Monday, April 29, 2019

Looking at Education Savings Accounts (ESAs)

This video is from Tennessee but something tells me ESAs are to public education across the country what anti-vax sentiment is to public health.

Education Savings Accounts (ESA) are vouchers that takes state tax money out of neighborhood public schools for use at private schools. ESA voucher proposals are being pushed in other states as foot-in-the-door schemes for greater taxpayer support for private schools and vendors. Whereas traditional public education entities have strict requirements for public meetings, transparency, governance, academic achievement, testing/reporting and financial accountability, such requirements don’t exist and wouldn’t exist for entities receiving tax dollars from ESAs.



ESAs strike me as a variant of rentier capitalism

Just a few hours ago I had this insight: search algorithms are crafted to define rentier in terms of natural resources.
Am I alone thinking ours is a rentier economy?
Credit and debt are usually more subject to exploitation than natural resources.
ESAs use taxes for the benefit of a selected group.
The appeal, of course, is getting something for nothing.
 

Sunday, April 28, 2019

"When your ears are stuffed with money you don't hear well."

Elizabeth Warren has more than a couple of soundbites. 
Here she explains a well thought-out plan.
Something tells me she has lots more than this.

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Middle-Class Bombers and Shooters

This morning's reports from Sri Lanka are describing the perpetrators of the tragedy there, suicide bombers, as being from well-educated middle class backgrounds. A web search for well-educated middle class background bombers returned a fascinating collection of links, some of which on the first screen were dated 2010, 2011 and 2016 as well as a few minutes or hours ago. Clearly, this phenomenon is not unique. Like everyone else my opinion is not yet well-informed, but this web search told me more than I really wanted to know.

This is from the 2010 link:

Because engineering is often the most prestigious vocation in developing countries, it makes sense that this new generation of well-educated terrorists would disproportionately come from that profession.
This was in fact the conclusion also reached by Peter Bergen and Swati Pandey in their 2006 study of madrassas (Islamic schools) and lack of education as a putative terrorist incubator. Using a database of some 79 jihadis who were responsible for the five most serious terrorist incidents between 1993 and 2005, they found that the most popular subjects amongst those jihadi terrorists who attended university was engineering followed by medicine.

Bergen and Pandey further observed that 54 percent of the perpetrators either attended university or had obtained a university degree. The terrorists they studied “thus appear, on average, to be as well educated as many Americans—given that 52 percent of Americans have attended university.
Finally, they observed that two-thirds of the 25 terrorists involved in the planning and hijacking of the four aircraft on September 11th 2001 had attended university and that two of the 79 had earned PhD degrees while two others were enrolled in doctoral programs.

The popularity of medicine as a terrorist vocation most recently surfaced in connection with the botched attempt to bomb a nightclub in central London and the dramatic, but largely ineffectual, attack on Glasgow’s International Airport in June 2007. Six of the eight persons arrested were either doctors or medical students; the seventh person was employed as a technician in a hospital laboratory; and the eighth member of the conspiracy was neither a medical doctor nor in health care, but instead had earned a doctorate in design and technology. 
Medical doctors becoming terrorists is hardly new, either. George Habash, the founder and leader of a prominent 1960s-era Palestinian terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was a medical doctor. As was the PFLP’s head of special operations, Wadi Haddad.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s chief strategist and bin Laden’s deputy, is a trained surgeon. Orlando Bosch, who was active in the militant Miami, Florida-based anti-Castro movement and was charged with the inflight bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight in 1976 that killed 73 persons, practiced as a pediatrician.

The more salient point may be that, contrary to the common place belief that poverty and lack of education breeds terrorism, to a large extent, those historically attracted to terrorism have in fact tended to be reasonably well, if not, highly educated; financially comfortable and, in some cases, quite well off; and, often gainfully employed.

The 2011 link includes this:

The report added: ‘Where data is available, two-thirds came from middle or upper-middle-class backgrounds, showing there is no simplistic relationship between poverty and involvement in Islamist extremism.’
The study also found that half of the suspects it surveyed were married and some had children.

‘This indicates that having commitments to a spouse and children did not necessarily restrain these individuals from becoming involved in activity that may have resulted in lengthy imprisonment, if not death.’

The report adds: ‘The vast majority (90 per cent of those on whom we have data) are described as sociable, with a number of friends. Our data thus tends to contradict commonly held stereotypes of terrorists being “mad”, psychopathic or evil.

‘It also challenges the theory that individuals who turn to radical or extremist networks are those who are unable to make friends in normal life.’

Professor Anthony Glees, a terrorism expert at Buckingham University, said: ‘I am glad MI5 are privately accepting that terror suspects were sociable creatures because for a long time they gave the impression that terrorists and suicide bombers are lone wolves.

‘It is also encouraging that they believe most terror suspects come from middle-class backgrounds. Traditionally, there was a belief among the spooks and police that terrorists were caused by poverty.’

The 2016 link includes this:

The whole history of political terror is marked by fanatics with advanced education who have declared war on their own societies. Khmer Rouge's Communist genocide in Cambodia came out from the classrooms of the Sorbonne in Paris, where their leader, Pol Pot, studied writings of European Communists. The Red Brigades in Italy was the scheme of wealthy privileged boys and girls from the middle class. Between 1969 and 1985, terrorism in Italy killed 428 people. Fusako Shigenobu, the leader of the Japanese Red Army terrorist group, was a highly-educated specialist in literature. Abimael Guzman, founder of the Shining Path in Peru, one of the most ruthless guerrilla groups in history, taught at the University of Ayacucho, where he conceived of a war against "the democracy of empty bellies." "Carlos the Jackal," the most infamous terrorist in the 1970s, was the son of one of the richest lawyers in Venezuela, Jose Altagracia Ramirez. Mikel Albizu Iriarte, a leader of the Basque ETA terrorists, came from a wealthy family in San Sebastián. Sabri al-Banna, the Palestinian terrorist known to the world as "Abu Nidal," was the son of a wealthy merchant born in Jaffa. 
Some of the British terrorists who have joined the Islamic State come from wealthy families and attended the most prestigious schools in the UK. Abdul Waheed Majid made the long journey from the English town of Crawley to Aleppo, Syria, where he blew himself up. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the mastermind of the kidnapping and killing of the American journalist Daniel Pearl, graduated from the London School of Economics. Kafeel Ahmed, who drove a jeep full of explosives into the Glasgow airport, had been president of the Islamic Society at Queen's University. Faisal Shahzad, the failed terrorist of Times Square in New York, was the son of a high official in the Pakistani military. Zacarias Moussaoui, the twentieth man of the 9/11 attacks, had a PhD in International Economics from the London's South Bank University. Saajid Badat, who wanted to blow up a commercial flight, studied optometry at London University. Azahari Husin, the terrorist who prepared the bombs in Bali, studied at the University of Reading.

And finally, this (and much more) is in this morning's Washington Post: 

Nine suicide bombers, including a married couple, carried out the devastating Easter attacks in Sri Lanka that killed 359 people, authorities said Wednesday, revealing new details about the network behind the string of bombings. 
Eight of the attackers have been identified, said police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera. The group included two brothers and a woman, who blew herself up on Sunday when police closed in on a house in the capital, Colombo. 
Ruwan Wijewardene, the state minister for defense, told reporters that the bombers used two safe houses in Colombo and Negombo. They came from middle-class and upper-class backgrounds, he said, and some were “quite well-educated people.” One of them had studied in Britain and Australia 
Sixty people have been arrested in connection with the attacks on churches and hotels, including Mohamed Ibrahim, a wealthy businessman who imported spices and owned the home in Colombo’s Dematagoda neighborhood where the police conducted a raid on Sunday. 
Two of his sons were suicide bombers, and it was his daughter-in-law who detonated explosives when police officers came to the house, killing three of them and herself.
Wijewardene said the bombers had split from the National Thowheed Jamaath, an obscure Islamist extremist group based in the eastern part of the country. The leader of the splinter group carried out the suicide attack on Colombo’s Shangri-La hotel, he said.
More will be added as the hours and days unfold, but this part of the backstory should not be forgotten. 

Addendum, April 30...

Two days ago yet another young man with an AR-15 attacked a synagogue in California, killing one victim and injuring others, apparently limited in the number of victims because his gun jammed and the quick action of others who intervened. The details are a matter of record but the mystery to me, as with the question about suicide bombers above, is what makes young men into anti-social creatures, filled with so much hate they are driven to become mass killers?

The perpetrator of the synagogue attack appears to have been (and may still be) an exceptionally good student as well as a talented piano player.
California State University, San Marcos, also confirmed that Earnest was a nursing student there who had earned dean’s list honors. The school released a statement saying it was “dismayed and disheartened” that he was suspected in “this despicable act.”
USA Today also reported that Earnest graduated in 2017 from Mt. Carmel High School in Poway, where his father taught science. Earnest was an honor student who took multiple AP classes, swam on the varsity swim team, and played the piano. “The words and actions of this individual are in no way representative of the beliefs held by our school community nor by his father, a long-time teacher at MCHS,” Poway Unified School District Communications Director Christine Paik said in a statement. “Mt. Carmel is a No Place for Hate campus.”
San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore said authorities continue to pore through Earnest’s social media accounts and a “manifesto” posted just before the attack. Gore said law enforcement officials were attempting to verify the authenticity of the letter, which reportedly details the shooter’s hatred of Jews.
Aside from their all being white, the assault rifle (AR) attackers do not all have the same profiles. Most but not all of them acted alone, and most were relatively young. In some cases there was social maladjustment but they were all able to come into possession of the most popular and effective firearm needed to kill the maximum number of victims as rapidly as possible.

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 23, 2019

As Jamie Dupree points out: "...the irony is that illegal immigrants using fake Social Security numbers has pumped billions into the system."



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I so wish tweets like this could be posted and viewed in Facebook (like You Tube). In this case, regarding people in jails voting, what is the fear? Is the danger that they will elect other criminals? That already happens with a free electorate. I don't see the downside.
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"My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution." 
Barbara Jordan was taken too soon. 

It's no surprise that adding a citizenship question to the census
 originated in the Executive branch.
How better to weaken Congress?


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(I forgot what I put here. Sorry.)
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Long read... over 5700 words...

 

This embedded Tweet is only here at my blog. 
It's too difficult to put it in a Facebook post.

Monday, April 22, 2019

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 22, 2019

Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, 80 years on, is being recognized for being the first man to sail around the world alone fifty years ago. I can't find the BBC Radio clip that got my attention this morning but this extraordinary man tells his story first-hand in an interview last year.


For anyone with time to spare, this link to a longer program repeats some the same content allowing more time to hear Sir Robin telling the story of his life in his own words.

What makes Sir Robin's story all the more remarkable is that he built his yacht, Suhaili, himself. It was the smallest craft in the Sunday Times sponsored Golden Globe race and he was seen as the underdog. He lost his self-steering equipment just a few months into the trip and, when his radio also broke, many feared he had been lost to the seas.
Sir Robin also reveals how he overcame appendicitis and describes fighting and killing a shark while repairing the damaged hull of his boat. Despite all these challenges, Sir Robin was the only one of nine sailors entered in the race to return to Britain successfully - ten months after he set sail.
Fifty years on, as he approaches his 80th birthday, Sir Robin re-creates his voyage by reading extracts from his diary, combined with archive from the real world he left behind - such as the Vietnam War, the Space Race and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
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It's a shame Facebook doesn't allow Twitter links to embed. 
This little gem is too cute to skip but posting it in Facebook
is just too much trouble.

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I'm posting this important TED talk again, together with a follow-up tweet from Carole Cadwalladr with a follow-up that does not appear in the original.



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The death toll in Sri Lanka now pushes three hundred. The situation is more complicated than most Americans imagine, certainly more so than can be explained in a couple of sentences. In these early hours the picture remains unclear.


Authorities are reported to have blocked social media (whatever than means) but thanks to VPNs that is only a partial dampening of oxygen for this fire. Nevertheless I tossed this tweet into the discussion.


~~~
xxx

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 21, 2019

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This is a winner!


And the more I learn about Chef
José Andrés the better I like him.



Today on Face the Nation...

Saturday, April 20, 2019

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 20, 2019





Click hyperlink to the right...

I give stories like this as little oxygen as possible, but in this case not posting it would be like failing to trigger the fire alarm when flames are clearly coming up the stairwell.


Friday, April 19, 2019

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 19, 2019


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If true, this is a positive sign. An implosion of the for-profit/student-debt/education-industrial complex is long overdue. The rentier class has exploited this low-hanging fruit for years.


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This image is from another video in 2014.

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~~~Then there's Chef Andrés!



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In case I want to find it again, here is a stream of consciousness comment I left somewhere early this morning, in response to the query Will the next investigation be into “The Mind of Mueller”?


The man knows how to thread legal needles better than anyone. If the report does nothing else it puts the ultimate responsibility on Congress to take whatever steps are needed next. As someone pointed out in the endless forensic examinations of the report, he was careful to avoid making any judgement about the president's guilt or innocence of any possible criminal activity. Although he furnished a veritable mountain of suggestive (circumstantial) evidence, he remained keenly aware that even the suggestion that a crime has been committed would make it impossible for the accused, as a sitting president, to advance any legal defense. 

It's clear that the responsibility now falls to Congress to take the next steps. Impeachment arises in the House (simple majority of those voting) but has no effect (other than a protracted PR carnival) unless two-thirds of the Senate votes to remove the president from office. And that is at best highly unlikely to happen.

It occurred to me that a bipartisan solution to the problems encountered in both previous threats of impeachment (Nixon and Clinton) that a "sitting president cannot be indicted for a crime" must be clarified once and for all. That is clearly a crazy idea, and the conditions under which that might happen (and already should have been) must be spelled out in new legislation.
 
One remedy would be for the VP to assume the office of the president for some interval of time during which he or she can be indicted and determined guilty or innocent of a crime, after which he or she will either resume the office or surrender the remainder of the term to the VP. Otherwise we now have a really ugly precedent for any future president to push the "immunity from indictment" envelope further than we have already seen. As it is, we now have a president who also happens to be a criminal, and he's getting away with it.

It occurred to me that if the current president got assurance that such legislation would not apply to him, he would be less likely to raise hell about Congress crafting it. He might, in fact, actively support the idea by way of covering up his dirty tracks. (It would not legally apply to him anyway
as an ex post facto application.)

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Very timely quarter-hour of radio.
At NRA pensions are frozen & there is no more free coffee in the offices. This peek behind the curtain reveals a company in trouble.

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 18, 2019

Best. Video. Ever.



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Look closely at the graphic map at this link.
It is a Who's Who of right-wing organizations advancing political agendas in the guise of faith. 


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The Columbine killings twenty years ago set loose a pernicious myth, that bullying is the underlying root of mass killers.


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Before we move on, here is yesterday's NPR spot about the Notre Dame fire.


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I left a link to Capitol Ministries in a comment. 
This group has successfully infiltrated our state & national politics with well-focused efforts beginning decades ago. 


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This You Tube link is no longer timely, but it appeared
in a comment and is a treasure worth keeping.

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 17, 2019


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This image appeared in my Facebook timeline.


I cannot stress enough the importance of this TED talk.






Elizabeth Warren writes the Time Magazine note about AOC.
Take a look at the video.




Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 16, 2019

Daniel entered the lion's den.
He may not have made them docile pets but they didn't kill and eat him. Take a look. Decide for yourself.



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The morning after the Notre Dame fire, read these reassuring words from a card-carrying medievalist.





Monday, April 15, 2019

Pete Buttigieg

Mayor Pete comments about the tragic fire of Notre Dame. 

"To the people of France I would like to say that Notre Dame Cathedral was like a gift to the human race. We share the pain but we also thank you for this gift to civilization. "

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 15, 2019

Don't be misled by the goofy picture. Journalist Jenan Moussa came across a trove of material "through a source" revealing details of an ISIS wife living incognito in Germany. This is the opening of her still-unfinished report.

Jenan Moussa is a freelance journalist whose reports from the Mideast and Levant I have followed for years. This morning's Twitter thread was the link that led me to the You Tube version.
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The Sudanese diaspora seems to be coming home...


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Notre Dame was in serious need of attention long before today's fire, which is why the scaffolding was already there.


Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem, Palm Sunday

Sunday, April 14, 2019

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 14, 2019

I'm not apt to buy this book. Namit's review is all I need. Revisionist history virtually always comes with a political agenda.
 
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Twitterverse Colloquy -- Speaker Pelosi's cautious words do little to dampen the Islamophobia targeting Rep. Ilhan Omar. 

Speaker Pelosi: As we visit our troops in Stuttgart to thank them and be briefed by them, we honor our first responsibility as leaders to protect and defend the American people. It is wrong for the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to fan the flames to make anyone less safe.

Twitter reply: I have many irreverent things to say about 9/11, most of them having to do with how it was used to start a war in a country that had nothing to do with it, and now about how it's being used to attack and slander a US Congressperson.

Another reply: when did the memory of 9/11 become “sacred”? in what way? and to whom?
i meant this as a genuine question. it was indisputably tragic, world-changing, evil and despicable, and a turning point of history. but “sacred” is a particular word with its own religious meanings, and i wanted to pinpoint what it means to call such a day “sacred” specifically.

Then there's this: The memory of 9/11 became "sacred" immediately because calling things "sacred" discourages uncomfortable questions like: "Why did we get our asses kicked?" and "Does it even make sense that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with this?"
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Gerrymandering example...(political bonsai?)


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This is the most coherent summary of all matters Palestinian yet assembled at one place. And it is only a descriptive summary, with no apparent agenda.



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No wonder climate change is such an uphill climb. There are far more gullible people than anyone imagined.
When ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to become wise.


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Saturday, April 13, 2019

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 13, 2019




Metonymy. Look it up.
Generally, metonymy is used in developing literary symbolism, meaning it gives more profound meanings to otherwise common ideas and objects. Texts exhibit deeper or hidden meanings, thus drawing readers' attention. In addition, the use of metonymy helps achieve conciseness.


Jay Rosen teaches journalism and direct the Studio 20 program at NYU.


This post from India reminds me of the sweet smiles and sincerity of our own extremists calling themselves pro-life, piously indifferent to the anguish of all involved -- pregnant mother, family & provider as well. True believers are an intractable lot no matter what their belief system may be. Anti-vaccine people and climate change skeptics are a couple more groups that come to mind.




Then there's George Carlin (whom I didn't link at Facebook). This is a bonus for blog readers.


“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody..."

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From the Grain of Salt department...


NPR Weekend Edition Saturday (not yet online) has a segment about this exhibit.




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It's not yet noon and I'm signing off early today, but this morning has been pretty interesting anyway.
The web has become for me an echo of my first encounter with a good public library in my early teens. Having grown to that point only with whatever books my mother had, including an endless subscription to Reader's Digest, I never saw a really good library with an endless card catalogue, stacks and all that. It was better than a candy store and I spent endless hours there, including access to a pretty good array of LP records anyone could listen to with headphones.
In recent decades the web has become the world's library and the amount of reading is truly endless. It's an exercise of will to resist junk reading, too. It's worse than the temptations of gambling or drugs. And social media is the reading equivalent of both.
Today I get a break. I'm leaving shortly to have lunch with an old friend -- an hour's drive going and coming -- so a chunk of today will be listening to public radio...speaking of other drug-like temptations.


Friday, April 12, 2019

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 12, 2019


Assange is in UK custody, facing a probable extradition to US. That might take a year meaning endless arguments about journalism, leaking, hacking, spying, etc.
Meantime, the Reality Winner case, which is more straightforward, remains largely overlooked.





>>>>>  I like this... <<<<<

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"There’s still a long time before the first contests, and it’s possible that Warren will succumb to the flaws that her critics see in her campaign. In particular, she might not be able to raise enough money. She’s decided not to take any Pac money and not to fundraise with wealthy donors, a position that may be as much practical as it is principled: the super-rich are not likely to donate to Warren anyway, since she has such a detailed plan, called the Ultra Millionaire Tax, to redistribute their money. She may fall victim to the seemingly unshakable controversy over her old claims of Native American ancestry, and she seems doomed to be smeared and underestimated for her sex, called cold and unlikable for her intellect and then, as with other female candidates, derided as pandering when she tries to seem more relatable."








Thursday, April 11, 2019

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 11, 2019








This is the most satisfying video I have found in weeks. Enjoy...


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This is a truly iconic image. No matter what becomes of the uprising, this image will never be lost.

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 10, 2019

My day is off to a good start.

I don't know if those without Twitter accounts can access threads of origin and/or replies, but it's worth a try. The date/time stamps (html links) should open those other tweets. 

The linked Bloomberg article includes an audio alternative to reading.  Check out the replies thread.
Question: Is Barr an AG or the president's consigliere?

I'm sure there are many hooks like this one in the water...

Times have changed since the days of Daniel Ellsberg.
Snowden in exile. Assange in limbo. Reality Winner in jail.
Leakers gotta be swift & sure with many friends in high places. 






Always good to know that everyday people now use the web and social media to stay abreast of scientific progress.
NY Times & others report today:

Astronomers announced on Wednesday that at last they had seen the unseeable: a black hole, a cosmic abyss so deep and dense that not even light can escape it.
“We’ve exposed a part of our universe we’ve never seen before,” said Shep Doeleman, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and director of the effort to capture the image, during a Wednesday news conference in Washington, D.C.



Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...



The following Twitter thead is related...



Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Facebook & Twitter Notes, April 9, 2019

Christopher Wylie, who worked for data firm Cambridge Analytica, reveals how personal information was taken without authorisation in early 2014 to build a system that could profile individual US voters in order to target them with personalised political advertisements.
At the time the company was owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Donald Trump’s key adviser, Steve Bannon.
Its CEO is Alexander Nix How Cambridge Analytica turned Facebook ‘likes’ into a lucrative political tool ► https://www.theguardian.com/technolog...


Cambridge Analytica's ruthless bid to sway the vote in Nigeria links the Guardian report where I came across this video. 

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'The rhino's anatomy suggested that it lived in pretty open, grassy plains, grazing almost entirely on grass,' explains Adrian. 'Its unusual teeth look very strongly adapted for that kind of grazing as well.' By studying the stable isotope ratios in the rhino's teeth, which involves looking at the levels of different carbon and nitrogen isotopes and then comparing them to different plants, the researchers were able determine what the animals were eating. The results confirm that the Siberian unicorn was most likely grazing on tough, dry grasses.

The Siberian unicorn lived at the same time as modern humans by Josh Davis. First published 26 November 2018


The NY Times is keeping up as the administration's flow chart upheavals churn away.









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Hold your nose and read this for yourself.
My command of language is too weak to compose a synopsis without expletives.

Two attorneys general from the District of Columbia and Maryland have filed lawsuits arguing the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP
xxxxx