>The federal government is proposing to overhaul radiation safety regulations for nuclear power, including by eliminating a long-term principle for nuclear safety.

>The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) this week proposed to get rid of the requirement for nuclear plants to ensure that radiation exposure is “as low as is reasonably achievable.”

>Proponents of the change say just using radiation dose limits is less subjective than going by the “as low as is reasonably achievable” principle — and that it led to overly conservative protections that stifled the nuclear industry.

>Supporters of the current language, however, say that having the “as low as reasonably achievable” principle, also known as ALARA, in place ensures that nuclear plants take all measures possible to reduce exposure for workers and the general public.

>[...]

>In addition to axing ALARA, the NRC is proposing other changes, including loosening emissions limits for radioactive material.

The NRC's proposal (PDF)

It doesn't look like this proposal has made it to the Federal Register yet nor to the NRC's Documents for Comment page.

I took a walk today and these were my very non-political thoughts that I considered.

I'm someone who's spent a lot of time becoming news media literate, and I also have an economics degree and work in a field full of finance people. Those two aspects of how I see the world are important, because I was thinking about how one of them rarely carries over from social media into my actual life, while the other one does.

I live in the southwest US, and I've spent most of my life around people who talk about the news constantly but almost never think about how it's constructed. I can look at a news story and break down the selection bias, the agenda-setting, the framing — why a headline is worded the way it is, what's been left out, what response it's engineered to produce in an audience. But that lens doesn't really travel. In day-to-day conversation, people treat the news as a more or less direct window onto reality. They argue about the content of a story; I'm usually sitting there wondering about the shape of it. I don't really have anyone around me to talk to about that side of things.

Online, though, it's different. I can watch someone do a sharp breakdown of how a story was framed, or see a community of media-literate people dissect a manufactured controversy in real time, and feel genuinely connected to that — like I'm part of a group that actually sees what's happening. It's a real source of satisfaction. But it's also a bubble. The skill of media literacy lives mostly in my head and on my feed; it almost never makes it into a real conversation with the people physically around me. A world of people thinking critically about framing and narrative exists for me mostly online. It's a filter bubble I carry around but can't really bring into the room with me.

Economic literacy is the opposite story. What I see discussed online about markets, policy, or economic indicators is often the same stuff I hear about at work the next day, because I work with people who have finance backgrounds and think in similar terms. There's continuity there. When the government shutdown was looming, I was anxious about it both as a regular person and as someone who understands the mechanics of what a shutdown actually does — and I could talk through that anxiety with coworkers who were thinking about it the exact same way. My online filter bubble on economics and my real-world environment reinforce each other instead of pulling apart.

So one identity-based bubble — the media-literate one — is discontinuous with my daily reality. The other — the economically literate one — is continuous with it.

This led me to a question I can't answer on my own, and I'm hoping people here can help. What's it like for other kinds of specialized literacy or expertise? I'd guess something like scientific literacy might be discontinuous in a lot of places, the way mine is, depending on whether you're surrounded by people in that field. Legal literacy might be more continuous if you work in or around law. I wonder if there's a pattern where literacies tied to prestige professions (finance, law, medicine) tend to have built-in real-world communities that reinforce the online version, while literacies that are more about how you interpret information (media literacy, statistical literacy) tend to stay isolated in your head, because almost no one practices them socially even if plenty of people practice them online.

So, I'm genuinely curious: for the specific things you've gotten knowledgeable or skilled at, does what you see and engage with online match up with your day-to-day life, or is there a gap? Where does your filter bubble line up with reality, and where does it not?

I'm trying to get through Octavia E. Butler's The Parable of the Talents. It's just extremely difficult, especially after reading The Parable of the Sower, because it seems more like a premonition than a sci-fi book. I think it's worth quoting one particular section of the first chapter to see why:

>I have read that the period of upheaval that journalists have begun to refer to as "the Apocalypse" or more commonly, more bitterly, "the Pox" lasted from 2015 through 2030—a decade and a half of chaos. This is untrue. The Pox has been a much longer torment. It began well before 2015, perhaps even before the turn of the millennium. It has not ended.

>I have also read that the Pox was caused by accidentally coinciding climatic, economic, and sociological crises. It would be more honest to say that the Pox was caused by our own refusal to deal with obvious problems in those areas. We caused the problems: then we sat and watched as they grew into crises. I have heard people deny this, but I was born in 1970. I have seen enough to know that it is true. I have watched education become more a privilege of the rich than the basic necessity that it must be if civilized society is to survive. I have watched as convenience, profit, and inertia excused greater and more dangerous environmental degradation. I have watched poverty, hunger, and disease become inevitable for more and more people.

>Overall, the Pox has had the effect of an installment-plan World War III. In fact, there were several small, bloody shooting wars going on around the world during the Pox. These were stupid affairs—wastes of life and treasure. They were fought, ostensibly, to defend against vicious foreign enemies. All too often, they were actually fought because in-adequate leaders did not know what else to do. Such leaders knew that they could depend on fear, suspicion, hatred, need, and greed to arouse patriotic support for war.

>Amid all this, somehow, the United States of America suffered a major nonmilitary defeat. It lost no important war, yet it did not survive the Pox. Perhaps it simply lost sight of what it once intended to be, then blundered aimlessly until it exhausted itself.

>What is left of it now, what it has become, I do not know.

And so, after reading this, I'm just like...this describes the US precisely at this moment. It's not a leap of faith to think we might find ourselves in Butler's desolate narrative. The conditions are set. Time merely needs to progress, as it inevitably does.

Fortunately, the running theme is adaptability to change through community. Basically, the black experience throughout history.

Still though...this is a hard read. Butler pulls no punches.

Anyway, have y'all read any good books lately? Hopefully lighter in tone...

Look! Real journalism!

Here's a tl;dr:

1. Secret Harvesting of Highly Personal Data

The text alleges that the NDS is actively embedding surveillance software into federal websites to track citizens without their knowledge or consent.

• Invisible Tracking: Sites like TrumpRx (health) and RealFood (nutrition) use a tool called PostHog to record every keystroke, mouse movement, and page scroll. They are also allegedly running custom code (AutoMonitor) to copy and reroute all site data to hidden servers.
• Bypassing Protections: The tracking is disguised to slip past consumer ad-blockers, and user IP addresses are not anonymized.
• Sensitive Information: Citizens using these sites for prescription prices or health information are having their medical inquiries recorded, contradicting the sites' own privacy policies.

2. Hijacking Civic Infrastructure

The NDS is systematically taking control of the core digital infrastructure that Americans use to interact with their government, moving it out of the hands of specialized agencies and into partisan White House control.

Civic Service	Legal Authority	NDS Action
Voter Registration	Election Assistance Commission	Building a shadow vote.gov preview
Passports / Biometrics	State Department	Building passports.gov for photo uploads
Federal Identity	General Services Admin.	Took over management of Login.gov (150M+ users)

• Consolidated Vulnerability: Dozens of these critical federal sites are allegedly being routed through a single, personally named Cloudflare account (loveisaskill), violating basic federal IT and security protocols.

3. Total Evasion of Legal Oversight

The laws passed after Watergate to protect citizens from government surveillance are being entirely bypassed through structural loopholes.

• No Privacy Disclosures: The NDS has filed none of the legally required privacy impact assessments or vendor contracts for any of its programs.
• Shadow Staffing: By hiring staff under "temporary advisory" rules (Section 3161), NDS employees do not appear on public salary reports, are not required to file financial disclosures, and bypass normal ethics reviews.
• Zero Accountability: Because they operate within the Executive Office of the President, they have no Inspector General. Furthermore, all of their data and communications will be sealed under the Presidential Records Act for 12 years after the administration ends, preventing any immediate public or congressional scrutiny.

4. Control Over Elections and Identity

Perhaps the most immediate threat involves the intersection of biometric identity and voting. The same personnel who were previously sued for illegally accessing federal data under the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) now control Login.gov—the biometric gateway used by over 150 million Americans to access jobs, Social Security, and federal benefits.

Simultaneously, the NDS is building a federal voter registration system where the staff in charge admittedly do not know what data is being logged or retained. By moving voter registration data directly into the White House weeks before an election, the office breaks the protective "wall" established by Congress to prevent sitting presidents from viewing or manipulating voter rolls.

The Bottom Line: The author argues that the NDS is not just redesigning websites; they are quietly rerouting the data of the American public—health inquiries, passport photos, and voter registrations—into a permanent, unaccountable black box controlled directly by the White House.

I feel like this sub needs more critical thinking examples.

Why YSK: The Toulmin model is analytical tool to help you construct and deconstruct solid arguments if you care to.

Imo, the Toulmin model consists of three essential components:

1. Grounds/Data: The information that supports the claim
2. Warrant: The sometimes implied or stated link between the grounds and the claim.
3. Claim: The conclusion of the argument, or what exactly is being argued for.

As an example there's the classical Aristotelian syllogism:

• Socrates is a man
• All men are mortal
• Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Transformed to the Toulmin model, we get:

1. Grounds/Data: Socrates is a man
2. Warrant: All men are Mortal
3. Claim: Socrates is mortal

The Toulmin model also has 3 secondary components (at least, that's how I think of them):

1. Qualifier: Modifies the claim
2. Backing: Establishes the reliability or relevance of the warrant
3. Rebuttal: Acknowledges anticipated exceptions that might invalidate the claim.

So, when constructing an argument, we need the three essential components.

1. Grounds/Data: Cats are adorable.
2. Warrant: I want adorable things.
3. Conclusion: I want a cat.

Irl, I'd say I want a cat because they're adorable. But it's that third bit, the warrant of 'I want adorable things' that connects the grounds to the claim.

But, I might want to add the secondary components to convince my wife.

1. Qualifier: I want an adorable fully grown pound kitty.
2. Backing: Adorable things improve the quality of our lives.
3. Rebuttal: Puppies are cute, too, but they're far more rambunctious than fully developed cats.

Altogether, my persuasive pitch for a cat would be:

>I want an fully grown adorable pound kitty because kitties are adorable! And having adorable things around the house just makes life better. I know puppies are also an option in the adorable category, but really, who has time for that? That's why we should go get a cat.

Purdue OWL has an excellent write up on the Toulmin Model if you want to know more. Once you learn to think in terms of claims, warrants, and grounds/data, and pick up on qualifiers, backings, and rebuttals, certain environments were arguments are rampant become easier to navigate.