I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Thursday, June 13, 2019

Linkee-poo Thursday rains bring Friday's mud

"Michael Palin has predicted he will be the only Monty Python member to become a sir after being dubbed a knight by Prince William at Buckingham Palace."

"Yet many of these (food) labels also frustrate her. There's often a gap between what they seem to promise and what they actually deliver. Marketing fills that gap… (For a list of some labels and what they really mean, you can jump to the bottom of this story.)"

"Then, during Schandevel's junior year, the university's student government put out a campus affordability guide, written with the average Michigan student in mind — but it's worth noting that the average student at the school has a family income of about $150,000 per year." So she put out her own guide and crowd sourced the content. Raman (I can't eat it anymore, and not just because of the salt-load, don't drain the noddles for a starchy soup), Mac and Cheese (put canned peas and tuna fish in it, also expand it with generic elbow macaroni), buy off season/closeouts/Goodwill, and (among a whole lot of other things) steal toilet-paper. Also our experience there is one of the many reason I support Planned Parenthood, but I don't give to United Way (as sometimes free help isn't better than no help). The audio of the story goes more in depth. Also, here in Ohio our legislature has embarked on a jihad to keep college to only 4 years (or 2 years for associate degrees) and by doing so are paring down the education students receive. Instead of looking at this from the other side and seeing that non-traditional students are the majority, and most baccalaureate degrees really should take 5 to 6 years these days.

"After decades of deliberation and planning, the Peruvian government has broken ground on a multibillion-dollar airport expected to connect Machu Picchu, the country's historical jewel, more easily with the outside world. But conservationists are outraged over the potential impact of a massive, state-of-the-art international facility on the ancient site and surrounding rural communities." NIMBYism at a World Heritage site. Catch 'em while you can.

"Rural Health: Financial insecurity plagues many who live with disability." I see this every day I work at the hospital.

"A new study finds that changes in your red-meat-eating habits can be tied to your risk of early death. An increase in red meat consumption of at least half a serving per day was linked with a 10% higher risk of early death in the study, published in the medical journal BMJ on Wednesday… Replacing red meat with other protein sources may help you live longer, the study found."

"A second person infected with the Ebola virus has died in Uganda, the health ministry said Thursday, after a family exposed to the disease quietly crossed the border from Congo." Is it time to panic yet?

"The FBI is now helping local authorities in the Dominican Republic examine the mysterious deaths of three Americans who were staying at resorts in the island country in recent weeks, an FBI official has confirmed to NPR." Don't drink anything.

"In his 40 years of working with people who struggle with addiction, David Crowe has seen various drugs fade in and out of popularity in Pennsylvania's Crawford County… Methamphetamine use and distribution is a major challenge for the rural area, says Crowe, the executive director of Crawford County Drug and Alcohol Executive Commission. And opioid-related overdoses have killed at least 83 people in the county since 2015, he says." Well hello, Meth. We thought you were gone. Drugs of choice shift, we really need to focus on why people become addicted to drugs and fight that instead of focusing on disrupting individual drug supplies and extending treatment for only one kind of addiction.

"'It's mostly noise. You're just skimming desperately,' says Morrison, 'and you're going to miss a lot as you walk by.' Maybe people stop and engage with one or two (scientific/research) posters, Morrison says, but it generally takes time to even figure out what the poster is about. That means researchers often spend time with a poster that turns out to be not all that significant for them." Scientists learn the value of effective visual communications. This is like in literature circles someone writing a story about robots or space travel "that's about people and the sociological ramifications of this technology, but totally not SF." High, yes, we've been here before. BTW, this is also how advertising works. Give people something they can recognize and hang onto if they're interested, or let them know they can move on.

"Stanford University's former sailing coach avoided significant prison time and was sentenced Wednesday to just one day behind bars for his role in a massive college admissions scandal." And two-years supervised probation.

"The U.S. Forest Service, under Chief Vicki Christiansen, is proposing revisions to the National Environmental Policy Act that could limit environmental review and public input on projects ranging from forest health and wildfire mitigation to infrastructure upgrades to commercial logging on federal land." Clear cutting here we come.

How go the Trade Wars? "Oil output from OPEC fell in May, hitting a five-year low as the group warned that U.S.-China trade tensions could lead to slower economic growth and weak fuel demand." Not that it's a global slow down or anything.

"Chinese regulators should step up support for the economy and keep ample liquidity in the financial system, Vice Premier Liu He said on Thursday, suggesting Beijing would soon unveil more policies to bolster growth amid rising U.S. trade pressure."

"Pence is on a quiet mission to advance the administration’s top legislative priority for the year — the troubled trade deal — and, with it, just maybe hold together the fraying Republican coalition ahead of the next one."

"Hong Kong police resorted to harsher-than-usual tactics to suppress protesters this week in the city’s most violent turmoil in decades… Police fired rubber bullets and beanbag rounds at the crowds, weapons that have not been widely used in recent history."

"Around 480,000 households… have been randomly selected to complete one of two versions of a test census form — one with the citizenship question, the other without… The results, expected to be available this fall, will inform the bureau's upcoming advertising campaign for the 2020 census and plans for hiring door knockers to visit households that don't self-respond to the census." The Census is always counting. "They emphasize that federal law prohibits the Census Bureau from releasing census responses identifying individuals until 72 years after they're collected." And they are very serious about that. During my training in 2010, it was mentioned more than 3 times during the training I received, and I had to talk about it another 2 times while training others. We had the sense that people in the Washington Office would set fire to the archives before giving up that information (other than in aggregate form). And yes, that 75-year rule was in direct response to the Census information being used to roundup Japanese Americans in WWII.

"Trump administration to send migrant children to Army base once used as Japanese internment camp." JFC. (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)

"But in June, 2018, the Board of Immigration Appeals, which reviews rulings made in immigration court, issued a two-to-one decision denying Ana’s most recent request to stay in the U.S. The judges, considering Ana’s captivity, decided that, because she had worked for the guerrillas, even under duress, she was not their victim but functionally a member of their group. “While the respondent’s assistance may have been relatively minimal, if she had not provided the cooking and cleaning services she was forced to perform, another person would have needed to do so,” they wrote, in an opinion called Matter of A–C–M–. Ana was ineligible for asylum, under a law called the material-support statute, because she had aided terrorists." (Grokked form Laura J Mixon)

"A U.S. jury could not reach a verdict Tuesday against a border activist charged with conspiracy to transport and harbor migrants in a trial that humanitarian aid groups said would have wide implications on their work." (Grokked from Laura J Mixon)

The Hyde Amendment, "Democrats on the 2020 campaign trail are emphasizing their support for expanded abortion rights, but in Washington, House Democrats are preparing to retain a decadeslong ban on most federal funding for abortions." Along with the Dickey Amendment, probably two of the worse pieces of legacy legislation we're still dealing with. Why yes, both were GOP initiated amendments. We need to have this discussion, because if we don't, they'll just continue being added to appropriation bills to smooth their approval.

"Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), a lead architect of the GOP tax bill, suggested Tuesday the tax cuts may not fully pay for themselves, contradicting a promise Republicans made repeatedly while pushing the law in late 2017… Pressed about what portion of the tax cuts were fully paid for, Brady said it was 'hard to know.'… 'We will know in year 8, 9 or 10 what revenues it brought in to the government over time. So it’s way too early to tell,' said Brady at the Peterson Foundation’s annual Fiscal Summit in Washington D.C." But first, you need to transfer some money into this bank account so we know that all the numbers are correct before we can send you the Nigerian Prince Millions we promised. For a supposedly "strong economy" our federal deficit is up by 38% this year. But don't despair, conservatives will get right back to worrying about the deficit and debt just as soon as President Warren is sworn in. (Grokked from Laura J Mixon)

"President Trump on Wednesday expressed surprise that cameras captured some of the contents of a sheet of paper he claimed contained details of an undisclosed agreement between the U.S. and Mexico." No no no. See, it was a prop, you weren't supposed to read it. Fuck, I'm just surprised the paper had anything to do with the Mexico "agreement."

"Two tankers were apparently attacked in the Gulf of Oman Thursday, less than a month after four other ships were struck in the region." Round up the usual suspects.

LinkedIn would like you to know it's also relevant in the coming social media wars. "But Katie Jones doesn’t exist, The Associated Press has determined. Instead, the persona was part of a vast army of phantom profiles lurking on the professional networking site LinkedIn… Experts who reviewed the Jones profile’s LinkedIn activity say it’s typical of espionage efforts on the professional networking site, whose role as a global Rolodex has made it a powerful magnet for spies."

"'Deepfake' videos threaten to bedevil 2020 campaign… The widespread existence of deepfakes could even make some people dismiss legitimate videos as fabricated."

"Sophisticated and inaccurate altered videos known as 'deepfakes' are causing alarm in the digital realm. The highly realistic manipulated videos are the subject of a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday. As Miles O’Brien reports, the accelerating speed of computers and advances in machine learning make deepfakes ever more difficult to detect, among growing fears of their weaponization."

"Trump has given dozens of interviews to Fox News and Fox Business hosts, but he’s largely ignored the broadcast networks since taking office. As president, Trump has only done two interviews for Sunday shows, according to Mark Knoller, a CBS correspondent who tracks Trump’s appearances." And why doesn't the president usually give more interviews to more than Fox News?

This is why. "'I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening,' Trump continued. 'If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent’—oh, I think I’d want to hear it.” Stephanopoulos then questioned whether it was a good idea allowing foreign countries to interfere in a domestic election. “It’s not an interference, they have information—I think I’d take it,' Trump said. 'If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI—if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, "oh let’s call the FBI." The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressman, they all do it, they always have, and that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.'" Our stable genius president, everybody. He just waved the green flag on foreign interference in the 2020 election and doesn't see anything wrong with it. Because, according to him, it's business as usual. Impeach the mother fucker.

"The House Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates as part of its investigation into Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election."

"Former White House communications director Hope Hicks has agreed to a closed-door interview with the House Judiciary Committee, the panel announced Wednesday, a breakthrough for Democrats who have been frustrated by President Donald Trump’s broad stonewalling of their investigations."

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