Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Saturday, August 7, 2021

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2363 - making the UNCONSCIOUS conscious - Weekly Hodge Podge for 2108.07



A Sense of Doubt blog post #2363 - making the UNCONSCIOUS conscious - Weekly Hodge Podge for 2108.07

Greetings readers, Thanks for tuning in.

This is the WEEKLY HODGE PODGE that is now twice monthly, usually, except when it’s still weekly.

Like two weeks ago, this is a big one and a random with no categories.

More than ever before, we’re living the DANSE MACABRE, and people’s unconscious ideations are becoming conscious.

SO. 

MUCH.

PROJECTION.

It’s is nearly a constant stream from the right. Accuse others of what I am doing. It’s a trump tactic borrowed from the Russians.

He even said it at a rally the other day, claiming that if you just repeat something often enough, then people believe it. He meant to use that as proof of how the “witch hunt Russian Hoax” exonerated him (it didn’t), but he’s really talking about all the fraud, grift, and deception. And none of his followers seems to care.

Isn’t that one of the seven signs of the apocalypse or something?

This Hodge Podge is trimmed but still huge.

I moved out a bunch of content that I will dig into in two weeks.

I added a bunch of comic book imagery of SMACK DOWN because we need more SMACK DOWN.

When did empathy and being awake or even fighting fascism become bad things?

Since when is “socialism” synonymous with the worst 1984-esque society?

And America is not racist???

WHAT THE ACTUAL?

I guess if you try to legally bind people from teaching the history and reality of racism, then you have plausible deniability.


Programming (doing it, coding) may hurt you more than help you.

Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson are vile and despicable, but that’s not new information.

And it’s not really “opinion,” given the latest horrors to vomit forth from their pie holes.

In a world of mis- and dis- information, we need a vaccine against believing things that are not true. Granted, humans have always believed things that are not true and will continue to do so. I am not sure what we do about it.

Tons of things to click. In fact, a whole monster list of links to click.

I think you will enjoy it.

That’s all for today.

See you all next week or in three weeks, who knows.



Jung explains that painful emotions develop from experiences of trauma, loss, rejection, or abandonment; often from our early childhood. Doesn’t seem surprising. When we don’t heal these early emotional wounds, they can fester into neuroses. Another of Jung’s famous quote proposes: “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” 

Essentially, by attempting to avoid suffering, we develop unconscious patterns as coping mechanisms. Unconscious patterns that can lead to numbing with alcohol, anger, denial, isolation, or any method of distraction…anything to outrun or avoid negative emotions. 

The difficult and courageous work of becoming more conscious of hidden beliefs and stories we tell ourselves based on experience, might be the most important work we could ever do.




Image from - https://faconfessions.com/2020/03/23/making-the-unconscious-conscious/
https://ryangottfredson.com/blog/2019/12/02/making-the-unconscious-conscious/



"Which is to suggest that, although the uneasy dreams of the mass subconscious may change from decade to decade, the pipeline into that well of dreams remains constant and vital. This is the real danse macabre, I suspect: those remarkable moments when the creator of a horror story is able to unite the conscious and the subconscious mind with one potent idea" (King, Danse Macabre, pg. 17).








COOL THINGS!!














Posted by EditorDavid  from the social-(media)-services dept.
The New York Times tells the story of 17-year-old Ellie Zeiler, a TikTok creator with over 10 million followers, who received an email in June from Village Marketing, an influencer marketing agency.

"It said it was reaching out on behalf of another party: the White House."Would Ms. Zeiler, a high school senior who usually posts short fashion and lifestyle videos, be willing, the agency wondered, to participate in a White House-backed campaign encouraging her audience to get vaccinated against the coronavirus...? Ms. Zeiler quickly agreed, joining a broad, personality-driven campaign to confront an increasingly urgent challenge in the fight against the pandemic: vaccinating the youthful masses, who have the lowest inoculation rates of any eligible age group in the United States...

To reach these young people, the White House has enlisted an eclectic army of more than 50 Twitch streamers, YouTubers, TikTokers and the 18-year-old pop star Olivia Rodrigo, all of them with enormous online audiences. State and local governments have begun similar campaigns, in some cases paying "local micro influencers" — those with 5,000 to 100,000 followers — up to $1,000 a month to promote Covid-19 vaccines to their fans. The efforts are in part a counterattack against a rising tide of vaccine misinformation that has flooded the internet, where anti-vaccine activists can be so vociferous that some young creators say they have chosen to remain silent on vaccines to avoid a politicized backlash...

State and local governments have taken the same approach, though on a smaller scale and sometimes with financial incentives. In February, Colorado awarded a contract worth up to $16.4 million to the Denver-based Idea Marketing, which includes a program to pay creators in the state $400 to $1,000 a month to promote the vaccines... Posts by creators in the campaign carry a disclosure that reads "paid partnership with Colorado Dept. of Public Health and Environment...." Other places, including New Jersey, Oklahoma City County and Guildford County, N.C., as well as cities like San Jose, Calif., have worked with the digital marketing agency XOMAD, which identifies local influencers who can help broadcast public health information about the vaccines.
In another article, the Times notes that articles blaming Bill Gates for the pandemic appeared on two local news sites (one in Atlanta, and one in Phoenix) that "along with dozens of radio and television stations, and podcasts aimed at local audiences...have also become powerful conduits for anti-vaccine messaging, researchers said."

Here’s what we know about the delta-plus variant

By Jennifer Hassan and Lateshia Beachum ●  Read more »



H.E.R. Brings Back 'Lights On' Festival With Erykah Badu, Ari Lennox, Lucky Daye, Masego and More

The Oscar-winning artist made the announcement on Sunday during an acceptance speech at the 2021 BET Awards.

https://www.theroot.com/h-e-r-brings-back-lights-on-festival-with-erykah-badu-1847196615


Every week, we celebrate elements of Portland’s wonderful weirdness in collaboration with Weird Portland United.

If you haven't read any features from this series yet, you can find our archive of Weird Wednesdays past right here. Previous features have profiled The Unipiper, the Portland Sleestak, Spencer Sprocket, Carlos the Rollerblader, Strawberry Pickle, and many more colorful local characters.

But for today, I’m gonna need you to slap on a HAZMAT suit and follow me onto the campus of Reed College because we’re doing a deep dive into the strange history and function of Reed College’s nuclear reactor.

Zip up; here we go. 





Today’s Intense Moral Outrage

Posted on July 11, 2021    Posted by 


Look, the whole fuckin’ point of M&M’s is that they are the milk chocolate that melts in your mouth, not in your hand™. So this unholy monstrosity is not only questionable the level of composition (really? As the add-in to a chocolate bar, you’re adding… chocolate? Really?), it also goes against everything M&M’s stands for as a product line. This is, literally, the actual worst.

This is why we can’t have nice things, people. This is why our nation is on the precipice. I just hope we all can take a long, hard look in the mirror at who we’ve become, and realize what has to be done. I pray we can find the courage. Our children’s children will remember what we do, here, now.

(And no, I didn’t buy it. I SWEAR. Stop looking at me like that.)





As we settle in to live with Covid, we should recognize that too many people misunderstood the powers of the various vaccines. They mistook what the vaccines could do for what they wanted them to do. The vaccines don’t turn your body into a sterilizing chamber that extinguishes the virus. All that they do — and all that their makers ever claimed they did — was to trigger your immune system to create responses to combat a Covid-19 infection. Companies never said their vaccines would magically prevent you from catching the disease, only that they would dramatically increase your chances to escape illness, avoid a ventilator and dodge death. They understood from the beginning that “breakthrough” infections were in the offing. They also never said vaccines would prevent the vaccinated from transmitting the disease. They didn’t deliver magic, but they did deliver a miracle, one that could be even more miraculous if more of us would only vax up.

At some juncture, policymakers and civilians alike need to study what we’ve learned about Covid-19 and set a toleration point for what sort of Covid-19 contagion level we can accept. Should that toleration point be a level at which the burden doesn’t collapse our hospitals’ capacities? Should it look something like a recent week’s level of mortality rate, which translates to about 90,000 to 165,000 annual Covid-19 deaths? That death rate would be comparable to what we experienced during the 2017-18 flu season, when the flu hospitalized 810,000 people and killed 61,000. Every one of those flu deaths was tragic and every hospitalization arduous, but the toll didn’t translate into lockdowns or panic.

Setting a sensible toleration point for Covid-19 won’t come easy. Nobody wants to be the guy who says, “It’s regrettable but acceptable that this many people die.” But our day of reckoning is drawing near. We can’t hide in our burrows forever.




‘America is not racist’ becomes a GOP 2024 mantra






Pence is already trying out a version of that message, telling a crowd in the early nominating state of New Hampshire last month that "America is not a racist country ... it is past time for America to discard the left-wing myth of systemic racism."

His remark won a standing ovation at the Hillsborough County GOP’s annual Lincoln-Reagan Dinner.



Posted by BeauHD  from the power-of-language dept.
theodp writes:The commonly held belief that programming is inherently hard lacks sufficient evidence," begins CS Prof Brett Becker in [an article published in the journal Communications of the ACM]. "Stating this belief can send influential messages that can have serious unintended consequences including inequitable practices. [...] Language is a powerful tool. Stating that programming is hard should raise several questions but rarely does. Why does it seem routinely acceptable -- arguably fashionable -- to make such a general and definitive statement? Why are these statements often not accompanied by supporting evidence? What is the empirical evidence that programming, broadly speaking, is inherently hard, or harder than possible analogs such as calculus in mathematics? Even if that evidence exists, what does it mean in practice? In what contexts does it hold? To whom does it, and does it not, apply?"

Becker concludes: "Blanket messages that 'programming is hard' seem outdated, unproductive, and likely unhelpful at best. At worst they could be truly harmful. We need to stop blaming programming for being hard and focus on making programming more accessible and enjoyable, for everyone.



Posted by EditorDavid  from the nowhere-to-hide dept.
Some protesters in Minnesota set a fire last year. But then the surveillance footage from that day "set off a nearly yearlong, international manhunt...involving multiple federal agencies and Mexican police. The pursuit also involved a facial recognition system made by a Chinese company that has been blacklisted by the U.S. government."

The New York Times tells the story of the couple who was eventually arrested:Ms. Yousif gave birth while on the run, and was separated from her baby for four months by the authorities. To prosecutors, the pursuit of Mr. Felan, who was charged with arson, and Ms. Yousif, who was charged with helping him flee, was a routine response to a case of property destruction... But beyond the prosecutorial aftermath of the racial justice protests, the eight-month saga of a young Minnesota couple exposed an emerging global surveillance system that might one day find anyone, anywhere, the technology traveling easily over borders while civil liberties struggle to keep pace...

They drove, heading south on Interstate 35, a highway that runs down the middle of the country, stretching from Duluth, Minn., on Lake Superior, to Laredo, Texas, on the Mexican border. They had made their way through Iowa and just hit the northern part of Missouri, 300 miles from Rochester, when police first caught up with them. A warrant had been issued for Mr. Felan's arrest, allowing the authorities to ping his cellphone to locate him. According to a court document, late on a Monday night, more than a week after the events in St. Paul, local police in rural western Missouri, who were asked to go where the phone was pinging, stopped a black S.U.V. registered to Mr. Felan. Ms. Yousif was driving, and said she didn't know where Mr. Felan was. The police let her go...

Over the next week, police kept pinging the location of Mr. Felan's phone but kept missing him. According to a court document, he sent a message to his brother in Texas saying he was turning it off between messages, worried about being tracked; the couple eventually bought new phones... On a Friday night in mid-June 2020, a surveillance camera at a Holiday Inn outside San Antonio captured Ms. Yousif and Mr. Felan driving his mother's brown Toyota Camry into the hotel's parking lot. They got out of the car, walked outside the view of the camera and then disappeared...
Later in Mexico, at a meeting with law enforcement officials in Coahuila, Federico Pérez Villoro, an investigative journalist, remembers meeting a government employee in charge of Mexico's first large-scale facial recognition system who'd said America's FBI had asked them for help finding people accused of terrorism. This is significant because they were using the Dahua surveillance system from China, that's partly state-owned and "blacklisted by the U.S. government in 2019...According to a notice in the Federal Register, Dahua's products were used in "China's campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention and high-technology surveillance" against Uighurs and other Muslim minority groups."

Ironically, in the end it wasn't the $30 million system that identified the couple, according to the U.S. Justice Department. It was somebody who'd contacted them directly to collect the $20,000 reward. "But the technology is spreading globally, in part because China is aggressively marketing it abroad, said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Center for A.I. and Digital Policy, a nonprofit in Washington.... China is marketing mass surveillance technology to its trading partners in Africa, Asia and South America, he explained, pitching it as a way to minimize crime and promote public order in major metropolitan areas."In a 2019 report on video analytics, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that millions of surveillance cameras installed in recent decades are "waking up" thanks to automation, such as facial recognition technology, which allows them to not just record, but to analyze what is happening and flag what they see...

Evan Hurst
July 28, 2021 10:03 AM

We predicted it, and sure enough, it came to pass.

After yesterday's brutal and honest congressional testimony from DC and Capitol cops about the January 6 attack on the Capitol by radicalized domestic terrorists, Fox News's primetime hosts made fun of those cops. We guess for Fox's evening hosts, cops are only heroic if they're abusing Black people.

You'd think Tucker Carlson's White Power Hour would win the gold, but we're going to have to award him the silver this time, as he was edged at the last minute by Laura Ingraham, who was in much finer form last night. Maybe Tucker is still recovering from having his dick publicly broken in Montana this past weekend.

Regardless, here's Ingraham, who gave out awards to the cops for their theatrical performances. Of course, she started by lying about what happened January 6:


LAURA INGRAHAM: There was certainly a lot of violence that day but it was not a terrorist attack. It wasn't 9/11. It wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to America. It wasn't an insurrection.

It indeed wasn't 9/11, and it wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to America — there are so many sordid acts in our history committed by white supremacists, so that's a high bar! — but it was most definitely an insurrection to overturn democracy committed by terrorists who shouldn't be allowed to walk free. DC police officer Daniel Hodges even read the definition of domestic terrorism, according to US law, during his testimony yesterday, for racist, propaganda-spewing hacks like Ingraham.

Ingraham, rolling her eyes and scoffing like she does, gave out acting awards to the officers, mocking their testimonies along the way. First, though, she awarded "Best use of tears and pauses in a leading role" jointly to Reps. Adam Schiff and Adam Kinzinger, both of whom teared up and cried during the hearing. "God save us from these third-rate theatrics," said Ingraham, who we guess prefers her men tougher, like Dinesh D'Souza, a person we always must remind you Ingraham had sex with on purpose.

She then gave "Best use of an exaggeration in a supporting role" to Capitol Police officer Aquilino Gonell, who, she said, "thinks the pen is literally mightier than the sword." She was literally mocking his testimony that the weapons used against them that day were weapons. Haw haw! He said weapons were weapons even if they were just pens! (And also stun guns and tasers and crowbars and flagpoles and knives and baseball bats and fire extinguishers and bear spray.)

For "Blatant use of partisan politics when facts fail," she gave her prize to Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn. We had a feeling when he admitted he voted for Joe Biden, the Fox News hosts would react in the same spirit as the terrorists that day. As Dunn testified, they surrounded him screaming, "You hear that, guys? This [n-word] voted for Joe Biden." (He did not say "n-word.") They screamed "BOO! Fucking [n-word]" at him. Ingraham just removed the overt racial slur for deniability purposes. She also bellyached that Dunn compared Donald Trump to a hitman.

Finally, for "Best performance in an action role," she made fun of DC officer Michael Fanone, who testified in great detail about terrorists giving him a heart attack and a concussion that day, and called the actions of Republican congressmen showing absolute indifference to him and his colleagues "disgraceful." Then she hosted seditionist Rep. Jim Banks, whom Nancy Pelosi rejected for the committee, who said the officers' statements were "carefully scripted" and said they "stumbled over words they weren't familiar with." Guess he just thinks cops are too stupid to know big words.

Speaking of "carefully scripted," you'll note that Ingraham didn't actually play much of those guys' testimonies. Just the parts she cherry-picked so she could roll her eyes and scoff at them.

Meanwhile, Tucker.

Want to watch Tucker Carlson laugh like a big tough guy at Officer Fanone for saying he's suffered from PTSD since the attacks where he was literally beaten within a half inch of his life? You can see it here, but like we said, Tucker really didn't bring his A-game last night, so it doesn't deserve an instant replay here.

Tucker was also apparently offended that Fanone didn't have any PTSD from last summer's mostly peaceful protests in DC:

"What is interesting is Michael Fanone didn't mention experiencing any trauma during the time he spent last year on the DC police force. It was just last summer that rioters in Washington torched the oldest Episcopal church in the city just steps from the White House. Dozens of police officers were injured that day."

If Fanone said he had PTSD from seeing a Black person protest for their rights, Tucker would try to be his best friend or maybe date him. The Capitol terrorists were white though, so Tucker just doesn't get it.

Tucker made fun of Officer Gonell, who before his current job served in Iraq, and who testified that "on January 6th for the first time, I was more afraid to work at the Capitol than my entire deployment to Iraq." Haw haw, that was very funny to Tucker, the frozen dinner heir who definitely knows what war is like.

"Actually what happened on January 6, according to the video we do have, does not look a lot like Iraq. It's not Fallujah." He played footage of a relatively quiet segment of the Capitol invasion, with protesters milling peacefully about the rotunda.

Of course he did. Of course, he could have played some of Fanone's bodycam footage, because they played that in Congress yesterday. But Tucker was busy lying.

We'll finish this post with this partial transcript of a voicemail Officer Fanone received while he was testifying, from somebody he did not know:

"You're so full of s—t, you little f---ot f—ker. You're a little p---y… You're a lying f—k… How about all the scummy Black f—king scum destroying our cities and burning them… I wish they would have killed all you scumbags, 'cause you people are scum. They stole the election from Trump… Too bad they didn't beat the s—t out of you more."

No, the message wasn't left on Fanone's phone by Tucker or Laura, but nobody would be shocked if it had been. Especially because if you hear the full voicemail, the caller asked Fanone if he wanted an Emmy or an Oscar.

These minds think alike.

[Media Matters / Insider / Daily Beast / ibid.]


The Pandemic's Biggest Scammer Is A Monster Of The Media's Own Creation

Robyn Pennacchia
July 24, 2021 03:20 PM

Today, The New York Times ran a less-than-glowing profile on Dr. Joseph Mercola, the man a recent study says has been the biggest spreader of coronavirus misinformation since the beginning of the pandemic. The man has made millions off of selling fake cures and otherwise scaring your relatives into not getting the vaccine, putting us all in danger. This is not the first critical article they've written on him during the pandemic and it probably will not be the last.

Via The New York Times:

An internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens, Dr. Mercola has published over 600 articles on Facebook that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines since the pandemic began, reaching a far larger audience than other vaccine skeptics, an analysis by The New York Times found. His claims have been widely echoed on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

The activity has earned Dr. Mercola, a natural health proponent with an Everyman demeanor, the dubious distinction of the top spot in the "Disinformation Dozen," a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media, said the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Others on the list include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and Erin Elizabeth, the founder of the website Health Nut News, who is also Dr. Mercola's girlfriend.

"Mercola is the pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement," said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online conspiracy theories. "He's a master of capitalizing on periods of uncertainty, like the pandemic, to grow his movement."

2015, however, was a different story. In 2015, the Times ran an article claiming that wearable devices could give you cancer. The "expert" they cited on this? One Dr. Joseph Mercola, who had previously claimed that basically everything else in the universe, from tap water to bras to Pringles could also give you cancer, along with many other outlandish claims on other health topics.

Dr. Mercola has also been a guest on the Dr. Oz show on multiple occasions, literally telling viewers why they should not trust their doctors. His top three reasons? Doctors will tell you tanning beds are bad for you (which they are!), that you should get a flu shot and that coconut oil is probably not a magic substance that can cure all of the diseases. While no one should just blindly trust their doctor, these would be some very stupid and incorrect reasons not to do so.

While Mercola's page on Quackwatch is approximately the length of Moby Dick, he's been legitimized for years by sources people consider reputable. His ideas have been repeated because frankly, people love a good "Here's a surprising thing that could kill you and/or cure all of what ails you" article or television show segment. He has made his fortune out of dispensing terrible medical advice and he has, in turn, made money for those willing to profit off of his terrible medical advice.

Dr. Oz, by the way, has lied to people so many times that he was once dragged before congress to explain himself — and he is still on the air.

In fact, I'm going to drop that right in here. I may not agree with Claire McCaskill on everything, but this? This I will treasure forever. She did real good here.

CNN: Senator McCaskill Grills Dr. Oz Over Diet Scamswww.youtube.com

We've also got the Dr. Oz-adjacent show "The Doctors," discussing important and totally real health issues like the scourge of "menopause face."


Studies have shown that more than half of the information on these shows is bullshit, and yet they are on every day. As of right now, Dr. Oz is renewed up until 2023.

How are we actually sitting around going "Oh boy, I just don't know how all of these people don't want to take vaccines and why they believe all of these very stupid things about them?" when people just like Dr. Mercola are regularly legitimized in our media?

If we want a society in which creeps like Dr. Mercola cannot take advantage of people this way, cannot put all of us in danger by pushing medical disinformation, this shit has got to stop.

[The New York Times]



Republicans Not Interested In Hearing Capitol Police Drone On About Saving Them From Trump’s Mob

Stephen Robinson
July 28, 2021 08:53 AM

The House investigation into the January 6 Capitol attack began Tuesday, and while hardly an Agatha Christie thriller where the villain remains a mystery until the very end, it was certainly compelling viewing — at least if you're a reasonably engaged citizen and not a GOP congressman who just can't be bothered with the grisly details of the Trump-inspired insurrection.

CNN congressional correspondent Ryan Nobles said the most common response from Republicans when asked their thoughts about Tuesday's hearing was variations of "I was too busy to watch." According to CNN's Melanie Zanona, House Minority Leader and Trump step stool Kevin McCarthy couldn't watch the hearings because he was “stuck in back-to-back meetings." (He must've filled his schedule in the week after pulling his selected GOP members from the committee.)

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters Tuesday that he didn't watch the hearings because he “was busy doing work," as if it's that time consuming to block any legislation that might help Americans. McConnell didn't have time for casual TV viewing. He proudly declared, “I serve in the Senate!" We wouldn't describe what McConnell does as “service" of any kind, but his office is located inside the crime scene. He's only in one piece now because the Capitol Police held off Trump's Frankenstein army. At the very least, he could've sent the cops a pot of jam.

This pathetic, passive aggressive display is the insurrection version of "I didn't see that tweet." C'mon, Republicans wanted congressional hearings over so-called "cancel culture," but they can't listen to police officers testify about how a violent MAGA mob tried to kill them?

Twitter

Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio's shame, was still stinging from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejecting him from the 1/6 committee because she wasn't interested in a carnival act. He subtweeted the hearing, suggesting that now suddenly Democrats care about violence against the police. This is the tired rightwing argument that somehow a violent insurrection, which led to a cop's death, is the same as someone accidentally stepping on a cop's toe at a Black Lives Matter rally. (That toe cruncher is probably still in jail pending trial.)

Jordan also berated Pelosi for even having hearings when America is not yet a utopian paradise.

Crime's skyrocketing. The border's in crisis. The price of everything is up.

“God knows where we're heading." Jordan's doing his best Marvin Gaye here.

What's Speaker Pelosi doing about it? Nothing. She's too busy pushing her partisan January 6th charade.

Jordan also asked what the difference was between a Democrat and a Never Trumper. This was presumably a dig at Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, whose voting records speak for themselves. The current GOP doesn't bother hiding that it's nothing more than an autocratic cult of personality. Members of organized crime families demonstrate more honor.

The GOP House Judiciary account tweeted some quaint old-timey rhetoric about how Democrats are the ones who hate cops.

Twitter

Democrats defunded the police.

Democrats belittled the police.

Democrats threatened to abolish the police.

Republicans #BackTheBlue.

Period.

This charming set of lie-filled declarative statements can't hold up against the gripping testimony from officers who faced off against Trump's MAGA mob. The footage was devastating and undeniable, though Republicans are very good at denying reality. That's one of their core competencies.

If it wasn't clear already that Republicans back the insurrectionists who beat the cops black and blue, Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield mocked Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell who feared for his life on January 6. Stinchfield insisted that Gonell couldn't possibly have been in any serious jeopardy because “there were no guns" in the Capitol. That's a lie, and even if no one literally shot Gonnell, the mob tried to hug and kiss him to death like he was one of Lennie's rabbits from Of Mice And Men.

Fox News contributor Julie Kelly, who's appeared multiple times on Tucker Carlson's white power hour, smeared Officer Michael Fanone as “crisis actor" who apparently went so method he let Trump's mob beat the crap out of him.

She tweeted:

Crisis actor Fanone just beat on the table and said it's "disgraceful!" that any elected official denies his narrative of what happened on January 6.

Calls it an "insurrection."

Blasting GOP lawmakers.

Now says this isn't about politics, lol.

He has many tattoos.

OMG, Officer Fanone has ... tattoos, possibly even many, as in more than one. He'll never get an invite to Kelly's country club. She also dismissed Officer Harry Dunn's testimony that Trump's thugs repeatedly called him racial slurs. She wasn't alone in her repulsiveness: Federalist co-founder Sean Davis said Dunn's claims are “unsubstantiated." He also shared damning examples of Dunn tweeting while a liberal.

This was all predictably horrible, but truly the low point of the day was Reps. Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, and Louie Gohmert — all sitting members of Congress — attempting to hold a protest rally outside the Justice Department on behalf of the true January 6 victims — the criminal suspects who have been mostly treated with kid gloves considering they tried to overthrow the government. Cheney called this spectacle a “disgrace." We don't enjoy this recent trend of agreeing with a Cheney, but when she's right, she's right.

Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter.


Looks Like Alabama Congressdoofus Mo Brooks Is About To Go Through Some Things

Liz Dye
July 28, 2021 09:20 AM

Snake eyes! Yesterday Mo Brooks, the Alabama congressman and senatorial hopeful, struck out twice in his bid to get someone — anyone! — to take over for him in the tort suit filed by his fellow representative Eric Swalwell for Brooks's alleged incitement of the insurrection.

"Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass!" Brooks demanded of the screeching mob on January 6. "Now, our ancestors sacrificed their blood, their sweat, their tears, their fortunes, and sometimes their lives, to give us, their descendants, an America that is the greatest nation in world history. So I have a question for you: Are you willing to do the same? My answer is yes. Louder! Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America? Louder!! Will you fight for America?!"

We all know what happened next.

Swalwell alleges that Brooks, along with Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump, and Donald Trump Jr., committed various torts against him, including conspiring to violate his civil rights.

Brooks spent weeks dodging the process server, because he is a very serious grown adult and former member of the Alabama bar. After finally getting served, Brooks claimed in a filing earlier this month that he was acting within the scope of his official duties when he dispatched a crowd of lunatics to storm the Capitol. Citing the Westfall Act, which requires the government to substitute itself as defendant when a government employee faces a tort claim on the job, Brooks then demanded that the DOJ swoop in and save him from his scary colleague. Or, barring that, he'd like the House itself to take over his legal defense.

Brooks's arguments ranged from the plausible — he was commenting on a matter of public interest — to the idiotic — he drafted and practiced his Ellipse speech in the Rayburn Office building. But the gravamen of his argument appears to be that his constituents just really, really like Donald Trump, so anything he does to support the great man is definitionally constituent services. It's a bold strategy, Cotton!

Here is an actual line from his motion:

Brooks sought to encourage the Ellipse Rally attendees to put the 2020 elections behind them (and, in particular, the preceding day's two Georgia GOP Senate losses, and to inspire listeners to start focusing on the 2022 and 2024 elections, which had already begun.

Brooks sought to inspire Ellipse Rally attendees to exercise their First Amendment rights by chanting the words "USA."

UH HUH.

Shockingly, the government failed to be persuaded by this logic.

"The record indicates that Brooks's appearance at the January 6 rally was campaign activity, and it is no part of the business of the United States to pick sides among candidates in federal elections," the government wrote in its reply last night. "Members of Congress are subject to a host of restrictions that carefully distinguish between their official functions, on the one hand, and campaign functions, on the other. The conduct at issue here thus is not the kind a Member of Congress holds office to perform, or substantially within the authorized time and space limits, as required by governing law."

The DOJ agreed with Rep. Zoe Lofgren, chair of the Committee on House Administration, who wrote that Brooks's reference to 2022 and 2024 was an explicit admission "that his conduct was instead in furtherance of political campaigns," rather than part of his official duties. And so both the Justice Department and House General Counsel informed the court last night that they would not be jumping in to save Brooks's sagging bacon.

"Given that the underlying litigation was initiated by a current Member of the U.S. House of Representatives individually suing another current House Member individually and does not challenge any institutional action of the House or any of its component entities, the Office has determined that, in these circumstances, it is not appropriate for it to participate in the litigation," House Counsel Doug Letter wrote.

So Brooks is on his own in this one. Well, unless Donald Trump decides to do his old pal a solid and pick up the tab for this round.

LOLOLOL.

[Swalwell v. Trump, et al., Docket via Court Listener]

Follow Liz Dye on Twitter!









https://www.quantamagazine.org/long-covid-how-it-keeps-us-sick-20210701/

How ‘Long COVID’ Keeps Us Sick

Other diseases with long-term symptoms can help us understand how COVID can affect us long after the virus itself is gone.






In this Jan. 6, 2021 file photo, supporters loyal to then-President Donald Trump, try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington.
Photo: Julio Cortez (AP)


https://www.theroot.com/u-s-capitol-rioter-tells-on-himself-to-bumble-match-g-1847355897

U.S. Capitol Rioter Tells on Himself to Bumble Match, Gets Arrested Soon After

He did all of that and the only date he got out of it was to appear in court.

By
J.L. Cook
Comments (14)
Alerts

You’d be hard pressed to find a group of people more excited to incriminate themselves everyone that ran up into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

The Washington Post reports that Andrew Taake of Houston faces various charges, including assaulting police officers, after he admitted his participation in the deadly insurrection to someone he matched with on the dating app Bumble. His case is similar to Robert Chapman’s, who was arrested after he too bragged to a Bumble match about how he made his way into Statuary Hall.

From the Post:

The unnamed Bumble user asked if (Taake) had been “near all the action,” Taake claimed he was pepper-sprayed by police after gathering to protest the presidential election results, according to a July 21 criminal complaint.

“About 30 minutes after being sprayed,” he said of a selfie showing him wearing a gray beanie and dark gaiter across his face. “Safe to say, I was the very first person to be sprayed that day … all while just standing there.”










His match turned the conversation over to officials, according to the Post, along with screenshots of Taake’s location on Jan. 6. The officials did some digging and found that Taake was caught on camera “using what appears to be a metal whip and pepper spray to attack law enforcement officers.”

So, not only are dudes out here lying about their height and professions on dating apps, but now they’re telling stories about how they spent their time during one of the most shameful events in America’s history? Gotcha.

The Post reports that while Taake and Chapman were charged for their roles in the Capitol riot, other Bumble users have been flagged for similar discussions.

It’s weird. Most people who commit a crime usually go on the low for a while or call that vacuum repair dude from Breaking Bad to vanish them. But as ABC News has reported, these people can’t seem to keep their mouths shut online.

Maybe it’s because they assume that based on how others who have been tried for storming the Capitol have so far received wimpy sentences, the same will happen to them when they face their charges.

That’s possible and it wouldn’t be very surprising. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

As for Taake’s Bumble match, the Post reports that the two never got to meet face to face.


Apple Plans To Scan US iPhones for Child Abuse Imagery
Apple intends to install software on American iPhones to scan for child abuse imagery, Financial Times is reporting citing people briefed on the plans, raising alarm among security researchers who warn that it could open the door to surveillance o...

Biden Wants Half of New Cars Sold in 2030 To Be Hybrid or All-Electric
President Biden wants 50 percent of all new cars sold in the United States in 2030 to be all-electric, plug-in hybrid, or hydrogen-powered. From a report: In addition, his administration will propose new fuel economy and emissions standards that will mo...

Firefox Lost Almost 50 Million Users In 3 Years
An anonymous reader quotes a report from It's FOSS, written by Ankush Das: Mozilla's Firefox is the only popular alternative to Chromium-based browsers. It has been the default choice for Linux users and privacy-conscious users across every platform. Ho...

Senate Democrats To Introduce Legislation That Would Tax Energy Companies Responsible For Major Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Zack Budryk writes via The Hill: The Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act, sponsored by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), would require between 25 to 30 of the U.S. corporations responsible for the most greenhouse gas pollution to pay $300 billion into a fund o...

The CDC Needs To Stop Confusing the Public
Dr. Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, writing at The New York Times: The C.D.C. faces three major problems. The first is reality: a sustained campaign of misinformation against vaccines and other public h...

Apple Confirms It Will Begin Scanning iCloud Photos for Child Abuse Images
Apple will roll out a technology that will allow the company to detect and report known child sexual abuse material to law enforcement in a way it says will preserve user privacy. From a report: Apple told TechCrunch that the detection of child sexual a...

Spanish Engineers Extract Drinking Water From Thin Air
A Spanish company has devised a system to extract drinking water from thin air to supply arid regions where people are in desperate need. Reuters reports: "The goal is to help people," said Enrique Veiga, the 82-year-old engineer who invented the machi...

US Intel Agencies Are Reviewing Genetic Data From Wuhan Lab
ytene writes: CNN is claiming an exclusive scoop, with an article reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies have scored a massive trove of Covid-19 genetic data, which, CNN suggests, comes from the Wuhan research lab. More than the complex challenge of...

The Slow Collapse of Amazon's Drone Delivery Dream
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Well over 100 employees at Amazon Prime Air have lost their jobs and dozens of other roles are moving to other projects abroad as the company shutters part of its operation in the UK, WIRED understands. In...

Historical Language Records Reveal a Surge of Cognitive Distortions in Recent Decades
From a paper on PNAS [PDF]: Can entire societies become more or less depressed over time? Here, we look for the historical traces of cognitive distortions, thinking patterns that are strongly associated with internalizing disorders such as depr...


Robyn Pennacchia
July 26, 2021 03:40 PM

Matt Schaefer's face, which we did not edit in any way shape or form.

Source: Matt Schaefer's Facebook Page

For well over a decade now, conservatives have been wringing their hands in fear, misinterpreting the left's insistence that they stop being shitty to Muslim people as a desperate desire on our part to enact "Sharia Law" across the United States. As such, multiple states and counties have explicitly banned "Sharia Law" to thwart our nefarious plans. We're putting "Sharia Law" in quotes here because generally speaking, they are as likely to be able to correctly define "Sharia Law" as they are likely to be able to define "Critical Race Theory." It's almost as if this is a running theme, re: things they want to ban.

They must be over this fear, however, as Republican Texas state Rep. Matt Schaefer felt quite free to cite the Taliban as a beacon of morality on the subject of reproductive freedom, tweeting "FACT: Even the Taliban oppose abortion" in response to a letter to the editor in the Houston Chronicle comparing Texas's batshit Abortion Tattletale Sweepstakes to something the Taliban might do. Which, you know, it is.


Just to refresh: on September 1, a law will be going into effect in Texas banning abortion after six weeks. Texas plans to enforce this law by essentially deputizing citizens and allowing anyone (anyone!) to file a lawsuit against anyone who

(1) performs or induces an abortion in violation of this chapter;

(2) knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise, if the abortion is performed or induced in violation of this chapter, regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of this chapter.

If found guilty, the accused will owe the "complainant" $10,000. If found innocent, they still have to pay their own legal fees. This doesn't just apply to people in Texas, by the way. If anyone in any state sends money to someone in Texas for the purpose of helping them pay for an abortion after six weeks and some creep there finds out, they can sue them for $10,000.

This is such a horrifying idea that it is genuinely difficult to imagine anyone supporting it who doesn't think the Taliban has the right idea about things.

The Taliban is not exactly known for its progressive ideas, re: women. In fact, it's pretty big on forced marriage and not letting girls go to school or letting women leave the house without a male companion or work outside the home. It is therefore not even slightly surprising that it opposes abortion and throws people in prison for five years for having one. Saying "FACT: Even the Taliban oppose abortion" is like saying "FACT: Even Jeffrey Dahmer liked killing and eating people" or "FACT: Even Heinrich Himmler loved genocide." These things are all true, but not necessarily things a normal person would want to emulate.

Of course, Matt Schaefer is not exactly a normal person, particularly when it comes to abortion. Notably, in 2015 he proposed a law requiring people to go through labor and deliver babies that were not going to be able to survive outside the womb. He also once responded to a mass shooting with a Twitter rant on how he opposes laws banning AR-15s and "red flag" laws that might have prevented said mass shooting.

So yeah, he might actually be right at home in the Taliban.





Posted by BeauHD  from the what-to-expect dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:Record-shattering" heatwaves, even worse than the one that recently hit north-west America, are set to become much more likely in future, according to research. The study is a stark new warning on the rapidly escalating risks the climate emergency poses to lives. The research found that highly populated regions in North America, Europe and China were where the record-shattering extremes are most likely to occur. One illustrative heatwave produced by the computer models used in the study showed some locations in mid-northern America having temperatures 18C higher than average. The new computing modeling study [...] looked for the first time at the highest margins by which week-long heatwave records could be broken in future.

It found that heatwaves that smash previous records by roughly 5C would become two to seven times more likely in the next three decades and three to 21 times more likely from 2051-2080, unless carbon emissions are immediately slashed. Such extreme heatwaves are all but impossible without global heating. The vulnerability of North America, Europe and China was striking, said Erich Fischer, at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, who led the research. "Here we see the largest jumps in record-shattering events. This is really quite worrying," he added. "Many places have by far not seen anything close to what's possible, even in present-day conditions, because only looking at the past record is really dangerous."

The study also showed that record-shattering events could come in sharp bursts, rather than gradually becoming more frequent. "That is really concerning," Fischer said: "Planning for heatwaves that get 0.1C more intense every two or three years would still be very worrying, but it would be much easier to prepare for." The new research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, concluded: "Record-shattering extremes are [currently] very rare but their expected probability increases rapidly in the coming three decades." It found the rate of global heating was critical in increasing the risk, rather than simply the global temperature reached. This indicates that sharp cuts in emissions are needed as soon as possible, rather than emissions continuing and being sucked back out of the atmosphere at a later date. The scientists used a scenario in which carbon emissions are not reduced, which some experts have argued is unrealistic, given that some climate action is being taken. However, global emissions are not yet falling, bar the blip caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and the researchers argue the scenario remains relevant until CO2 emissions are consistently falling.


Posted by BeauHD  from the land-before-time dept.
"A research team has proposed a novel link between how fast our planet spun on its axis, which defines the length of a day, and the ancient production of additional oxygen," reports Science Magazine. "Their modeling of Earth's early days, which incorporates evidence from microbial mats coating the bottom of a shallow, sunlit sinkhole in Lake Huron, produced a surprising conclusion: as Earth's spin slowed, the resulting longer days could have triggered more photosynthesis from similar mats, allowing oxygen to build up in ancient seas and diffuse up into the atmosphere." From the report:As a postdoc at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Klatt had studied microbial mats growing on sediments in the Middle Island Sinkhole in Lake Huron. There, the water is shallow enough for the cyanobacteria to get enough sunlight for photosynthesis. Oxygen-depleted water and sulfur gas bubble up from the lake floor, creating anoxic conditions that roughly approximate conditions of early Earth. Scuba divers collected samples of the microbial mats and in the lab, Klatt tracked the amount of oxygen they released under various day lengths simulated with halogen lamps. The longer the exposure to light, the more of the gas the mats released.

Excited, Klatt and Arjun Chennu, a modeler from the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research, set up a numerical model to calculate how much oxygen ancient cyanobacteria could have produced on a global scale. When the microbial mat results and other data were plugged into this computer program, it revealed a key interaction between light exposure and the microbial mats. Typically, microbial mats "breathe" in almost as much oxygen at night as they produce during the day. But as Earth's spin slowed, the additional continuous hours of daylight allowed the simulated mats to build up a surplus, releasing oxygen into the water. As a result, atmospheric oxygen tracked estimated day length over the eons: Both rose in a stepped fashion with a long plateau.

This "elegant" idea helps explain why oxygen didn't build up in the atmosphere as soon as cyanobacteria appeared on the scene 3.5 billion years ago, says Timothy Lyons, a biogeochemist at the University of California, Riverside. Because day length was still so short back then, oxygen in the mats never had a chance to build up enough to diffuse out. "Long daytimes simply allow more oxygen to escape to the overlying waters and eventually the atmosphere," Lyons says. Still, Lyons and others say, many factors likely contributed to the rise in oxygen. For example, Fischer suspects free-floating cyanobacteria, not just those in rock-affixed mats, were big players. Benjamin Mills, an Earth system modeler at the University of Leeds, thinks the release of oxygen-binding minerals by ancient volcanoes likely countered the early buildup of the gas at times and should be factored into oxygen calculations. Nonetheless, changing day length "is something that should be considered in more detail," he says. "I'll try to add it to our Earth system models."


Posted by BeauHD  from the underground-industries dept.
Scammers are abusing Instagram's protections against suicide, self-harm, and impersonation to purposefully target and ban Instagram accounts at will, with some people even advertising professionalized ban-as-a-service offerings so anyone can harass or censor others, according to screenshots, interviews, and other material reviewed by Motherboard. From the report:It appears that in some cases, the same scammers who offer ban-as-a-service also offer or are at least connected to services to restore accounts for users who were unfairly banned from Instagram, sometimes for thousands of dollars. "Me (and my friend's) currently have the best ban service on-site/in the world," one advertisement for a ban service on the underground forum OG Users reads. "We have been professionally banning since 2020 and have top-tier experience. We may not have the cheapest prices, but trust me you are getting what you are paying for."

War, the pseudonymous user offering the ban service, told Motherboard in a Telegram message that banning "is pretty much a full time job lol." They claimed to have made over five-figures from selling Instagram bans in under a month. War charges $60 per ban, according to their listing. Another banner on a different underground forum offers the service for between 5 euros and 30 euros per account, depending on the number of followers. That listing advertised bans for accounts up to 5,000 followers, but claimed that higher follower accounts are also possible to ban. The first listing said it can impact accounts with up to 99,000 followers. War said they didn't know why particular customers may use their service, but added "obviously individuals who have money to throw around." Both listings say that a target account must have a human in the profile photo. In War's case, they said they ban users by filing a fraudulent impersonation complaint to Instagram.

For banned accounts, victims generally have to provide Instagram with several pieces of information such as their name, phone number, and linked email address [...]. [P]reviously, once an account was banned, the owner could try to restore it themselves straight away. Recently, Instagram introduced a 24 hour buffer window where a user has to wait before trying to restore the account, they said. But it appears that in other cases some of the people offering restore services are connected to those banning the accounts in the first place. [S]ome victims receive a message offering account restoration immediately after being banned, and that in their own case, the two accounts that launched the ban attack and the one offering the restore service follow each other on Instagram.

Posted by BeauHD  from the climate-crisis dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:Climate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet's main potential tipping points. The research found "an almost complete loss of stability over the last century" of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.

Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level in the eastern North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets. The complexity of the AMOC system and uncertainty over levels of future global heating make it impossible to forecast the date of any collapse for now. It could be within a decade or two, or several centuries away. But the colossal impact it would have means it must never be allowed to happen, the scientists said.The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Climate Change.






Posted by BeauHD  from the good-luck-listening-in-though dept.
Terry Rudolph, a professor of quantum physics at Imperial College London, suggests that interstellar light could actually be harnessed by space faring aliens to form an encrypted quantum internet. Motherboard reports:This may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but Rudolph says it was actually a natural extension of what he does as co-founder of PsiQuantum, a Silicon Valley-based company on a mission to build a scalable photonic quantum computer. He laid out his idea in a paper recently published on the arXiv preprint server. Rudolph said the idea for the paper on aliens communicating with quantum starlight flowed from his work on quantum computers. Unlike the quantum computers being pursued by the likes of Google or Intel that use superconducting circuits or trapped ions at incredibly cold temperatures to create qubits (the quantum equivalent of a computer bit), photonic computers use light to accomplish the same thing. While Rudolph says this kind of quantum design is unconventional, it does also have advantages over its rival -- including being able to operate at room temperature and easy integration into existing fiber optic infrastructure.

The primary way the aliens would create this kind of quantum internet is through a quantum mechanics principle called entanglement, explains Rudolph. In a nutshell, entanglement is a phenomena in which the quantum states of particles (like photons) are linked together. This is what Einstein referred to as "spooky action at a distance" and means that disturbing one particle will automatically affect its partner, even if they're miles apart. This entanglement would allow aliens -- or even humans -- to send encrypted signals between entangled partners, or nodes. Now, scale that single computer system up to a network potentially spanning the entire cosmos.

Aliens aside, Rudolph says that his paper demonstrates that building a photon-based quantum internet here on Earth might be "much easier than we expected." As for the aliens, even if they were using this kind of technology to transform waves of light into their own personal chat rooms, we'd have no way of knowing, says Rudolph. And even if we could pick out these light patterns in the sky, we still wouldn't be able to listen in. This is due to the incredibly shy nature of quantum particles -- any attempt to observe them by an outside party would alter their state and destroy the information they were carrying.



Posted by BeauHD  from the hide-and-seek dept.
fahrbot-bot shares a report from Phys.Org:Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have linked together, or "entangled," the mechanical motion and electronic properties of a tiny blue crystal, giving it a quantum edge in measuring electric fields with record sensitivity that may enhance understanding of the universe. The quantum sensor consists of 150 beryllium ions (electrically charged atoms) confined in a magnetic field, so they self-arrange into a flat 2D crystal just 200 millionths of a meter in diameter. Quantum sensors such as this have the potential to detect signals from dark matter -- a mysterious substance that might turn out to be, among other theories, subatomic particles that interact with normal matter through a weak electromagnetic field. The presence of dark matter could cause the crystal to wiggle in telltale ways, revealed by collective changes among the crystal's ions in one of their electronic properties, known as spin.

As described in the Aug. 6 issue of Science, researchers can measure the vibrational excitation of the crystal -- the flat plane moving up and down like the head of a drum -- by monitoring changes in the collective spin. Measuring the spin indicates the extent of the vibrational excitation, referred to as displacement. This sensor can measure external electric fields that have the same vibration frequency as the crystal with more than 10 times the sensitivity of any previously demonstrated atomic sensor. (Technically, the sensor can measure 240 nanovolts per meter in one second.) In the experiments, researchers apply a weak electric field to excite and test the crystal sensor. A dark matter search would look for such a signal.

Quick Links, Updated Constantly

You can also follow along with the Quick Links on Twitter and in kottke.org's main RSS feed.

THE LATEST LINKS

A panel of boomers answers questions from gen Z. "Do you think young people are overly sensitive and privileged?"  theguardian.com

 

"The Atlantic Ocean's current system...could be weakening to such an extent that it could soon bring big changes to the world's weather." (The Day After Tomorrow is a documentary.)  reuters.com

 

Bauhaus poster generator.  tool.graphics · via @pomeranian99

 

Useful rule of thumb: It's Not a Self-Driving Car Unless You Can Sleep In It.  groundtruthautonomy.com

 

Taking some Italians to an NYC Olive Garden. "'There is an Italian phrase,' said Marco after we ordered our food. '"Li ti avvelenano", which translates to "there they will poison you." This is my prediction for the night.'"  tripout.online

 

Epidemiologist Ellie Murray runs through the math to see how various interventions will fare in the US w/r/t to the delta variant of Covid-19. The much higher R0 for delta is the driving force here.  twitter.com

 

"The very role and meaning of libraries relies on their right to own books, because books that can expire are books that can disappear permanently — books that can be taken away."  thenation.com

 

Wow, Lionel Messi is leaving FC Barcelona (confirmed by the club).  fcbarcelona.com

 

Why medieval city-builder video games are historically inaccurate. "Any gameplay loop that tells a story of linear settlement growth is incongruent with how a medieval economy worked."  leidenmedievalistsblog.nl

 

Is the Viral "Red Dress" Music Video a Sociological Experiment? Performance Art? Or Something Else?  openculture.com

 

"It's just that trees are super fuckin queer."  twitter.com

If you need a little break today, may I suggest watching this video of a single kidney bean that belonged to Charles Darwin being meticulously cleaned for conservation?  twitter.com · via @gregorg

 

I Appreciate When Men Interrupt Me Even If I'm Trying to Tell Them There's a Fire.  mcsweeneys.net

 

Black Cyclists Are Stopped More Often Than Whites, Police Data Shows.  bicycling.com · via @s_m_i

 

AUGUST 4

 

Kate Winslet Says 'Some Very Cool Ideas' Now Exist for 'Mare of Easttown' Season 2. Quoting Han Solo: "I got a bad feeling about this."  indiewire.com

 

Juliette Kayyem: Flying is not a right and unvaccinated people should be on the no-fly list. "While flying, vaccinated people should no longer carry the burden for unvaccinated people."  theatlantic.com

 

According to a KFF poll conducted in July, 75% of Americans who say they definitely won't get the vaccine believe that getting the vaccine is riskier than becoming infected with Covid-19.  kff.org

 

Narrative nonfiction master Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City, The Splendid and the Vile) is coming out with his first work of fiction, an audiobook-only novella called No One Goes Alone.  nytimes.com

 

There are three different types of fun. "Type 2 fun is miserable while it's happening, but fun in retrospect."  rei.com

 

AUGUST 3

 

The diamond-water paradox in economics. We need water to live so it's more valuable but diamonds are more expensive. Why is that?  npr.org

 

Flying toasters in CSS.  bryanbraun.com · via @craigmod

 

Mark Rober built a robot that can set up dominos really quickly.  youtube.com

 

Here's where we're at with space elevators. "The Space Elevator has been a dream of scientists for centuries. A new design may finally make it a reality — at least, by the next century."  mashable.com

 

Since the January 6th attack on Congress, four police officers who responded to the insurrection at the Capitol have died by suicide.  nbcnews.com

 

AUGUST 2

 

paint everything everywhere! This is a super-fun little game.  puzzlescript.net · via @waxpancake

 

For many, the belated realization that Covid will be ‘a long war’ sparks anger and denial.  statnews.com

 

The new Tesla Plaid Model S is so so ridiculously fast. As my son would say, "it's OP".  youtube.com

 

Pro tip: always close your font sizing HTML tags.  web.archive.org · via @tcarmody

 

John Oliver on "the long history of housing discrimination in the U.S., the damage it's done, and, crucially, what we can do about it".  youtube.com

 

This is important to keep in mind: "Who Are the Unvaccinated in America? There's No One Answer."  nytimes.com

 

Cookie Monster Chase is a Pac-Man-style game available to play on the official Sesame Street site.  sesamestreet.org

 

New climate study: heatwaves are going to get more likely. "From 2051 to 2080, those prolonged, record-breaking events are expected to become three to 21 times more probable than they were in the past."  theverge.com

 

AUGUST 1

 

"Dogs tend to poop aligned north-south. [...] How do the scientists know? Because during magnetic storms, dogs poop any which way."  interconnected.org

 

JULY 30

Oh of course Google scientists have demonstrated a genuine "time crystal" for the first time ever. "The consequence is amazing: You evade the second law of thermodynamics."  quantamagazine.org

 

JULY 29

 

The next month or two is a really great time to see Saturn in the night sky (esp. if you have a telescope).  syfy.com

 

The US poverty rate is expected to be *cut in half* this year due to pandemic relief efforts from the federal government. Presumably after those efforts end, poverty levels will go back to "normal".  nytimes.com

 

What if the Unvaccinated Can't Be Persuaded? ~15% of Americans just won't do it unless forced and it'll take many months (if not years) of education & outreach to reach another 15% who aren't. *sigh*  nytimes.com

 

Surrealist stock illustrations.  absurd.design · via @sidebario

 

The always excellent Margaret Sullivan on how the media is "equalizing the unequal": "Our democracy is under attack. Washington journalists must stop covering it like politics as usual."  washingtonpost.com

 

From the first time, scientists have been able to observe x-rays coming from the back side of a black hole, which were bent around the hole and toward us. Einstein's general theory of relativity remains undefeated.  gizmodo.com

 

JULY 28

 

Huh, Gawker is back? RIP that old rainbow logo.  gawker.com

 

"Two bartenders floated in and out of the conversation, dropping comments like 'what's Covid?' to laughter. Just recently, a beloved cook at the restaurant had died from the virus, they said." This is a horrifying portrait of contemporary America.  politico.com

 

So interesting to read about the ritual & tradition among Dominican families living in NYC of heading to the beach to eat empaguetadas, a spaghetti dish.  eater.com · via @waxpancake

 

JULY 27

"Almost everybody still yells at their kids sometimes, even the parents who know it doesn't work. Yelling may be the most widespread parental stupidity around today."  nytimes.com

 

An entertaining thread arguing that most pickup trucks in the US are purchased as status symbols and aren't practical. "Owning a truck the size of a WWII Sherman tank serves no practical purpose."  twitter.com

 

A timeline of digital nomadism. The term "digital nomad" was first used in 1997, but the concept originated perhaps as far back as the 60s.  nomadicnotes.com · via @legalnomads

 

The trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Looks fun.  youtube.com

 

The CDC is going to change their mask-wearing guidance for vaccinated people. Good.  nytimes.com

 

Wow, Taschen is coming out with a massive 624-page "XXL" book of all of Frida Kahlo's paintings and promises it's "the most extensive study of her work and life to date".  bookshop.org

 

What a find! This short clip from 1974 is the earliest known footage of Prince playing live music. He was just 16, performing before the demolition of a YMCA building.  collections.mnhs.org · via @anildash

 



THERE'S STILL A WHOLE LOTTA

 PANDEMIC GOING ON

PANDEMIC

THE WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT

Photo of flu patients during the First World War



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: 

This is also a good data site:
Worldometer - Coronavirus info

Last updated: August 08, 2021, 00:50 GMT

 United States

Coronavirus Cases:

36,518,948

Deaths:

632,987

Recovered:

29,851,803


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.
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.
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THE CORONAVIRUS IS MUTATING NOW WHAT?

Coronavirus Is No 1918 Pandemic - The Atlantic

A Red Cross worker in the United States, 1918

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Led Zeppelin - Whole Lotta Love (Live at Royal Albert Hall 1970)
Oct 26, 2009




Led Zeppelin

You're watching Led Zeppelin perform 'Whole Lotta Love' at the Royal Albert Hall in 1970 from the Led Zeppelin DVD.


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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2108.07 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2227 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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