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Archive for 2017
August 25, 2017
HARPOONING OFF GUAM: Nice shot.
SHE SEEMS NICE: New Labour MP says she will not ‘hang out’ with Conservative women because they are the ‘enemy.’
Ms Pidcock explained: “The idea that they’re not the enemy is simply delusional when you see the effect they have on people”.
She also tweeted: “Whatever type they are, it’s visceral. I’m not interested in being cosy with Tories. My interview with @skwawkbox”.
New Tory MP Kemi Badenoch disagreed with Ms Pidcock that Conservatives are an enemy to women.
She told Refinery29: “I would call myself a feminist. I have a son and a daughter – I want to make sure they have the same opportunities in life. [The Conservatives] have had two female prime ministers. We haven’t had as many female MPs (the Conservative party currently has 67 female MPs while Labour has 119) but we have had a different way of doing things. For us, a woman in power is more important than lots of women taking orders from men.”
Dozens of young girls from Rotherham and Newcastle could not be reached for comment.
MORE BAD NEWS FOR PUTIN, THE SAUDIS, IRAN, ETC.: Mexico’s Most Promising Shale Region Is Open for Business.
Don’t look now, but Mexico is hoping that its recent energy reforms will turn the shale boom from a uniquely American phenomenon into a uniquely North American one. This summer, Mexico opened up onshore blocks of its Burgos basin region, just south of Texas.
To date, the country’s state-owned oil company Pemex has been unable to successfully start commercial production in the basin, in part due to geology but certainly also the result of the company’s lack of expertise in shale. Now that Mexico’s oil and gas reserves are being opened up to private (and foreign) companies, there’s an opportunity for firms with the personnel, the experience, the equipment, and the culture necessary to get the country’s shale production up off (or maybe more accurately out of) the ground.
Prior to Mexico’s market reforms, Pemex was in a tailspin. The company was running the Red Queen’s race, spending more money and hiring more personnel while seeing production fall precipitously as fields matured. President Enrique Peña Nieto pushed through unpopular reforms to open Mexico’s struggling oil and gas industry up to competition, and after some fits and starts he’s seen that effort rewarded: on one day in July, there was a “world-class” oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico by a group of private companies, a major increase in the estimated potential of another offshore field, and the successful sale of 21 out of 24 other offshore blocks on auction. In other words, there’s a lot of momentum building up in Mexico’s offshore hydrocarbon industry.
Funny how that works.
THE MORNING BRIEFING: Trump Put on Diet of Highly-Curated Information and Much, Much More.
THAT’S WHY THEY’RE TRYING TO DISTRACT US: Actresses attack Trump, but Hollywood is rife with gender bias. “A new study out of Duke University suggests that for all the Hollywood rhetoric lamenting gender inequality, the film industry is actually among the worst offenders”
I think we need Congressional hearings on Hollywood’s rampant culture of discrimination.
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IT’S COME TO THIS: The obscene effort to shame ‘Trump’s Jews.’
BUT OF COURSE: THE NEW YORK TIMES’ CROSSWORD PUZZLE IS INCREASINGLY PROBLEMATIC TO ITS INTENDED AUDIENCE. As James Lileks writes, “So the crossword is old and white. So what? Well, it’s in the Times, and thus it should be inclusive, and that means abandoning terms that Young Persons of Color don’t get, or, if they do get them, don’t find them appropriate for the newspaper. Eskimo, for example. The term is no longer used – therefore it should not be referenced. Cultural literacy thus shrinks to only the common terms deemed acceptable by the Word Judges, until we have a generation unaware that the term Eskimo ever existed.”
Reminder: These books weren’t intended by their authors to be how-to guides:
TIME TO LEAVE HOUSTON, IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY: Hurricane Harvey intensifies into Category 2 hurricane, zeroes in on Texas Coast.
EMBRACE THE HEALING POWER OF “AND:” Kamala Harris is either the stupidest or the cruelest senator in America.
Evans Ray Jr. was a small business owner who ran a neighborhood barbershop. Evans Ray Jr. is a family man who loved his wife and four kids. And Evans Ray Jr. is also a convicted felon. To help a buddy, he agreed during a moment of indiscretion in 2004 to arrange a drug deal.
Because of his two nonviolent priors in the early 1990s, he was sentenced to the mandatory minimum under Maryland law: life in prison. After a dozen years at a high-security penitentiary, Ray received presidential clemency, a chance, as President Obama wrote to him, “to turn your life around.”
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., evidently would have let Ray rot in prison. If she was president, Harris wouldn’t hand down pardons or grant clemency. That’s because Harris is either the stupidest or the cruelest senator in the country.
“Joe Arpaio was convicted because he committed a crime,” Harris tweeted in reference to the infamous ex-Arizona sheriff. “He should not be pardoned.”
Setting aside whether or not Arpaio deserves a second chance, the statement from Harris is stunning in its ignorance. Obviously the convicted committed a crime! That’s the whole point of the pardon.
I mean, you don’t have to be convicted of a crime to be pardoned. But that’s how it usually works. The notion that pardons should be unavailable to those who have been convicted is pretty much just plain crazy.
CAPITALISM ALWAYS FINDS A WAY: Cash is useless in Venezuela thanks to hyperinflation — so people are turning to bitcoin.. “Bitcoin miners can make as much as $500 a month, which is enough to afford things such as baby diapers and insulin from overseas.”
As Venezuela suffers its worst meltdown in history, with inflation skyrocketing and basic necessities running in short supply, many have taken to bitcoin mining in a bid to survive, according to a report in the current issue of the Atlantic.
The reason? Electricity is now cheaper and more affordable in the crisis-hit country than most basic goods. That’s because under President Nicolás Maduro, electric power is heavily subsidized to the point that it’s essentially free, the Atlantic said.
Bitcoin mining works like this: Miners use computer hardware to perform complex computations that ultimately create each new link in the bitcoin blockchain — the massive, decentralized ledger technology that underpins the cryptocurrency. In return, they are rewarded with bitcoin. One of the key requirements to mine bitcoin is to have a large supply of power.
Cheap power might be Maduro’s last remaining, reliable bribe to keep himself in power.
ONE YEAR AGO TODAY: Hillary Clinton Deleted Emails Using Program Intended To ‘Prevent Recovery.’
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: After Trans Discussion, Kindergartener ‘Came Home Crying And Shaking So Afraid She Could Turn Into A Boy.’
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I’M NOT SHOCKED THAT THE ANTIFA FOLKS FLED: Warrants issued for three ‘speech rally’ counterprotesters: Men skipped out on court arraignments yesterday.
SKYNET WANTS US DIVIDED: Defense Technologists Divided Over Killer Robots.
The blunt talk by leaders of the AI world has raised eyebrows. Musk has put AI in the category of existential threat and is demanding decisive and immediate regulation. But even some of the signatories of the letter now say Musk took the fear mongering too far.
What this means for the Pentagon and its massive efforts to merge intelligent machines into weapon systems is still unclear. The military sees a future of high-tech weapon systems powered by artificial intelligence and ubiquitous autonomous weapons in the air, at sea, on the ground, as well as in cyberspace.
The United Nations has scheduled a November meeting to discuss the implications of autonomous weapons. It has created a group of governmental experts on “lethal autonomous weapon systems.” The letter asked the group to “work hard at finding means to prevent an arms race in these weapons, to protect civilians from their misuse, and to avoid the destabilizing effects of these technologies.”
Longterm, I’d feel better about battlefield automation if the Executive hadn’t effectively usurped (or perhaps more accurately, been voluntarily given) Congress’s power to declare war.
I WONDER IF THERE’S A BROAD-RANGING ANTIFA INVESTIGATION GOING ON? Court orders company to produce data on anti-Trump site.
A court in the District of Columbia on Thursday ordered web hosting company DreamHost to produce data and information requested by the Department of Justice (DOJ) related to an anti-President Trump website.
Chief Judge Robert Morin of the Superior Court of D.C. ruled from the bench that the government, under the court’s supervision, can proceed with an amended search warrant for data requested from DreamHost on the website disruptj20.org, which was used to organize protests against Trump on Inauguration Day.
However, Morin outlined what he described as “added protections” to guard the data of innocent visitors to the website. He directed the government to submit information to the court about its method for searching through the data and minimizing data on innocent third-party visitors to the site.
The government is seeking the data in connection with the ongoing investigation into the rioting that occurred on Inauguration Day.
Morin couched his order as an attempt to balance First Amendment protections with the government’s need for the information on the website.
Here’s Orin Kerr’s analysis from a few days ago.