There's battle lines being drawn.
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Young people speaking their minds
getting so much resistance from behind

Friday, May 4, 2018

Linkee-poo is taking a Greyhound on the Hudson River line

Still running like mad, now with more running like mad.

"In 1931, Zora Neale Hurston sought to publish the story of Cudjo Lewis, the final slave-ship survivor. Instead it languished in a vault. Until now." As others have pointed out, it didn't "languish", the rights to the work were uncertain so it couldn't be published.

"Dutch scientists have built "synthetic" embryos in their laboratory using mouse cells other than sperm and eggs."

"Women who eat more fast food spend longer trying to get pregnant, while those who eat more fruit conceive more quickly, researchers in Australia reported Thursday… It’s one more finding adding to evidence that a healthy diet can help make people more fertile." Yes, processed foods are not good for you. Although this was a retrospective study (meaning they asked women who were already pregnant to remember their diets and how long they took to get pregnant), and the sampling was small (note, these are the classic ingredients in the category of "non-replicable data set" studies).

"A 132-pound ovarian tumor was removed from a 38-year-old Connecticut woman this year, according to two doctors involved in the case." Note for both the case details (ovarian cysts and tumors are somewhat common and could become dangerous) as well as for the example of doctors saying they couldn't help this woman until she found the "right" doctor. Also, I'm not fat, that's my tumor.

"An elementary school principal in Houston is being criticized after she reportedly joked about telling police that a black special-needs student brought a gun to the school… The boy has had behavioral problems and has been known to run from class… Swearingen reportedly told the staff members that the next time that happened, 'We won’t chase him. We will call the police and tell them he has a gun so they can come faster.'" Of course they offered the, "It was a careless remark and it's not how I really feel" apology. Yeah, not buying it. This person shouldn't be near kids. (Grokked from Laura J Mixon)

"Cambridge Analytica, the embattled London-based data analytics firm that famously did work for the Donald Trump presidential campaign, has shut down." It's all fun and games until people find out about it. The company's statement is hilarious, BTW. I hope they don't just dump the data, 'cause that might be more of a criminal act. (Grokked from Dan)

"Britain's Information Commissioner's Office and Electoral Commission will continue to pursue Cambridge Analytica, which shut down on Wednesday."

"ProPublica obtained the chat logs of Atomwaffen, a notorious white supremacist group. When Samuel Woodward was charged with killing 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein last month in California, other Atomwaffen members cheered the death, concerned only that the group’s cover might have been blown." And then there's this classic trait of all terrorist movements, "For Mason, the way forward was obvious: He no longer wanted to convince the masses of the rightness of Nazism. They would never get it. Now was the time for true believers to go underground and launch a clandestine guerrilla war aimed at bringing down 'The System.'" Terrorists are failed revolutionaries. (Grokked from Laura J Mixon)

"But images of the migrant caravan belie the reality on the ground. The question of whether an invasion is actually occurring at the Southern border is, of course, an empirical one, and the federal government’s own statistics tell a much different story than the one offered by Trump. According to data from the Department of Homeland Security, illegal crossings are now at historic lows—about one-fifth of what they were at their peak in the late-1990s and early-2000s—and a large proportion of the immigration flows from Mexico that once occurred illegally now occur through legal channels." I'm sure conservatives will trumpet, "Our strategy is working!" Yet, they've been declining for a while (a major contributor is that because it's more difficult and expensive to cross the border, the seasonal migrants are now staying in country). But then theres this, "In 2000, 8,580 Border Patrol agents apprehended 1.7 million migrants on the Southwest border. In 2017, nearly twice as many Border Patrol agents apprehended less than a fifth as many migrants. Adjusted for inflation, the Border Patrol’s budget more than doubled between 2000 and 2017." And Trump and the GOP want to spend more. It's another, "We NEED a second engine for the F35, because reasons." (Grokked from Jim Wright)

"Manning, the 2018 National Teacher of the Year recipient, had brought with her from Spokane, Wash., a stack of letters that her immigrant and refugee students wrote ahead of her trip to the White House, where she accepted the award Wednesday."

"Chinese personnel at the country's first overseas military base in Djibouti have been using lasers to interfere with US military aircraft at a nearby American base, activity that has resulted in injuries to US pilots and prompted the US to launch a formal diplomatic protest with Beijing, two military officials told CNN." (Grokked from Dan)

"Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, when he joined the EPA, drew up a list of his preferred travel destinations and told his staff to find official reasons for him to travel to those countries, according to The Washington Post."

"A Republican candidate in Wisconsin’s heated Senate race questioned the thinking of military service members who are Democrats, arguing that their service contradicts their political views." Dear candidate Kevin Nicholson, please feel free to fuck off and die.

"At the end of March, the White House dismissed the allegations that Stormy Daniels had an affair with President Trump in 2006 and was paid for her silence just before the 2016 election, claiming she can’t keep her story straight. 'The president has strongly, clearly and consistently denied these claims,' said White House Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah. 'The only one who’s been inconsistent is the one making the claims.'" Yeah, not so much. Waiting for the social conservatives to being wondering how Melania can still stay married to him. I'm not holding my breath.

"President Trump hired on Wednesday a Washington lawyer who represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment, a sign that the White House sees no immediate end to its legal problems and is girding for a combative relationship with a new Congress after the midterm elections."

No comments: