Archive for 2019
July 12, 2019
IT’S COME TO THIS: Wealthy opponents of new San Francisco shelter claim homeless are bad for environment.
The wealthy San Francisco residents who launched a crowdfunding campaign to block construction of a new homeless shelter in their waterfront neighborhood are employing a new tactic: arguing that homeless people are bad for the environment.
In a lawsuit filed against the city of San Francisco and the California State Lands Commission, the residents called for the project to undergo an environmental review before breaking ground.
“This project will have a significant effect on the environment due to these unusual circumstances, including by attracting additional homeless persons, open drug and alcohol use, crime, daily emergency calls, public urination and defecation, and other nuisances,” the lawsuit states.
Under those standards, obviously it’s time to ban San Francisco itself as having a significantly negative impact on the environment.
SKYNET SMILES: NASA Is Building A Family Of Cliff-Climbing Robots.
SKYNET SMILES MAINTAINS HIS POKER FACE: Robots Are Beating Humans At Poker.
Wise robots, however, always let the Wookie win.
MICROBIOME NEWS: Vaginal bacteria linked to ovarian cancer. “Having too few ‘friendly’ vaginal bacteria may increase a woman’s chance of ovarian cancer, and swabs can be used to spot this, say researchers.”
BUTTIGIEG NAMES HIS SPENDING PROJECT AFTER THE WRONG GUY: FREDERICK DOUGLASS WANTED NOTHING TO DO WITH WHITE GUYS OFFERING “HELP”: Pete Buttigieg is earnestly trying to bail himself out of his troubles with African American voters by throwing large sums of money in their direction. It will be like a new Marshall Plan, he says.
He calls his initiative the “Douglass Plan” after the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass. But Buttigieg couldn’t have chosen a less likely person to name his spending program after. Douglass hated that sort of thing. He famously said:
The question is asked, and pressed with a great show of earnestness at this momentous crisis of our nation’s history, What shall be done with the four million slaves if they are emancipated?
… Our answer is, do nothing with them; mind your business, and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune. They have been undone by your doings, and all they now ask, and really have need of at your hands, is just to let them alone. They suffer by every interference, and succeed best by being let alone. The Negro should have been let alone in Africa—let alone when the pirates and robbers offered him for sale in our Christian slave markets—(more cruel and inhuman than the Mohammedan slave markets)—let alone by courts, judges, politicians, legislators and slavedrivers—let alone altogether, and assured that they were thus to be let alone forever, and that they must now make their own way in the world, just the same as any and every other variety of the human family. As colored men, we only ask to be allowed to do with ourselves, subject only to the same great laws for the welfare of human society which apply to other men, Jew, Gentiles, Barbarian, Sythian. Let us stand upon our own legs, work with our own hands, and eat bread in the sweat of our own brows. When you, our white fellow countrymen, have attempted to do anything for us, it has generally been to deprive us of some right, power or privilege which you yourself would die before you would submit to have taken from you.
I always liked Douglass.
THE GENOCIDE THAT THE HUMAN RIGHTS COMMUNITY DOESN’T CARE ABOUT: Nigerian Christians plead for U.S. help in face of religiously driven violence.
“FASTER, PLEASE”: “Johnson & Johnson is preparing to test an experimental HIV vaccine in the U.S. and Europe in a move toward developing the first immunization against the deadly disease after decades of frustration.”
As the Good Professor says: “Faster, please.”
YOU’VE GOT YOUR MOTHER IN A WHIRL; SHE’S NOT SURE IF YOU’RE A BOY OR A GIRL: Starwoman? Mattel announces David Bowie Barbie dressed as Ziggy Stardust.
HARVARD STUDY BACKS UP COMMON SENSE ON TRIGGER WARNINGS: Worst part (in my opinion): “a preregistered test found that trigger warnings increased survivor’s view of their trauma as integral to their identity (this is known as ‘event centrality’).” Exactly as a normal person would suspect.
SPENGLER HAS A MODEST PROPOSAL: Cut the Intelligence Budget and Use the Money to Build Our Own 5G Systems.
Why not? We don’t seem to get nearly the intelligence we pay for.
ALEX ACOSTA RESIGNS AS SECRETARY OF LABOR: “He tried to avoid this scenario by holding a press conference on Wednesday to explain the sweetheart deal he gave to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein 11 years ago. Acosta didn’t perform badly at the conference. Many of his arguments seemed reasonable on the surface, though not upon scrutiny. However, Acosta failed to stem the tide of criticism against him and therefore, I suspect, to satisfy President Trump that he would not remain a political liability.”
Related: Epstein floodgates open: More than a dozen women come forward with new allegations.
AMERICANS SMARTER THAN OFTEN GIVEN CREDIT FOR: Most Americans Didn’t Care Enough to Watch the Democratic Debates Live.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:
● Shot: Are Facebook, Twitter, Google evil or just everywhere? What we have to do about big tech.
—The InstaProfessor in USA Today, May 28th.
● Chaser: “An American organization founded by tech giants Google and IBM is working with a company that is helping China’s authoritarian government conduct mass surveillance against its citizens… ‘Aegis is unlimited, we are dealing with thousands Tbps [terabits per second] in China more than 200 million population,’ Zhu Wenying, a Semptian employee, wrote in an April message.”
—The Intercept, yesterday.
WOW: A New Plan for Keeping NASA’s Oldest Explorers Going.
One key issue is that both Voyagers, launched in 1977, have less and less power available over time to run their science instruments and the heaters that keep them warm in the coldness of deep space. Engineers have had to decide what parts get power and what parts have to be turned off on both spacecraft. But those decisions must be made sooner for Voyager 2 than Voyager 1 because Voyager 2 has one more science instrument collecting data — and drawing power — than its sibling.
After extensive discussions with the science team, mission managers recently turned off a heater for the cosmic ray subsystem instrument (CRS) on Voyager 2 as part of the new power management plan. The cosmic ray instrument played a crucial role last November in determining that Voyager 2 had exited the heliosphere, the protective bubble created by a constant outflow (or wind) of ionized particles from the Sun. Ever since, the two Voyagers have been sending back details of how our heliosphere interacts with the wind flowing in interstellar space, the space between stars.
Not only are Voyager mission findings providing humanity with observations of truly uncharted territory, but they help us understand the very nature of energy and radiation in space — key information for protecting NASA’s missions and astronauts even when closer to home.
It’s exciting to see NASA keeping the Voyagers going, just to see that they can keep them going. After a combined 24 billion miles of space travel over 42 years, the ongoing science almost seems like icing.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ‘Sugar Daddy’ business thrives as more coeds sign up to pay off student debt.
SUSTAINABILITY: $3,355,970,000,000: Federal Spending Sets Record Through June; Deficit Hits $747,115,000,000.
Just wait until the last quarter of the fiscal year, when agencies start burning through any leftover cash to make sure they don’t get any less to spend next year.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Minnesota town’s Pledge of Allegiance ban shouldn’t shock. It’s now commonplace on campus. The reason why this campus stuff matters is that it gradually leaks out to stain the rest of society.
SEBASTIAN GORKA AND PLAYBOY REPORTER GET INTO SHOUTING MATCH AT WHITE HOUSE: ‘YOU’RE A PUNK!’
[Brian] Karem said the attendees were a group of people “eager for demonic possession.”
Gorka heard Karem’s comment and responded, saying, “And you’re a journalist, right?”
Karem replied, “Come over here and talk to me brother, we can go outside and have a long conversation.”
“You’re threatening me in the Rose Garden?” Gorka replied. “You’re a punk. You’re not a journalist. You’re a punk.”
Karem also works for CNN, where, as with Playboy, threatening conservatives is a resume enhancer.
(Bumped.)
