A Sense of Doubt blog post #2069 - "But Her Emails" ...WEEKLY HODGE PODGE FOR 2010.17
17 DAYS - daily election day countdownJust imagine turning on the TV, seeing your president, and feeling your blood pressure go down instead of up.
— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) October 16, 2020
Students of the Dance Theatre of Harlem dancing through the streets of New York City pic.twitter.com/VYCo387qOc
— ballet archive📁 (@balletclips) October 12, 2020
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| Graveyard Queen - Danka Mahara - IG |
10. 17 Republicans Think It's Totally Fine That Their Colleague Is Getting QAnon Death Threats. Shit's fucked up, yo.
9. Everything Totally Fine, Just Fine, Says Trump's Extremely Shifty Physician. Physician's shifty, yo.
8. No, You Don't Have To Feel Sorry For Donald Trump. You really, really don't.
7. BREAKING: Wayne LaPierre May Have Made One Or Twelve Little Ooopsies On His Taxes. Just a tiny!
6. Watch The VP Debate Through Wonkette's Liveblog Like With That Box Thingie During A Solar Eclipse! Hey! It me!
5. But Why, WHY Would Donald Trump Endanger Himself, All Of Us? (Spoiler: No F*cking Idea). In which Dok tried to psychoanalyze the president, with mixed success!
4. Live Updates: Trump Coronapocalypse, Day 5. Many stories!
3. Live Updates: Trump Coronapocalypse, Day 4. Many more stories!
2. Live Updates: Trump Coronapocalypse, Day 6. Even more stories!
1. GOPers Now Taking COVID Seriously Following Trump's Diag— Ahhh, Who Are We Kidding? Man, they really aren't.
Whenever an unarmed black person is killed by police officers, the absolute first thing conservatives do is look into their backgrounds, find things they may have done wrong in their lives in order to paint them as a criminal or otherwise unsavory person, thereby justifying the actions of police officers with no known psychic abilities. Breonna Taylor, they wanted people to know, should have at least understood that that's just what happens when you date a drug dealer.
Things are a little different, of course, when white people commit actual crimes.
On Thursday evening, Sheriff Dar Leaf — who had, in the past, been acquainted with two of the accused attempted kidnappers, Michael and William Null and even shared a stage with them at at least one Second Amendment rally — shared his view that perhaps we shouldn't rush to judgment, because maybe they were just trying to arrest Gov. Whitmer on felony charges.
Sheriff Leaf said:
It's just a charge, and they say a plot to kidnap, but you gotta remember ... are they trying to kidnap? Cause a lot of people are angry with the Governor and, uh, they want her arrested. So are they trying to arrest or was it a kidnap attempt. Cause you can still, in Michigan, if it's a felony, you can make a felony arrest.[...] And it doesn't say that if you're in elected office that you're exempt from that arrest. So I have to look at it from that angle and I'm hoping that's more of what it is.
Oh! And maybe they were just gonna kidnap her for her birthday, but ... then the entire plot of the movie Jawbreaker happened?
Giphy
On Friday, Sheriff Leaf came back and said that he wasn't making excuses for their behavior, but rather that he was trying ensure they got a fair trial.
Sheriff Dar Leaf responds to reactionwww.youtube.com
Sure.
But Sheriff Leaf has not been the only person trying to make excuses for these men or at least trying to explain away their behavior. There have been multiple tweets, articles and what have you pointing to the fact that at least a few of these men appear to have been living in squalid conditions.
As a result, there's been a lot of "being poor doesn't make you racist" and "they weren't so poor they couldn't afford $3,000 tactical gear" dialogue.
Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with discussing these things, I don't even think there is anything intrinsically wrong with mentally working out ways in which those accused of crimes might be innocent (though "maybe they just wanted to arrest her" is certainly a stretch).
I also happen to believe that, yes, economic hardship absolutely contributes to a variety of societal ills that have nothing directly to do with poverty and that it's probably easier to radicalize people who are not having a particularly great time of things than it is people who are relatively comfortable. That is not "class reductionism," that is "the term 'hangry' exists for a reason."
The thing here is that it very much seems that white men, conservative white men in particular, are the only recipients of this largesse, generosity and fair-mindedness. That's the problem. We are socialized to see white men as fully realized human beings full of both good and bad in a way we are not socialized to see anyone else. We're socialized to assume goodness of them, and then when they don't turn out to be good, we are supposed to ask what went wrong? What outside forces combined to push this man to do this kind of thing? How did society fail them?
It would be great to live in a world where we treated everyone with the generosity and understanding that some people are trying to treat these men with — even all criminals. We don't. Hell, we treat white male perpetrators of crimes more generously than we treat Black victims of crimes.
And as long as that is the case, no one really wants to hear about how the poor militia guy who tried to kidnap a woman had to live in a basement with a bunch of vacuum cleaners because he spent all of his money on guns. It makes people feel like being a little chintzy with the compassion.
Now that I've ranted my face off, it's your turn — because this is your open thread!
[Fox17]
Openly mocking the genuine concerns of women isn't a winning strategy, which might explain why Trump isn't winning. His ego won't permit him to accept that Joe Biden possesses certain traits that a key segment of his 2016 coalition prefers, like empathy, compassion, and human decency. He won't change, and now suburban women are burning rubber on him.
The Missoulian retracts its endorsement of Jennifer Fielder, a Bundyite lunatic who spread the baseless hoax that ANTIFA WAS COMIN' all over the Northwest, after the paper's executive editor, Gwen Florio, resigned over it. Now they're all "we didn't consider that she was a Bundyite, we're agin that," and "we didn't consider that she's against Black Lives Matter, we're fur Black lives matterin'," and "we didn't recognize the impact her Hitler face tattoo might have on people, we're against Hitler face tattoos, always have been." Okay, she doesn't have a Hitler face tattoo that I know of. Anyway, I've been working in media (newspapers for most of it) since 1991, and I've never seen such a total fuckup. Like, if they didn't consider those things, what did they consider? — Missoulian
Trump: Suburban women, will you please like me? pic.twitter.com/efn79VuVA3
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) October 13, 2020
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The Trump campaign thinks Omarosa should pay for an $850,000 ad campaign because this:
"It would be my recommendation that Ms. Manigault Newman pays for the corrective ads/corrective statements outlined above to counteract the long-term adverse effects of information that appeared as a result of Ms. Manigault Newman violating her confidentially agreement," Mr. Rose wrote. He concluded: "If corrective ads are not placed, voters may continue to hold beliefs about the president as a result of Ms. Manigault Newman's statements."
Yes, it's a "corrective ad/statement" to stop people thinking something about the president that they're not arguing isn't true, just that it's secret. — New York Times
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Have you heard about the latest USPS bad mailman throwin' away yer ballots outrage? Yes, about that. — Pittsburgh City Paper
Since it became clear that the president was losing in the polling and that a global pandemic was pushing more and more folks towards mail-in voting, President Trump and his merry band of Trumpesticles have consistently claimed that mail-in voting is open to massive fraud.
/https://www.thespec.com/content/dam/thespec/opinion/editorial-cartoon/2020/10/02/editorial-cartoon-for-oct-2/_20201002.jpg)
My mom said I had to go watch Kamala Harris questioning Amy Coney Barrett RIGHT NOW because she was ELECTRIFYING. So I went on twitter and searched "kamala" and all that came up was rightwing buuuuttttthuuuuurtttt about what a bitch whore she is, so I guess my mom was right! (Kamala Harris on CSpan)
if you missed the end of that Kamala interview, here you go. it's worth every second. the end is...omg. pic.twitter.com/jTqK9UOav0
— Florida Chris (@chrislongview) October 15, 2020
https://www.wonkette.com/lindsey-graham-black-people-totally-welcome-in-south-carolina-so-long-as-theyre-conservative
Lindsey Graham: Black People Totally Welcome In South Carolina, So Long As They're Conservative
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| One of Trump’s greatest ally-pawns in this attempted whitewash has been Attorney General Bill Barr. Mandel Ngan/Getty Images |
Trump-Fueled DOJ Probe Into Obama “Unmasking” Conspiracy Reportedly Comes Up Empty
In the alternate universe far, far from our own, Donald Trump isn’t a grifter, but a paragon of integrity undone by ordinary but malicious American bureaucrats at the behest of a previously assiduously norm-following American president who suddenly went berserk and tried to take down a political rival. As president, Trump has, obviously, tried to push this fiction with mind-numbing results, enlisting his mouth, Twitter account, sundry self-serving internet hucksters and hangers-on, the Republican Party writ large, and various organs of the American government to try to pass this finger paint rendering of reality off as a historical document. One of Trump’s greatest ally-pawns in this attempted whitewash has been Attorney General Bill Barr. Need a strategic investigation? A timely exoneration? A political insinuation under the guise of law and order? How about a legal or ethical equivalence? For all of the above, Barr’s your guy. And Trump has called on him over and over again.
But reality is reality and Trump is still Trump. And we got yet another reminder of that fact when the Washington Post reported Tuesday that the “unmasking probe” Barr commissioned to root around in the Obama-era decision-making process that led to the Russia investigation basically came up with nothing untoward. In the face of the damning—but somehow not politically fatal—revelations of the Mueller report, Trump and his allies began repurposing the fact that he was somehow still president as evidence of not only his innocence but a grand, sinister conspiracy against him. Enter the accusation of “unmasking,” a not-out-of-the-ordinary process where, when conducted in good faith, government officials request names be unredacted in order to gain more insight into intelligence gathered about American citizens in foreign intelligence reports. U.S. Attorney John Bash, whom Barr entrusted with the review—which overlapped with other investigations—found no “substantive wrongdoing,” the Post reports. Bash will not file any charges and will not even issue a public report of the findings. Bash announced last week he was resigning from the Department of Justice and has since left his post.
“The department—both under Barr and Trump’s previous attorney general, Jeff Sessions—has repeatedly turned to U.S. attorneys across the country to investigate matters of Republican concern, distressing current and former Justice Department officials, who fear that department leaders are repeatedly caving to Trump’s pressure to benefit his allies and target those he perceives as political enemies,” the Post notes. “Bash’s team was focused not just on unmasking, but also on whether Obama-era officials provided information to reporters, according to people familiar with the probe, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation. But the findings ultimately turned over to Barr fell short of what Trump and others might have hoped, and the attorney general’s office elected not to release them publicly, the people familiar with the matter said. The Washington Post was unable to review the full results of what Bash found.”
With days left before he was set to graduate from high school, Devin Freelon and his friends decided to visit Sterling State Park in Michigan, a recreational park on the lip of Lake Erie, just an hour away from Detroit. They were playing music in the parking lot when a white man they had never met before began…
Did Joe Biden Kill Seal Team 6 And Let Bin Laden Live? Donald Trump Says Sure, Why Not
It's never not embarrassing when the US president retweets garbage drivel like some tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorist. Monday, Donald Trump shared a tweet from someone named "Oscar the Midnight Rider 1111," who'd posted an article claiming that “Hiden Biden" (that's Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee) and Barack Obama “may have had SEAL Team 6 killed."
The idea is that Biden and Obama had the SEAL team murdered ... for reasons, and then tried to cover it up by sending $152 billion to Iran under the pretense of a nuclear deal. And the brilliance of this plan is its simplicity.
There are a lot of spurious rumors surrounding SEAL Team 6, the elite group that killed Osama bin Laden. A popular one among conservatives is that then-Vice President Biden, eager to gloat about the bin Laden mission, blurted out the names and telephone numbers of the SEAL team members, which endangered their lives. (Back then, Biden wasn't senile. He was stupid but in full command of his faculties.) This didn't actually happen, but it is the sort of thing Trump himself would later do: Remember when he gave up "code word classified" intelligence to Russians in the Oval Office?
The BREAKING news in the article Trump retweeted is that former CIA agent and current whistleblower Allan Harrow Parrot plans to release documents this week that would “uncover numerous crime sprees." This is supposedly the true October surprise.
Parrot is someone who is admired in the dark corners of the internets by people who believe Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is “an idiot." Yeah, how dare that Purple Heart recipient say true things under oath that incriminated President Bone Spurs!
Oh, this is also somehow all related to Benghazi, which conservative loons still insist is a greater American tragedy and failure of leadership than the 70 billion examples that have occurred (so far) during the Trump administration.
Conservative propaganda site DJHJ Media published this dreck, which Trump shared with his 87 million Twitter followers. The author is Kari Donovan. This is her Friendster photo and profile:
DJHJ Media
Donovan is a self-described “ex-Community Organizer." She presumably doesn't mind now if communities are untidy. She's a “grassroots volunteer with the GOP" and a “homeschool mom," which is every mom these days. Thanks, COVID-19!
Donovan has accused Democrats of trying to “frame" Trump in the "Russian collusion case." She's also written articles defending Gavin McInnes and the Proud Boys, who she contends are not white supremacists.
DONOVAN: Even the far-left radical group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) admits the Proud Boys are not part of the alt-right and are not racists, but they are something the left will not tolerate and that is unwilling to feel guilty.
It's OK to feel guilty sometimes. That's how you know you're not a sociopath.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the Proud Boys a hate group because of — for a start — their anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric. McInnes, who said Senator Cory Booker “is kind of like Sambo," fits any reasonable definition of “racist."
What Donovan lacks in simple Google-based research, she more than makes up for in lousy writing. The following is from an article denouncing cancel culture:
Cancel Culture is a tactic used by democratic mobs to excuse their selfish, greedy behavior when they set their collective focus on a target, in order to bring upon the desired reaction which usually emboldens their product placement and messaging of victimology, and using this technique the left has a new victory over B&G who makes Cream of Wheat.
Donovan is big mad that B&G Foods announced it was removing the image of a smiling Black chef from packages of Cream of Wheat. That's show biz, kid, but Donovan thinks it's something far more sinister.
The Left, including Good Morning America, educates people about what they call, "systematic racism" which is a creation of left that allows them to shakedown more companies and go back further in history to build their victim culture.
Yeah, that's why we invented slavery and segregation, so we could someday force Cream of Wheat to change its packaging.
This is the "citizen journalist" our big, dumb president believes is going to pull a Woodward and Bernstein on Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Trump admitted to actual impeachable offenses to the real Bob Woodward so you'd think he could tell the difference.
Just 19 days to go.
Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter.
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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/trump-tweets-twitter-story-satirical-site-the-babylon-bee.html
Trump, Not Much of a Reader, Tweets Story From Satirical Site Touting Itself as “Fake News You Can Trust”
Twitter Shuts Down Entire Network To Slow Spread Of Negative Biden News https://t.co/JPmjOrKPcr via @TheBabylonBee Wow, this has never been done in history. This includes his really bad interview last night. Why is Twitter doing this. Bringing more attention to Sleepy Joe & Big T
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2020
Often, Donald Trump does dumb things that make you feel like you’re losing your mind because he gets a pass and somehow this is the real world now. Sometimes, however, Donald Trump does something super duper dumb that manages to perfectly encapsulate how dumb everything he says and does is and those rare instances provide a moment of cosmic clarity—and are far more gratifying than I’d like to admit. On Friday, President Donald Trump, not much of a reader, tweeted out an article from The Babylon Bee, a satirical news site with a Christian bent, that describes itself as “Fake news you can trust.” And in at that moment, Trump managed to throw himself a perfectly timed alley-oop, which he leapt to grab midair, double pump, and dunk… on himself… on the wrong basket.
Trump found the headline “Twitter Shuts Down Entire Network To Slow Spread Of Negative Biden News” too good not to throw out into the digital ether to make his point that he’s the real victim here. “Wow, this has never been done in history,” Trump tweet-fumed. “This includes his really bad interview last night. Why is Twitter doing this. Bringing more attention to Sleepy Joe & Big T.”
“After seeing account after account tweet out one particularly bad story, CEO Jack Dorsey realized he had to take action,” the Onion-esque story reads. “Dorsey smashed a glass box in his office reading ‘Break In Case Of Bad Publicity For Democrats.’ Inside the case was a sledgehammer for smashing Twitter’s servers… Dorsey ran downstairs and started smashing as many computers as he could, but he did need to ask for some help, as the hammer was pretty heavy.”
Other stories on The Babylon Bee include:
Afterward, the site took a well-deserved victory lap.
Maybe Donald Trump shouldn’t be president again?
THE PANDEMIC
This is how you shut down a coronavirus denier. — SBS News
https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/10/15/2138259/oxford-scientists-develop-5-minute-covid-19-antigen-test
Oxford Scientists Develop 5-Minute COVID-19 Antigen Test
Siemens Healthineers on Wednesday announced the launch of a rapid antigen test kit in Europe to detect coronavirus infections, but warned that the industry may struggle to meet a surge in demand. Although the Oxford platform will only be ready next year, the tests could help manage the pandemic in time for next winter. Health officials have warned that the world will need to live with coronavirus even if a vaccine is developed.
A Man Caught Coronavirus Twice -- and It Was Worse the Second Time
Being infected once does not mean you're protected from being infected again, even if such cases are still vanishingly rare, with just five identified out of nearly 40 million confirmed cases worldwide. That means people who have had covid-19 still need to stay vigilant, following the advice on social distancing, wearing face masks, and avoiding crowded, poorly ventilated spaces. This was not altogether unexpected: coronavirus experts warned us that other coronaviruses, such as the common cold, are seasonal. However, there are still many questions that researchers are racing to answer. How much protection does having covid-19 confer? Is that mainly through antibodies or T cells? How long does protection last? What does it mean for the medical treatments that are being developed, or for vaccines? Will we all require a yearly shot rather than a one-off vaccine, for example? If nothing else, this new case is a reminder of how much about this virus we still don't know.
Pfizer CEO Says Covid Vaccine Will Not Be Ready by Election Day
OCT 16, 20207:06 AM
Part of President Donald Trump’s pitch to voters, if you can even call it that, is that he’s personally hard at work shepherding a vaccine from the minds of American scientists into the arms of American voters—all by Election Day! Vote Trump or die! This has, of course, always been a ludicrous proposition based on a farcical timetable, all made even more preposterous by the underlying fact that the “miracle cure by November 3” approach is basically the sole plank of The Trump Plan to combat the virus. That’s it; the whole enchilada. To make that happen, Trump needed something drug-sounding he could pass off as an imminent something-or-other that you could (soon!) get jabbed in your arm. The Trump administration was trying to pave the way for Pfizer to pull a rabbit out of its hat by the first Tuesday in November, but, on Friday, even Pfizer admitted it isn’t going to happen.
“I know there is a great deal of confusion regarding exactly what it will take to ensure its development and approval, and given the critical public health considerations and the importance of transparency, I would like to provide greater clarity around the development timelines for Pfizer’s and our partner BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla wrote Friday in an open letter. “So let me be clear, assuming positive data, Pfizer will apply for Emergency Authorization Use in the U.S. soon after the safety milestone is achieved in the third week of November. All the data contained in our U.S. application would be reviewed not only by the FDA’s own scientists but also by an external panel of independent experts at a publicly held meeting convened by the agency.”
This is good news! A potential vaccine candidate appears to be approaching the threshold of efficacy and safety that could mean it will be able to combat the virus sooner rather than later. Let’s not let an American president, potentially in his final days of office, allow us to take our eyes off the road to recovery.
Sean Patterson is not worried that Donald Trump has been hospitalized with coronavirus because he believes what the president tells him.
"It's a hoax. There's no pandemic. As Trump said, how many millions die of flu?" said the 56-year-old truck driver outside the early voting station in St Joseph, Missouri – a stronghold for the president.
But then Patterson pauses and contemplates the possibility that Trump really does have Covid-19.
"If he's sick, then they planted it when they tested him. It's what they did to me when I went to hospital for my heart beating too fast. Two weeks later I got a cold," he said. "It's political. I don't trust the US government at all. Who are they to mandate personal safety? I listen to Trump."
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.
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
Deaths:
Recovered:
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RANDOM
SLATE: Made-for-Amazon Brand Names Are Getting Ridiculously Surreal
Sweatyrocks? Demonlick?? Pukemark??!!
I was recently shopping for clothes on Amazon when I noticed bizarre brand names popping up—more bizarre than usual, I mean. It’s common to come across unfamiliar brands on Amazon, where sellers are constantly fashioning product lines and whole brands around what shoppers are searching for. But here were a series of names that were not only unknown to me, but also quite perplexing: Artfish, Wishpig, Sweatyrocks, Demonlick, and Pukemark.
These were puzzling compound words. I wasn’t sure if they supposed to be funny or offensive. Was something possibly lost in translation? I kept repeating Pukemark back to myself, mystified. It was simple, sensational, and random, like actual word vomit. Pukemark!
There are lots of brands that exist mainly or exclusively on Amazon, and it’s difficult to track down the stories behind them. It’s very common to see names made up of seemingly random combinations of letters, like Euymhod or WIHOLL. Most of these brands are based in China, and many are factory-direct, meaning that you are buying from the manufacturer. Pukemark, which sells inexpensive, trendy clothing, is available through a third-party seller based in Hangzhou, China. Beyond the seller’s Amazon profile, almost nothing about it exists on the web.
more athttps://slate.com/technology/2020/10/amazon-brand-names-pukemark-demonlick-china.html
Looking for Life? Researchers Identify 24 Exoplanets Even More Habitable Than Earth (gizmodo.com.au)
As the new study points out, planets marginally older than Earth have a greater chance of being more habitable. When planets get old, "exhaustion of internally generated heat may result in eventual cooling, with consequences for global temperatures and atmospheric composition," write the authors. Earth is 4.5 billion years old, but planets between the ages of 5 billion and 8 billion years are likely to be more habitable, simply from a probabilistic standpoint...
To be clear, many of the criteria, such as atmospheric oxygen, plate tectonics, geomagnetism, and natural satellites, are currently beyond our ability to detect. What's more, only two of these planets, Kepler 1126 b and Kepler-69c, are scientifically validated planets, the remainder being on the list of unconfirmed Kepler Objects of Interest. Consequently, some of these "exoplanets" might not even be planets at all...
There are other limitations to consider as well. The authors are naturally biased towards Earth-like conditions, given that our planet provides the only known example of habitability. Life may proliferate under conditions not yet understood, and it's important to keep that in mind... We also don't know about the potential knock-off effects of these conditions. They sound good on paper, but the reality could be vastly different, as these environmental characteristics could collectively result in conditions wholly unsuitable for life.
"What's useful here is the criteria for planets that may not look exactly like Earth, but could be even more awesome locations for life," writes CNET.
"This could help us direct the resources of next-generation space telescopes like NASA's much-delayed James Webb."
https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/10/11/0225229/what-if-they-replaced-windows-with-microsoft-linux
What If They Replaced Windows With Microsoft Linux? (techrepublic.com)
[U]sers would very quickly learn what it's like to work on a desktop computer and not have to deal with the daily frustrations that come with the Windows operating system. Updates are smoother and more trustworthy, it's secure, and the desktop just makes more sense. Microsoft has been doing everything in its power to migrate users from the standard client-based software to cloud and other hosted solutions, and its software cash cow has become web-centric and subscription-based. All of those Linux users could still work with Microsoft 365 and any other Software as a Service (SaaS) solution it has to offer — all from the comfort and security of the Linux operating system...
If Microsoft plays its cards right, the company could re-theme KDE or just about any Linux desktop in such a way that it's not all that different from the Windows 10 interface. Lay this out right, and consumers might not even know the difference — a "Windows 11" would simply be the next evolution of the Microsoft desktop operating system. Speaking of winning, IT pros would spend less time dealing with viruses, malware, and operating system issues and more time on keeping the network (and the servers powering that network) running and secure... Microsoft would be seen as finally shipping an operating system worthy of the consumer; the consumer would have a desktop operating system that didn't deliver as many headaches as it did moments of actual productivity and joy; and the Linux community would finally dominate the desktop.
Cory Doctorow: Tech Workers Are Now Questioning the Powers Technology Gives (theguardian.com)
As a society, we have a great fallacy, the fallacy of the ledger, which is that if you do some bad things, and then you do some good things, you can talk them up. And if your balance is positive, then you're a good person. And if the balance is negative, you're a bad person. But no amount of goodness cancels out the badness, they coexist — the people you hurt will still be hurt, irrespective of the other things you do to make amends. We're flawed vessels, and we need a better moral discourse. That's one of the things this book is trying to establish...
[F]iction gives you an emotional fly-through. It invites you to consider the lived experience of what is otherwise a very abstract and technical debate. And in the same way that Orwell bequeathed us this incredibly useful adjective Orwellian, as a way to talk about not the technical characteristics of the technology, but who does it and whom it does it to, these stories are a way of intervening in the world.
In the real world, Doctorow believes our moment in time includes the possibility of a growing coalition of anti-monopoly sentiment. But he also believes that fears of technology-induced unemployment may ultimately be offset by climate change.
"We've got 200 to 300 years of full employment for every working pair of hands, to do things like relocate every city on a coast 20km inland. The extended amounts of labour ahead of us are more than any technology could offset."
Citigroup Tech Executive Unmasked as Major QAnon 'High Priest' (bloombergquint.com)
The movement had been contained mostly to the internet's trollish fringes until around the time Gelinas came along. In 2018, while doing his job at Citi, he created, as an anonymous side project, a website dedicated to bringing QAnon to a wider audience — soccer moms, white-collar workers, and other "normies," as he boasted. By mid-2020, the site was drawing 10 million visitors each month, according to the traffic-tracking firm SimilarWeb, and was credited by researchers with playing a key role in what might be the most unlikely political story in a year full of unlikely political stories: A Citigroup executive helped turn an obscure and incoherent cult into an incoherent cult with mainstream political implications...
The need to spread the word beyond core users led to the creation of aggregator sites, which would scrape the Q drops and repost them in friendlier environs after determining authenticity. (The ability to post as Q has repeatedly been compromised, and some posts have had to be culled from the canon.) This task, Gelinas once told a friend, could be his calling from God.... His intention, as he later explained on Patreon, the crowdfunding website widely used by musicians, podcasters, and other artists, was to make memes, which are harder to police than tweets or Facebook text posts. "Memes are awesome," Gelinas wrote. "They also bypass big tech censorship." (Social media companies are, at least in theory, opposed to disinformation, and QAnon posts sometimes get removed. On Oct. 6, Facebook banned QAnon-affiliated groups and pages from the service....) The site wasn't just a repository of QAnon posts; Gelinas served as an active co-author in the movement's growing mythology... Gelinas claimed he was the No. 2 figure in the movement, behind only Q, according to a friend, and began to dream about turning his QAnon hobby into his main gig...
By now, his site's growth had attracted an enemy. Frederick Brennan, a 26-year-old polymath with a rare bone disease, had decided to unmask him. Brennan was a reformed troll. He'd created 8chan, but he had a change of heart after the man responsible for the 2019 mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, posted his manifesto on the forum in advance and inscribed 8chan memes on the weapons he used to kill 56 people... He referred to Gelinas's site in a tweet as "the main vector for Q radicalization."
Days after Gelinas was outed as the man running the site, Citigroup "had put him on administrative leave and his name was removed from the company's internal directory. He was later terminated."
Should Colleges Do Admissions Without Standardized Tests? (forbes.com)104
Adams notes that 2020 and fallout from the Board's inability to administer its tests safely and efficiently during the pandemic may be the undoing of the seemingly invincible cash machine. Since March, 500+ colleges — including every Ivy League school — have joined the growing 'test optional' movement. And on top of widely-reported technical problems with virtual AP exams in the spring, just-disclosed 2020 College Board AP data reveals that decreases in exam participation were seen in nearly every course.
"They're going to learn how to do admissions without the tests," warns the head of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. The article notes that "All told, more than 1,600 four-year schools will not require scores for admission in 2021, and a growing number are becoming 'test blind,' meaning they won't consider scores at all..."
And there's also privacy concerns:College Board "leases" student data, including ethnicity, religion, gender and their parents' educational backgrounds, to colleges and other third parties. The practice initiates an onslaught of promotional mailings and brochures that students' families must endure in the years leading up to admission. (Late last year, a class action suit was filed in federal court in Illinois, claiming the College Board is violating the state's child privacy laws and using deceptive practices to enrich itself. College Board points out that a similar suit was dismissed several years ago.)
The PSAT and SAT exams are loss leaders, in a sense, steering students to other opportunities on which College Board can cash in.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/10/16/021201/fcc-will-move-to-regulate-social-media-after-censorship-outcry
FCC Will Move To Regulate Social Media After Censorship Outcry (theverge.com)
On Thursday, Pai said that the commission's general counsel said that "the FCC has the legal authority to reinterpret Section 230." He continued, "Consistent with this advice, I intend to move forward with a rulemaking to clarify its meaning.""Pai's decision to move forward with rulemaking follows a series of moderation decisions on Wednesday made by Facebook and Twitter against a New York Post article regarding former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, who has been the subject of political attacks from the right throughout the 2020 presidential election," the report adds.
Facebook reduced the reach of the story, while Twitter banned linking to the story entirely. "These moves from Facebook and Twitter incited an outcry over conservative bias from Republicans," reports The Verge.
2.1 Million of the Oldest Internet Posts Are Now Online For Anyone To Read (vice.com)
This week, Jarosciak uploaded some of the oldest Usenet posts available to the internet. Around 2.1 million posts from between February 1981 and June 1991 from Henry Spencer's UTZOO NetNews Archive are archived at the Usenet Archive for anyone to browse. This latest archive-dump is part of an even larger project by Jarosciak. He launched the Usenet Archive site last month, as a way to host groups in a way that'd be independent of Google Groups, which also holds archives of newsgroups like Usenet. It's currently archiving 317 million posts in 10,000 unique Usenet newsgroups, according to the site -- and Jarosciak estimates it'll eventually hold close to 1 billion posts.
Physicists Successfully Carry Out Controlled Transport of Stored Light (phys.org)
In their recent publication, Professor Patrick Windpassinger and his colleagues have described the actively controlled transport of such stored light over distances larger than the size of the storage medium. Some time ago, they developed a technique that allows ensembles of cold atoms to be transported on an 'optical conveyor belt' which is produced by two laser beams. The advantage of this method is that a relatively large number of atoms can be transported and positioned with a high degree of accuracy without significant loss of atoms and without the atoms being unintentionally heated. The physicists have now succeeded in using this method to transport atomic clouds that serve as a light memory. The stored information can then be retrieved elsewhere. Refining this concept, the development of novel quantum devices, such as a racetrack memory for light with separate reading and writing sections, could be possible in the future.The findings have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Chilling Report Suggests 1 Out of 5 Countries Could Be Headed For Ecosystem Collapse (sciencealert.com)
The index was designed to give governments and businesses a benchmark for the state of local ecosystems important to their economies, in the hope that the data can help inform relevant insurance solutions for communities at risk. Developing nations in the index with large agricultural sectors -- like Kenya, Vietnam, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Nigeria -- are particularly at risk due to their GDP's reliance on natural resources, but "densely populated and economically important regions" such as Southeast Asia, Europe, and America are also exposed to risk despite their economic diversification. Among the top of the rankings sit Australia and South Africa, which are also among the world's largest economies, and are both also dealing with water scarcity, pollination, and coastal protection issues."For all 195 nations, researchers assessed the state of 10 'ecosystem services,' such as intact habitat, air quality, water security, soil fertility, coastal protection, erosion, and timber provision," the report adds. "Nearly a third of the countries -- exactly 60 in total -- were found to have ecosystems in a fragile state on more than 20 percent of their land. Only 41 countries had intact ecosystems covering the same expanse of land."
"This index doesn't necessarily mean these ecosystems or the economies that rely on them are doomed, but if we keep tracking the way we are, human activity could very well lead to tipping points and abrupt ecosystem collapse."
https://www.foodandwine.com/syndication/wuthering-heights-ponden-hall-estate-for-sale
The Gorgeous Estate That Inspired 'Wuthering Heights' Is for Sale
In the last 20 years, it has operated as a bed and breakfast that literature fans love to visit.
If it’s always been your dream to gaze upon the bleak and windswept moors of England, now’s your chance.
According to Lonely Planet, Ponden Hall, located outside Stanbury near Haworth in West Yorkshire, is now up for sale. In addition to being a beautiful house, the massive estate is also credited for being the inspiration of Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights."
The 5,000-square-foot property sits upon four acres near Ponden Reservoir, according to Lonely Planet. The grounds date back to the mid-1500s, but the main house was built in 1634 and underwent an additional renovation in 1801. In the last 20 years, it has operated as a bed and breakfast that literature fans love to visit.
The entire Brontë family was known to visit the estate, which still looks very much like the detailed descriptions of the fictional Wuthering Heights in Brontë’s book. You can practically imagine the book’s narrator, Lockwood, peering out the window in the main guest room to see the ghost of Cathy Earnshaw begging to come in.
If you have a special love for Gothic Romance, this is definitely the place to indulge.
The house itself is eight bedrooms, with a two-bedroom annex, and features original details like timber beams, vaulted ceilings, exposed stone work, fireplaces, and flagstone floors, according to the listing. It also includes a large living room as well as a kitchen and breakfast nook with a butler sink. Some bedrooms also have ensuite bathrooms attached. While the house is historic, it also has some major modern upgrades like a washer and dryer and Wi-Fi.
Outside, there are walled gardens, seating areas, mature trees and shrubs, a private courtyard, and access to the rolling hills around the estate. The villages of Stanbury and Haworth are close by for restaurants, shopping, and other errands you might do.
At the moment, the property is for sale for £1 million GDP ($1.28 million USD). For more information, visit the listing on the Strutt & Parker real estate website, or visit the Ponden Hall website.
Andrea Romano is a freelance writer in New York City. Follow her at @theandrearomano.
This story originally appeared on travelandleisure.com.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2010.17 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1933 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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