Linkee-poo Thursday

The Opportunity Mars Rover. And so it goes.

"If we have a book idea related to our work, even if fictional, the company wants unfettered power to claim control over whether it gets written, who owns the copyright and what we might get paid for it. The company also wants to claim the film rights to such books even if the company grants permission for the book to be written, on unpaid leave, for an outside publisher." Heinous fuckery most foul. Although I have had to clarify and get in writing from some companies I've worked for that their IP rules don't pertain to my freelance or my writing. (Grokked from Hannah Bowman)

"Harley-Davidsons are famous for their iconic deep rumble. But the Milwaukee-based motorcycle maker's latest model features an electric motor that emits a high-pitched whirring sound. Will Harley fans go along for the ride?" If you had asked me 5 years ago, I wouldn't have figured HD to be the first major motorcycle builder to push out an electric bike in the US (note that Zero and a few others have been shipping electric motorcycles for many years now). But at $30k (a Zero DSR with updates for battery and charging is about half that), I have a feeling they won't be selling many.

"SpaceX has filed an official protest with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) after NASA awarded competitor United Launch Alliance a launch contract for Lucy, an interplanetary probe meant to explore a belt of unique asteroids clustered around Jupiter’s orbital swath." Lawsuits are not uncommon for large government contracts.

Until now, this was only a funny comic. "They say the trolls may have contributed to the 2018 outbreak of measles in Europe that killed 72 people and infected more than 82,000 -- mostly in Eastern and Southeastern European countries known to have been targeted by Russia-based disinformation campaigns." If this proves out, this could be big. Oh my Russian friends, you may have overstepped the legality line here. Not from how you did it, through a disinformation campaign, but that this could be seen as waging biological warfare against civilians (depending on how a court may wish to define some terms). IANAL, but I hope you all have one. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)

"The wife of White House communications chief Bill Shine said Wednesday that childhood diseases such as measles 'keep you healthy & fight cancer.'" The lack of actual, factual knowledge in the current conservative leadership is absolutely stunning. "Measles is one of the leading causes of death for children, according to the World Health Organization." Get the goddamn vaccinations. That said, just because you have the MMR shot does not mean you are protected. Working in healthcare, not only do we need to get the vaccines, we are also tested for their effectiveness. The rubella part of the MMR doesn't work on me. I've had the childhood vaccines, and I've had 3 vaccines for it as an adult. My blood does not show rubella antibodies. So just because a kid who had the MMR appears to also have contracted measles, this does not invalidate the efficacy of the vaccine for the majority of people. While I don't wish shingles (the chickenpox virus) on anyone, I wouldn't be terribly upset with Mrs. Shine came down with a case of it.

I'm sure you've heard (or uttered) the phrase, "One of these days, you're going to do that to the wrong person." Whelp. "If you're trying to extort money from people, there are probably better choices for a victim than William H. Webster. Back in 2014, Webster was called by a Jamaican man, 29-year-old Keniel Aeon Thomas, who was attempting to perpetrate the all too common advance-fee fraud scam… According to Thomas, Webster and his wife had won $15.5 million and a Mercedes-Benz in the Mega Millions lottery, and the caller would be all too happy to release those funds, just as long as Websters first paid $50,000 to cover taxes." (Grokked from John)

"For this week's (On the Media) pod extra, we feature a conversation from WNYC'S Brian Lehrer Show. Brian talked with Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone, editors of The Free Speech Century, a collection of essays by leading scholars, marking 100 years since the Supreme Court issued the three decisions that established the modern notion of free speech."

"After more than 20 years in business, Prime Time Sports Owner Stephen Martin says he can’t afford his monthly lease anymore at Chapel Hills Mall… It’s not the first time Martin has slashed prices like this–choosing to get rid of all Nike apparel last fall, following the company’s ad campaign with Colin Kapernick." (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)

Trigger warning. Whenever I hear people talking about late-term abortions, I think of a few mothers like this I've known (not all of whom were raped), the ones I've seen in the ER. "If I had been allowed the option to choose a 'late-term abortion,' would I?… Yes. A hundred times over, yes. It would have been a kindness." I've deleted a paragraph of examples because of HIPAA, and they're not my stories to tell. This is an example of mental cruelty which started with the rape and continued through the law which removed the option of a late-term abortion. You might say God only gives us what we can handle and I'm here to tell you that's a crock of shit. Sometimes we break, and what we can re-assemble from the pieces is never fully what would have been. Pregnancy is not the easy, happy time like they show on TV (even if they makes jokes about the pain of contractions). If that's how it played out for you, congrats. Not everyone is so lucky. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)

It just sorta slipped out. "The cartoonist who drew the strip, Wiley Miller, told the Post that he had forgotten about the scribbled message until it was published. He added that he wrote the phrase several weeks ago when he was frustrated by the Trump administration's actions." (Grokked from Jim Wright)

"One year after the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., the urgency for new gun restrictions has declined, but roughly half the country is concerned a mass shooting could happen at a school in their community, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds." It's only been one year, it seems like an eternity.

"A Connecticut judge has ruled that Infowars host Alex Jones must undergo a sworn deposition in the defamation case brought against him by family members of Sandy Hook school shooting victims."

"When news emerged that Qatar may have unwittingly helped bail out a New York skyscraper owned by the family of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, eyebrows were raised in Doha." Who can keep track of a paltry billion dollars? I mean, it just sorta slipped and feel into investing. (Grokked from Dan)

"Fukuyama was hardly alone in pronouncing nationalism all but dead. A lot of other people had, too. That’s what worried Degler." To paraphrase Jim Wright, when you ignore Nazis, that's how you get more Nazis. " The endurance of nationalism proves that there’s never any shortage of blackguards willing to prop up people’s sense of themselves and their destiny with a tissue of myths and prophecies, prejudices and hatreds, or to empty out old rubbish bags full of festering resentments and calls to violence. When historians abandon the study of the nation, when scholars stop trying to write a common history for a people, nationalism doesn’t die. Instead, it eats liberalism." (Grokked from Robert J Bennett)

"President Donald Trump late Wednesday demanded California return the $3.5 billion it received from the federal government for a 'disaster' high-speed rail project." Vindictiveness and political shenanigans. Well, he's learning. A little. And slowly.

Somebody going to emergency, somebody's going to jail. "Manafort "made multiple false statements to the FBI, the OSC and the grand jury concerning matters that were material to the investigation," including his contacts with his Russian associate during the campaign and later, Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote on Wednesday."

"Paul Manafort's latest legal debacle deepened the core intrigue underlying special counsel Robert Mueller's probe: Why have so many of President Donald Trump's associates been caught lying about contacts with Russians?"

A snippet of Andrew McCabe's book on his time as FBI Director, post Comey, published in the Atlantic. "People do not appreciate how far we have fallen from normal standards of presidential accountability. Today we have a president who is willing not only to comment prejudicially on criminal prosecutions but to comment on ones that potentially affect him. He does both of these things almost daily. He is not just sounding a dog whistle. He is lobbying for a result. The president has stepped over bright ethical and moral lines wherever he has encountered them. Every day brings a new low, with the president exposing himself as a deliberate liar who will say whatever he pleases to get whatever he wants. If he were 'on the box' at Quantico, he would break the machine." (grokked from Kathryn Cramer)