realized belatedly that they should have recused but did not. So, if this were a one-off where there was a single case where Justice Thomas should have recused, but didn't, I think it would basically be a non-story.
But the problem is that it is part of this broader pattern of certainly concerning behavior and this broader pattern of filing inaccurate and or incomplete disclosure reports.
Is it possible that Thomas made a genuine mistake here? That he didn't notice Crow's connection to this case?
Yes. It's possible this was an accident.
But two things can be true: Justice Thomas's participation could have been accidental and it still could have been wrong. The rules are not set up only to prohibit malicious behavior.
Is there an argument to be made that Thomas stood to benefit financially from a decision in this 2004 appeals case?
Not in any direct way, not that I can tell.
Thomas's defense regarding the undisclosed vacations and the sale of his house has essentially been that Harlan Crow never had business before the court. Does this Bloomberg report effectively discount that defense?
I don't think it discounts the defense. I think it suggests that the defense is itself incomplete.
The reason why we have ethics rules and financial disclosure requirements is not just to ensure that the justices are recusing from the right cases. It's also because of broader questions about the potential for undue influence. And it's not just that there's disclosure rules, there are also limits on what kinds of gifts and other benefits federal judges and justices can receive.
So, I think it's not quite complete to suggest that the only issue that arises from this relationship is potential conflicts in cases before the court.
People gravitate toward that because that's the most concrete thing you could point to, but we have these ethics rules and we have these standards not just to avoid that.
What else are we trying to avoid with these rules?
In general, I think we would be troubled by a world in which the justices were carrying out the bidding of wealthy donors.
That's not to say that's what's happening here, but I think we should all at least be able to agree that that's something to be avoided.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Is it your opinion then that Thomas had any sort of legal duty to recuse himself from this 2004 appeals case?
Yes.
But part of what we get into here is also that it's not that the rules are a mess; it's that they have no enforcement mechanism. So, even when justices really have a fairly clear obligation to recuse, they are their own masters.
SCOTUS justices only have to recuse themselves when they have family members coming before the court or when they stand to benefit financially from a case, is that right? Or are there other instances where they should?
Well, no, the justices are bound by 28 USC section 455. They're bound by the same statutes that bind lower court judges in that respect.
The problem is that for lower court judges, there are enforcement mechanisms. If a judge declines to recuse in a case that appears to trigger 455, there are ways for the aggrieved party to challenge the judge's recusal. And the problem with the Supreme Court is there's no similar mechanism.
Could the spate of allegations against Thomas lead to any sort of punishment or repercussions — whether that's internal court policing or a Supreme Court code of ethics?
I don't know, but again, the question is not what the rules should be. The question is how would those rules be enforced.
And I don't think anyone's holding their breath that Congress is going to somehow pass a new enforcement mechanism.
So, I think the question is whether there comes a point where the court believes it's in its own interest as an institution to adopt its own enforcement mechanism, a mechanism that is more robust than just "each justice decides for themselves."
Chief Justice Roberts yesterday officially declined to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Supreme Court ethics. Was that to be expected?
He wasn't subpoenaed. It was an invitation. He's not bound to accept it. That's his prerogative. It's unfortunate that we live in a world where that's his reaction, but as unfortunate behavior by the court goes, I don't think this is high on the list.
Is there a point to which this controversy gets big enough that we might eventually see Roberts subpoenaed or testifying before Congress?
No, but again, I don't think having the Chief Justice give compulsory testimony before Congress is necessary. It's not a binary, it's not either the chief justice testifies or nothing happens.
The point is that the issue should not be punishing Justice Thomas or punishing Justice Gorsuch. The issue should be creating some kind of public groundswell behind the idea that there needs to be a more rigorous way of enforcing the rules that exist.
We may all disagree about the exact content of those rules, we may disagree about which actions do and do not violate those rules. But it seems like we ought to be able to agree that if we're going to have rules, it would be kind of pointless if there was no way of enforcing them.
Are there proposed ideas for how to go about enforcing those rules?
Sure. But most of them involve the court agreeing to care.
I think it's a longer-term, more subtle conversation about sort of rationing up, not the pressure, but helping to persuade the court it is in its long-term interests to do more to provide a means of addressing the problem.
And again, the problem not necessarily being Thomas or Gorsuch, the problem being that we have these ethics rules that no one could enforce.
Paul Morigi/Getty Images for MoveOn
It seems this week's Politico report detailing Justice Neil Gorsuch's alleged misconduct supports your point that this is all indicative of a larger issue within the court, and not about misdeeds by individual justices.
And it's not even just the conservatives. Justice Sotomayor has had to revise her disclosure reports in the past.
This is not partisan, this is institutional. And the problem is that everyone assumes it's partisan because the people who are complaining are progressives and they're complaining about conservatives. And what that drowns out is that the real problem here is not conservatives or progressives. The real problem here is that the court as an institution has no effective way of policing itself.
We may not all agree on when it should police itself. We may not all agree on when the conduct of individual justices is crossing the line, but that seems like a silly reason to not agree that there ought to be consequences when that happens.
Why was there never an enforcement mechanism set up for the Supreme Court?
Well, I think some of it is that historically there was less external concern about this. Historically, I think there was maybe more faith that the court was policing itself.
It's also worth noting that in 1969, a justice resigned in the face of a purported ethics scandal. And I just think we're in a very different time, not just because of the current composition of the court, but because of the court's current relationship with the political branches or lack thereof, compared to most of its history.
Can Americans trust the court to be an impartial arbiter after all of these recent reports?
That's a bit of a loaded question. There's the old Russian proverb: "Trust but verify."
One of the problems of today's discourse is that we almost start from a presumption of bad faith. And it's unfortunate that it's possible that justices who are acting in nothing but good faith might nevertheless not be the right people to decide when they should be recusing.
It's really hard to get folks to see that because there's one very loud chorus of voices accusing the justice of bad faith and there's another defending them by saying, "No, they had good faith."
And I want to be in the middle shouting at everyone, "Even people acting in good faith shouldn't necessarily be their own judges."
I've seen quite a few recipes nowadays that calls for some corn syrup in addition to sugar and water. I'm wondering what the necessity of using corn syrup is, like, what "effect" are we trying to achieve by adding it in?
To my understanding, all corn syrup adds is sugar, and a slight thickening effect (depending on how much you use). If it's the "thickening" effect that's needed in recipes, wouldn't adding a thickening powder like xanthan gum, or corn starch, provide effectively the same effect? Or simple syrup + xanthan gum?
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn is offering "one-of-a-kind" pizza cutters for the price of a $20 donation to her fundraising committee.
"Cutting the red tape," declares a slogan on the wheel cutter, which features the stars of the Tennessee state flag.
"I'm fighting to cut the red tape in Washington, but it's not easy," Blackburn said in a Monday promotional video for the kitchen utensil. "If you pledge $20 today, I'll send you your very own made-in-America pizza cutter."
Blackburn, who is running for reelection in 2024, is seen slicing a pepperoni pizza on a kitchen counter. "Together, we can cut the red tape in Washington once and for all," she said.
—Marsha Blackburn (@VoteMarsha) April 24, 2023
In comparison, pizza cutters of similar functional designs are available at Walmart for $2.96 and $7.98. A stainless steel variant is going for $10.99.
Blackburn's video, posted on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, was soon ridiculed by people on social media.
"That's the most rediculous thing I've seen all week," one person wrote.
With her pizza cutter venture, Blackburn joins a host of other GOP politicians hawking stylized household goods for donations.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who's running for the GOP presidential nomination, sells $35 hats with political slogans and beer koozies for $17.
Former President Donald Trump has offered supporters merchandise, memberships to societies he appears to have made up, and chances to win a dinner with him.
Items include a white T-shirt with red words for $47 donations and the title of "Great MAGA King," which appears to be a GIF of a medieval scroll for $25 donations. His store page sells merchandise like a Mar-a-Lago Christmas ornament for $95.
Across the aisle, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in August also touted $30 hats and T-shirts with the tagline "but her emails."
President Joe Biden's reelection campaign is also selling $22 mugs and $32 t-shirts with designs alluding to the "Dark Brandon" meme.
A representative for Blackburn did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment sent outside regular business hours.
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