"A landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has 'no documented historic precedent.'" Apparently our former "worst case scenario" is now the least of what will happen and we have an all new worst case scenario. We're boned.
"Some of the world's top climate scientists have concluded that global warming is likely to reach dangerous levels unless new technologies are developed to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere."
"Just before 2 p.m. on Saturday, the easygoing get-together ended in an unimaginable nightmare: State Police say the 2001 Ford Excursion limousine charged down a steep state road, blew past a stop sign and careened into the parking lot of the Apple Barrel Country Store & Cafe, where the limo struck a parked and an unoccupied 2015 Toyota Highlander, and two people.."
"Australian researchers say their new font, called Sans Forgetica, could be the tool to help people retain information… The typeface, which slants to the side and has gaps in the middle, is not easy on the eyes. But according to the team at RMIT University in Australia who conceived Sans Forgetica, it has the perfect combination of 'obstruction' needed to recall information." Ugh. Okay, one last time for the back row, reading is a learned process. While this font may "work" (for various definitions of "work") for the time being, brains are plastic. After much exposure you'll again just "glance over them (with) no memory trace… created…" Secondly, your memory isn't photographic (well, some of yours are, and some of it is). The part that processes the written word, Wernicke's area, while located near the occipital, does not store visual information. All they've done is create a system that requires you to slow down (you don't "read" individual letters, you actually read groups of words recognizing their overall shape), equating that with actual "learning." But again, the brain is plastic. With exposure to this font eventually you'll be used to processing it. (Grokked from Dan)
Big Brother is watching you… "Justin Rohrlich warns that those mobile trailer-mounted signs displaying your MPH are also recording number plates and taking photos of the driver and passengers. The cameras are being retrofitted to existing models." You know how conservatives have been lamenting the loss of due process and wrecking the career of a "good" man with "uncorroborated" charges ("uncorroborated" is the "baseless")? Yeah. But they don't give a shit when the rest of us are being processed into police databases without being accused of a crime. Note that they're not capturing images of just the speeders for later citations, they're capturing everyone.
Why Wikipedia is not an actual encyclopedia. "When the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced the Nobel prize for physics this week, anyone wanting to find out more about one of the three winners would have drawn a blank on Wikipedia… Until around an hour and a half after the award was announced on Tuesday, the Canadian physicist Donna Strickland was not deemed significant enough to merit her own page on the user-edited encyclopedia." (Grokked from Annalee Flower Horne)
"Voters such as Sneed and Lesser are a significant reason why Democrats now believe that in the Nov. 6 congressional midterm elections, the party can win more than the 23 seats they need to seize control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Some predict Democrats could take as many as 40 seats by flipping districts like Brat’s in Virginia." Don't get cocky. Show up. Vote. If Democrats win, it should be with a shout instead of a small voice. (Grokked from Laura J Mixon)
"'My favorite three words in our Constitution are the first three words: "We the People,"' Powell said on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on Sunday. 'But recently, it’s become "Me the President" as opposed to "We the People." And you see things that should not be happening.'" Oh noes, more conservatives are very concerned. I'm just wondering that now they've installed their far right wing court if they'll continue to suffer the president's buffoonery. But they still haven't completely dismantled government, so he may yet be useful to them.
"Republicans may have traded majorities in Congress for a conservative Supreme Court." And right now the president and the GOP are trying to pain the backlash as "angry mobs" and using other words that other dictators and tyrants have used to suppress the masses.
So over the weekend the GOP has been hamming the message about how poor Brett Kavanaugh has been the subject of threats of violence and this should never happen and the Democrats should be ashamed of themselves. Meanwhile, "Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who publicly accused now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, has not been able to return to her home and faces a near-constant stream of threats, her attorneys said in an interview on Sunday." And not a peep from the GOP on that one.
"As Max and his colleagues searched D.N.S. logs for domains associated with Republican candidates (after the DNC hack, they expected to also see the Russians trying to hack the RNC), they were perplexed by what they encountered. 'We went looking for fingerprints similar to what was on the D.N.C. computers, but we didn’t find what we were looking for,' Max told me. 'We found something totally different—something unique.' In the small town of Lititz, Pennsylvania, a domain linked to the Trump Organization (mail1.trump-email.com) seemed to be behaving in a peculiar way. The server that housed the domain belonged to a company called Listrak, which mostly helped deliver mass-marketing e-mails… Some Trump Organization domains sent mass e-mail blasts, but the one that Max and his colleagues spotted appeared not to be sending anything. At the same time, though, a very small group of companies seemed to be trying to communicate with it." I think I posted links to this back in 2016. But here's just a reminder. Also at the time I believe the connections between Alpha Bank (a Russian bank), but not the connections with Spectrum Health (owned by the DeVos family) were disclosed. So 3 companies pinging the same server that seemed to be dark to most of the rest of the internet. Not like there's anything suspicious there at all. And this story follows up with the major players and where they've ended up (hint: lots of political appointments in the DoJ). (Grokked from Laura J Mixon)
Why was Kavanaugh rammed through? Because Kavanaugh is "one of us" (them)". He will maintain the privilege of the elite. The "rules" don't apply to "them" and Kavanaugh will make sure it stays that way. (Grokked from Charles Obendorf)
Kavanuagh is the culmination of decades of right wing wishes and hard work. As I've said before, in the 80s the GOP looked at the shrinking demographic of conservatism and developed plans to enshrine their values in both law and the institutions. This is why the Federalist Society was created. The courts will be the last stand of conservative values (which is why Democrats have a hard time filling vacant judgeships, but conservatives fly through the nominations). It's all part of the lono term plan. (grokked from Laura J Mixon)
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