A Sense of Doubt blog post #2272 - "I do not talk to pawns..." - Weekly Hodge Podge 2105.08

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2272 - "I do not talk to pawns..." - Weekly Hodge Podge 2105.08


This Hodge Podge is truly all Hodge Podgey with no real organization and a wide variety of things.

Starting with this great quote. Isn't it great?

"Every something is an echo of nothing."

 

-John Cage

 

There's also some cool images, just some random stuff for your viewing and reading pleasure. Thanks for tuning in.

I cannot stand Kyrie Irving. I think he is a colossal asshole. I am not even going to sugar coat it. He may be a talented basketball player, but he's a nut job and a head case. He's offensive. His exit from Cleveland was offensive. He has consistently said things to the media that are either offensive, arrogant, or pathetically stupid. This new bit wins the triple crown for being all three. He has been shirking part of his job, which is being an ambassador for his team and the NBA by talking to the media before and after games, mostly after. And then he gets fined, rightly so, because he's not doing his mother-effin' job, and he has the temerity to say he "doesn't talk to pawns" !?!?!? 

So my first reaction to this statement is "Fuck you, Kyrie Irving." He's an idiot. Like when he reported to the media that he was a flat-earther and then tried to dial that back when he took a shit storm of criticism. And now, he's calling sports reporters PAWNS????? Seriously? 

The gutless NBA should have fined him AGAIN for those remarks and his team should have suspended him.

Offensive, arrogant, and pathetically stupid. Good job Kyrie Irving. You have talent, but no one (especially you) has enough talent to get away with saying something so abhorent.

I had no respect for him anyway. His stock has dropped even lower into the negative.

It's actually worse than anything Trump ever said about the media.

Since Einstein has proven that time is money, I will not take up too much of yours. If you were kind enough or curious enough to check out this post, thank you. There's a series of good things here, and quite a bit more than the usual suspects, but with no real organization at all.

ENJOY.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/31395814/brooklyn-nets-kyrie-irving-get-35k-fines-violating-nba-media-access-rules

Malika AndrewsESPN Staff Writer

Kyrie Irving and the Brooklyn Nets each have been fined $35,000 for violating the NBA's media access rules, the league announced on Wednesday.

"The fines result from Irving's repeated refusal to participate in postgame media availability," the league said in a statement.

The NBA requires that healthy players be made available upon request to reporters before or after every game. Throughout the season, Irving has declined on several occasions to be available in a news conference. Most recently, Irving declined requests -- including those from ESPN -- to speak to reporters after the Nets' 124-118 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday night.

This marks the second time this season that Irving and the Nets have been fined for a failure to comply with the league's media guidelines. In December, Irving and the Nets were each fined $25,000 after he declined numerous requests to speak to reporters during training camp.

Afterward, Irving appeared to react to the fine on Instagram.

"I pray we utilize the 'fine money' for the marginalized communities in need, especially seeing where our world is presently," Irving wrote. "[I am] here for Peace, Love and Greatness. So stop distracting me and my team, and appreciate the Art. We move different over here."

He added, "I do not talk to Pawns. My attention is worth more."

Irving has played in 49 of the Nets' 66 games this season. He is averaging 27 points, 4.9 rebounds and 6.3 assists.

• Terms of Use

WIRED

Bats Raised in Helium-Rich Air Reveal a Key to Echolocation

BY JOHN TIMMER, ARS TECHNICA

To test bats’ sense of the speed of sound, researchers put them in an atmosphere that alters it. No word on whether the helium made the bats sound funny.

THE MONITOR | 2-MINUTE READ

The Bill and Melinda Gates Divorce Memes Are Freaking Me Out

BY ANGELA WATERCUTTER

Get LOLs out of anything else, I’m begging you.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Read The Book WIRED Called A "Rippingly Good Read"

"Turns out that even cautionary tales can be exciting, when the future we’re most excited about is the one where they never come true.” —The Editors at WIRED

TUNED IN | 3-MINUTE READ

Sisters With Transistors Puts Women Back Into Music History

BY BETH HOLZER

The documentary follows the women who, throughout the 20th century, captured the sound of a newly electrified world.

SLASHDOT

Global Heating Pace Risks 'Unstoppable' Sea Level Rise as Antarctic Ice Sheet Melts Biden Backs Waiving International Patent Protections For COVID-19 Vaccines Google Will Automatically Enroll Users in Two-Factor Authentication Soon Amazon Drivers Are Instructed To Drive Recklessly To Meet Delivery Quotas Twitter Begins To Show Prompts Before People Send 'Mean' Replies Sony Discontinues Its Last DSLRs Microsoft Is Finally Ditching Its Windows 95-Era Icons Starlink Satellite Internet Service Gets 500K Preorders Opposing PRO Act, Uber and Other Gig Companies Spend Over $1 Million Lobbying IBM Creates First 2nm Chip

Global Heating Pace Risks 'Unstoppable' Sea Level Rise as Antarctic Ice Sheet Melts The current pace of global heating risks unleashing "rapid and unstoppable" sea level rise from the melting of Antarctica's vast ice sheet, a new research paper has warned. From a report: Unless planet-heating emissions are swiftly reduced to meet the g... Biden Backs Waiving International Patent Protections For COVID-19 Vaccines President Biden threw his support behind a World Trade Organization proposal earlier this week to waive intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines, clearing a hurdle for vaccine-strapped countries to manufacture their own vaccines even though ... Google Will Automatically Enroll Users in Two-Factor Authentication Soon Most security experts agree that two-factor authentication (2FA) is a critical part of securing your online accounts. Google agrees, but it's taking an extra step: It's going to automatically sign Google account holders up for two-factor accounts. From a r... Amazon Drivers Are Instructed To Drive Recklessly To Meet Delivery Quotas Amazon delivery companies around the United States are encouraging reckless and dangerous driving by ordering delivery drivers to shut off an app called Mentor that Amazon uses to monitor drivers' speed and give them a safety score to prevent accidents. Dr... Twitter Begins To Show Prompts Before People Send 'Mean' Replies Nasty replies on Twitter will require a little more thought to send. From a report: The tech company said it is releasing a feature that automatically detects "mean" replies on its service and prompts people to review the replies before sending them. "W... Sony Discontinues Its Last DSLRs After helping make mirrorless dominant, Sony appears to have quietly stopped selling its A-mount DSLR cameras. Engadget reports: As first seen by SonyAlpha Rumors, the A68, A99 II and A77 II have been removed from Sony's website and are listed as "no l... Microsoft Is Finally Ditching Its Windows 95-Era Icons Microsoft is now planning to refresh the Windows 95-era icons you still sometimes come across in Windows 10. The Verge reports: Windows Latest has spotted new icons for the hibernation mode, networking, memory, floppy drives, and much more as part of t... Starlink Satellite Internet Service Gets 500K Preorders SpaceX has received more than 500,000 preorders for its Starlink satellite internet service and anticipates no technical problems meeting the demand, founder Elon Musk said on Tuesday. Reuters reports: "Only limitation is high density of users in urban... Opposing PRO Act, Uber and Other Gig Companies Spend Over $1 Million Lobbying An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: Even as President Joe Biden called for Congress during his joint address last week to pass labor reform legislation, a slate of gig companies has spent over $1 million lobbying Congress to influenc... IBM Creates First 2nm Chip An anonymous reader shares a report: Every decade is the decade that tests the limits of Moore's Law, and this decade is no different. With the arrival of Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) technology, the intricacies of multipatterning techniques developed on ...

MEDIUM

Matilda Swinney in Sexography·

4 min read

Are Blowjobs Fun For Women Too?

A girl’s perspective on oral sex

Allison Gaines in An Injustice!·

6 min read

Kamala Harris ‘Embarrassed Everyone Who Supported Her’ Amanda Seales Said

America is a racist country until it changes course

Catherine Pugh, Esq.·

10 min read

♃Humor Me: Let’s Play “Spot the White Supremacist.”

When Our National Approach to Henhouse Safety Is “Trust the Fox.”

James Maynard in The Cosmic Companion·

9 min read

Why We Must Start Living on Mars — Now.

Why should we start living on Mars? It’s our best chance to save Earth — and humanity

AEON

The environment Essay The miracle of the commons Far from being profoundly destructive we humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight by Michelle Nijhuis

Quantum theory Essay Quantum music Physics has long looked to harmony to explain the beauty of the Universe. But what if dissonance yields better insights? by Katie McCormick

Values and beliefs Video A samurai rulebook offers guidance on how to kill enemies and refrain from gossip 20 minutes

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/05/newsmax-apology-retraction-for-2020-election-coverage-trump-dominion-lawsuit/

• POLITICS

20 HOURS AGO

Newsmax Issues Retraction and Apology for 2020 Election Coverage

“No evidence” a Dominion Voting employee tampered with results, far-right network admits.

• 

  JULIA LURIE

  Senior ReporterBio | Follow

Newsmax, the far-right news outlet that boosted the Trump campaign’s false claims of 2020 election rigging, admitted on Friday that there was “no evidence” that an executive at Dominion Voting Systems had tampered with election results.

The statement was part of a settlement in the defamation lawsuit against Newsmax and a number of other Trump allies and conservative news outlets brought by top Dominion employee Eric Coomer. In the aftermath of the 2020 campaign, Newsmax repeatedly aired claims that Coomer had manipulated electronic voting records in favor of Biden.

The Newsmax statement admitted the company had found no evidence that Coomer interfered with the election or that he “participated in any conversation with members of ‘Antifa.” It went on, “Many of the states whose results were contested by the Trump campaign after the November 2020 election have conducted extensive recounts and audits, and each of these states certified the results as legal and final.”

Coomer reportedly reached an undisclosed financial settlement with Newsmax, and has dropped the company from his lawsuit, according to the Associated Press. The claims against others the lawsuit named, including Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, and One America News Network, are ongoing.

The Newsmax lawsuit was just one several defamation actions that voting-services companies like Dominion and Smartmatic have filed  against Trump supporters and far-right information outlets, alleging that the false claims have hurt the plaintiffs’ reputations and profits. 

But Newsmax’s backpedaling is unlikely to curb the lasting damage of the falsehoods and conspiracy theories it helped disseminate: According to an April Reuters/Ipsos poll, 55 percent of Republicans still believe that Biden’s win was due to rigged results or illegal voting. Sixty percent believe the election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Want Your Own Business? Want Employees? Then You Have To Pay Them.

Robyn Pennacchia

May 02, 2021 02:30 PM

 

Won't someone think of the job creators?

Last week, one of the more popular Republican talking points, re: The Pandemic, was that businesses (and Kirstie Alley) are suffering because all of the lazy assholes that should be working for them are instead deciding that they would rather just stay home and collect unemployment.

It's not a particularly surprising take. For decades, Republicans have been blaming poverty on both "laziness" and the existence of social programs meant to assist the poor, while simultaneously insisting it would just be cruel to expect employers to pay their workers a wage they can actually live on. This is what they do, this is what they say, regardless of the fact that it makes absolutely no sense and never has.

It is obvious to any child who has played musical chairs that if there are more people than there are jobs, some people are not going to have jobs. If those who do have jobs aren't being paid enough to live, either they're going to die or that difference is going to have to be made up somewhere. Also, if they're not being paid enough to live, they're not going to be spending money at other businesses, which means other people won't have enough money to live on or to pay people. Duh.

One of the ways the pandemic changed us, as a society, is that it now seems to be more clear to more people that people have to be able to survive, and that if they can't survive, something has to be done to allow them to do that, or we won't be able to function as a society. We can't just have people starving to death or losing their homes or falling so far that they can't get back up.

But the narrative the Right is going with now is that these poor businesses are suffering because all of the people who should be working for them have become spoiled rotten and don't want to go and work for less money than they are getting on unemployment. This is particularly true for restaurants, which in most states pay servers far less than minimum wage. It's also true for the sorts of fast-food restaurants that still think it's okay for them to pay people the minimum wage.

This is rather curious given that we've been told for years that the minimum wage is meant to be for teenagers (which raises the question "Then why they are open while teenagers are still in school?). Of course, now that these businesses can't find adults who are willing to work for that amount, they're not happy.

If I were to walk into Hardee's and ask for my meal half-off because that's all I personally feel like paying, the response would likely be "No, if you want lunch, you have to pay what the meal costs." It would be strange if my response to this was calling the company "lazy" or "entitled."

This is something that is understood in practically all other financial transactions. If you can't pay for a meal, you don't get to eat out. If you don't want to pay for a new dress, you don't get to have a new dress. If you can't pay for a store front or or office space, if you can't pay for inventory or ingredients or other necessities, you don't get to have a business. But people who can't afford to pay their employees a living wage should still get to have a business and should still get to have employees to work at that business — and that if they can't find any employees to work for what they want to pay, the problem isn't that they're not offering enough money, but rather that potential employees are either "lazy" or "entitled."

The fact is, the only businesses that are suffering for lack of employees are the businesses that are not paying people enough to live on. The answer isn't that people should lose their unemployment, but that if businesses want to have employees, they have to be able to pay them enough to survive.

Things are changing. The days of "we all must sacrifice for the job creators, and eventually it will all trickle down" are over. They just are. Largely because the "trickle down" part never happened. More employees are unionizing, more Americans are deciding that enough is enough and that it shouldn't be that hard to have a reasonably decent life. People want homes and food and health care and child care and a reasonable work/life balance. It's no longer cool to brag about working 70 hours a week and never taking vacation time. It was already starting to happen, but the pandemic kicked it into high gear. So either these businesses are going to have to change with the times or they're going to be replaced by businesses that will. Isn't that what the free market Republicans love so much is all about?

Five nights a week, an average of more than 3 million people tune in to watch Tucker Carlson on Fox News—it's the largest audience of any show on cable news.¹ In April alone, those millions of viewers have heard Carlson claim that COVID-19 vaccines don't work, that having children wear masks to protect them from the virus is child abuse, that convicted murderer Derek Chauvin did nothing wrong, and that Democrats want to replace white voters with immigrants—a decades-old racist and antisemitic argument known as the "replacement theory."^2,3,4,5

Videos featuring Carlson's comments doubting the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines are spreading like wildfire on social media, with one clip viewed nearly 6 million times on Facebook alone.⁶

Carlson has become the tip of the spear of the powerful right-wing media machine, the de facto leader of the racist, conspiracy-loving, pro-Donald Trump far right—and we need to fight back.

MoveOn was built more than 20 years ago to be an organizing hub for the grassroots progressive movement, when we needed to break down the power of right-wing lies and fight back against the right-wing's billionaire backers, like Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch. We know how to do this really well, and we've fought and won over and over again during the past two decades.

Our country is at an inflection point now, and we cannot let racist ghouls like Carlson drive the message.

Ever since the beginning, MoveOn has been fueled not by billionaires, but by our members. We've never been beholden to a dictatorial overlord or corporate interests. We are accountable only to you and members like you, Christopher. And in this moment, we need you.

Will you become one of our most dedicated donors by chipping in $5 a month to keep MoveOn strong and able to fight back against the right-wing media machine?

Yes, I'll chip in monthly.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.

In 2020, when we saw right-wing disinformation spreading unchecked across Facebook, often with the help of networks of bad actors intentionally pushing out disinformation to suppress votes or confuse the public, MoveOn spun up an entirely new staff team to identify, track, and get those networks taken down. We succeeded in taking down multiple networks, raising awareness, and educating voters on how to spot and avoid false and misleading information—even and especially if it came from someone like Carlson.

In the lead-up to the 2018 midterms, we pioneered a brand-new digital voter persuasion model, relying on personal videos shared by MoveOn members that could cut through the noise and right-wing nonsense and turn out voters. We succeeded in motivating more than 100,000 voters, helping to clinch victories for Democrats and take back the House of Representatives to stop the worst of Trump's abuses.

And in 2016, as lies by Fox News, Alex Jones, and other right-wing conspiracy content began to take off across social media, we launched our in-house Creative Lab to make videos and other content for social media that could directly push back against the onslaught of Republican and right-wing talking points, racism, and outright lies with powerful, fact-based content that inspires viewers and encourages them to get involved. Since its launch in 2016, Creative Lab has produced thousands of videos that have been viewed hundreds of millions of times.

MoveOn is always at the cutting edge and ready to use our grit, determination, and creativity to fight back against the forces that want to install Republicans in power permanently, strip rights away from vulnerable communities, and break our spirits. And we're able to do it on a budget that is a fraction of what Fox News, the Republican National Committee, and Trump and his deep-pocketed friends spend.

But we need your help to keep going, Christopher. Will you chip in $5 a month to keep MoveOn strong now and for the fights to come?

Yes, I'll chip in monthly.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.

The fight for progress is a long one, but we are so grateful to be in the fight with you.

Thanks for all you do.

–Kelly, Justin, Allison, Sana, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. "Tucker Carlson Leads Fox News To Big Win In April Prime Time Ratings," Forbes, April 27, 2021
https://act.moveon.org/go/153209?t=6&akid=296753%2E36207282%2EtU8HlT

2. "Tucker Carlson speculates Pfizer dose of COVID-19 vaccine 'doesn't work,'" Media Matters for America, April 15, 2021
https://act.moveon.org/go/153210?t=8&akid=296753%2E36207282%2EtU8HlT

3. "Tucker Carlson tells viewers to call Child Protective Services if they see a child wearing a mask outside," Media Matters for America, April 26, 2021
https://act.moveon.org/go/153211?t=10&akid=296753%2E36207282%2EtU8HlT

4. "Tucker Carlson says Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murder because jurors were scared of Black Lives Matter," Media Matters for America, April 20, 2021
https://act.moveon.org/go/153212?t=12&akid=296753%2E36207282%2EtU8HlT

5. "Tucker Carlson again invokes the white supremacist 'replacement theory,'" Media Matters for America, April 21, 2021
https://act.moveon.org/go/153213?t=14&akid=296753%2E36207282%2EtU8HlT

6. "On Facebook, Tucker Carlson's clips promoting anti-vaccine and racist talking points are being wildly shared," Media Matters for America, April 20, 2021
https://act.moveon.org/go/153214?t=16&akid=296753%2E36207282%2EtU8HlT

Bend police officer under investigation after accusations of extremist speech

By Emily Cureton (OPB)

May 5, 2021 6 a.m.

The chief of the Bend Police Department said one of its officers is under investigation after displaying a slogan of the gun rights movement while on duty.

Cpl. Joshua Spano was photographed over the weekend donning the Greek phrase “molon labe,” meaning “Come and take [them],” while issuing a citation to a vocal critic of Bend police.

The activist, Mike Satcher, is currently embroiled in a legal battle with Bend over access to police records. Spano cited Satcher on Saturday for criminal trespassing during what the activist describes as a volunteer effort to provide food and showers to unhoused people. After the interaction, members of Satcher’s group, the Central Oregon Peacekeepers, circulated the photo of Spano along with screenshots from his personal social media accounts, which contain imagery often used by far-right groups.

A submitted photo of Cpl. Joshua Spano in Bend on May 1, 2021.

Emily Cureton

A screenshot of a 2013 post shows a leg tattoo of the Statue of Liberty holding a pistol and silencer, with the “molon labe” phrase inked below. The post is captioned: “Love my country, hate my government.” A 2017 post apparently made by Spano displays a collection of patches alongside a notebook cover that reads: “People To Kill.” One of the patches includes the Roman number “iii,” a favorite of the anti-government militia group, the Three Percenters. Alleged members of the group from Texas and Colorado stand accused of participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Last December, Spano also appeared to use Instagram to advertise stickers — an image of an assault rifle in the style of the Patagonia fish logo. The sticker was visible on a fellow officer’s clipboard at a police response months earlier, as clashing political demonstrations turned violent.

MORE AT

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/05/05/bend-police-department-officer-joshua-spano-under-investigation-extremist-speech/

A submitted screenshot of an Instagram post linked to Bend Police Cpl. Joshua Spano shows a collection of patches. The Roman numeral "III" is often used by the Three Percenters, an anti-government militia group.

Courtesy of Central Oregon Peacekeepers

Why COVID-19 May Be the Last Pandemic

Medical breakthroughs mean we will never again suffer through diseases like the novel coronavirus—if politicians will get out of the way.

By Nick Gillespie

THERE'S STILL A WHOLE LOTTA

 PANDEMIC GOING ON

PANDEMIC

THE WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT

If you prefer your data in a visual format, here's the current map from COVID Exit Strategy, using data from the CDC and the COVID Tracking Project.

I want to add this link to the weekly report. It's important to remember:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1983 - Is Coronavirus more contagious and more deadly than the flu? YES.

ALSO... I am seeing a big discrepancy between the Johns Hopkins data in death totals and WORLDOMETER data, which aggregates data from many more sources. Could this be the slow down due to the change in how the CDC obtains the data, having it filter first through Health and Human Services department.

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: 

COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

This is also a good data site:

Worldometer - Coronavirus info

Last updated: May 08, 2021, 16:18 GMT

 United States

Coronavirus Cases:

33,423,238

Deaths:

594,981

Recovered:

26,325,307

Daily Cases Graph - Daily Deaths Graph

Projections

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.

THE CORONAVIRUS IS MUTATING NOW WHAT?

https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/spanish-flu-the-virus-that-changed-the-world/

https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/05/03/0224201/canadian-government-accused-of-trying-to-introduce-internet-censorship

Canadian Government Accused of Trying to Introduce Internet Censorship (vancouversun.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on Monday May 03, 2021 @07:34AM from the blaming-Canada dept.

"After more than 25 years of Canadian governments pursuing a hands-off approach to the online world, the government of Justin Trudeau is now pushing Bill C-10, a law that would see Canadians subjected to the most regulated internet in the free world," argues the Vancouver Sun (in an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader theshowmecanuck):Although pitched as a way to expand Canadian content provisions to the online sphere, the powers of Bill C-10 have expanded considerably in committee, including a provision introduced last week that could conceivably allow the federal government to order the deletion of any Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or Twitter upload made by a Canadian. In comments this week, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh indicated his party was open to providing the votes needed to pass C-10, seeing the bill as a means to combat online hate...

The users themselves may not necessarily be subject to direct CRTC regulation, but social media providers would have to answer to every post on their platforms as if it were a TV show or radio program. This might be a good time to mention that members of the current Liberal cabinet have openly flirted with empowering the federal government to control social media. In a September Tweet, Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna said that if social media companies "can't regulate yourselves, governments will." Guilbeault, the prime champion of Bill C-10, has spoken openly of a federal regulator that could order takedowns of any social media post that it deems to be hateful or propagandistic...

Basically, if your Canadian website isn't a text-only GeoCities blog from 1996, Bill C-10 thinks it's a program deserving of CRTC regulation. This covers news sites, podcasts, blogs, the websites of political parties or activist groups and even foreign websites that might be seen in Canada...

The penalties prescribed by Bill C-10 are substantial. For corporations, a first offence can yield penalties of up to $10 million, while subsequent offences could be up to $15 million apiece. If TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are suddenly put in a situation where their millions of users must follow the same rules as a Canadian cable channel or radio station, it's not unreasonable to assume they may just follow Facebook's example [in Australia] and take the nuclear option.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/21/05/07/0431225/scientists-create-record-breaking-laser-with-mind-blowing-power

Scientists Create Record-Breaking Laser With Mind Blowing Power (vice.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Friday May 07, 2021 @09:00AM from the record-breaking-intensity dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard:For the Korean research team led by senior author Chang-hee Nam, a plasma physicist and professor at Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology, their breakthrough in laser science may be a physically small feat (striking an area the size of a micron) but will have a huge impact on how we study not only cosmic phenomena from the beginning of time but how we treat cancer as well. After ten years of toiling, the team has demonstrated in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Optica the development of a laser with record-breaking intensity over 10^23 watts per square centimeter. Nam told Motherboard in an email that you can compare the intensity of this laser beam to the combined power of all of the sunlight across the entire planet, but pressed together into roughly the size of a speck of dust or a single red blood cell. This whole burst of power happens in just fractions of a second. "The laser intensity of 10 W/cm is comparable to the light intensity obtainable by focusing all the sunlight reaching Earth to a spot of 10 microns," explained Nam.

To achieve this effect, Nam and colleagues at the Center for Relativistic Laser Science (CoReLS) lab constructed a kind of obstacle course for the laser beam to pass through to amplify, reflect, and control the motion of the photons comprising it. Because light behaves as both a particle (e.g. individual photons) as well as a wave, controlling the wavefront of this laser (similar to the front of an ocean wave) was crucial to make sure the team could actually focus its power. Nam explains that the technology to make this kind of precise control possible has been years in the making. Nam said that the ultrahigh power laser design played a role in this discovery by helping remove beam distortions while the deformable mirrors made it possible to have "extremely tight focusing without any aberrations." Beyond being a scientific breakthrough, Nam said that this high-intensity laser will open doors to explore some of the universe's most fundamental questions that had previously only been explored by theoreticians. Nam also said that these lasers have a more terrestrial purpose as well in the form of cancer treatment technology.

EDITOR'S PICKS

• 

  Willie Mays at 90: He was Steph Curry, Michael Jordan, Simone Biles and Mikhail Baryshnikov

Willie Mays arrives at Oracle Park in style as San Francisco Giants celebrate his 90th birthday

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/31407431/willie-mays-arrives-oracle-park-style-san-francisco-giants-celebrate-90th-birthday

SAN FRANCISCO -- The San Francisco Giants turned their idyllic waterfront park into baseball's biggest birthday bash Friday night as the team celebrated Willie Mays turning 90 years old the day before.

Mays, baseball's oldest living Hall of Famer, took a victory lap of sorts around Oracle Park before the Giants' 5-4 victory over the San Diego Padres, riding in a choice white and turquoise 1956 Oldsmobile convertible and waving his cap to a cheering crowd.

The field had a massive grass etching in center field of Mays in his backswing with the words "SAY HEY 90" next to it.

"When you think the name 'Willie Mays' it's almost like a mythological type of name that has the same feeling as a 'Babe Ruth' or a 'Lou Gehrig,' you know?" said Giants catcher Buster Posey, who has developed a special kinship with Mays since debuting with San Francisco in 2009.

"All of us who have been here for a while, have spent quite a good amount of time with him, and he just always, he still likes to talk the game. He wants to try to get to know the guys that are on the team. And, you know, unfortunately, we haven't seen him for a while the last couple of years. But when he's around, it's usually pretty entertaining."

Given the pandemic and last year's shortened MLB season, it was Mays' first visit to the Giants' yard since 2019.

Mays' major league career spanned from 1951 through 1973 (with a one-year break for military service in 1953) for the New York and San Francisco Giants and New York Mets. When he retired, his 660 home runs ranked third in big league history; he now ranks sixth behind his godson Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Ruth, Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/31407431/willie-mays-arrives-oracle-park-style-san-francisco-giants-celebrate-90th-birthday

On Friday night, his career highlights -- including footage of his iconic over-the-shoulder basket catch in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series at the Polo Grounds -- played on the stadium's video board before the first pitch.

Both teams stood at the top of their respective dugouts to salute Mays as he drove by in the pregame ceremony.

A live video feed showing Bonds helping Mays cut a birthday cake was shown on the video board after the crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to Mays after the third inning.

From athletes to music artists to government officials, recorded birthday wishes from a multitude of Mays' friends and admirers also were played on the video board throughout the game. From former Giants, that included Bonds, Dusty Baker, Orlando Cepeda, Jeffrey Leonard, Will Clark and Dave Dravecky, but many more from baseball sent their birthday wishes, including Derek Jeter, Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., Vin Scully, former MLB commissioner Bud Selig and current commissioner Rob Manfred.

Other famous names to salute Mays included Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady; former NFL stars Ronnie Lott and Steve Young; rappers Lil Wayne and Snoop Dogg; hockey legend Wayne Gretzky; NBA Hall of Famer Magic Johnson; the Golden State Warriors' Steve Kerr and Stephen Curry; sports broadcasters Robin Roberts and Bob Costas; California Gov. Gavin Newsom; former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown; current mayor London Breed; and former President George W. Bush.

"When somebody's like one of the two or three best players in any sport, in the history of the sport, it's hard not to make an impact on current players," said Giants manager Gabe Kapler. "I just don't think we get that much exposure to the all-time, all-time greats. And the all-time great human beings. So for those reasons, I think he resonates with current players."

Added Posey: "I mean, honestly, the reason that people still talk about him today is just because how incredible a baseball player he was and for how long he played and, you know, his accomplishments as a baseball player will forever stand the test of time."

https://ew.com/tv/magic-order-tv-series-netflix-previews-millarworld-projects/

The Magic Order TV series is back in development as Netflix previews more Millarworld projects

Ahead of the premiere of Jupiter's Legacy, Mark Millar offers updates on a number of other projects coming to Netflix.

By Nick Romano

May 06, 2021 at 12:00 PM EDT

The Magic Order TV series lives again.

As part of a preview of upcoming Millarworld projects at Netflix, Mark Millar announced that the show, based on his comic with artist Olivier Coipel, is back in active development.

The Magic Order was postponed last year "due to all the uncertainty" with the pandemic, Millar writes in a Netflix blog post: "Some time away has given us a chance to come back with a completely fresh look at the material, and we should be getting into our new writers' room very shortly."

The comic, first published in 2018 by Netflix, focuses on five families of magicians who blend in with the human public by day and wage mystical battles against dark forces by night. These families must work together to combat an enemy that is picking them off one by one.

Millar originally envisioned the concept as a live-action series, "but as comic fans know, I'm also passionate about doing books," he notes. The creator then announced volume 2 of the comic will launch this October with artist Stuart Immonen, and volume 3 will follow "immediately afterwards" with Gigi Cavenago.

Jupiter's Legacy, premiering on Netflix Friday, is the first live-action Millarworld project. But, aside from The Magic Order, there's lots more in store.

Millar's blog post mentions development on "a six-episode live-action spy series," which will be his first spy story since Kingsman "but a very different kind of property."

"The writer is someone I've been a massive fan of for two decades, and he was the only person I approached," he says. "This has the potential to be one of the biggest franchises I've ever created. I'm so excited and I hope you will be too!"

Others in the works are a show based off Millar's American Jesus comic from producers Everardo Gout (Marvel's Luke Cage) and Leopoldo Gout (Molly's Game); an anime adaptation of his superpowered heist comic Super Crooks, about eight supervillains; and a movie based on Reborn with The Lego Batman Movie's Chris McKay directing, Bek Smith writing, and Sandra Bullock producing.

Empress, Huck, Sharkey the Bounty Hunter, and now Prodigy are also in development as films. Matthew and Ryan Firpo, who worked on the screenplay for Marvel's Eternals, are writing Prodigy.

Related content:

• Jupiter's Legacy trailer brings a new kind of superhero family to Netflix
• Jupiter's Legacy first look: Mark Millar likens series to The Incredibles but with 'nightmare' kids
• See the exclusive trailer for Netflix's first comic book, The Magic Order

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https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/05/08/0236207/facebook-criticized-for-arbitrary-suspension-of-trump----by-its-own-oversight-board

Facebook Criticized For 'Arbitrary' Suspension of Trump -- by Its Own Oversight Board (npr.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday May 08, 2021 @10:34AM from the critical-conditions dept.

"It never occurred to me that a Facebook-appointed panel could avoid a clear decision about Donald Trump's heinous online behavior," writes a New York Times technology reporter. "But that is what it's done..."

They call the board's decision "kind of perfect, actually, since it forces everyone's hand — from the Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to our limp legislators in Congress..."

The editor of the conservative National Review adds:If Facebook had set out to demonstrate that it has awesome power over speech in the United States, including speech at the core of the nation's political debate, and is wielding that power arbitrarily, indeed has no idea what its own rules truly are or should be, it wouldn't have handled the question any differently... The oversight board underlines the astonishing fact that in reaching its most momentous free-speech decision ever in this country, in determining whether a former president of the United States can use its platform or not, Facebook made it up on the fly. "In applying this penalty," the board writes of the suspension, "Facebook did not follow a clear, published procedure." This is like the U.S. Supreme Court handing down decisions in the absence of a written Constitution, or a home-plate umpire calling balls and strikes without an agreed-upon strike zone...
John Samples, a member of the Oversight Board, has even said explicitly that their decision was not about former president Trump — but about Facebook itself. The Washington Post reports:Samples said the board found that Facebook enforced a rule that didn't exist at the time. Trump was suspended indefinitely, rather than permanently or for a specific period of time, as defined by the company's own rules. "In a sense we were being tough with them," Samples said.

Other members said the board's call should reassure anyone concerned that Facebook wields too much control over online speech. "Anyone who's concerned about Mark Zuckerberg's power and his company's power over our speech online should actually praise this decision," Julie Owono, executive director of Internet Sans Frontières, said at a virtual event hosted by the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. "The board refused to support an arbitrary suspension..."

The flurry of media appearances marked a critical moment in the board's existence, as it tries to prove its legitimacy, define its powers and establish its relationship with Facebook.
NPR notes that Former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a board co-chair, even called Facebook "a bit lazy" for failing to set a specific penalty in the first place... "What we are telling Facebook is that they can't invent penalties as they go along. They have to stick to their own rules," Thorning-Schmidt said in an interview with Axios.The board's criticism didn't stop at Facebook's imposing what it called a "vague, standardless penalty." It slammed the company for trying to outsource its final verdict on Trump. "Facebook has a responsibility to its users and to its community and to the broader public to make its own decisions," Jamal Greene, another board co-chair and constitutional law professor at Columbia, said Thursday during an Aspen Institute event. "The board's job is to make sure that Facebook is doing its job," he said.

Tensions between the board's view of the scope of its role and Facebook's were also evident in the board's revelation that the company wouldn't answer seven of the 46 questions it asked about the Trump case. The questions Facebook refused to answer included how its own design and algorithms might have amplified the reach of Trump's posts and contributed to the Capitol assault. "The ones that the company refused to answer to are precisely related to what happened before Jan. 6," Julie Owono, an oversight board member and executive director of the digital rights group Internet Sans Frontières, said at the Aspen Institute event.

"Our decision says that you cannot make such an important decision, such a serious decision for freedom of expression, freedom of speech, without the adequate context."

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/05/07/218251/honeywell-admits-sending-f-35-f-22-technical-drawings-to-china

Honeywell Admits Sending F-35, F-22 Technical Drawings To China (upi.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Saturday May 08, 2021 @09:00AM from the violating-export-laws dept.

schwit1 shares a report from UPI:The State Department announced it has reached a $13 million settlement with U.S. defense contractor Honeywell International over allegations it exported technical data concerning fighter jets and other military vehicles to foreign countries, including China. The settlement resolves 34 charges the State Department leveled against the company for disclosing dozens of engineering prints showing dimensions, geometries and layouts for manufacturing parts for aircraft, gas turbine engines and military electronics.

Honeywell voluntarily informed the department in two disclosures that it had violated arms export control laws by sending the technical drawings to foreign countries, the State Department said in a statement. Honeywell had identified 71-controlled drawings that it had exported to Canada, Ireland, China and Taiwan between July 2011 and October 2015. "The U.S. government reviewed copies of the 71 drawings and determined that exports to and retransfers in the PRC of drawings for certain parts and components for the engine platforms for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, B-1B Lancer Long-Range Strategic Bomber and the F-22 Fighter Aircraft harmed U.S. national security," the document said.In a statement emailed to UPI, Honeywell explained it "inadvertently shared" the technology that was assessed as impacting national security during "normal business discussions" but remarked that the schematics were commercially available worldwide. "No detailed manufacturing or engineering expertise was shared," it said.

The company has agreed to pay the fine and have an external compliance officer oversee the consent agreement for at least 18 months as well as conduct an external audit of its compliance program.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2105.08 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2136 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.