I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Linkee-poo when did it get so late

"Hundreds of out-of-state reinforcements bolstered utility crews struggling to restore power throughout New England on Tuesday, a day after a powerful storm blew down trees and postponed Halloween activities in many communities." It's like The Year Without a Santa Clause, only at Halloween.

"'The discovery of NGTS-1b was a complete surprise to us—such massive planets were not thought to exist around such small stars,' said lead study author Daniel Bayliss in a statement. 'This is the first exoplanet we have found with our new NGTS facility and we are already challenging the received wisdom of how planets form.'"

"Silk protein fabrication is still an evolving science." Making industrial quantities of spider silk to produce stronger fabrics. Which are great, but really hard to take off.

Why we can't have nice things and why lying to the public matters. People in Coal Country aren't taking advantage of retraining because 1) it's scary, 2) they keep being promised that the jobs are coming back. The jobs aren't coming back. More than likely you will have to move. You were lied to by the politicians you supported, and the bosses you forgot once ordered guards to fire on miners and their families. A political party is going to need to fess up to lying, but I doubt that will happen anytime. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)

"A new study shows that CEOs who invest in corporate social responsibility initiatives put themselves at significant risk of losing their jobs." There's a lot of wrong in that study (note they don't qualify or identify the social responsibility actions which could be overall charity to only sponsoring the little league team the boss' kid plays on). But it also exposes a harsh reality, in business a lot of people are sociopaths who only care about if they made 11 cents instead of 10 cents.

"The nurse who was roughly arrested at a Salt Lake City hospital has settled with the city and the university that owns the hospital for $500,000." She needs a better lawyer.

"NPR has placed its senior vice president for news, Michael Oreskes, on leave after fielding accusations that he sexually harassed two women seeking career opportunities nearly two decades ago, when he worked at The New York Times." Sexual assault is all about the power differential.

"A 29-year-old man plowed into a crowd of bicyclists and pedestrians just blocks away from the World Trade Center Tuesday afternoon. Mangled bicycles littered the street as medics rushed to the victims."

"SWAT officers on Tuesday evening swarmed a Riverside elementary school classroom and shot a parent who had taken a teacher hostage, ending an hours-long standoff."

"Alert librarian credited with spotting suspect in fatal shooting of University of Utah student." The other thing you didn't hear about yesterday. Also, Librarians FTW!

"The new ad, set to begin airing on cable stations nationwide on Tuesday, seizes on 'skyrocketing' insurance premiums 'all while Democrats in Washington, D.C., block a better plan to repeal and replace Obamacare once and for all — obstructing our president just to score political points with the radical left.'" Dear Mr President, fuck you. The Republicans own healthcare now. They have since January. "Despite the ad’s claims, however, the Republican Party’s health care problems are largely of its own making." Bet you won't hear that on Fox News.

"On Nov. 7, voters in Maine will decide whether to join 31 other states and expand Medicaid under former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. It is the first time since the law took effect nearly four years ago that the expansion question has been put to voters." This could be interesting. I still find it difficult to get my mind around people who have absolutely no compassion for their fellow humans.

Remember people talking about how the GOP wants to tear government apart and destroy anything that helps you? Yeah, this is how they do it. (Grokked from Chuck Wendig)

"House Republicans announced late Tuesday that they would delay by one day the release of their long-awaited tax cut bill that GOP leaders have promised will be the most extensive overhaul of the tax code in a generation, as members clashed over curtailing popular tax breaks to pay for trillions of dollars in tax cuts for individuals and corporations." Just like with the Obamacare repeal, the questions revolve around who they're going to screw over and the extent to which they're going to screw them over. Note to anyone listening, if you're here, you're going to get screwed over (I doubt I have any of the 1% among my readers). They're arguing over how hard they're going to screw you over. They also have to limit the "costs" of the bill to $1.5 Trillion (note that is tacked directly on to the deficit). They're having a hard time getting the cost that low.

"Police arrested seven people after scuffles and at least one serious fight broke out between protesters and people attending a speech by conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos at a Southern California college Tuesday night." So, how's that free speech thing going? "'We really just felt left out of the conversations on campus as conservatives and bringing him has really started this conversation about free speech,' (Brooke Paz, a spokeswoman for the College Republicans who invited Yiannopoulos) said." Well, if your intent was to let people know that College Republicans are assholes and Nazis, job well done.

"Russian interference efforts in the 2016 presidential election were broader than anyone first knew, as representatives for Facebook, Twitter and Google told lawmakers on Capitol Hill Tuesday." Um, that's "broader than they would admit." Some of us knew (and yeah, they're still understating it because they're only counting those posts/accounts they can tie to Russian addresses). Also, right now people are siloing the information. When these people saw information on FB, they might also have tweeted it, sent it through email, or told people at work or home about it.

And here I will note that I'm hearing a lot of talk like the advice I gave before. To counter this we need to have an informed and savvy electorate. We need Fox News to stop. We need talk radio to stop. We need trust in our news sources (bring back the laws that protected us from shysters like Limbaugh, Jones and the rest). And we need to have the people carry enough background knowledge to be able to see through the attempts to make us gullible. Twenty years of conservative talking points have softened up the US for exactly this kind of disinformation (yes, there are some on the liberal side, but the overwhelming preponderance is from the right, as in about a 98 to 2 ratio). The routes of information can not be closed without a total censorship regime so that's out. What we need is to harden the target.

No comments: