Archive for 2019
July 18, 2019
AT AMAZON, save on Bestselling Jewelry.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Omar: Now That I’ve Filed My Boycott-Israel Motion, I’ll Go To … Israel.
SOMEBODY NEEDS TO: Stiffening the Backbone of the Right.
THEY’D NEVER DO THIS TO MUSLIMS: Church volunteers no longer allowed to lead library playgroup after singing about God.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: NYT: Yeah, Well, the Soviets Sent Women and Minorities into Space First.
GET THAT MAN AN UMBRELLA AND A GATORADE, STAT: Can’t Stand the Heat? Biden Looks & Sounds Terrible on the Trail Today.
SO THEY WANTED TO “SEND HIM BACK,” IN OTHER WORDS? Enough Games, Democrats: We Know You Wanted To Deport Sebastian Gorka.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Booker says he felt disrespected in his verbal tussle with Biden.
TAMARA KEEL: Hobbyists vs. Hardcore Enthusiasts: The Gun-Community Divide. I think we can all be friends.
THE LEFT IS BIG ON INFLATING CURRENCY, WHETHER MORAL OR FINANCIAL, UNTIL IT’S WORTHLESS: “RACISM”: IT’S NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE. “The idea that politicians may or may not be subject to criticism or disagreement depending on their skin color is so un-American, and so profoundly stupid, that it is hard to imagine that anyone could assert it. Yet we live in such degraded times that one-third of Democrats are willing to tell pollsters that is what they believe.”
Related: The Sordid History of Liberals Calling Republicans Racists.
WHO KNOWS THIS? TRUMP KNOWS THIS. The backlash is growing against Xi Jinping in China and around the world.
20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: The Nightmare Of An America Ruled By AOC And Her Socialist Pals.
FaceApp, a smartphone app that allows users to apply filters onto selfies they upload, has grown in popularity again thanks to a feature that allows users to make themselves look older.
But cybersecurity experts have raised several red flags about FaceApp. It’s made by a Wireless Lab, a small company based in Russia and, according to its terms and conditions, your photos could be used in unexpected ways.
FaceApp’s privacy policy notes its affiliates and service providers “may transfer information that we collect about you, including personal information across borders and from your country or jurisdiction to other countries or jurisdictions around the world.”
FaceApp essentially owns images uploaded to its service and can use them in any way it wants. That could include anything from splashing your photo across a billboard to using it in the development of facial recognition technology.
Machine learning requires tons of data, which users have been happily uploading in droves in exchange for “free” apps and services.
TROLL LEVEL, PRESIDENTIAL: Trump: What’s This About Ilhan Omar and Her Brother?
IN THE SOVIET UNION, THE FUTURE IS ALWAYS CERTAIN; IT’S THE PAST THAT’S ALWAYS CHANGING: The War over America’s Past Is Really about Its Future.
(Classical reference in headline.)
NOAH ROTHMAN: The Outrage Economy.
The commodification of outrage has become a business model. Nike’s sales surged after it joined forces with its controversial spokesman and his campaign against standing for the singing of the national anthem. The carmaker Audi, too, enjoyed a sales bump when it advanced in a Super Bowl spot the flawed notion that women only make a fraction of what men make for the same work. The razor-maker Gillette’s two-minute-long web-based advertisement appealing to stereotypes to imply that conventional male socialization was transforming young men into abusers and sexual harassers generated a firestorm of controversy and a 6 percent increase in Procter & Gamble’s stock price.
Surveys routinely show that consumers will patronize firms based not on the products they produce but the “social or political issues” they embrace. People want to (literally) wear their politics on their sleeves. The controversies around which brands organize their outrage campaigns are, however, often chimerical.
“I think a lot of people in today’s day and age want to know, ‘What are we supposed to be outraged about,’” said a former employee of the anger-stoking Millennial media company Mic.com. The site specialized in controversies you didn’t even know you should be mad about. It advised its readers that they should be outraged over the sexism evident in the BBC’s description of one of its anchors as a “mother of three” and the racism in the television industry exposed by an African-American comedian’s decision to leave NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”
What horrible people.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Genetic factors are primary cause of autism, study finds.
SKYNET SMILES: Brains scale better than CPUs. So Intel is building brains. “Neuromorphic hardware is proving able to handle tasks organic brains excel at much more efficiently than conventional processors or GPUs can. Visual object recognition is perhaps the most widely realized task where neural networks excel, but other examples include playing foosball, adding kinesthetic intelligence to prosthetic limbs, and even understanding skin touch in ways similar to how a human or animal might understand it.”
