Archive for 2020
October 21, 2020
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Amazon Buckles, Agrees to Stream ‘What Killed Michael Brown?’ “Conservatives, not black film orgs, help bring searing documentary to the public.”
The protagonists in the real-life saga come as no surprise to anyone paying attention.
ALL THE BEST PEOPLE ARE ANTI-VAXXERS NOW: One doctor’s campaign to stop a covid-19 vaccine being rushed through before Election Day.
INSERT JEFFREY TOOBIN JOKE HERE: ‘Happy ending effect’ impairs future decision-making, study says.
SAY ANYTHING: FCC trying to help Trump win election with Twitter crackdown, Democrats say. “Pai’s Section 230 plan called a ‘reckless and politically motivated stunt’.”
No, it’s an attempt to put a stop to social media’s ongoing reckless and politically motivated stunts.
DON SURBER: Reading The Polls. “Gallup reported that 28% of Americans call themselves Republican, while 27% call themselves Democrats. That is the first time in 16 years that Republicans outnumber Democrats. The mass registration effort by Republicans in Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere support this because it shows the nation is trending Republican. How the nation is trending matters more than actual registrations. In 2000, when Bush 43 flipped West Virginia, Democrats not only had twice as many registered voters in the state, they had the majority of registrations. Democrats vote Republican and then register Republican. I went a few decades like that.”
DEMOCRATIC POLITICIANS ARE ANTI-VAXX NOW: Effectiveness, politics impact public’s willingness to take COVID-19 vaccine.
AMY PEIKOFF ON FACEBOOK: How Many ‘Oversight Boards’ Does It Take to Dim a Light Bulb?
SWEDEN IS DOING A LOT OF SMART THINGS: Sweden Bans Huawei, ZTE From Its Upcoming 5G Telecom Networks.
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE SWAMP AND THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: “The message from Georgetown is clear. [Peter] Strzok is too sleazy to work for the FBI or for Robert Mueller, but not to teach at Georgetown University.”
IF THE LEFT IS WILLING TO GO FULL-ON ORWELL TO HELP THE DEMOCRATS WIN, WHAT WILL IT BE WILLING TO DO WHEN THEY’RE IN POWER? Wikipedia Editors Back Bidens, Stifle Dissent.
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: A Pre-Election Update on the Emoluments Clauses Cases.
MADE IN CHINA: Defense Experts Blast Biden’s Taiwan Policy.
Biden’s own record on Taiwan, as well as the public writings of his top foreign-policy surrogates and advisers, hints at potentially dangerous policies for both the United States and Taiwan. In 2001, Biden authored an op-ed arguing that U.S. support for the country could “draw us into a war across the Taiwan Strait.” Meanwhile, recent editorials from some of Biden’s top Indo-Pacific advisers spell out a vision for Taiwan that would downplay U.S. military backing, cut defense spending, and rely on more flexible deterrence to counter Beijing. Zack Cooper, China scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said such measures would only fuel Chinese ambitions in the region.
“You will see some serious downward pressure on the defense budget,” Cooper told the Washington Free Beacon. “I think the Democrats know that this is going to be a real tension.”
Carafano lodged similar complaints. “The problem with our enemies is that they can all count,” he said. “We can do all this stuff about how we are going to be smarter on defense…. That has zero impact on great-power competition.”
The Biden campaign did not return a request for comment about Democrats’ past handling of Taiwan, including his eight-year tenure as vice president.
Beijing got good value for their dollars.
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: Meet your (Chinese) Facebook censors.
China is one of the most censorious societies on Earth. So what better place for Facebook to recruit social media censors?
There are at least half a dozen “Chinese nationals who are working on censorship,” a former Facebook insider told me last week. “So at some point, they [Facebook bosses] thought, ‘Hey, we’re going to get them H-1B visas so they can do this work.’ ”
The insider shared an internal directory of the team that does much of this work. It’s called Hate-Speech Engineering (George Orwell, call your office), and most of its members are based at Facebook’s offices in Seattle. Many have Ph.D.s, and their work is extremely complex, involving machine learning — teaching “computers how to learn and act without being explicitly programmed,” as the techy website DeepAI.org puts it.
When it comes to censorship on social media, that means “teaching” the Facebook code so certain content ends up at the top of your newsfeed, a feat that earns the firm’s software wizards discretionary bonuses, per the ex-insider. It also means making sure other content “shows up dead-last.”
Like, say, a New York Post report on the Biden dynasty’s dealings with Chinese companies.
And this: Facebook Stings Babylon Bee:
During the Amy Coney Barrett hearings, The Babylon Bee, an Onion-like humor site for conservatives, published a story that starts like this:
WASHINGTON, D.C.—After two days of Amy Coney Barrett gracefully and stoically answering questions with perfect recall and no notes, suspicions grew on Capitol Hill that she might be a practitioner of the dark arts.
“Oh, she’s a witch alright, just look at her!” said Senator Hirono. “Just look at the way she’s dressed and how she’s so much prettier and smarter than us! She’s in league with Beelzebub himself, I just know it! We must burn her!”
Senator Hirono then pulled a live duck out of a massive burlap sack next to her and announced: “In addition to being a Senator, I am also quite wise in the ways of science. Everyone knows witches burn because they are made of wood. I think I read that somewhere. Wood floats, and so do ducks– so logically, if Amy Coney Barrett weighs as much as this duck I found in the reflection pool outside, she is a witch and must be burned.”
OK, it’s not that funny — but it is unmistakably a joke. It was not that funny because all of us have seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail eleventy-million times. Here’s the scene that the joke is lifted from:
There is a zero percent chance that Facebook’s censors don’t understand that this is a joke, and a zero percent chance that they really believe that repeating a gag from a universally beloved comedy film that’s nearly fifty years old incites violence.
What is it, then? It’s Facebook flexing its muscle to punish a comedy website that made fun of Democratic politicians.
Earlier: By Censoring The NY Post, Big Tech Is Begging For Big-Time Reform.
As Peggy Noonan wrote last year, “Overthrow the Prince of Facebook…Break them up. Break them in two, in three; regulate them. Declare them to be what they’ve so successfully become: once a pleasure, now a utility. It all depends on Congress, which has been too stupid to move in the past and is too stupid to move competently now. That’s what’s slowed those of us who want reform, knowing how badly they’d do it. Yet now I find myself thinking: I don’t care. Do it incompetently, but do something.”
Somebody should write a book about this stuff.
GROSS: Here’s a Sampling of the Hunter Biden Texts Giuliani Turned Over to the Police. “The texts appear to implicate Democratic nominee Joe Biden in covering up his son’s alleged sexual abuse and in taking part in some of Hunter Biden’s deals.”
SO YOU’RE SAYING BIDEN IS THE CANDIDATE OF WHITE SUPREMACY? 538: Trump Is Losing Ground With White Voters But Gaining Among Black And Hispanic Americans.
IN THE MAIL: From Ted Cruz, One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Another Debate, Another Partisan Hack Moderator.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Could we maybe get just one debate with a moderator who isn’t a partisan Democrat swamp creature?
Answer: No. Don’t be silly.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- Joy Behar is thankful for Jeffery Toobin’s schwanzstucker.
- Memo to NeverTrumpers: It’s OK to admit you’re Democrats.
- Meet the restraunteurs who deep-fried Pennsylvania’s lockdown.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.