38 DAYS - daily election day countdown
Great blog entry this week: LET'S GET AFTER IT. (Thank you, Chris Cuomo...)
I just finished reading THE NEW JIM CROW, and this quote stood out to me.
It gives me the theme this week for the HODGE PODGE, the weekly mixture of all the things of interest to me about the election, the pandemic, police brutality, black lives matter, and more.
"The burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs."
~ (W.E.B. du Bois as quoted in The New Jim Crow pg. 217).
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| https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/14/the-soul-of-w-e-b-du-bois/ |
BECAUSE we need levity:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/22/1977546/-Biden-loves-the-Biden-Obama-Memes-Day-69-out-of-100-Days-of-Loving-Joe-Biden
Biden: I tinted all the mirrors orange— Person, Woman, Man, Zandar, TV (@ZandarVTS) November 13, 2016
Obama: What?
Biden: He won't be able to see himself
Obama: Joe...
Biden: He'll think he's a vampire pic.twitter.com/IbZ8tr1m1m
And more levity that some people will take seriously:
I find it very interesting how the show “Masked Singer” hit America in January 2019, a little bit over a year before they started forcing us all into masks.— DeAnna Lorraine 🇺🇸 (@DeAnna4Congress) September 25, 2020
It’s almost like they were beginning to condition the public that masks were “normal” and “cool”.
The media is demonic.
More here: https://www.wonkette.com/deanna-lorraine-knows-the-masked-singer-was-part-of-this-whole-coronaplot-thing
SAD DAY LAST WEEK - THERE'S TWO CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEMS IN AMERICA - ONE FOR WHITE PEOPLE AND THE OTHER FOR EVERYONE ELSE.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/nationwide-protests-breonna-taylor-grand-jury-decision-two-officers-shot-in-louisville.html
Radley Balko knows a couple things about no-knock police warrants. Here is what he says you need to know about Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron omitting facts to the point of lying in his press conference explaining why the officers who killed Breonna Taylor weren't charged. (To one of his points, we too have said Taylor was sleeping when she was killed. This was not correct.) (Washington Post)
THIS IS TOO GREAT... HE HEARD THEM; HE HEARD THEM...
— Ava DuVernay (@ava) September 24, 2020
via GIPHY
It is with great sadness the Chicago Bears mourn the loss of Bears Hall of Fame running back Gale Sayers. Sayers amplified what it meant to be a Chicago Bear both on and off the field. He was regarded as an extraordinary teammate, leader, husband and father. He was 77. pic.twitter.com/cK8kS9ru8b— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) September 23, 2020
My heart is broken over the loss of my dear friend, Gale Sayers.— Billy Dee Williams (@realbdw) September 23, 2020
Portraying Gale in Brian’s Song was a true honor and one of the nightlights of my career. He was an extraordinary human being with the the kindest heart.
My sincerest condolences to his family 💔#RIPGaleSayers pic.twitter.com/OyQRlwuznU
https://www.wonkette.com/were-just-really-really-going-to-miss-ruth-bader-ginsburg
THE 2020 ELECTION
Why the hell did the national press bury the story of Trump refusing to say he'd commit to a peaceful transfer of power? Dan Froomkin wants to know, and he's being hysterical about it. — PressWatch
Trump Refuses to Affirm That the Winner of the Election Will Be President
SEPT 24, 20207:37 AM
In Donald Trump’s telling of it, the result of the 2020 election, which has not been held yet—and he might even win—is not legitimate. It’s a note Trump struck in 2016, when it looked like he almost certainly would not win, and it’s a scorched earth approach to democracy that he’s only made more extreme this time around. There’s no way to frame Trump’s approach to the upcoming vote as anything other than the stuff of strongmen and authoritarians. This is how elections are treated in Ankara and Moscow. On Wednesday, Trump was given the umpteenth chance to take the high road and reassert a sense of calm and order to the electoral process by saying something gallingly obvious: the winner of the election will be president. When asked by a reporter about that possibility, whether the president of the country could reassure Americans that there would be a peaceful transfer of power next year, Trump opted for disorder.
“We’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump responded during a White House news conference. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster. “I understand that, but people are rioting,” responded the reporter. “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful—there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation,” the president said. “The ballots are out of control. You know it. And you know who knows it better than anyone else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.”
“Get rid of the ballots.” A real thing an American president just said.
https://www.wonkette.com/he-said-it-hes-a-fascist-plan-accordingly
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| https://lithub.com/umberto-eco-on-donald-trump-14-ways-of-looking-at-a-fascist/ |
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| https://medium.com/@martinbishop_13070/mein-trumpf-donald-and-the-14-point-definition-of-fascism-or-it-has-happened-here-1f5ab51227ab |
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/biden-trump-criminal-justice-facebook-ads.html
Our analysis found that of the $82 million Trump’s reelection campaign has spent on Facebook ads this year, $6.6 million paid for ads about crime and policing—a top focus of his Facebook campaign. Almost all of it came since George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis in May. More than one-third of those ad buys were aimed at key battleground states and many sought to persuade specific undecided voters, and married women in particular. The Biden campaign? It didn’t spend a cent on criminal justice ads on Facebook until late August, choosing instead to focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recovery. Yet Biden had, during the Democratic primaries, articulated a more progressive criminal justice platform than any of his party’s recent nominees.
After being hammered by Trump and other Republicans as a puppet of antifa and the “radical left,” in recent weeks Biden has begun to shift his strategy, making some mention of criminal justice issues in ads on television and social media.
Examining the candidates’ Facebook ads, we can see these shifts in tactics and how the campaigns have changed their thinking about what voters want to hear about criminal justice in the final weeks before Election Day.
Former Mueller Prosecutor Says Russia Investigation, Cowed by Trump Threats, “Could Have Done More”
Without financial records to seal the deal or compelled testimony to out wrongdoing or, minimally, flip witnesses that were eyeing presidential pardons, the investigation failed to deliver on its promise to plumb the darkest depths of Trump’s Russia links. “We still do not know if there are other financial ties between the president and either the Russian government or Russian oligarchs,” Weissmann writes. “We do not know whether he paid bribes to foreign officials to secure favorable treatment for his business interests, a potential violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that would provide leverage against the president. We do not know if he had other Russian business deals in the works at the time he was running for president, how they might have aided or constrained his campaign, or even if they are continuing to influence his presidency.”
The Mueller investigation refused to go all the way, to use its authority to leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of truth; it described what was plain in abstraction, and in doing so did left the American public in perhaps a worse off position than they started—nowhere.
The Fox News Decision Desk Controls the Fate of American Democracy
Trump can’t use the Supreme Court to cheat in overtime if he loses in regulation.
The question, then is: How much damage could an all but openly partisan Supreme Court, particularly in tandem with partisan supreme courts at the state level and partisan appeals judges, do? It’s impossible to give a single definitive answer, because that would require knowing exactly what is in Trump’s brain when he makes these comments. And no one, including Trump himself, ever knows exactly what he means by anything. But we can look at his remarks in the context of what his campaign has done, then put that in the context of what we know about what might be happening on the ground in November.
https://politics.slashdot.org/story/20/09/20/0441208/us-teens-are-being-paid-to-spread-disinformation-on-social-media
US Teens Are Being Paid to Spread Disinformation on Social Media (adn.com)
The Washington Post covered "a sprawling yet secretive campaign that experts say evades the guardrails put in place by social media companies to limit online disinformation of the sort used by Russia" during America's last presidential campaign in 2016.
According to four people with knowledge of the effort, "Teenagers, some of them minors, are being paid to pump out the messages..."The campaign draws on the spam-like behavior of bots and trolls, with the same or similar language posted repeatedly across social media. But it is carried out, at least in part, by humans paid to use their own accounts, though nowhere disclosing their relationship with Turning Point Action or the digital firm brought in to oversee the day-to-day activity. One user included a link to Turning Point USA's website in his Twitter profile until The Washington Post began asking questions about the activity. In response to questions from The Post, Twitter on Tuesday suspended at least 20 accounts involved in the activity for "platform manipulation and spam." Facebook also removed a number of accounts as part of what the company said is an ongoing investigation...
The months-long effort by the tax-exempt nonprofit is among the most ambitious domestic influence campaigns uncovered this election cycle, said experts tracking the evolution of deceptive online tactics. "In 2016, there were Macedonian teenagers interfering in the election by running a troll farm and writing salacious articles for money," said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab. "In this election, the troll farm is in Phoenix...."
The messages — some of them false and some simply partisan — were parceled out in precise increments as directed by the effort's leaders, according to the people with knowledge of the highly coordinated activity, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect the privacy of minors carrying out the work... The messages have appeared mainly as replies to news articles about politics and public health posted on social media. They seek to cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process, asserting that Democrats are using mail balloting to steal the election — "thwarting the will of the American people," they alleged. The posts also play down the threat from covid-19, which claimed the life of Turning Point's co-founder Bill Montgomery in July...
By seeking to rebut mainstream news articles, the operation illustrates the extent to which some online political activism is designed to discredit the media. While Facebook and Twitter have pledged to crack down on what they have labeled coordinated inauthentic behavior, in Facebook's case, and platform manipulation and spam, as Twitter defines its rules, their efforts falter in the face of organizations willing to pay users to post on their own accounts, maintaining the appearance of independence and authenticity.
One parent even said their two teenagers had been posting the messages since June as "independent contractors" — while being paid less than minimum wage.
According to four people with knowledge of the effort, "Teenagers, some of them minors, are being paid to pump out the messages..."The campaign draws on the spam-like behavior of bots and trolls, with the same or similar language posted repeatedly across social media. But it is carried out, at least in part, by humans paid to use their own accounts, though nowhere disclosing their relationship with Turning Point Action or the digital firm brought in to oversee the day-to-day activity. One user included a link to Turning Point USA's website in his Twitter profile until The Washington Post began asking questions about the activity. In response to questions from The Post, Twitter on Tuesday suspended at least 20 accounts involved in the activity for "platform manipulation and spam." Facebook also removed a number of accounts as part of what the company said is an ongoing investigation...
The months-long effort by the tax-exempt nonprofit is among the most ambitious domestic influence campaigns uncovered this election cycle, said experts tracking the evolution of deceptive online tactics. "In 2016, there were Macedonian teenagers interfering in the election by running a troll farm and writing salacious articles for money," said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab. "In this election, the troll farm is in Phoenix...."
The messages — some of them false and some simply partisan — were parceled out in precise increments as directed by the effort's leaders, according to the people with knowledge of the highly coordinated activity, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect the privacy of minors carrying out the work... The messages have appeared mainly as replies to news articles about politics and public health posted on social media. They seek to cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process, asserting that Democrats are using mail balloting to steal the election — "thwarting the will of the American people," they alleged. The posts also play down the threat from covid-19, which claimed the life of Turning Point's co-founder Bill Montgomery in July...
By seeking to rebut mainstream news articles, the operation illustrates the extent to which some online political activism is designed to discredit the media. While Facebook and Twitter have pledged to crack down on what they have labeled coordinated inauthentic behavior, in Facebook's case, and platform manipulation and spam, as Twitter defines its rules, their efforts falter in the face of organizations willing to pay users to post on their own accounts, maintaining the appearance of independence and authenticity.
One parent even said their two teenagers had been posting the messages since June as "independent contractors" — while being paid less than minimum wage.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-campaign-misspells-nobel-peace-prize-in-fundraising-ad-2020-9
- The Trump campaign released an ad that incorrectly spelled Nobel as "Noble" to celebrate his second nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
- A far-right Norwegian lawmaker again put forth President Donald Trump's name for the prestigious award, citing his role in normalizing ties between the United Arab Emirates and Israel.
- Anyone can be nominated for the prize, and hundreds of candidates are submitted every year.
I am just making Tucker Carlson confused dog faces now. Is he ... huh?
Is he saying that private companies that get federal contracts are banned from any sort of bias training in their own businesses? That he will use the power of the federal government to discriminate against private industry based on speech? That he will prior-restraint what they say? Government small enough to ...
I ... huh?
Giphy
U.S. Attorney General William Barr listens during a discussion with state attorneys general on Protecting Consumers from Social Media Abuses in the Cabinet Room of the White House on September 23, 2020 in Washington, D.C. Pool/Getty Images
Assistant U.S. Attorney: Barr “Has Brought Shame” on Justice Department
SEPT 26, 20209:30 AM
A current federal prosecutor has spoken up publicly against Attorney General Bill Barr, saying he “has brought shame” on the Department of Justice. James Herbert, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts wrote a letter published in the Boston Globe saying he wanted to speak out against the “unprecedented politicization of the office of the attorney general.” ABC News confirmed the authenticity of the letter.
The letter is significant because even though several former officials have spoken up against Barr, it is highly unusual for a current federal prosecutor to criticize the attorney general publicly. In the letter, Herbert made sure to emphasize he was only speaking for himself. “While I am a federal prosecutor, I am writing to express my own views, clearly not those of the department, on a matter that should concern all citizens: the unprecedented politicization of the office of the attorney general,” Herbert said. “The attorney general acts as though his job is to serve only the political interests of Donald J. Trump. This is a dangerous abuse of power.”
NEW: Sources familiar confirm to @ABC the authenticity of this letter from current AUSA James Herbert publicly speaking out against AG Barr. "The current attorney general has brought shame on the department he purports to lead." w/ @AaronKatersky pic.twitter.com/4jzDtk7Q0r— Alex Mallin (@alex_mallin) September 25, 2020
In the letter, Herbert suggests the final straw that led him to break protocol and speak out publicly was Barr’s speech at Hillsdale College earlier this month. During the speech, Barr harshly criticized his own Justice Department and its workers, claiming they were often motivated by politics and went “headhunting” for high-profile targets. While speaking at the conservative-leaning school, Barr dismissed those who say he is too personally involved in cases involving Trump. “What exactly am I interfering with?” he asked. “Under the law, all prosecutorial power is invested in the attorney general.”
Herbert cited several instances in which Barr has shown he is more interested in making the president happy than seeking justice. “From his misleading summary of the Mueller Report, to his selective intervention in cases against political allies of the president, to his accusation that victims such as George Floyd are being used as mere ‘props’ by those calling for racial justice, to his baseless claims about mail-in ballots, William Barr has done the president’s bidding at every turn,” Herbert wrote. “For 30 years I have been proud to say I work for the Department of Justice, but the current attorney general has brought shame on the department he purports to lead.”
https://www.wonkette.com/fbi-director-wray-testifies-truthfully-about-elections-and-mark-meadows-is-not-having-it
THE PANDEMIC
CLASSIC!
Q: Why haven't you said anything about the US hitting 200,000 coronavirus deaths?— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 22, 2020
TRUMP: "Go ahead. Uhhhhh. Anybody else?" pic.twitter.com/gUv1kgG9OT
Trump's message about the US hitting 200,000 coronavirus deaths is to try and pass blame to China pic.twitter.com/Z2OlvxG7dy— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 22, 2020
The Pentagon Got $1 Billion to Fight Coronavirus. It Went Shopping for Military Equipment Instead.
Two hundred thousand dead Americans. No ceremony, not even a candle, and Trump is blaming Joe Biden for being "anti-vaxx." (Mother Jones)
'Why Modeling the Spread of COVID-19 Is So Damn Hard' (ieee.org)
Slashdot reader the_newsbeagle writes:At the beginning of the pandemic, modelers pulled out everything they had to predict the spread of the virus. This article explains the three main types of models used: 1) compartmental models that sort people into categories of exposure and recovery, 2) data-driven models that often use neural networks to make predictions, and 3) agent-based models that are something like a Sim Pandemic.
"Researchers say they've learned a lot of lessons modeling this pandemic, lessons that will carry over to the next..." the article points out:Finally, researchers emphasize the need for agility. Jarad Niemi, an associate professor of statistics at Iowa State University who helps run the forecast hub used by the CDC, says software packages have made it easier to build models quickly, and the code-sharing site GitHub lets people share and compare their models. COVID-19 is giving modelers a chance to try out all their newest tools, says biologist Lauren Ancel Meyers, the head of the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin. "The pace of innovation, the pace of development, is unlike ever before," she says. "There are new statistical methods, new kinds of data, new model structures."
"If we want to beat this virus," says Mikhail Prokopenko, a computer scientist at the University of Sydney, "we have to be as adaptive as it is."
"Researchers say they've learned a lot of lessons modeling this pandemic, lessons that will carry over to the next..." the article points out:Finally, researchers emphasize the need for agility. Jarad Niemi, an associate professor of statistics at Iowa State University who helps run the forecast hub used by the CDC, says software packages have made it easier to build models quickly, and the code-sharing site GitHub lets people share and compare their models. COVID-19 is giving modelers a chance to try out all their newest tools, says biologist Lauren Ancel Meyers, the head of the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin. "The pace of innovation, the pace of development, is unlike ever before," she says. "There are new statistical methods, new kinds of data, new model structures."
"If we want to beat this virus," says Mikhail Prokopenko, a computer scientist at the University of Sydney, "we have to be as adaptive as it is."
Sweeeet, Montana is having a "remarkable increase" in coronavirus cases, and half the twitter replies are fumbling basic math and repeating "did they die OF covid or WITH covid?" (NBC News)
https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/09/20/2359229/could-open-source-licensing-stop-big-pharma-profiteering-on-taxpayer-funded-covid-19-vaccines
Could Open Source Licensing Stop Big Pharma Profiteering On Taxpayer-Funded Covid-19 Vaccines? (theconversation.com)
Two professors at the University of Massachusetts have co-authored a new essay explaining how open source licensing "could keep Big Pharma from making huge profits off taxpayer-funded research" in the international, multi-billion-dollar race for a Covid-19 vaccine:The invention of the "General Public License," sometimes referred to as a viral or reciprocal license, meant that should an improvement be made, the new software version automatically inherits the same license as its parent. We believe that in a time of a global pandemic, a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine should be licensed with General Public License-like properties...
Fortunately, some pharmaceutical companies, national governments, nonprofits like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and international organizations like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiatives — which supports vaccine development — are putting policies in place that embrace openness and sharing rather than intellectual property protection. Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiatives officials have stated that all of their funding agreements require that "appropriate vaccines are first available to populations when and where they are needed to end an outbreak or curtail an epidemic, regardless of ability to pay." That's an important start.
However, when there is a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine, the U.S. and other national governments need to create contractual agreements with firms that provide fair and reasonable funding to cover their costs or even some reasonable profit margin while still mandating the open sharing of the processes for vaccine production, quality assurance and rapid global distribution.
Fortunately, some pharmaceutical companies, national governments, nonprofits like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and international organizations like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiatives — which supports vaccine development — are putting policies in place that embrace openness and sharing rather than intellectual property protection. Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiatives officials have stated that all of their funding agreements require that "appropriate vaccines are first available to populations when and where they are needed to end an outbreak or curtail an epidemic, regardless of ability to pay." That's an important start.
However, when there is a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine, the U.S. and other national governments need to create contractual agreements with firms that provide fair and reasonable funding to cover their costs or even some reasonable profit margin while still mandating the open sharing of the processes for vaccine production, quality assurance and rapid global distribution.
I fucking love this next GIF!!
Trump CDC Issues New Coronavirus Guidance: DOY DOY DOY WE DUNNO
https://idle.slashdot.org/story/20/09/27/0213209/researcher-discusses-whether-time-travel-could-prevent-a-pandemic
Researcher Discusses Whether Time Travel Could Prevent a Pandemic (popularmechanics.com)
University of Queensland student Germain Tobar who worked with UQ physics professor Fabio Costa on a new peer-reviewed paper "says he has mathematically proven the physical feasibility of a specific kind of time travel" without paradoxes, reports Popular Mechanics:Time travel discussion focuses on closed time-like curves, something Albert Einstein first posited. And Tobar and Costa say that as long as just two pieces of an entire scenario within a closed time-like curve are still in "causal order" when you leave, the rest is subject to local free will... In a university statement, Costa illustrates the science with an analogy
"Say you travelled in time, in an attempt to stop COVID-19's patient zero from being exposed to the virus. However if you stopped that individual from becoming infected, that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place. This is a paradox, an inconsistency that often leads people to think that time travel cannot occur in our universe. [L]ogically it's hard to accept because that would affect our freedom to make any arbitrary action. It would mean you can time travel, but you cannot do anything that would cause a paradox to occur...."
But the real truth, in terms of the mathematical outcomes, is more like another classic parable: the monkey's paw. Be careful what you wish for, and be careful what you time travel for. Tobar explains in the statement:
"In the coronavirus patient zero example, you might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would. No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you. Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency."
"Say you travelled in time, in an attempt to stop COVID-19's patient zero from being exposed to the virus. However if you stopped that individual from becoming infected, that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place. This is a paradox, an inconsistency that often leads people to think that time travel cannot occur in our universe. [L]ogically it's hard to accept because that would affect our freedom to make any arbitrary action. It would mean you can time travel, but you cannot do anything that would cause a paradox to occur...."
But the real truth, in terms of the mathematical outcomes, is more like another classic parable: the monkey's paw. Be careful what you wish for, and be careful what you time travel for. Tobar explains in the statement:
"In the coronavirus patient zero example, you might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would. No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you. Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency."
Silicon Valley Tech Workers Angered By Proposal to Make Some Mandatory Telecommuting Permanent (nbcnews.com)
"The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a regional government agency in the San Francisco Bay Area, voted Wednesday to move forward with a proposal to require people at large, office-based companies to work from home three days a week as a way to slash greenhouse gas emissions from car commutes," reports NBC News:It's a radical suggestion that likely would have been a non-starter before Covid-19 shuttered many offices in March, but now that corporate employees have gotten a taste of not commuting, transportation planners think the idea has wider appeal. "There is an opportunity to do things that could not have been done in the past," said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, a member of the transportation commission who supports the proposal. She said she felt "very strongly" that a telecommuting mandate ought to be a part of the region's future...
Some of the nation's largest companies are headquartered in the Bay Area, including not only tech giants Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel and Netflix, but Chevron, Levi Strauss and Wells Fargo... The idea of a mandate was a surprise to residents, many of whom first learned of the idea this week from social media and then flooded an online meeting of the transportation agency Wednesday to try, unsuccessfully, to talk commissioners out of the idea. "We do not want to continue this as a lifestyle," Steven Buss, a Google software engineer who lives in San Francisco, told the commission. "We are all sacrificing now to reduce the spread of the virus, but no one is enjoying working from home," he said. "It's probably fine if you own a big house out in the suburbs and you're nearing retirement, but for young workers like me who live in crowded conditions, working from home is terrible."
Many callers pointed out that the situation exacerbates inequality because only some types of work can be done from home. Others worried about the ripple effects on lunch spots, transit agencies and other businesses and organizations that rely on revenue from office workers. Still other residents said that if car emissions are the problem, the commission should focus on cars, not all commutes... Dustin Moskovitz, a cofounder of Facebook who usually keeps a low public profile, mocked the idea as an indictment of the Bay Area's general failure to plan for growth. "We tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas," Moskovitz, now CEO of software company Asana, tweeted Tuesday.
The mandate would apply to "large, office-based employers" and require them to have at least 60 percent of their employees telecommute on any given workday. They could meet the requirement through flexible schedules, compressed work weeks or other alternatives.
Some of the nation's largest companies are headquartered in the Bay Area, including not only tech giants Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel and Netflix, but Chevron, Levi Strauss and Wells Fargo... The idea of a mandate was a surprise to residents, many of whom first learned of the idea this week from social media and then flooded an online meeting of the transportation agency Wednesday to try, unsuccessfully, to talk commissioners out of the idea. "We do not want to continue this as a lifestyle," Steven Buss, a Google software engineer who lives in San Francisco, told the commission. "We are all sacrificing now to reduce the spread of the virus, but no one is enjoying working from home," he said. "It's probably fine if you own a big house out in the suburbs and you're nearing retirement, but for young workers like me who live in crowded conditions, working from home is terrible."
Many callers pointed out that the situation exacerbates inequality because only some types of work can be done from home. Others worried about the ripple effects on lunch spots, transit agencies and other businesses and organizations that rely on revenue from office workers. Still other residents said that if car emissions are the problem, the commission should focus on cars, not all commutes... Dustin Moskovitz, a cofounder of Facebook who usually keeps a low public profile, mocked the idea as an indictment of the Bay Area's general failure to plan for growth. "We tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas," Moskovitz, now CEO of software company Asana, tweeted Tuesday.
The mandate would apply to "large, office-based employers" and require them to have at least 60 percent of their employees telecommute on any given workday. They could meet the requirement through flexible schedules, compressed work weeks or other alternatives.
THE WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT
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.
WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT - JOHNS HOPKINS
Anyway, as usual, here's the weekly links to the data about cases (lower than reality) and deaths (lower than reality, also) due to COVID-19.
Data can be found here, as always:
This is also a good data site:
Last updated: September 27, 2020, 18:25 GMT
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
7,302,826
Deaths:
209,291
Recovered:
4,536,625
About Worldometer
Worldometer manually analyzes, validates, and aggregates data from thousands of sources in real time and provides global COVID-19 live statistics for a wide audience of caring people around the world.
Our data is also trusted and used by the UK Government, Johns Hopkins CSSE, the Government of Thailand, the Government of Vietnam, the Government of Pakistan, Financial Times, The New York Times, Business Insider, BBC, and many others.
Over the past 15 years, our statistics have been requested by, and provided to Oxford University Press, Wiley, Pearson, CERN, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), The Atlantic, BBC, Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology, Science Museum of Virginia, Morgan Stanley, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Kaspersky, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon Alexa, Google Translate, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the U2 concert, and many others.
Worldometer is cited as a source in over 10,000 published books and in more than 6,000 professional journal articles and was voted as one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest and largest library association in the world.
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PROTESTS, BLACK LIVES MATTER, ANTIFA
Talia Lavin talked to anarchists about NYC's designation as an "anarchist jurisdiction." Spoiler: They don't fucking think so! (Curbed)
https://www.opb.org/article/2020/09/25/oregon-gov-kate-brown-declares-emergency-in-portland-as-proud-boys-rally-approaches/
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown declares emergency in Portland as Proud Boys rally approaches
The move is designed to allow the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and Oregon State Police to control the law enforcement response.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has declared a state of emergency in Portland over the weekend, in a move her office said will allow authorities to better respond to a far-right rally that could draw thousands to the city Saturday.
Under an arrangement Brown laid out Friday, the governor’s emergency declaration will put authority for addressing the rally — along with any counterdemonstrations — into the hands of the Oregon State Police and Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. With this “incident command structure,” the Portland Police Bureau would follow the lead of those agencies.
In a press conference announcing the decision, Brown cited a pattern that has repeatedly played out in the city when far right demonstrators hold rallies to provoke counterprotesters and soon devolve into violent street brawls.
“The First Amendment does not give anyone license to hurt or kill someone because of opposing political views,” Brown said. “And when free expression is fueled by hate and coupled with an intent to incite violence, then I need to do everything I can as governor to ensure the safety of Oregonians."
The event is being organized the far right group the Proud Boys, which regularly engages in violence at protests, and is supposed to take place in North Portland’s Delta Park. A counterdemonstration is planned at nearby Peninsula Park.
State Police Superintendent Travis Hampton said the governor’s decision would lead to a massive influx of state troopers into North Portland starting Saturday morning.
The governor declined to give figures for how many law enforcement officers from various agencies would be coming into the city, but said she was “confident that law enforcement is adequately resourced to tackle the situation.”
The arrangement also frees up police officers to use CS gas, a type of tear gas, if they determine the demonstration has gotten out of hand. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler announced earlier this month that he was prohibiting city police from using the gas, following widespread criticism officers have used it indiscriminately on demonstrators during months of demonstrations for racial justice in the city.
Earlier this week, both the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and the Oregon State Police had rebuffed the Portland Police Bureau’s request for assistance with crowd control, citing the ban on CS gas. Law enforcement officials, including Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell, have said they believe the gas is the safest option to disperse crowds and warned a ban would lead to more dangerous physical interactions between police and protesters.
With the governor giving control to Oregon State Police, all three law enforcement agencies will have the option of using the gas.
“We will not remove CS gas as a possibility from these events,” Hampton said. “Under this authority, we will make this available to not only state troopers, deputy sheriffs, but also Portland police officers.”
Brown said the arrangement was agreed to in a meeting with Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek, Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury, Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty and Wheeler.
In a statement, the mayor thanked the agencies for sending help and said the resources would “go a long way” to ensuring law enforcement was ready when the far right and white nationalist groups come to town.
“Having a unified command structure uniting the resources of the state, the county and the city is a timely and appropriate response to the threat we face,” Wheeler said.
The mayor also noted his ban on CS gas "remains unchanged.”
Earlier this week, the city denied a permit for the Proud Boys event, citing coronavirus concerns. Asked by a reporter whether the permit denial would be enforced, Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell said the steps police took hinged on the size of a crowd.
“We don’t know how many people are going to show up, This is not the type of thing people RSVP to,” Lovell said. “So there’s going to be the potential that we get a very, very large crowd. And given our ability to manage that crowd safely, that’ll determine what we do.”
Lawsuit targets Proud Boys
Hours after the governor’s announcement, the Oregon Justice Resource Center announced a $1.25 million lawsuit against three Proud Boys members for alleged assault that took place at rallies this August.
The suit names three members of the far right group: Corey Wyatt, David Willis, and Alan Swinney.
Swinney, a familiar face at far right rallies in Portland, has showed up armed during at least two demonstrations this August and has a reputation for engaging in violence.
“This is a lawsuit about conduct and consequence, and it is about law and order,” reads the suit. “For two consecutive weekends in August 2020 in Portland, Oregon, Defendants, who are not residents of Portland, descended upon its downtown streets, sowing chaos, shooting at passers-by, spraying people with chemical weapons, and lobbing explosive with seeming impunity from local authorities."
“This is their call to account.”
The suit was filed on behalf of four Multnomah County residents: Albert Lee, Melissa Lewis, Amanda Seaver, and Evelyn Bassi. Three allege they were either bear maced or sprayed with pepper balls by the defendants. Bassi said she was badly burned after a member of the group hurled an explosive device in the area where she stood. Photos included in the filing show severe burns on her right side.
Juan Chavez, director of the Civil Rights Project for the Oregon Justice Resource Center, said in a statement he hoped the suit would discourage the flood of Proud Boys into the city, announced just a day before they’re expected to show up.
“They continue to target Portlanders because they regard our city as fertile ground for political violence against people with left-wing political views and antifascists in general,“ Chavez wrote. "This suit is intended to deter defendants from returning to our city to cause more harm and distress.”
Trump Rumored To Be On Hunt For New FBI Director To Confirm Every Wrong Thing He Believes
Yesterday, rumors were swirling that Trump was planning to replace FBI director Christopher Wray after Wray said true things while testifying to the Department of Homeland Security instead of the things that Trump wants to be true. Right-wing media, starting with Newsmax and moving on to the traditional Macedonian troll farm outlets, started reporting that not only did he already have a shortlist, but that the person at the very top of that list is Michael Flynn lawyer Sidney Powell. This, of course, would be a really exciting thing for all of the weirdo QAnon people who think Michael Flynn is their special hero or whatever.
No one else has confirmed that, so we're taking it with a grain of salt, but Trump has told more reputable media that he is considering it.
Via Washington Post:
"We're looking at a lot of different things and I did not like his answers yesterday and I'm not sure he liked them either. I'm sure he probably would agree with me. Antifa is bad, really bad," Trump said. Trump has used the fringe anarchist believers to paint a dark image of America under Biden.
"And if you look at it, who is the real problem? The big problem is China. And we can have others also and I'm not excluding anybody. But the big problem is China, and why he doesn't want to say that, that certainly bothers me," Trump added, referring to reports that China was working to boost Biden in the election.
Wray probably didn't like his answers yesterday. He's a Republican. I'm sure he would have loved reporting that the real danger was the Left, that the real danger was Antifa and that white supremacists are simply a bunch of cuddly bunnies who love their country so, so much and would never do nothing to hurt nobody. I'm sure he would have enjoyed doing that.
Unfortunately, his job yesterday was to report the facts that exist, not the facts that he or Donald Trump would really like to exist.
For one, Wray said that Russia was a much bigger threat than China when it comes to meddling with this year's election, and Trump wanted him to say it is China that is the bigger threat. It would make him super happy if Wray would just say that, because then everyone would be like, "Oh, poor Donald Trump! The communists in China are conspiring against him because they want Joe Biden to win! That is so unfair! And they're going to mess with the ballots, probably, so like ... there just shouldn't be any voting by mail, and maybe even only Republicans should be allowed to vote because maybe all of the Democrats are in cahoots with the communists!"
And then, you know, he'd win and everyone would go, "Look at him, beating the odds like that with all of those communists conspiring against him!"
Wray appears not to get this. He's a Republican, and yet he doesn't get this. He's supposed to get up there and confirm, regardless of what is actually found, evidence-wise, that the whole space opera happening inside Donald Trump's head is totally real and not a thing he and his followers are imagining. He's supposed to say that there's no threat from Russia and that Vladimir Putin is a great, democratically elected leader and a friend to all Americans. Obviously.
Wray also fucked up by saying that Antifa isn't so much an organization as it is an ideology, just because that is a factually correct statement that someone in the intelligence gathering business would understand. But what Wray should have said is, "Yes, it is definitely an organization and not only that, it is an organization funded by George Soros, who pays a bunch of actors a ton of money to pretend like they think police brutality is a serious problem or that Donald Trump is bad when in fact they think those things are awesome, just like everyone else in the whole world does," and then designated them as the greatest terror threat of all.
Or, as Trump said:
I would like to know what kind of funding Trump thinks "Antifa" would even require. I can't think of anything, really. In my black bloc days I funded myself with the money I earned working at a vintage clothing store. Though I didn't really have any expenses beyond gas.
Trumpist Dan Bongino complained that probably Wray was just saying all of these things so that liberal journalists will say nice things about him, rather than because they are true.
But the worst sin Wray committed — even worse than saying a thing that Donald Trump does not agree with about Putin or China — was testifying to Congress that most racially motivated violent extremism in the US is committed by white supremacists, rather than by everyone else, against white people:
Within the domestic terrorism bucket category as a whole, racially motivated violent extremism is I think the biggest bucket within that large group. And within the racially motivated extremism bucket people prescribing to some kind of white supremacist ideology is certainly the biggest chunk of that.
Conservatives did not like that at all. Gateway Pundit called it "outrageous!"
Why won't they see that the real crimes are the ones being committed against white people?
Via Gateway Pundit:
Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter Marxists are burning down buildings, shaking down business, terrorizing white people dining outdoors and threatening white people in their homes.
That was the entirety of their article, by the way, aside from the quote from Wray, a claim that he had no evidence for, and various videos of protests getting out of hand.
It is very well-documented that white supremacists and right-wing extremists commit the vast majority of violent terrorism. It's been true for years. It's understandable that the Right would prefer this to not be true because they think they're doing really well with their mantra that Black Lives Matter and Antifa are scary and violent, but that doesn't make it so. The only way, really, to get an FBI director to say what they want an FBI director to say is for the FBI to stop doing intelligence gathering and focus exclusively on making up weird shit about the Left that rightwing assholes would find satisfying.
Naturally, the Q people are very excited and claiming that the rumors of Wray being ousted is "proof" that one of Q's "proofs" accurately predicted Wray's firing back in July — only two months after Axios had reported that he would probably be fired soon.
Well, you know, whatever gets
them through the day.
[Washington Post]
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POLICE BRUTALITY
If you've seen footage from the riots across the country over the last few months, chances are it came from @ShelbyTalcott or @VenturaReport.— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 24, 2020
Now they've been detained for the last 12 hours by @LMPD despite numerous calls from our staff identifying them as press.
Let them go. pic.twitter.com/pmuJy02Mdl
Wow this is even worse than saying somebody wrote pig on your coffee cup in your handwriting. Cop who claimed ambush lied, shot himself. — Newsweek
Today I learned about the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, when the white men "expelled opposition black and white political leaders from the city, destroyed the property and businesses of black citizens built up since the Civil War, including the only black newspaper in the city, and killed an estimated 60 to more than 300 people." So many things to learn every day! (Wikipedia)
Crowd Cheers as the President Gloats About This One Time the Cops Shot a Reporter With a Rubber Bullet for No Reason
He got hit on the knee with a canister of tear gas. And he went down. He didn’t—heeee was down. ‘My knee! My knee!’ [Crowd laughs] Nobody cared, these guys didn’t care. They moved him aside. [Crowd laughs.] And they just walked right through—it was like, it was the most beautiful thing. No, because after we take all that crap for weeks and weeks, they would take this crap. And then you finally see men get up there and [punches fist forward] go right through, did—wasn’t it really a beautiful sight? [Crowd cheers.]
It’s called law and order. Law and order!
Because Velshi was in the middle of reporting from Minneapolis when the police attacked him and his crew, the incident the president was talking about was recorded on camera and broadcast on television, and it is available to watch. It was during the unrest in Minnesota in May, after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
None of it happened the way the president described: The police had showed up on the scene and begun firing tear gas, unprovoked, at the protesters and reporters there. Velshi himself was hit with a rubber bullet, not a gas canister. (He and his crew had been gassed, but not hit with canisters, earlier in the segment.) In the video, he never says “My knee! My knee!”; he says “Oh, shit!” when the bullet hits him, and then “All right , guys, I got hit. Yeah, I got hit. Hold on.” He does not fall down but limps over to the curb and then leans against a car. The police do not move him aside but remain down the block, where they fired from, as MSNBC cuts away to another reporter in a different part of the protest scene.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29949715/los-angeles-lakers-lebron-james-zero-comment-reward-challenge-la-county-sheriff
Los Angeles Lakers' LeBron James has 'zero comment' on reward challenge by L.A. County sheriff
Dave McMenaminESPN Staff Writer
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- LeBron James said he had "zero comment" on the Los Angeles County sheriff's public urging of the Los Angeles Lakers star to donate more than six figures to double the reward for information connected to the recent shooting of two officers in Compton, California.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva called out James by name in a radio interview last week, placing an expectation on the veteran basketball player to match the reward fund, which totaled $175,000 at the time, to facilitate the search for a suspect.
"I want to make a challenge. This challenge is to LeBron James," Villanueva told 790 KABC in Los Angeles. "I want you to match that and double that reward because I know you care about law enforcement. You expressed a very interesting statement on race relations and officer-involved shootings and the impact it has on the African American community. And I appreciate that.
"But likewise, we need to appreciate that respect for life goes across professions, races, creeds, and I'd like to see LeBron James step up to the plate and double that."
James initially referenced the Sept. 12 shooting -- which involved an unknown person aiming a gun through the passenger-side window of a police vehicle and hitting a 31-year-old sheriff's deputy in the jaw and arms and a 24-year-old deputy in the forehead, hand and arm -- following Game 2 of the Western Conference finals.
"We don't want anyone to be injured. We don't want anyone to be hurt," James told Spectrum SportsNet's Mike Trudell during his postgame interview Sunday. "My condolences go out to the officers that were shot in Los Angeles. And we want justice for that, as well as we want justice for Breonna Taylor and so on and so on. We don't want no violence. We preach for the better of love and peace. Hopefully we can get that at some point in our communities -- but [to achieve it as] us as a nation because that's what's going to make us the greatest nation again. All peace and all love."
Both deputies have been released from the hospital and are resting, according to a tweet from the sheriff's department.
Beyond issuing the no comment on Tuesday, James continued to preach nonviolence following the Lakers' Game 3 loss to the Denver Nuggets.
"I've never in my 35 years ever condoned violence. Never have. But I also know what's right is right, and what's wrong is wrong," James said. "I grew up in the inner city in a Black community in what we call the hood or the ghetto. ... I've seen a lot of counts firsthand of a lot of Black people being racially profiled because of our color. And I've seen it throughout my whole life.
"And I'm not saying that all cops are bad because, I actually -- throughout high school and things of that nature, and I'm around them all the time, and they're not all bad. But when you see the videos that's going on and you can see all over the -- not only my hometown but all over America -- you continue to see the acts of violence toward my kind, I can't do nothing but to speak about it and see the common denominator.
"But not one time have I ever said, 'Let's act violent toward cops.' I just said that what's going on in our community is not OK, and we fear for that, and we fear for our lives. It's something that we go on every single day as a Black man and a Black woman and a Black kid, a Black girl. We fear. We fear that moment when we're pulled over."
James cited the arrest of Keonte Furdge -- a 23-year-old Black man who was handcuffed and detained at gunpoint at his residence in June in Wisconsin after a neighbor didn't recognize him and called the police -- as another example of racial inequity at the hand of the law.
"The police came in the house without a warrant, without anything and arrested the guy, a Black man, because he was sitting out on the porch. And if you can't tell me that's not racial profiling, then I don't know what the hell we're looking at," James said. "But I do not condone violence toward anyone -- police, Black people, white people, anyone of color, anyone not of color -- because that's not going to ever make this world or America what we want it to be."
A FREE INTERNATIONAL INTERNET IS LONE GONE
With New Security and Free Internet Issues, What Did the TikTok Deal Really Achieve? (nytimes.com)
Though the U.S. government averted a shutdown of TikTok through a new Oracle/Walmart partnership, that leaves much bigger questions unresolved. The biggest issue may be that banning apps "defeats the original intent of the internet," argues the New York TImes. "And that was to create a global communications network, unrestrained by national borders.""The vision for a single, interconnected network around the globe is long gone," Jason Healey, a senior research scholar at Columbia University's School for International and Public Affairs and an expert on cyber conflict. "All we can do now is try to steer toward optimal fragmentation."
But the Times also asks whether the TikTok agreement fails even at its original goal of protecting the app from foreign influence:The code and algorithms are the magic sauce that Beijing now says, citing its own national security concerns, may not be exported to to a foreign adversary... Microsoft's bid went further: It would have owned the source code and algorithms from the first day of the acquisition, and over the course of a year moved their development entirely to the United States, with engineers vetted for "insider threats." So far, at least, Oracle has not declared how it would handle that issue. Nor did President Trump in his announcement of the deal. Until they do, it will be impossible to know if Mr. Trump has achieved his objective: preventing Chinese engineers, perhaps under the influence of the state, from manipulating the code in ways that could censor, or manipulate, what American users see.
Other questions also remain, including America's larger policy towards other apps like Telegram made by foreign countries. Even Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford's Freeman-Spogli Institute, complains to the Times that "bashing TikTok is not a China strategy. China has a multi-prong strategy to win the tech race. It invests in American technology, steals intellectual property and now develops its own technology that is coming into the U.S... And yet we think we can counter this by banning an app. The forest is on fire, and we are spraying a garden hose on a bush."
And another article in the Times argues that the TikTok agreement doesn't even eliminate Chinese ownership of the app:Under the initial terms, ByteDance still controls 80 percent of TikTok Global, two people with knowledge of the situation have said, though details may change. ByteDance's chief executive, Zhang Yiming, will also be on the company's board of directors, said a third person. And the government did not provide specifics about how the deal would answer its security concerns about TikTok...
A news release published by Walmart on Saturday on its website — then edited later — captured the chaos. "This unique technology eliminates the risk of foreign governments spying on American users or trying to influence them with disinformation," the company said. "Ekejechb ecehggedkrrnikldebgtkjkddhfdenbhbkuk."
But the Times also asks whether the TikTok agreement fails even at its original goal of protecting the app from foreign influence:The code and algorithms are the magic sauce that Beijing now says, citing its own national security concerns, may not be exported to to a foreign adversary... Microsoft's bid went further: It would have owned the source code and algorithms from the first day of the acquisition, and over the course of a year moved their development entirely to the United States, with engineers vetted for "insider threats." So far, at least, Oracle has not declared how it would handle that issue. Nor did President Trump in his announcement of the deal. Until they do, it will be impossible to know if Mr. Trump has achieved his objective: preventing Chinese engineers, perhaps under the influence of the state, from manipulating the code in ways that could censor, or manipulate, what American users see.
Other questions also remain, including America's larger policy towards other apps like Telegram made by foreign countries. Even Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford's Freeman-Spogli Institute, complains to the Times that "bashing TikTok is not a China strategy. China has a multi-prong strategy to win the tech race. It invests in American technology, steals intellectual property and now develops its own technology that is coming into the U.S... And yet we think we can counter this by banning an app. The forest is on fire, and we are spraying a garden hose on a bush."
And another article in the Times argues that the TikTok agreement doesn't even eliminate Chinese ownership of the app:Under the initial terms, ByteDance still controls 80 percent of TikTok Global, two people with knowledge of the situation have said, though details may change. ByteDance's chief executive, Zhang Yiming, will also be on the company's board of directors, said a third person. And the government did not provide specifics about how the deal would answer its security concerns about TikTok...
A news release published by Walmart on Saturday on its website — then edited later — captured the chaos. "This unique technology eliminates the risk of foreign governments spying on American users or trying to influence them with disinformation," the company said. "Ekejechb ecehggedkrrnikldebgtkjkddhfdenbhbkuk."
From Climate Change to the Dangers of Smoking: How Powerful Interests 'Made Us Doubt Everything' (bbc.com)
BBC News reports:In 1991, the trade body that represents electrical companies in the U.S., the Edison Electric Institute, created a campaign called the Information Council for the Environment which aimed to "Reposition global warming as theory (not fact)". Some details of the campaign were leaked to the New York Times. "They ran advertising campaigns designed to undermine public support, cherry picking the data to say, 'Well if the world is warming up, why is Kentucky getting colder?' They asked rhetorical questions designed to create confusion, to create doubt," argued Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University and co-author of Merchants of Doubt. But back in the 1990 there were many campaigns like this...
Most of the organisations opposing or denying climate change science were right-wing think tanks, who tended to be passionately anti-regulation. These groups made convenient allies for the oil industry, as they would argue against action on climate change on ideological grounds. Jerry Taylor spent 23 years with the Cato Institute — one of those right wing think tanks — latterly as vice president. Before he left in 2014, he would regularly appear on TV and radio, insisting that the science of climate change was uncertain and there was no need to act.
Now, he realises his arguments were based on a misinterpretation of the science, and he regrets the impact he's had on the debate.
Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes discovered leading climate-change skeptics had also been prominent skeptics on the dangers of cigarette smoking. "That was a Eureka moment," Oreskes tells BBC News. "We realised this was not a scientific debate."Decades before the energy industry tried to undermine the case for climate change, tobacco companies had used the same techniques to challenge the emerging links between smoking and lung cancer in the 1950s... As a later document by tobacco company Brown and Williamson summarised the approach: "Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public." Naomi Oreskes says this understanding of the power of doubt is vital. "They realise they can't win this battle by making a false claim that sooner or later would be exposed. But if they can create doubt, that would be sufficient — because if people are confused about the issue, there's a good chance they'll just keep smoking...."
Academics like David Michaels, author of The Triumph of Doubt, fear the use of uncertainty in the past to confuse the public and undermine science has contributed to a dangerous erosion of trust in facts and experts across the globe today, far beyond climate science or the dangers of tobacco. He cites public attitudes to modern issues like the safety of 5G, vaccinations — and coronavirus.
"By cynically manipulating and distorting scientific evidence, the manufacturers of doubt have seeded in much of the public a cynicism about science, making it far more difficult to convince people that science provides useful — in some cases, vitally important — information.
"There is no question that this distrust of science and scientists is making it more difficult to stem the coronavirus pandemic."
Most of the organisations opposing or denying climate change science were right-wing think tanks, who tended to be passionately anti-regulation. These groups made convenient allies for the oil industry, as they would argue against action on climate change on ideological grounds. Jerry Taylor spent 23 years with the Cato Institute — one of those right wing think tanks — latterly as vice president. Before he left in 2014, he would regularly appear on TV and radio, insisting that the science of climate change was uncertain and there was no need to act.
Now, he realises his arguments were based on a misinterpretation of the science, and he regrets the impact he's had on the debate.
Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes discovered leading climate-change skeptics had also been prominent skeptics on the dangers of cigarette smoking. "That was a Eureka moment," Oreskes tells BBC News. "We realised this was not a scientific debate."Decades before the energy industry tried to undermine the case for climate change, tobacco companies had used the same techniques to challenge the emerging links between smoking and lung cancer in the 1950s... As a later document by tobacco company Brown and Williamson summarised the approach: "Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public." Naomi Oreskes says this understanding of the power of doubt is vital. "They realise they can't win this battle by making a false claim that sooner or later would be exposed. But if they can create doubt, that would be sufficient — because if people are confused about the issue, there's a good chance they'll just keep smoking...."
Academics like David Michaels, author of The Triumph of Doubt, fear the use of uncertainty in the past to confuse the public and undermine science has contributed to a dangerous erosion of trust in facts and experts across the globe today, far beyond climate science or the dangers of tobacco. He cites public attitudes to modern issues like the safety of 5G, vaccinations — and coronavirus.
"By cynically manipulating and distorting scientific evidence, the manufacturers of doubt have seeded in much of the public a cynicism about science, making it far more difficult to convince people that science provides useful — in some cases, vitally important — information.
"There is no question that this distrust of science and scientists is making it more difficult to stem the coronavirus pandemic."
https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/09/23/0057256/jeff-bezos-is-opening-his-first-tuition-free-bezos-academy-preschool-where-each-child-will-be-the-customer
Jeff Bezos Is Opening His First Tuition-Free Bezos Academy Preschool, Where Each Child 'Will Be the Customer' (thehill.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill:Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos on Tuesday announced he's soon opening the first location of a network of tuition-free "Montessori-inspired" preschools for underserved children. In an Instagram post, Bezos said the first Bezos Academy will open in Des Moines, Wash., on Oct. 19. The network of schools will offer year-round programming, five days a week, for children between the ages of 3 and 5. Admissions will prioritize low-income families, according to the Bezos Day One Fund website.
"This classroom is just the beginning," Bezos wrote in a post featuring a photo of a preschool classroom. "The @bezosacademy opens its doors on Oct. 19th. This one in Des Moines, WA, is the first of many free preschools that we'll be opening for underserved children." The nonprofit organization says it wants to run the schools using the same set of principles that have driven e-commerce giant Amazon. "Most important among those will be genuine, intense customer obsession. The child will be the customer," the organization said on its website.
"This classroom is just the beginning," Bezos wrote in a post featuring a photo of a preschool classroom. "The @bezosacademy opens its doors on Oct. 19th. This one in Des Moines, WA, is the first of many free preschools that we'll be opening for underserved children." The nonprofit organization says it wants to run the schools using the same set of principles that have driven e-commerce giant Amazon. "Most important among those will be genuine, intense customer obsession. The child will be the customer," the organization said on its website.
Old TV Caused Village Broadband Outages For 18 Months (bbc.com)
seoras shares a report from the BBC:The mystery of why an entire village lost its broadband every morning at 7am was solved when engineers discovered an old television was to blame. An unnamed householder in Aberhosan, Powys, was unaware the old set would emit a signal which would interfere with the entire village's broadband. After 18 months engineers began an investigation after a cable replacement program failed to fix the issue. The embarrassed householder promised not to use the television again. The village now has a stable broadband signal.The engineers used a spectrum analyzer to help pinpoint the "electrical noise" that was causing the problem.
"At 7am, like clockwork, it happened," said engineer Michael Jones. "It turned out that at 7am every morning the occupant would switch on their old TV which would, in turn, knock out broadband for the entire village."
"At 7am, like clockwork, it happened," said engineer Michael Jones. "It turned out that at 7am every morning the occupant would switch on their old TV which would, in turn, knock out broadband for the entire village."
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2009.26 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1912 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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