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

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Linkee-poo late edition

So much shit, it couldn't hold till the next day.

"Temperatures that hit around 90 degrees Fahrenheit in Glasgow, Scotland, last week were more than the "weatherproof" roofing material on the city's Science Centre could withstand — it began melting, dripping black goo down the side of the building, reports the BBC… In the U.S., it was Forest Hill Road in Lancaster County, Pa., that was melting in the heat." The Southern Hemisphere has been dealing with this for almost a decade now. But now it's finally here in the Northern Hemisphere. We're boned. Time for Fox News to tell us because it'll snow by Christmas that global climate change isn't real.

"Uranus's strange climate and unusual tilt could be explained by an impact with a huge object, according to new research."

"The PacifiCorp Coal Valuation Study concluded that coal plants owned by Wyoming’s largest utility aren’t always the cheapest power source for customers, particularly compared to renewables. That finding runs counter to assumptions that proximity to coal mines always drives down the cost of coal power, compared with other options." (Grokked from Robert J Bennett)

"Swiss Re Ltd. will not provide insurance or reinsurance to businesses with more than 30% thermal coal exposure starting Monday." That might leave a mark. (Grokked from Robert J Bennett)

"The study looked at 17,260 Android apps and specifically paid attention to the media files being sent from them. As Business Insider summarizes it, 'The researchers found no instance in which these apps turned on the phone’s microphone unprompted and sent audio. But they did find that some apps were sending screen recordings and screenshots to third parties.'"

"'In the early days of the automobile, it was drivers' job to avoid you, not your job to avoid them,' says Peter Norton, a historian at the University of Virginia and author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. 'But under the new model, streets became a place for cars — and as a pedestrian, it's your fault if you get hit.'… One of the keys to this shift was the creation of the crime of jaywalking. Here's a history of how that happened." (Grokked from Saladin Ahmed)

How go the Trade Wars? "On Friday, the world's top two economies are due to exchange fire by hitting $34 billion of each other's exports with steep new tariffs, the first moves in what may become a devastating cycle of retaliation."

"U.S. whiskey distillers are fretting over the steep new tariffs they're facing around the world. They're being punished as U.S. trading partners retaliate against the Trump administration's tariffs on steel and aluminum. Now, the distillers fear that a long boom in U.S. whiskey exports could be coming to an end."

"Just in time for that Fourth of July burger, tariffs are hitting U.S. beef exports this week. And tariffs mean lots of prime cuts could get dumped back on the domestic market, lowering prices. Symons, and other ranchers across the West, are bracing to lose money — but many still proudly support President Donald Trump." As long as it hurts those "other people" more, they'll back Trump until they're eating shoe leather. "'We need to solve these trade problems,' (Kent Bacus, head of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association) says. 'But we don't need to do it on the backs of America's farmers and ranchers.'"

"For example, Fed policymakers had a wide-ranging discussion on whether the recently slim spread between short- and long-term interest rates might be a sign of an impending recession… Policymakers also took in a special presentation by Fed staff on another potential indicator of recession: the spread between the Fed’s current policy rate and the expected rate several quarters ahead derived from futures markets… The document released on Thursday did not indicate whether policymakers took either the yield curve or the information from the special staff presentation as pointing toward an impending recession."

"When Donald Trump visits Britain next week, Prime Minister Theresa May will have to face a harsh reality: Brexit makes Britain more dependent than ever on an alliance with the most unpredictable U.S. president in living memory." He's just not that into you.

"British police say two people in their 40s are in critical condition after being contaminated by the same deadly nerve agent used to attack a former Russian spy there in March. They both became sick on Saturday in Amesbury, England."

"We already knew President Donald Trump had thoughts about possibly maybe invading Venezuela. But it turns out those thoughts were persistent and it took a lot for the commander in chief to accept that going against the wishes of all the U.S. allies in the region was perhaps not the best way forward."

"In that document, the U.S. pledges security guarantees for North Korea, while North Korea commits to 'work toward a complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.'… There are doubts, though, about how serious Pyongyang is about doing that." This is my shocked face (I've been saying that a lot lately).

"Despite all the Democrats' special election wins, high voter turnout in primaries and polls showing strong party enthusiasm heading into the midterms, the fact remains that Democrats are still stuck at their lowest level of power in nearly a century." It's called RedMap, Rep. Ryan. Might want to study that. Again, the Democratic Party needs to build the ground to stand on. Right now it's in a haphazard manner. They need to develop talent, learn a lesson from Obama and get a strong ground game going, and they need to start holding to their principles. The right, at this time, will not negotiate. You lose nothing by holding on to your principles. Win the local elections, win the state elections, and the national elections will be much easier. Right now from the inside and out it appears they think winning national elections will gain them the local ones. Also, learn how to play the press. This is an article all about how the Democratic Party doesn't know how to win… while they're in the process of winning.

Why does the resistance call people Nazis? "Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) has called on a Nazi candidate to drop out of a Chicago-area congressional district race, breaking with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has urged voters to write in a candidate or to vote Democrat… Rauner on Tuesday called for Holocaust denier and self-avowed Nazi Arthur Jones to drop out of the race, according to WCIA TV… When asked if voters should instead cast a ballot for the Democratic candidate, Rauner replied, 'No.'" Because they're fucking Nazis. And this governor can't bring himself to tell people to vote for the other candidate. (Grokked from Patrick Nielsen Hayden)

"For months, ProPublica and FRONTLINE have been working to identify the white supremacists at the center of violent demonstrations across the country, including the infamous Unite the Right rally last August in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Rise Above Movement, a Southern California group that expresses contempt for Muslims, Jews, and immigrants, became a focus of that effort. ProPublica and FRONTLINE were able to quickly identify a number of the group’s leaders… But one seeming member of RAM was harder to nail down… In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Miselis works as a systems engineer for Northrop Grumman, the giant defense contractor with a plant in Redondo Beach, California." (Grokked from Chang)

"The move to denaturalize some citizens is just the latest in a larger drive by Republicans—led by key figures in the Trump White House—to preserve a white majority in American politics… What Donald Trump brings is an explicit effort to write nonwhite immigrants out of the body politic, removing as many as possible and presenting the rest as a suspect class." (Grokked from Gabriel Novo)

Resist. "Activists in two separate protests against the Trump administration's immigration policies were arrested at the Statue of Liberty on Wednesday — one group unfurling a banner calling for the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while in another act of defiance, a woman climbed the statue's base to protest immigrant family separations."

"President Trump on Thursday tweeted that Congress must pass immigration laws that would allow U.S. authorities to summarily kick out would-be immigrants 'just as they would if they were standing on your front lawn.'" Damn kids, get offa my lawn! The president is an idiot.

"The U.S. government is reviewing the cases of nearly 3,000 children in its care who say they were separated from their parents when they crossed the U.S. border as it rushes to meet a court imposed deadline to reunite migrant families, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar… Azar also said that the traditional method of verifying parental claims over a child, through documents like a birth certificate, will take too long. So the agency will be conducting DNA tests by taking a cheek swab of every child before matching him or her with a parent." That number of kids separate keeps going up. Since we took documentation away from the people as they crossed, it'll be difficult to use documents like birth certificates (which they may not have any in the first place). And why didn't we keep accurate records as we separated children to make reunification easy?

"Last week, ABC News’s Matthew Mosk and John Santucci reported that several wealthy Russians were “granted unusual access” to Trump inauguration parties back in January 2017 — and that Mueller was seeking to find out why." (Waves to my Russian friends)

"The Senate is about to confirm the man who would take over the Environmental Protection Agency should Scott Pruitt step down. Andrew Wheeler, an energy lobbyist who has worked for the Senate’s biggest climate change denier, faces a confirmation vote for deputy administrator, the number two position at the agency, as soon as Tuesday." But maybe this guy won't be as much of a grifter as the previous. Yeah, not holding my breath either. Policy wise I don't expect any change. (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)

You know how conservative love them some veterans? How they even turned the 4 of July into some militaristic fetish worship of them (hint, it is their holiday only in the sense it is all of ours holiday)? Apparently not so much. "Some immigrant U.S. Army reservists and recruits who enlisted in the military with a promised path to citizenship are being abruptly discharged, the Associated Press has learned." Also note, these immigrants are "doing it the right way." (Grokked from Chang)

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