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, February 21, 2019

Linkee-poo Thursday

Stumbled upon DesignCrowd. It's a place where you can dangle the potential of payment in front of designers who will compete for the shit wages you're willing to pay. Yes, Virginia, writing isn't the only profession where people will try to get you to work for "exposure." Fuck these people.

"Neil Gaiman has built a career out of mythical storytelling. From his novels American Gods and Anansi Boys to his recent Norse Mythology collection, the British author is known for his deep well of folklore knowledge and his brilliant re-imaginings. Now, he's set to bring that passion to the small screen with a reboot of Jim Henson's classic '80s anthology series, The Storyteller." (Grokked from Mary Robinette Kowal)

SpaceX is going to make a moonshot tonight (it'll be a long time transferring to lunar orbit), and "Next week, SpaceX is poised to make history with the first-ever test flight of a private spaceship built to carry astronauts into orbit. That Crew Dragon Demo-1 mission won't carry astronauts, but it will be the first launch of a spacecraft built for humans from U.S. soil since 2011 and you can watch it all live."

"The head of the US Food and Drug Administration says that if states don't require more schoolchildren to get vaccinated, the federal government might have to step in." Can't wait until they get to the religious exemption.

"A Reuters report on Dec. 14 revealed that Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that small amounts of asbestos, a known carcinogen, had been occasionally found in its talc and powder products, according to tests from the 1970s to the early 2000s — information it did not disclose to regulators or the public."

"The 2,000 mile border between the U.S. and Mexico traverses hundreds of miles of public lands, including six national parks. Environmentalists have long argued that a border wall has negative impacts on wildlife and on delicate desert and mountainous terrains. With President Trump's national emergency declaration, those concerns will only grow." And with an emergency declaration he can ignore environmental laws.

"A 49-year-old Coast Guard lieutenant charged with stockpiling weapons and drugs is being described as a 'domestic terrorist' who was planning 'to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country,' according to court documents filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland on Tuesday."

But what will knock this domestic terrorist off the news… "More than three weeks after he alleged that he was the victim of a hate crime, actor Jussie Smollett has been arrested on suspicion of filing a false report about it, Chicago police said Thursday morning."

"In its opinion, the Supreme Court rules that the U.S. Constitution's 8th amendment clause on excessive fines clause applies to states and local governments, and curbs their power to levy fines and seize property." The arc of history is long, but it does bend towards justice. Eventually. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)

"So I’m a perfectly reasonable, women-friendly fellow who is completely open to the idea of a woman president. And I never thought I’d hate anyone as much as I hate Hillary Clinton. But to my surprise, I’m actually starting to hate Elizabeth Warren." McSweeneys pokes the bear. (Grokked from Sarah Goslee)

"That changed today, when we all learned that Mark Harris, the Republican candidate in North Carolina’s 9th district, has a son. And that son, John Harris, is an attorney. Not just any attorney, either: he’s an assistant US attorney in the Eastern District of North Carolina. Today he testified about McCrae Dowless, the campaign operative hired by his father to get out the Republican vote…" I was reading a tweet thread from someone live tweeting the hearing. Ho boy, Mark Harris is in trouble. Seriously, dude, conceded the election and withdraw. Yes, I understand that even if all the votes McCrae Dowless "might" have tampered with went to your opponent, you still would have won. That's the sad irony of it though, not exculpatory evidence. You cheated. You know you cheated. Your purposefully hired Dowless to cheat for you. Being in office is about trust. Your constituency and your party should have zero trust in your judgement now. At worst there should be a new election, one in which Mark Harris is explicitly not allowed on the ballot. At best he could just concede the election. (Grokked from Laura J Mixon)

"Attorney General Bill Barr is preparing to announce as early as next week the completion of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, with plans for Barr to submit to Congress soon after a summary of Mueller's confidential report, according to people familiar with the plans… The precise timing of the announcement is subject to change." As it has with every previous announcement of Mueller being "done." But this time there does seem to be a "closing up shop" vibe going on. Now the real questions begin, like will we ever see the report, and will we see the whole report, or just an executive summary?

"The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is probing allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 elections, has been keen to speak with David Geovanis for several months, the sources say… Geovanis worked for the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whose ties to Trump's 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort have also been of interest to investigators." There's that name again.

"President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia is militarily ready for a Cuban Missile-style crisis if the United States is foolish enough to want one and that his country currently has the edge when it comes to a first nuclear strike." Oh Vlad. What does a minute or two matter if the whole world is in flames within 2 hours?

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