Archive for 2020
July 22, 2020
SO I VOTED YESTERDAY. It was early voting for some local elections and state primaries. There was a moderate crowd, with me having to wait about 5 minutes to get in. Everyone was masked and spaced. We had the new optically-scanned paper ballot system, where you mark a ballot, it’s scanned by a machine, and they keep the paper copy for recounts. The poll workers did a good job keeping everything moving and nobody seemed to have any problems. So much for the notion that a pandemic interferes with in-person voting.
THE MASK OF MODERATION SLIPS YET AGAIN: As Antifa Terrorizes Portland, Biden Claims Trump Is Attacking ‘Peaceful Protesters.’
IN THE MAIL: At the End of the World (Black Tide Rising Book 8).
JAMES LILEKS: “It’s 2020, after all. If speech is violence, surely music is first-degree murder…Yes, this is the piece called ‘It’s time to let Classical music die.’ Because classical music is an abusive partner, you see.”
Given his relationship with the Minnesota Youth Symphony, James is angry. You’ll like him when he’s angry.
HUH: Chinese hackers counted on no one clicking ‘update’ in decade-long spree.
The Department of Justice unsealed an indictment Tuesday alleging two hackers worked in collaboration with the Chinese Ministry of State Security to steal everything from video game source code to weapons designs from hundreds of companies around the globe. And, if the indictment is to be believed, the hackers were able to do much of this by exploiting people’s natural laziness about updating their software.
Notably, the indictment claims, the two hackers — Li Xiaoyu, 34, and Dong Jiazhi, 33 — had a decade-long spree that succeeded, in large part, because people and companies often don’t immediately download and install software patches as soon as they become available.
“[To] gain initial access to victim networks, the defendants primarily exploited publicly known software vulnerabilities in popular web server software, web application development suites, and software collaboration programs,” reads a DOJ press release.
It amazes me how many people — including IT pros who ought to know better — shrug off security patches.
#JOURNALISM: An Untrue Claim in The New Yorker Speaks Volumes.
How could it possibly be true that ‘two-thirds’ of all Americans aged 15-34 visiting emergency rooms had been injured by police or security guards, given the very many other reasons why people might present for emergency treatment? In the online version, there is no hyperlink to the research (although the article does contain hyperlinks), and the study’s authors are not named.
Jill Lepore could hardly be more eminent. She is a professor of American history at Harvard, the recipient of a long list of awards, and a longstanding staff writer at the New Yorker, as well as a contributor at many other well regarded publications. I love her writing, so much so that I bought several extra copies of her latest book These Truths to give as presents to friends and family. Given this, I thought at first that I might have misunderstood the sentence, and tweeted as much.
I sought out the study she was referring to, and found it: a 2016 paper, whose lead author, Justin Feldman, was a doctoral student at Harvard at the time. Soon after publication, the findings were described in a Harvard press release, and also reported on by The Guardian.
And it turns out I was right — the ‘two-thirds’ claim is not true. Not even close. . . .
I did my best to work out a rough estimate of the true proportion of 15-34 year olds visiting the ER who had suffered legal intervention injuries, and arrived at a figure of 0.2% (you can follow my working in this thread). So I believe Lepore’s claim to be off by a factor of several hundred.
Why does this one sentence matter? Well, firstly, it misinforms readers, several of whom (based on my Twitter search for the article’s URL) also alighted on this claim, but unlike me took it on trust. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it tells us something about the political climate in a publication like the New Yorker, which was once famous for its rigorous fact checking.
Think of the press as a psychological warfare operation against normal Americans and you won’t go far wrong.
ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT WAGE SLOW WAR OVER NILE RIVER WATER RIGHTS: Whiskey’s for drinking. Water’s for fighting. When it comes to the world’s longest river, there’s a lot of water to fight about.
Human survival, individual and societal, requires water. Just ask Egyptians. At least 7,000 years of life on the Nile has proven the adage “Egypt is the Nile” to be true. From Aswan north to Alexandria, the green band bordering the great river is home to 90% of Egypt’s population.
Twenty-first-century Egypt still confronts pharaoh-era East African geographic and climactic facts. Egypt gets 80% to 90% of its annual water needs from the Nile.
Egypt and Ethiopia have been confronting each other for well over a decade, as Ethiopia built the GERD, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The GERD now dams “the Blue Nile River near the Sudan border. This month, Ethiopia began filling the dam’s reservoir, which could ultimately hold 75 billion cubic meters of water.”
The column discusses the water conflict and a framework for resolving it.
MCCLOSKEY GUN INOPERABLE WHEN POLICE SEIZED IT, BUT PROSECUTION ORDERED CRIME LAB TO MAKE IT OPERABLE AND ‘LETHAL:’ “Gardner, a prosecutor backed by George Soros during her election, filed a charge of felony unlawful use of a weapon as well as a misdemeanor charge of fourth degree assault against both McCloskeys…When the gun that Patricia McCloskey had was turned over to the authorities, it was inoperable and inoperable when it arrived at the St. Louis Police crime lab. According to the McCloskey’s attorney, Joel Schwartz, the gun was inoperable during the incident in question with the protesters and couldn’t have hurt anyone. The McCloskeys, who are both attorneys, had used the gun as a prop during a trial.”
ROCKETS AWAY: An AH-64 Apache fires rockets downrange during aerial gunnery tables at Grafenwoehr, Germany.
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY ALLOWS THREATS AND INTIMIDATION AGAINST CONSERVATIVES.
Complain to grantmaking agencies under Executive Order 13864.
DID YOU FEEL THE EARTH MOVE, BABY? Powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake strikes off Alaska coast.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: They’re Not Really ‘Secret Police’ If We’re All Talking About Them. “We’re not talking about a fringe group of Twitter commies pitching a fit. The increasingly-impaired bag of vile who is currently serving as the Speaker of the House of Representatives is in on it. Her alcoholic Trump Derangement Syndrome is so strong that she is disparaging good federal police officers who are carrying out their duties in cities where Democrats have abandoned the law-abiding citizens to lawless packs of criminals.”
“The worse, the better,” the lefty visionary once said.
SORRY, IF PEOPLE HAVE TO DIE IN LARGE NUMBERS RATHER THAN LET ORANGEMANBAD BE PROVED RIGHT, SO BE IT: Hydroxychloroquine could save up to 100,000 lives if used for COVID-19: Yale epidemiology professor: One study found that early administration of hydroxychloroquine makes hospitalized patients substantially less likely to die.
I’M NOT SAYING THAT THE NEVERTRUMP MOVEMENT IS BASICALLY JUST A GRIFT MACHINE BUT . . . WELL, YEAH, THAT’S PRETTY MUCH WHAT I’M SAYING. Founder of Never-Trump Super PAC Arrested in $60M Bribery Scheme.
THE YANGTZE IS A RIVER OF MANY MOODS, AND RIGHT NOW ITS MOOD IS UGLY: Flooding in China disrupts medical, PPE suppliers. Shippers should expect delays.
GREAT MOMENT IN COOL, DISPASSIONATE OBJECTIVITY: LA Times Thirsts After ‘Naked Athena.’
‘Later she rolled on her back in a graceful pose, then stood again.’ Was this man taking copious notes or has he been watching a video on repeat?
Read’s piece climaxes with the implicit comparison of this nude woman to Tank Man, the Chinese gentleman who stepped in front of a column of tanks in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre. You might think the latter contained more powerful symbolism, because, if nothing else, it followed a massacre. Somehow, though, admirers of ‘Naked Athena’ cannot see the wood for the trees — or, perhaps, the trees for their wood.
Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™
DECOUPLING: U.S. has ordered China consulate in Houston to close – State department spokesperson. “We have directed the closure of PRC Consulate General Houston, in order to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information.”
COME SEE THE RACISM INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: BLM speaker: “There is one common enemy: the white man … we need to get rid of them.”
SHOCKER: Thick blue line: Surge in support for police, just 2 in 10 back ‘defund’ scheme.
In one of the first signs that a backlash has begun against police protests, a growing number of people are voicing their support for law enforcement, especially in their neighborhood, and shifting away from the “defund” effort sparked by the Black Lives Matter marches.
The latest Rasmussen Reports survey indicates a strong national support for police and law and order, even among African Americans. . . .
It’s not just a white thing. Rasmussen said that 57% of black people oppose defunding police in their home community. For whites, it’s 69%, and for other minorities, it is 62%.
The shift away from defunding police comes as many cities have seen a surge in crime and the images of looting, flag burnings, and riots during anti-police and Black Lives Matter protests remain fresh in the minds of the public, especially those in the suburbs.
The new survey said that many believe that a cut in funding of traditional policing will lead to higher crime rates. Only 12% now think defunding police will cut crime. Another 61% see crime increasing.
When you talk to African Americans from poor neighborhoods, they often complain that you never see police there until after there’s a problem. And most of them don’t want their neighborhoods turned over entirely to the gangs, which makes you wonder why so many Democratic politicians seem okay with that.
Related: Kurt Schlichter: Brace for the Backlash. “They expect to remove society’s rights and protections for their enemies – us – and they are shocked and indignant when they find their own rights and protections forfeit. They want the status quo for themselves while setting ours on fire, and they are too dumb to understand that things do not work out that way. The backlash has already begun. And it will be brutal.”