CUE THE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: Seattle Mayor Durkan Very Upset that CHOP’s ‘Summer of Love’ Has Landed On Her Doorstep.
UPDATE (From Ed): The End of the Summer Of Love? Crews begin removing barriers around Seattle’s ‘CHOP’ zone.
Related: One teen killed, one injured after fourth shooting near Seattle’s CHOP.
I HAVE A ‘NEW COLD WAR’ TWOFER FOR OUR PJMEDIA/TOWNHALL VIP MEMBERS: Assessing China’s True Strengths.
AND: Assessing China’s True Weaknesses.
If you’ve been thinking of becoming a member, you can do so here — and don’t forget to use that VODKAPUNDIT discount code.
BATTLESWARM BLOG: Scenes From the Social Justice War. “It’s getting harder and harder to craft individual blog posts when so much news keeps coming down the pike and it’s all related to everything else. Antifa is riots is #BlackLivesMatter is #DefundThePolice is Marxist revolution is cancel culture is civilian disarmament is George Soros is mainstream media bias is the Democratic Party.”
That about sums it up.
TWO COUNTRIES, ONE SYSTEM: China Imposes ‘Security Law’ on Hong Kong, Bringing in CCP ‘Reign of Terror’ With ‘Secret Police.’
THAT WOULD BE NICE SINCE WE MIGHT BE NEARING THAT FIGURE ALREADY: Coronavirus: could it be burning out after 20% of a population is infected?
PRIVACY: Tons of news apps caught unnecessarily snooping on iPhone clipboard. “The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, HuffPost, and scores of other apps may have accessed your passwords and other copy and pasted data.”
While news apps are the most concerning, there are a ton of other apps that also over-access iOS’s clipboard. A few popular games include 8 Ball Pool, Classic Bejeweled, Fruit Ninja, Plants vs. Zombies Heroes, PUBG Mobile, and more.
Social apps like Viber, Weibo, and Zoosk are also included. Bottom line: it’s not looking good. Christian Selig, the developer of Apollo, a Reddit app for iOS, told The Telegraph he’d also remove the creepy feature.
And these are only the apps that we know of so far. As iOS 14 blows the whistle on more apps snooping in the background, we’re sure more apps will be added to the list.
TikTok was caught by researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk in February for its egregious clipboard access. ByteDance, the developer behind TikTok, didn’t take steps to correct the excessive data access until Emojipedia creator Jeremy Burge and several other users noticed iOS 14’s new paste notification feature alerted him that the app was “grabbing the contents of my clipboard every 1-3 keystrokes.”
Due out this fall, iOS 14 is supposed to put a stop to this kind of snooping, but in the meantime, the privacy-busting tricks revealed by the iOS beta reveal just how little regard major publications have for their readers.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Lockdown 2, BS Boogaloo Is Upon Us. “The lockdown virtue-signaling is already back in full bloom. Il Ducey’s Twitter feed was positively insufferable on Monday night. It was almost as if he were auditioning to be the Democrats’ new favorite useful idiot Republican. The liberal responses were so laden with hysteria that I think the poor dears are at greater risk of succumbing to cardiac arrest than they are COVID-19.”
SIGN OF THE TIMES: I’m leaving Seattle for Texas so my employees can be free: Billion dollar business owner.
Say, when is Texas going to get serious about Glenn’s welcome wagon proposal?
CHARLES LIPSON: Three Ideas to End the Rot on College Campuses. “It’s not just that a careless word can cost your job, it’s that people tremble in fear that they might say the wrong word.”
Very Sovietesque.
More:
What’s wrong with this rigid groupthink? First, it takes real problems, such as police misconduct or Confederate statues, and inflates them for political purposes. It vastly exaggerates their extent and gravity, mistakenly generalizes them (Ulysses Grant is not Stonewall Jackson), ignores significant progress in correcting old errors, calls any disagreement “racist,” and relies on intimidation and sometimes violence, not democratic procedures, to get their way. The loudest voices say America and its history are fundamentally evil, that its institutions need to be smashed so they can be reestablished on “socially just” foundations. The mob and their fellow travelers will determine what is just. Who gives them that right? This arrogation of power and attack on public order will not end well.
The second problem is that America’s major institutions have been overwhelmed by these demands and have bowed down to them. Public trust has eroded in all America’s major institutions since the late 1960s. We now see the supine results. Instead of standing up to this swelling irrationalism and intimidation, they have appeased it—and sometimes embraced it. Predictably, appeasement has only fueled more extreme demands.
The rot began in America’s universities before spreading to mass media, cultural magazines, philanthropies, museums, and corporations. More and more parents are concerned that it now suffuses K-12 education. They don’t want a Pollyanna history, but neither do they want their children indoctrinated with a grim, doctrinaire view that America is an evil nation, incapable of reforming its own defects.
Universities have led this parade of self-flagellation. One reason is that so many administrators and professors agree with the mob demands.
Read the whole thing.
FINALLY, SOMETHING SENSIBLE HAPPENING IN MY OLD HOMETOWN:
On the other hand, someone please give those two some proper firearms training — STAT!
STEPHEN KRUISER: Kimmel, Cancel Culture, and the Future of Comedy.
I first began doing stand-up comedy in the early 1980’s at the beginning of the comedy boom in America. It was a real no-holds-barred affair and — not gonna lie — it was glorious. Comics had creative freedom that almost seemed like our birthright. When I first began going on the road professionally a few years later it was still like that.
Little did we know at the time that a generation of humorless scolds was being spawned right under our noses.
Previously: Comedians Dump Campus Gigs: When Did Colleges Lose Their Sense of Humor?
Question from 2015, answered.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Trump Calls For Tougher Republican Response To ‘Political War.’
ARTHUR CHRENKOFF: A Pessimist Case for November.
I remain optimistic, but Arthur raises a few points that, while unpleasant, need to be taken into account as Trump and his team craft his reelection campaign.
ANDREW CUOMO, GRANNY-KILLER: Nearly Half Of All COVID-Related Deaths In The US Are Directly Tied To Nursing Homes.
NEWS YOU CAN USE? NASA will pay you to design a space toilet that works in lunar gravity.
Related (From Ed): No word yet if the Wolowitz Zero-Gravity Waste Distribution Disposal System is among the prototypes being tested.
WHO? BidenWatch for June 29, 2020. “Black voters have about the same enthusiasm for Biden as they do for leftover tuna casserole, his non-profit did more to line staffer’s pockets than fight cancer, and Biden agrees to three debates with Trump.”
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