September, 2020 archive
Maskless Marauders 0
Joan Quiqley fears we are losing the war on stupid. Here’s a bit from her column:
He added that whether it’s information backed by science or common sense, people throughout the U.S. are not listening.
“The thing that annoys me the most is that we keep on doing our best to save all these people, and then you get another batch of people that are doing exactly the opposite of what you’re telling them to do.”
We are a society of stupid. And selfish.
The Climates They Are a-Changing 0
The Las Vegas Sun reports that the Mohave desert is becoming uninhabitable for Joshua trees. (Follow the link for the full story.)
The demise of the tree would “represent the collapse of the higher-elevation Mojave Desert ecosystem,” said Patrick Donnelly, the state director for the Center for Biological Diversity. The tree provides food and shelter for many desert animals, he said.
Anyone who denies the reality of climate change is not paying attention, too stupid for words, or on the take (or some combination thereof).
(Grammar error correx.)
Misdirection Play, If You Think Anti-Fascists Are the Enemy, What Does That Say about You? Dept. 0
At the Bangor Daily News, journalism professor Joseph Hayden looks at the (right-wing) hysterics about “antifa” and concludes that it is a barrel of balderdash, a bucket of batherskate, a freight-load of fantasy, designed to derail the discourse. Here’s a snippet; follow the link for the evidence.
It’s All about the Algorithm, Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Dept. 0
The EFF reports that Santa Clara, California, has ended its near-decade long experiment with “predictive policing” after finding that it just does not deliver. Here’s a tiny bit from their article (emphasis added):
There is a reason why the use of predictive policing continues to expand despite its dubious foundations: it makes money. Many companies have developed tools for data-driven policing; some of the biggest arePredPol, HunchLab, CivicScape, and Palantir. Academic institutions have also developed predictive policing technologies, such as Rutgers University’s RTM Diagnostics or Carnegie Mellon University’s CrimeScan, which is used in Pittsburgh. . . .
It is almost serendipitous, in a darkly sardonic way, that, in the same week that the EFF released its report, the Tampa Bay Times published the results of its investigation into how predictive policing lead to a cesspool of police surveillance and harassment in Pasco County, Florida. A nugget (again, emphasis added):
Then it sends deputies to find and interrogate anyone whose name appears, often without probable cause, a search warrant or evidence of a specific crime.
They swarm homes in the middle of the night, waking families and embarrassing people in front of their neighbors. They write tickets for missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass, saddling residents with court dates and fines. They come again and again, making arrests for any reason they can.
One former deputy described the directive like this: “Make their lives miserable until they move or sue.”
If One Standard Is Good, Two Must Be Better 0
Robin Abcarian looks at the mental contortions that (mostly white) persons put themselves through to deny reality sitting right before their eyes to justify unjustifiable police shootings of black persons, mostly young men.
But step back for a moment. Think of the bigger picture.
And look at it this way: No one should have put a knee on Floyd’s neck in the first place. No one should have shot Blake in the back. No one should have barged into Taylor’s home unannounced.
And, by the way, how is it OK for a 17-year-old white kid to freely roam the streets of Kenosha with an AR-15-style rifle — that he later uses to kill two people while police look on — but a Black man with a knife in his car is considered a threat to a cop standing behind him?
The Reopening, COVID Roulette Dept. 0
The superintendent of schools of a Georgia county is less than impressed by his state’s response to COVID-19 as regards schooling. His comments, methinks, could more generally. Here’s a bit of his piece (emphasis added):
(snip)
Don’t suddenly tell me, as educators, we have now become “essential workers” just to get us back to work. What were teachers before now, unessential?
In a similar vein, Portland, Maine, Press-Herald contributor Victoria Hugo-Vidal is not impressed:
Methinks many decisions about reopening and about COVID-19 are based on magickal mystical thinking alloyed with political and moral cowardice. Politicians, in a mirror echo of Captain Picard, keep saying, “Make it not so.”
But it is so. And will continue to be so for some time. And the virus will feed on their cowardice and denial of science and fact.
My town seems to be acting responsibly.
Random Observation 0
My new Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap was delivered today.
I was afraid that the old one, seen from the wrong angle, might be mistaken for a MAGA hat.
I could not bear the stigma . . . .
Complicit 0
A recurring phenomenon during the Black Lives Matter protests has been the appearance of white supremacists and other far-right agitators at otherwise generally peaceful protests in order to foment violence.
At Psychology Today Blogs, Rosemary Sword and Philip Zimbardo explore the minds and motivations of white supremacists. They start by citing an interview with former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Elizabeth Neumann, then go on to delve what motivates the embrace white supremacy and that embrace affects the behavior of the embracers.
It ain’t pretty.
Here’s a bit about the Neumann interview; follow the link for the rest of the discussion.
Neumann states further, “White supremacy groups are emboldened by the refusal (of the president and vice-president) to condemn them. The extreme fringe on the right believes the country should be white and controlled by white men…As recruitment occurs, there’s more violence; which we’ve seen the last three years.”