A Sense of Doubt blog post #2118 - Cure for acedia - "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" - WEEKLY HODGE PODGE FOR 2012.05
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| Joanna Harcourt Smith - Timothy Leary's "girlfriend" |
— gmrstudios (@gmrstudios) December 5, 2020
acedia https://t.co/zHG9LB42On via @farlex
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| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2020/11/06/joanna-harcourt-smith-socialite-author-went-run-timothy-leary/ |
It seems to me that this old Timothy Leary slogan, the clarion call of the LSD-loving, psychedelic-drugs-expand-consciousness, which are still unpacking, provides an apt aphorism for our moment right now.
"Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" sent multiple messages to late 1960s and early 1970s hippies to free themselves of the rigid establishment and join the counter culture.
The advice offers much the same meaning 50 years later with new resonance. Turn on means activate. Activate your mind, your agency. Don’t just bing watch a bunch of crap and eat Cheetos. Do something with your extra time in the pandemic, like make and plant mysterious monoliths around the world.
Tune in. Be informed. We started watching cable news and reading more prolifically in February, when the pandemic asserted itself as a global and national pandemic. We wanted the most update information and the analysis of experts. By “we,” I mean my household (minus the dogs), and all of you and me, together. I might not have gone all in on news and information just for the election. The pandemic prompted me more than anything else to subscribe to Slate, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reason, and Mother Jones as well as donating to Wonkette, NPR, and various other sites, causes, and organizations.
Not only did the election become a shit storm of demagogic and malefic proportions, but then, George Floyd was murdered, and people took the streets for support of the Black Lives Matter movement. And this murder brought to light so many more murders at the hands of police or white supremacists (possibly racist police officers), and then more murders happened.
More than ever before in my life, it seems essential to be tuned in to these unfolding events and turned on to do something about it all, activated, engaged and participating.
But then, we are all dropped out in quarantine, sheltering in place, staying home as much as possible to minimize spread of the virus (or we should be). Those of us who believe in science and are not selfish and narrow minded and can manage our pandemic fatigue are staying home, at least.
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| https://altgenerations.com/2020/08/31/joanna-harcourt-smith-on-her-book-tripping-the-bardo-with-timothy-leary-2/ |
The idea for this week’s theme came to me from watching the Showtime documentary My Psychedelic Love Story about Timothy Leary’s long time girlfriend, who died earlier this year. Hence the many images of Joanna Harcourt Smith as well as Leary’s slogan: "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out." This is a good film.
My Psychedelic Love Story TRAILER
And then, my friend Laura shared with me the word “acedia,” which means spiritual apathy and ennui. A great word for not just general apathy or sluggishness but SPIRITUAL ennui.
Leary’s slogan (not to mention the psychedelic drugs) strikes me as an effective cure for “acedia”: "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out."
Don’t let the acedia consume you.
Engage, get informed, stay informed, think critically, believe in science, wear a mask when you go out, and STAY THE FUCK HOME.
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| https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/joanna-harcourt-smith-obituary-7rhc0fpr2 |
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| https://cannabislaw.report/obituary-joanna-harcourt-smith/ |
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| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/14/us/joanna-harcourt-smith-dead.html |
This week’s HODGE PODGE contains all the usual ingredients of angst and outrage.
Total Covid-related deaths in the U.S. have surpassed 280,000. Covid-19 is the current leading cause of death this week and this year, beating out heart disease and cancer. Over 2000 people are dying each day, and this number could easily exceed 3000 people very soon because there’s too much resistance to science and sensible public health and safety measures in this country and people are selfish.
IN our home, we were going to have a small Christmas gathering of an additional three family members, which we have now canceled because it is just not wise; it is just not safe.
This posting mixes in some great images and some xkcd comics, such as this one about unread emails, which is so ME. (Currently in box = 1761 unread).
Did you know that Portland’s hosts the world’s oldest drag queen?? Neither did I. Darcelle is a reason to break quarantine, alone. Unless you don’t like drag queens, and then you’re just an asshole. Talk to the hand.
China has turned on its artificial sun fusion reactor???
Given that they could not contain the novel coronavirus virus sars cov-2 that develops into the lethal Covid-19, then I am dubious that an ARTIFICIAL SUN can be easily contained.
It can reach temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius!
The video of Mellisa Caron, the “witness” to voter fraud who spoke at a hearing in Michigan before state legislators at which Rudy Guilliani also farted (and has now tested positive for Covid) is priceless and reason enough to tune into my weekly Hodge Podge.
But wait, there’s more...
Big shocker. Qanon “leaders” are bilking stupid people for money. Wow, let me make sure I am sitting down for that one.
Sheeple.
Evict people? Remember, it’s obvious that the GOP does not give a rat fuck for any of you poor people who can’t pay your rent because you can’t work because of the pandemic.
And instead of doing his job, the Tantrum-Thrower in Chief just plays golf and rants on Twitter about election fraud that he cannot prove exists because it doesn’t.
Steven Mnuchin is an asshole.
These “not wanted” posters of Ivanka Trump plastered all over New York = hilarious.
Trump using his veto power as Blackmail so he can sue Facebook and Twitter for flagging his lies as “possibly misinformation.”
Trump’s Crazy Train legal team accuses REPUBLICAN governor Brain Kemp of Georgia of being a Chinese agent.
The crazy voter fraud bullshit and the divisive wedges being hammered between the right that’s not right at all and the left that’s very right is going to get some violence happening. People are going to get killed.
Especially people suggest that those who speak out against their idiocy with facts and truth should be brought before firing squads and shot.
Also, wingnut conservatives are you reading this? (You’re not.) “Triggering libs” is not a thing. Mostly we’re just sad and disgusted by how stupid you are. I know what I am about to write is mean, but why can’t we have a virus that just kills off stupid people.
Oh wait... maybe we do, oh maskless hordes who do not socially distance.
VIRUSES may have created the nucleus of the cell???? What???
The magic number that shapes the universe!
No, it’s not “42.”
And to close some great science and space news. Plus, why Tesla sucks.
Hats off to Uri Geller!!
Okay, thanks for tuning in, now turn on, and I hope you are already dropped out.
Club Darcelle XV has officially been added to the National Register of Historic Places. Portland’s oldest drag club in Old Town, which also features the world’s oldest working drag queen, 90-year-old Walter Cole (a.k.a. Darcelle), has been awarded historic recognition. Cole’s home was also placed on the National Register earlier this year, and Club Darcelle XV is the first site in Oregon to be nominated for its place in LGBTQ+ history. Now that it's officially on the list, the venue is protected from development and qualifies for tax provisions and grants, providing a safety net for the small business, which has struggled during the pandemic. (Willamette Week)
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/12/04/2211238/china-turns-on-nuclear-powered-artificial-sun
China Turns On Nuclear-Powered 'Artificial Sun' (phys.org)
Trump’s star voter fraud witness goes viral HUMILIATING herself at “hearing”
•Dec 2, 2020
Brian Tyler Cohen - 998K subscribers
BREAKING: Trump’s star voter fraud witness HUMILIATES herself at fraud “hearing.
Conspiracy Theorists Who'd First Popularized QAnon Now Accused of Financial Motives (nbcnews.com)
"NBC News has found that the theory can be traced back to three people who sparked some of the first conversation about Qanon and, in doing so, attracted followers who they then asked to help fund Qanon 'research.'"In November 2017, a small-time YouTube video creator and two moderators of the 4chan website, one of the most extreme message boards on the internet, banded together and plucked out of obscurity an anonymous and cryptic post from the many conspiracy theories that populated the website's message board. Over the next several months, they would create videos, a Reddit community, a business and an entire mythology based off the 4chan posts of "Q," the pseudonym of a person claiming to be a high-ranking military officer. The theory they espoused would become Qanon, and it would eventually make its way from those message boards to national media stories and the rallies of President Donald Trump.
Now, the people behind that effort are at the center of a fractious debate among conspiracy enthusiasts, some of whom believe the three people who first popularized the Qanon theory are promoting it in order to make a living. Others suggest that these original followers actually wrote Q's mysterious posts...
Qanon was just another unremarkable part of the "anon" genre until November 2017, when two moderators of the 4chan board where Q posted predictions, who went by the usernames Pamphlet Anon [real name: Coleman Rogers] and BaruchtheScribe, reached out to Tracy Diaz, according to Diaz's blogs and YouTube videos. BaruchtheScribe, in reality a self-identified web programmer from South Africa named Paul Furber, confirmed that account to NBC News. "A bunch of us decided that the message needed to go wider so we contacted Youtubers who had been commenting on the Q drops," Furber said in an email... As Diaz tells it in a blog post detailing her role in the early days of Qanon, she banded together with the two moderators. Their goal, according to Diaz, was to build a following for Qanon — which would mean bigger followings for them as well... Diaz followed with dozens more Q-themed videos, each containing a call for viewers to donate through links to her Patreon and PayPal accounts. Diaz's YouTube channel now boasts more than 90,000 subscribers and her videos have been watched over 8 million times. More than 97,000 people follow her on Twitter.
Diaz, who emerged from bankruptcy in 2009, says in her YouTube videos that she now relies on donations from patrons funding her YouTube "research" as her sole source of income. Diaz declined to comment on this story. "Because I cover Q, I got an audience," Diaz acknowledged in a video that NBC News reviewed last week before she deleted it.
To reach a more mainstream audience (older people and "normies," who on their own would have trouble navigating the fringe message boards), Diaz said in her blog post she recommended they move to the more user-friendly Reddit. Archives listing the three as the original posters and moderators show they created a new Reddit community... Their move to Reddit was key to Qanon's eventual spread. There, they were able to tap into a larger audience of conspiracy theorists, and drive discussion with their analysis of each Q post. From there, Qanon crept to Facebook where it found a new, older audience via dozens of public and private groups...
As Qanon picked up steam, growing skepticism over the motives of Diaz, Rogers, and the other early Qanon supporters led some in the internet's conspiracy circles to turn their paranoia on the group. Recently, some Qanon followers have accused Diaz and Rogers of profiting from the movement by soliciting donations from their followers. Other pro-Trump online groups have questioned the roles that Diaz and Rogers have played in promoting Q, pointing to a series of slip-ups that they say show Rogers and Diaz may have been involved in the theory from the start.
Those accusations have led Diaz and Rogers to both deny that they are Q and say they don't know who Q is.
PANDEMIC
China might not have been entirely on the up-and-up with us about COVID-19. That's still no excuse for racists to call the coronavirus the "kung-flu." (CNN)
Coronavirus cases are surging in California, and Governor Gavin Newsom warned Monday that he might have to more drastic measures, including more restrictive stay-at-home orders that Trump-inspired “patriots" will likely ignore. (Los Angeles Times)
People acted a fool on Thanksgiving and now what Andrew Cuomo calls the COVID Grinch is gonna steal Christmas. (AP)
Someone could probably redeem the otherwise-creepy “Baby, It's Cold Outside" by recording a “Baby, There's COVID Outside" version encouraging everyone to keep their ass home for the holidays.
More than 3100 people died of coronavirus yesterday (Thursday 12/3/20). Presumably you already knew that. What's that, it's one week after Thanksgiving, you say? Well nobody could have foreseen that.
Vaccine side effects supposed to be not so terrible after all, yay! (Washington Post)
A healthy young person who's been sick for eight months now has some GODDAMN THOUGHTS on it. — Buzzfeed News
Biden to ask very nicely that Americans wear masks for a hundred days, because of how he is a tyrant. (CBS)
During the Great Depression, there were two million Americans without homes and one of the biggest lessons learned was the revelation that, save for a bit of luck, practically anyone could find themselves in that same boat. It was that understanding that brought people together, that pushed them to make sacrifices for one another and to push for greater social reforms so that others wouldn't have to go through what they went through during that time.
Since then, however, we have created narratives that allow us to see poverty not as a failure of the system, but as a moral failure of the individual. It's a comforting fallacy that allows people to detach from the poor and go, "Well, I'm not lazy, so that will never happen to me!" The belief that poverty can be used as a motivational tool — that if people are miserable enough they will pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work hard and become a success, and that this will never happen if they are made comfortable — is ridiculous, but it certainly lets a lot of shitty people sleep at night.
At the end of this month, in the dead of winter, as many as 30 to 40 million Americans could be facing eviction. If two million homeless was noticeable in the 1930s, if we are generally aware of the nearly 600,000 homeless now, 30 million will not be easy to ignore.
Despite the recent spike in COVID-19 cases and the fact that many areas are under strict stay-at-home orders and shutdowns, the eviction moratorium, ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has not been renewed and will expire on Dec. 31. With all the hardship people have experienced this year, imagine also having to start the next year off without a home?
People are already telling themselves soothing stories about those who are likely to be evicted in January if the eviction moratorium is not re-upped. A popular one is about the people who stayed on unemployment while they were getting the $600 supplement rather than taking jobs that paid less than unemployment. Perhaps before we say that one out loud, we should consider that A) It was not particularly safe to be going on job interviews at that time, either, and B) What if the real problem is that we have jobs that pay less than unemployment in the first place?
The most American thing in the world these days is the fact that it actually costs less to house people than to allow unhoused people to live on the street, and we continue to do the latter. Mostly because many people are actually just more comfortable with allowing poor people to suffer needlessly than they are with giving anyone "free stuff." Many Americans are willing to pay far more than is necessary for all kinds of things to avoid this or to avoid any semblance of "socialism."
But 30 million evictions is a luxury we cannot afford. We can't afford to have 30 million people without homes just so people who didn't get screwed by the pandemic can feel really good about themselves and pretend that somehow those people losing their homes is what is best for them in the long run. For character-building reasons.
Not only is it extremely expensive to have people living on the street, it's extremely difficult for people living on the street to get a job — far more difficult than it is for housed people! Crazy, I know. Because people always look at homeless people and bitterly remark about how they should get real jobs instead of panhandling or something.
The thing is, in order to get a job, you have to have an address, you have to have a place to shower, you need somewhere to keep your clothes so you don't wear the same thing every day, you need transportation, you need food and a place to sleep so you have the energy to do a good job. If you don't have these things, it's very difficult to hold down a job, particularly in a climate where we do not have a lot of jobs to go around. The unemployed already have one strike against them when it comes to finding employment — we all know it's easier to get a job when you have a job, and that the longer you haven't had a job the harder it is to get one — they don't need any more than that.
Even if they do get a job, having an eviction on their record may make it difficult for them to find housing again. Especially given the affordable housing crisis currently happening in this country.
If people don't have homes or jobs, they probably aren't spending a whole lot of money. In order for our economy to function, we need people to spend money, or else even more people will be out of homes and jobs. We also need people to pay taxes in order for our society to function.
If there are 30 million people in that situation, we're gonna end up needing to use tax money to help them, eventually, and it's going to be a lot more expensive and difficult to help them get back on their feet than to have never let them fall off the ledge in the first place. Obviously.
A recent study also found a strong link between people being evicted from their homes during the pandemic and an increase in deaths from the virus. So not taking care of people during this difficult time could literally be the thing that kills us.
What does this mean? This means that we need to suck it up and not only renew the eviction moratorium — and back rent or mortgage payments, by the way, need to go on the end of one's lease or mortgage, not due in a lump as soon as the moratorium's over — but also get some people some goddamned money so they can survive this freaking pandemic. And I'm not just talking another $1200 stimulus. People need a universal basic income that they can survive on until there are jobs for them again, so that they can pay their rent — which also helps the poor old landlord class, Republican senators! — and be able to eat and get through this. Not just because we are wonderful people who care about other human beings or because we have bleeding hearts — it would be lovely if that were true for more people, but let's be real here, we've got a lot of assholes — but because it will actually be more expensive down the line if we don't do this. If giant banks can get bailouts, certainly 30 million Americans are "too big to fail" as well.
There's always a loser in musical chairs, because the game is set up with one less chair than is needed. When you live in a country where there literally aren't enough jobs that pay a living wage, where there are not enough affordable housing options, basic survival isn't simply a matter of working hard — it's a matter of just happening to be in the right place when the music has ended.
[NPR]
THE WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT
If you prefer your data in a visual format, here's the current map from COVID Exit Strategy, using data from the CDC and the COVID Tracking Project.
I want to add this link to the weekly report. It's important to remember:
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1983 - Is Coronavirus more contagious and more deadly than the flu? YES.
ALSO... I am seeing a big discrepancy between the Johns Hopkins data in death totals and WORLDOMETER data, which aggregates data from many more sources. Could this be the slow down due to the change in how the CDC obtains the data, having it filter first through Health and Human Services department.
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
Deaths:
Recovered:
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Tense exchange between Mnuchin and Porter over relief funds
•Dec 2, 2020
Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) went head-to-head with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin during a House Financial Services Committee hearing. Mnuchin supports moving $455 billion in coronavirus relief from the Federal Reserve back into the Treasury's general fund, which makes it harder for the Biden administration to access the emergency funding. #CNN #News
THE ELECTION
Y'all see this little shiny bauble? How President of the Senate Kamala Harris can throat-punch Moscow Mitch. Nobody's sure but ... maaaaybe? (Newsflector)
You want to understand Biden voters, right all? Here's your reading list. (Washington Post)
Romancing the Runoff. Stacey Abrams moonlights as a romance writer, so her fellow romance writers pitched in for an auction to help her KEEP Georgia blue. Bidding goes through Dec. 1, which is just about NOW, for the one priceless item that's left. [Background at Bustle / auction]
Hey look at the piece of shit at the tiny desk.
Or see the longer version where he goes the fuck on about his very good proof like "Joe Biden beat Obama in swing states but lost to Obama in not swing states" at CNN.
Cool.
In the end, it wasn't a senator or a judge or a general who stood up to the leader of the free world. There was no dramatic, made-for-Hollywood collision of cosmic egos. Rather, the death knell of Trump's presidency was sounded by a baby-faced lawyer, looking over his glasses on a grainy Zoom feed on a gloomy Monday afternoon, reading from a statement that reflected a courage and moral clarity that has gone AWOL from his party, pleading with the tens of thousands of people watching online to understand that some lines can never be uncrossed.
— Politico
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| https://soundcloud.com/jamiewoodfinjr/turn-on-tune-in-drop-out-dr-ford-remix |
Trump To Congress: Repeal Section 230 Or I'll Veto Military Funding (arstechnica.com)
The NDAA is a massive spending bill that Congress passes each year to authorize funding for the military. This year's version, now under active discussion on Capitol Hill, is expected to cost around $740 billion. The NDAA is seen as a "must pass" bill because no one wants to be blamed for holding up funding for the troops. So inserting language into it can be a way to pass proposals that might not stand on their own. But there's also a risk of a backlash -- especially if a measure is seen as unrelated to the military. This may be why Trump has started claiming that Section 230 is a "threat to our national security," since that would theoretically make it germane to a defense funding bill. Trump's campaign to repeal Section 230 appears to go beyond mere tweets. The White House is reportedly telling members of Congress the same thing in private that the president is telling his 88 million Twitter followers: that he will veto the NDAA if it doesn't repeal or at least overhaul Section 230.
https://www.motherjones.com/2020-elections/2020/12/donald-trump-lawyers-georgia-election-brian-kemp/
Pro-Trump Lawyers Say GOP Governor in Georgia Is a Chinese Agent and Blame George Soros
It’s been nearly a month since Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election by major media outlets and more than a week since the General Services Administration informed the president-elect that his team could start the transition process. But none of that has had any effect on the lawyers fighting on behalf of Donald Trump to overturn the election results in key swing states.
In a particularly deranged and conspiracy-filled press conference held in Georgia on Wednesday by attorney Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, a former member of Trump’s legal team, the two repeatedly affirmed, without citing any evidence, that Trump not only won Georgia but most other states, including California. They wildly described a massive (and fictitious) international conspiracy involving Dominion voting systems, China, George Soros, the Deep State, and the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez collaborating to steal the election from the president.
“It’s 1776 in America again,” Wood, an attorney and Trump ally who is currently representing Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who shot killed unarmed protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shouted with a preacher’s conviction to the crowd gathered in a North Atlanta suburb. He then shouted for George Soros to “get out of our country,” adding “you’re not going to sell our votes to China!” Powell falsely claimed that Georgia’s election was stolen from the president because voting machines manufactured by Dominion Voting systems were rigged to give Biden more votes. She added, without any evidence, that the recount of Georgia’s votes was also a sham and that both state and local election officials have been physically destroying ballots marked for Trump in order to get rid of evidence of voter fraud. Georgia certified its votes on November 20 with backing of its Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and election officials, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also a Republican. Both Wood and Powell called for Kemp and Raffensberger to resign as the crowd chanted for them to be locked up, with Wood bizarrely claiming that Kemp is a foreign agent working on behalf of China. Raffensberger, along with his wife, has received death threats in recent days.
But the November 3 election wasn’t the only one they called a sham. Both Wood and Powell also falsely claimed that the upcoming runoffs for Georgia’s two US Senate seats were currently being rigged and called on supporters at the rally to not vote. “I would encourage all Georgians to make it known that you will not vote at all unless your vote is secure,” Powell said. “There should not be a runoff. Certainly not on Dominion machines.”
This would all be extremely laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous. The people enabling Trump’s denial of reality—that he won the 2020 election by a landslide and that a rigged election is keeping him from serving a second term—are now inciting violence against people who are just doing their job. And the president himself is eating it up: In a lengthy, meandering speech posted onto his Facebook page Wednesday afternoon , Trump said that, “as president I have no higher duty than to defend the laws of the Constitution of the United States, that is why I am determined to protect our election system, which is now under coordinated assault and siege.” A statement par for course for a president who has spent four years trying to warp reality with disinformation.
Increasingly detached from reality, President Donald Trump stood before a White House lectern and delivered a 46-minute diatribe against the election results that produced a win for Democrat Joe Biden, unspooling one misstatement after another to back his baseless claim that he really won.
— AP
In a Facebook Rant, Trump Amplifies His Delusions of Election Fraud
His mendacious performance was far from a concession speech.
ABIGAIL WEINBERG
In a 46-minute speech posted to his Facebook page Wednesday, Donald Trump refused to concede the 2020 election, and instead merely repeated his lie that widespread voter fraud has cost him a second term.
Attorney General Bill Barr said on Tuesday that the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would influence the outcome of the election. Still, Trump spent nearly an hour Wednesday repeating the conspiracy theories he has devised to deny President-elect Joe Biden’s win: that mail-in ballots from non-citizens and dead people were counted; that glitching voting machines switched votes from Trump to Biden, that the election was the final act in a long con by Democrats—from the Mueller investigation to the impeachment hearings—to strip Trump of power, and that a full audit of the election would reveal Trump as the winner
“Ultimately, I am prepared to accept any accurate election result,” Trump claimed, falsely, “and I hope that Joe Biden is as well, but we already have the proof. We already have tens of thousands of ballots more than we need to overturn all of these states that we’re talking about.”
To be clear, voter fraud is so rare as to be statistically negligible, and the claims of faulty voting machines were thoroughly debunked. Even before recounts in Georgia and Wisconsin confirmed Biden’s victories in those states, it was clear that the former vice president had won both the popular vote and the Electoral College by considerable margins.
Among Trump’s dubious assertions on Wednesday was the claim that, because Republicans made gains in the House of Representatives and didn’t lose as many seats as they were expected to in the Senate, “It is statistically impossible that the person that led the charge—me—lost.”
Trump also alluded to his fear of prosecution once he’s out of office—a potential motivation for his refusal to accept the election results: “I hear that the same people who failed to get me in Washington have sent every piece of information to New York so that they can try to get me there.”
Because the speech was prerecorded and posted to Facebook, news networks didn’t have an opportunity to cut him off once he began spewing falsehoods. From now on, social media may be this one-term president’s only outlet.
End Times Guy Rick Wiles Hoping Trump Will Kill Us All By Firing Squad In Next Month
Wisconsin certified its election results Monday. These are the formalities we must pay attention to thanks to Donald Trump's jacklegged coup. While incompetent, his efforts to disenfranchise millions of voters are still as repulsive as his adult children. This asshole tried to have ballots thrown out from people who couldn't get to the polls because of age or disability. His campaign argued that some of them “didn't meet the criteria." May he rot forever in hell. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Joe Biden also won Arizona again after the state certified its election results. Trump is still whining while the ghost of John McCain laughs derisively. (Arizona Republic)
Sidney Powell's banana pants election fraud lawsuit cites a witness who observed skullduggery in Edison County, Michigan, which does not exist. Maybe she meant Springfield or Riverdale. (Raw Story)
A Deputy Prosecutor Was Fired for Speaking Out Against Jail Time for People Who Fall Behind on Rent
Arkansas prosecutor Josh Drake called the state’s criminal eviction statute “cruel” and “unconstitutional.”
This story was published originally by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published.
An Arkansas prosecutor has been fired after speaking out against the state’s criminal eviction statute in an October ProPublica story. Garland County deputy prosecutor Josh Drake was let go from his position on Oct. 31 by Michelle Lawrence, the prosecuting attorney.
Arkansas is the only state where landlords can file criminal charges rather than civil complaints against tenants for falling behind on rent. Drake told ProPublica, “I hate that law. It’s unconstitutional.” It constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, he said, echoing other Arkansas legal experts and advocates across the political spectrum.
Under the law, which dates to 1901, if a tenant’s rent is a day overdue, they forfeit their right to be in the property. If they don’t leave their homes within 10 days of getting a notice from their landlords, they can be charged with a misdemeanor and fined for each day they overstay.
Evictions in the state can snowball from charges to warrants to arrests to jail time, leaving people with criminal records that hinder their ability to find a new home or get a job. In civil evictions, by contrast, landlords can pursue unpaid rent and other additional fees from tenants, but the process doesn’t include daily fines for staying in the property without paying or put tenants at risk of jail time.
ProPublica found that since 2018, more than 1,000 cases have been filed under the criminal eviction statute. During that time, judges have sentenced at least 37 renters to jail after charges stemming from the law, which is officially known as “failure to pay rent, failure to vacate.” Women and people of color have disproportionately been charged.
Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national moratorium on evictions did not stop the criminal filings. Since the Sept. 4 order, at least 49 people have been charged, with more than two dozen cases filed in the last month. Meanwhile, the number of new cases of the coronavirus in Arkansas has risen dramatically since mid-September. The state now has over 1,000 hospitalized because of the virus, according to Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
Landlords told ProPublica they preferred the criminal statute to civil evictions because the criminal process is cheaper. Taxpayers shoulder the cost when county attorneys like Lawrence and Drake pursue tenants. In civil eviction hearings, landlords have to cover their attorney fees.
................................... more at link above in title.
BLACK LIVES MATTER
https://thegrapevine.theroot.com/steve-mcqueens-lovers-rock-authentically-captures-the-j-1845768534
Steve McQueen's Lovers Rock Authentically Captures the Joyful Resilience of the Black Diaspora
When I went to London for the first time, I thought it was Jamaica. As a nine-year-old born and raised on the Caribbean island, I thought of the UK in terms of what I’d seen on TV and read in the literature books set in Britain that were part of my primary school curriculum—as a place that was grey-scale and rainy, inhabited by funny accents like the one my now-British father had, and a truly foreign chilly climate. My father, also a born and raised Jamaican, was living there, which occasioned my visit.
It turned out that this place which was situated literally across the world from where I lived was more colorful and familiar than I had imagined (though even colder). Most of what I remember from this trip came back vividly as I watched Steve McQueen’s “Lovers Rock,” the second installment of his anthology film series Small Axe, which focuses in on the story of the Caribbean people who made England their home. The film brought back for me how effectively these transplants were able to stake their flag in a powerhouse country which for centuries had colonized the nations in the Caribbean they came from, like Jamaica.
The opening scene of the film licked me with that same sense of joyful recognition I had as a little girl who’d landed in England, stunned to hear Jamaican patois expressed just as sharply and authentically by people there as it was by those back home. The film kicks off with British-based actors Kadeem Ramsay, Romario Simpson, and Alexander James-Blake talking to each other in pitch-perfect Jamaican accents while maneuvering furniture out of a house in preparation for a party, signaling that Lovers Rock will be richly populated with sounds and visuals that reflect the aforementioned authenticity. As the men chat, women gather and sing in a kitchen while kneading flour for dumplings and chopping up onions, tomato, and thyme to cook up a rich curry goat that I could almost smell from memory.
Of course, Jamaican music is seminal to the film, which is named after that sub-genre of reggae concerned with giving couples something to slowly “wine” to. The recognizable bass drop under tracks sung by crooning reggae greats like Dennis Brown and Gregory Isaacs underscore the prevalence of Jamaican music wherever people who appreciate good music are present. The inclusion of Barry Biggs’ one-drop cover of American singer Eddie Holman’s “Hey There, Lonely Girl” also emphasized for me the power of Black people’s musical creations, not just specifically Jamaican ones, to engender connections—whether between two people slow wining at a party or among those from different branches of the Black diaspora, in this case, the U.S., UK, and Jamaica. The pleasure I got watching Lovers Rock came from witnessing a beautifully realized cinematographic telling of the deeply rooted connections that keep Black people living and loving, no matter where in the world we are and whatever hostility may be aimed at us.
Despite looming dangers like the threat of street violence from a group of white British men targeting lead character Martha (played by Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn), or the reality of intra-community violence when one of the Jamaican men at the party hovers over women with a hollow charm that turns malevolent pretty quickly, the film shows the exuberance of a people bringing their whole selves—and all that makes them feel at home—to a place where their joy cannot be sidelined, at least not for long. Jamaican-born, BAFTA Rising Star award-winning actor Michael Ward, who stars as Franklyn in the film, captures this brilliant synchronicity in his role. “Nuh bada get irate,” he says to St. Aubyn’s character at one point (roughly translated to “don’t get angry”), and as the words roll off his tongue you understand fully why Martha would give him more than one dance.
Dancing is one of the most evocative features in the film, not least of all because in 2020 you’d be hard-pressed to experience the kind of group abandon captured in this recreation of Caribbean people at a house party in the UK in the 1980s. Afros, dreads, and hips swing as weed smoke floats above bodies moving along with each other, instinctually feeling some of the very best parts of being a human: budding love, good music, and that ineffable energy that comes when people are gathered together in joy.
As the modern-day UK government pushes hostile policies aimed at rejecting and ejecting darker-skinned migrants from countries it plumbed for years for capital and cultural enrichment, Lovers Rock is a lush reminder that Black people bloom wherever we transplant ourselves—come what may.
Writer, speaker, finesser, and a fly dresser. Jamaican-American currently chilling in Chicago.
RANDOM AND OUTER SPACE
https://www.quantamagazine.org/did-viruses-create-the-nucleus-the-answer-may-be-near-20201125/
Did Viruses Create the Nucleus? The Answer May Be Near.
An unorthodox symbiotic theory about the origin of eukaryotes’ defining characteristic may soon be put to the test.
November 25, 2020
Different as the cells from animals, plants, fungi and protozoa can be, they all share one prominent feature: a nucleus. They have other organelles, too, like the energy-producing mitochondria, but the presence of a nucleus — a well-defined porous pouch full of genetic material — is what inspired the biologist Édouard Chatton in 1925 to coin the term eukaryotes, which referred to living things with a “true kernel.” All the rest he labeled prokaryotes, for life “before kernel.” This dichotomy between nucleated and nonnucleated life became fundamental to biology.
No one knows exactly how the nucleus evolved and created that division. Growing evidence has persuaded some researchers, however, that the nucleus might have arisen through a symbiotic partnership much like the one believed to have produced mitochondria. A crucial difference, though, is that the partner responsible for the nucleus might not have been a cell at all, but a virus.
Physicists Nail Down the 'Magic Number' That Shapes the Universe (quantamagazine.org)
Numerically, the fine-structure constant, denoted by the Greek letter a (alpha), comes very close to the ratio 1/137. It commonly appears in formulas governing light and matter. [...] The constant is everywhere because it characterizes the strength of the electromagnetic force affecting charged particles such as electrons and protons. Because 1/137 is small, electromagnetism is weak; as a consequence, charged particles form airy atoms whose electrons orbit at a distance and easily hop away, enabling chemical bonds. On the other hand, the constant is also just big enough: Physicists have argued that if it were something like 1/138, stars would not be able to create carbon, and life as we know it wouldn't exist.
Today, in a new paper in the journal Nature, a team of four physicists led by Saida Guellati-Khelifa at the Kastler Brossel Laboratory in Paris reported the most precise measurement yet of the fine-structure constant. The team measured the constant's value to the 11th decimal place, reporting that a = 1/137.03599920611. (The last two digits are uncertain.) With a margin of error of just 81 parts per trillion, the new measurement is nearly three times more precise than the previous best measurement in 2018 by Muller's group at Berkeley, the main competition. (Guellati-Khelifa made the most precise measurement before Muller's in 2011.) Muller said of his rival's new measurement of alpha, "A factor of three is a big deal. Let's not be shy about calling this a big accomplishment."
Researchers Calculate Earth is 2,000 Light-years Closer to the Milky Way's Black Hole (phys.org)
CNET explains:Over the last 15 years, a Japanese radio astronomy project, VERA, has been gathering data. Using a technique called interferometry, VERA gathered data from telescopes across Japan and combined them with data from other existing projects to create what is essentially the most accurate map of the Milky Way yet.
By pinpointing the location and velocity of around 99 specific points in our galaxy, VERA has concluded that the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A, at the center of our galaxy, is actually 25,800 light-years from Earth — almost 2,000 light-years closer than what we previously believed.
In addition, the new model calculates Earth is moving faster than we believed. Older models clocked Earth's speed at 220 kilometers (136 miles) per second, orbiting around the galaxy's centre. VERA's new model has us moving at 227 kilometers (141 miles) per second.
Uri Geller Finally Apologizes for Suing Pokemon 20 Years Ago (kotaku.com.au)
20 years later, Kotaku reports...Spoon-bending magician Uri Geller gave Nintendo permission to use the character Kadabra on Pokémon cards today, after a 20 year legal dispute in which Geller claimed the Pokémon's Japanese name and image were too close to his own.
"I am truly sorry for what I did 20 years ago," Geller tweeted today. "Kids and grownups I am releasing the ban. It's now all up to #Nintendo to bring my #kadabra #pokemon card back. It will probably be one of the rarest cards now! Much energy and love to all!"
As Screenrant explains, while Kadabra is a word associated with magic, the Pokémon's Japanese name — variously written as Yungerer, Yungeller, and Yun Geller — seems to be a reference to Geller... Geller sued Nintendo over Kadabra in 2000, seeking damages and insisting the card stop being used in sets. "Nintendo turned me into an evil, occult Pokémon character. Nintendo stole my identity by using my name and my signature image," Geller said at the time.
What Happened After Silicon Valley Tried to Make Telecommuting Permanent (eastbaytimes.com
Instead a compromise plan approved unanimously by commissioners last week "calls for big companies to have 60% of their employees take sustainable commutes — by transit, bike or carpooling — by 2035."
Lawmakers, mayors and the business community railed against the remote work mandate, saying it would undercut the Bay Area's economy and encourage large companies to re-locate to cheaper regions. Transit supporters said work-from-home requirements would cut train and bus use without clear proof it would reduce the mileage of vehicle trips and emissions. The new proposal calls for no more than 40 percent of a company's workforce to commute by auto on an average workday by 2035. Farms and employers with fewer than 50 workers would be exempt.
The plan encourages companies to subsidize transit passes, bikes, on-site employee housing, and commuter shuttles, as well as helping workers afford housing in walkable, transit-rich communities. Many large tech companies like Google and Facebook already provide shuttles and subsidize transit for their workers. It also suggests companies discourage workers from single-vehicle commutes by reducing parking spaces and raising parking fees, compressing work schedules and eliminating personal desks in favor of shared work spaces.
The new proposal was designed with input from state lawmakers, the mayors of San Francisco and San Jose, county supervisors, and officials from the tech industry and transit groups, MTC commissioner Nick Josefowitz said. "This is a much more effective policy," said Josefowitz, chief of policy at the regional think tank SPUR. "This is figuring out how to do it better with everybody at the table." Gwen Litvak of the business coalition Bay Area Council said the work-from-home mandate would have hurt urban centers and businesses. "The compromise will help revitalize downtowns, and gives business critical flexibility to have workers carpool, use public transit, ride bikes or walk, or even work remotely, but by their own choice," she said.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said the revisions better reflect how his city is evolving — from a suburban, car-centric culture to a city focused on developing a dense commercial and residential core supported by a robust transit network... Liccardo said part of Silicon Valley's success springs from having talented employees working side-by-side, exchanging ideas and innovations. Remote work reduces some creative energy.
"We cannot impose mandates that contradict the laws of human nature and the laws of creative industry," he said.
Bloomberg Columnist: Bitcoin is Part of a Real Monetary Revolution (bnnbloomberg.ca)
Covid-19 has been good for Bitcoin and for cryptocurrency generally. First, the pandemic accelerated our advance into a more digital word: What might have taken 10 years has been achieved in 10 months. People who had never before risked an online transaction were forced to try, for the simple reason that banks were closed. Second, and as a result, the pandemic significantly increased our exposure to financial surveillance as well as financial fraud. Both these trends have been good for Bitcoin....
What is happening is that Bitcoin is gradually being adopted not so much as means of payment but as a store of value. Not only high-net-worth individuals but also tech companies are investing. In July, Michael Saylor, the billionaire founder of MicroStrategy, directed his company to hold part of its cash reserves in alternative assets. By September, MicroStrategy's corporate treasury had purchased bitcoins worth $425 million. Square, the San Francisco-based payments company, bought bitcoins worth $50 million last month. PayPal just announced that American users can buy, hold and sell bitcoins in their PayPal wallets. This process of adoption has much further to run...
Some economists, such as my friend Ken Rogoff, welcome the demise of cash because it will make the management of monetary policy easier and organized crime harder. But it will be a fundamentally different world when all our payments are recorded, centrally stored, and scrutinized by artificial intelligence — regardless of whether it is Amazon's Jeff Bezos or China's Xi Jinping who can access our data... Rather than seeking to create a Chinese-style digital dollar, Joe Biden's nascent administration should recognize the benefits of integrating Bitcoin into the U.S. financial system — which, after all, was originally designed to be less centralized and more respectful of individual privacy than the systems of less-free societies.
Chinese Submarine Reaches the Deepest Place On Earth (cnbc.com)
The Biden Administration Needs to Do Something About Tesla
The electric carmaker’s approach to autonomous vehicles is far too risky.
DEC 01, 20209:00 AM
https://slate.com/technology/2020/12/tesla-biden-self-driving-cars-regulation.html
Australian Telescope Maps New Atlas of the Universe In Record Speed (theguardian.com)
The survey -- the Rapid Askap Continuum Survey -- has mapped millions of star-like points; most are distant galaxies, the CSIRO says. About a million of those distant galaxies have never been seen before. Scientists expect to find tens of millions of new galaxies in future surveys, lead author and CSIRO astronomer David McConnell said. The telescope mapped the sky in unprecedented speed and detail. The CSIRO says the result proves that an all-sky survey can be done in weeks rather than years. The instrument has a particularly wide field of view, enabling it to take panoramic pictures of the sky in high detail. The quality of the telescope's receivers means the team only needed to combine 903 images to form a full map of the sky. Other major world telescopes have required tens of thousands of images to put together an all-sky survey. The CSIRO's custom-built hardware and software then processed the 13.5 exabytes (13.5 billion gigabytes) of raw data generated by the telescope. That raw data was generated at a faster rate than Australia's entire internet traffic.The initial results were published in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.
Light-Based Quantum Computer Exceeds Fastest Classical Supercomputers (scientificamerican.com)
Unlike a traditional computer built from silicon processors, Jiuzhangis an elaborate tabletop setup of lasers, mirrors, prisms and photon detectors. It is not a universal computer that could one day send e-mails or store files, but it does demonstrate the potential of quantum computing. Last year, Google captured headlines when its quantum computer Sycamore took roughly three minutes to do what would take a supercomputer three days (or 10,000 years, depending on your estimation method). In their paper, the USTC team estimates that it would take the Sunway TaihuLight, the third most powerful supercomputer in the world, a staggering 2.5 billion years to perform the same calculation as Jiuzhang. [...] This latest demonstration of quantum computing's potential from the USTC group is critical because it differs dramatically from Google's approach. Sycamore uses superconducting loops of metal to form qubits; in Jiuzhang, the photons themselves are the qubits. Independent corroboration that quantum computing principles can lead to primacy even on totally different hardware "gives us confidence that in the long term, eventually, useful quantum simulators and a fault-tolerant quantum computer will become feasible," Lu says.
... [T]he USTC setup is dauntingly complicated. Jiuzhang begins with a laser that is split so it strikes 25 crystals made of potassium titanyl phosphate. After each crystal is hit, it reliably spits out two photons in opposite directions. The photons are then sent through 100 inputs, where they race through a track made of 300 prisms and 75 mirrors. Finally, the photons land in 100 slots where they are detected. Averaging over 200 seconds of runs, the USTC group detected about 43 photons per run. But in one run, they observed 76 photons -- more than enough to justify their quantum primacy claim. It is difficult to estimate just how much time would be needed for a supercomputer to solve a distribution with 76 detected photons -- in large part because it is not exactly feasible to spend 2.5 billion years running a supercomputer to directly check it. Instead, the researchers extrapolate from the time it takes to classically calculate for smaller numbers of detected photons. At best, solving for 50 photons, the researchers claim, would take a supercomputer two days, which is far slower than the 200-second run time of Jiuzhang.
Reversal of Biological Clock Restores Vision In Old Mice (scitechdaily.com)
The achievement represents the first successful attempt to reverse glaucoma-induced vision loss, rather than merely stem its progression, the team said. If replicated through further studies, the approach could pave the way for therapies to promote tissue repair across various organs and reverse aging and age-related diseases in humans. Sinclair and colleagues caution that the findings remain to be replicated in further studies, including in different animal models, before any human experiments. Nonetheless, they add, the results offer a proof of concept and a pathway to designing treatments for a range of age-related human diseases.
For their work, the team used an adeno-associated virus (AAV) as a vehicle to deliver into the retinas of mice three youth-restoring genes -- Oct4, Sox2 and Klf4 -- that are normally switched on during embryonic development. The three genes, together with a fourth one, which was not used in this work, are collectively known as Yamanaka factors. The treatment had multiple beneficial effects on the eye. First, it promoted nerve regeneration following optic-nerve injury in mice with damaged optic nerves. Second, it reversed vision loss in animals with a condition mimicking human glaucoma. And third, it reversed vision loss in aging animals without glaucoma.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2012.05 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1982 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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