SON OF HAMLET ON THE HUDSON: Cuomo On 2020: I’m Out… For Now Anyway.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
November 28, 2018
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): PETA Asks a Village Named Wool to Change Its Name to Vegan Wool.
PRIVACY: Google faces GDPR complaint over ‘deceptive’ location tracking.
Earlier this year the Norwegian watchdog produced a damning report calling out dark pattern design tricks being deployed by Google and Facebook meant to manipulate users by nudging them toward “privacy intrusive options.” It also examined Microsoft’s consent flows, but judged the company to be leaning less heavily on such unfair tactics.
Among the underhand techniques that the Google-targeted GDPR complaint, which draws on the earlier report, calls out are allegations of deceptive click-flow, with the groups noting that a “location history” setting can be enabled during Android set-up without a user being aware of it; key settings being both buried in menus (hidden) and enabled by default; users being presented at the decision point with insufficient and misleading information; repeat nudges to enable location tracking even after a user has previously turned it off; and the bundling of “invasive location tracking” with other unrelated Google services, such as photo sorting by location.
Under GDPR regulators may “levy major fines for compliance breaches — of up to 4 percent of a company’s global annual turnover.”
That’s a major sum.
CAESAR SALAD IS STILL OFF THE MENU: Investigators Track Down Source Region of Latest Romaine E. Coli Outbreak. “Romaine lettuce will be labeled with location information by region for safety, CDC says, but ‘it may take some time before these labels are available’.”
STEPHEN KRUISER: Jesse Kelly Is Back, but the Plague of Twitter’s Vague Rules Remains. “It’s still Jacked up.”
Twitter is Calvinball, only without the fun.
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: These women fled to escape misery in Venezuela. Instead of a new life, they found death.
Kenny Finol was studying journalism in her hometown of Maracaibo when she tried to escape the dizzying collapse of the Venezuelan economy, emigrating to Colombia and then Mexico.
She returned home in a coffin.
Her body was found Feb. 25 in an isolated corner of Ecatepec, a town just north of Mexico City known for violence against women and home base to several drug and people smuggling organizations. The 26-year-old Venezuelan had been disfigured with acid, brutally beaten, raped and tortured before she was killed.
Finol is only one of the dozens of women who were forced by Venezuela’s economic collapse to emigrate in search of a better life, but instead found death.
If you’re opposed to socialism, it’s because you’re an uncaring monster.
EVERYTHING IS RACIST: Lord of the Rings Slammed for Perpetuating Racism through Depiction of Orcs.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: “So, yesterday Britain’s liberal newspaper The Guardian reported that Paul Manafort — just before he became Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016 — had met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Manafort denied it, but WikiLeaks went much further. The Guardian altered their story shortly after publication, weakening the language.”
Tyler is filling in for Liz today.
WILLIAM MURCHISON: What posturing and positioning we can expect from the next Democratic House.
The New Deal, without precisely turning Democrats into the Planning Party, planted in them an enthusiasm for giving orders and directions to people not necessarily enthusiastic about being told what to do. And so came to pass the progressive vision: Progress our way, because we know what’s good for you.
What’s ahead? Other than attempted impeachment of the president? The progressive agenda will take shape in the House: probably a $15 minimum wage; maybe free college tuition and broad legalization of marijuana; almost certainly, tighter control of pharmacy prices and laxer oversight of immigration. Higher taxes on business will be proposed. Also, mandatory maternity leave from work. A federal support check for every taxpayer is a progressive notion looking better and better to poverty-fighters.
And what items on this large and luscious list will become law? None of them, actually. Not in 2019 and 2020. The Republican-controlled, and easily more conservative, Senate will shoot down all of them.
I expect that with the Senate (hopefully) going back to its traditional role of the chamber where bad ideas go to die, that the Democratic House is going to be an even bigger circus than usual — especially given the unprecedented numbers of vocal “democratic” socialists about to join Pelosi’s caucus.
If nothing else, it should prove entertaining.
THE THINGS THEY THINK BUT DO NOT SAY: Don’t Democrats like Beto in Fact Agree — 100%! — with Trump that Central American Countries Are Shitholes?
MIDDLE EAST MUDDLE: How Saudi and Qatar are competing over Iraq.
A Qatari delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani visited the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Nov. 7, where he met with the Iraqi president, prime minister and parliament speaker to “discuss the ties between the two countries.”
Three days after the Qatari delegation’s visit, Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources of Saudi Arabia Khalid Al-Falih visited Baghdad and met with as many figures as did the Qatari Minister of Foreign Affairs. This happened in light of the tense relationship that has governed Saudi-Qatari ties since June 2017.
While in Baghdad, Falih met with Iran-backed leaders of the Popular Mobilization Units that Saudi Arabia categorizes as “lawless militias,” and he invited them to visit Doha. These meetings confirm that Doha is trying to compete with Riyadh and even sabotage its ties with Iraq by building a relationship with Saudi enemies in Iraq.
Given the polarization between Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the region, each of them is trying to attain a rapprochement with Iraq. Meanwhile, as Iraq is trying to cut off energy imports from Iran due to US pressure after the reimposition of sanctions against Iran, both Riyadh and Doha could replace Tehran in this issue. This is also a chance to win over Baghdad’s new government.
Moreover, some Iraqi Sunni blocks that are funded and backed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia are competing for the minister of defense position in new Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government. It is therefore likely that the two countries of the Gulf are also competing at this level.
Maybe Joe Biden was right about partition. Three governments with fewer factions to manage might do better than one impossibly corrupt government in an impossible situation.
CAN’T HARDLY WAIT: Get ready for Congress’ annual Shutdown Theater Christmas Special.
Democrats want to use the shutdown clock to push for an apparently unconstitutional bill to protect special counsel Robert Mueller’s job. Following the appointment of acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, Democrats (and Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.) have sounded the alarm about the need to insulate Mueller from being fired by the president who appointed him.
“I feel very strongly about protecting Bob Mueller,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a recent interview. ”I think that I will look at any and all vehicles in order to do that. That goes to the question as to whether the president is above the law.”
Meanwhile, President Trump has also toyed with the idea of using the government shutdown as a means to get concessions from Democrats on border security. As recently as Thursday POTUS said that “there certainly could be” a shutdown if immigration concerns remain unaddressed by the December 7 deadline.
What didn’t make the list? Any concerted attempt by the GOP to address Obamacare’s lingering list of problems or Planned Parenthood funding.
Now that there is no tomorrow, you might have hoped that the GOP Congress would legislate that way. But no.
AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR: 3 U.S. Soldiers Killed by Roadside Bomb in Afghanistan.
November 27, 2018
TYLER O’NEIL: Hey Hollywood, how about some exciting history that isn’t Robin Hood or King Arthur?
The Battle of Kursk would make for an epic war movie, except… who you gonna root for?
SHOCKER: Apolitical Stars Are Biggest Draws.
Nobody wants a lecture with their popcorn.
REMEMBER “DON’T BE EVIL?” WASN’T THAT AWESOME? Google employees sign letter against censored search engine for China.
Google’s plan for returning to China, which is known as Project Dragonfly and would reportedly allow the Chinese government to blacklist certain search terms and control air quality data, has garnered significant backlash internally since it was first reported on in August. More than 1,400 Google employees signed an internal petition criticizing the lack of transparency around the project, and at least one employee resigned in protest.
But Tuesday’s letter, which was initially signed by nine current Google employees, is a bold step for employees of a company that prizes internal transparency but considers leaking information to be not “Googley”. Organizers of the letter said they would continuously update the letter as more employees signed on; by midday there were more than 50 signers.
Good for them. It will be interesting to see if they end up losing their jobs for what is essentially a political expression.
THAT’S WHAT XHE SAID: Google pulls gender pronouns from Gmail Smart Compose to reduce bias.
Gmail’s Smart Compose can save you valuable time when you’re firing off a quick message, but don’t expect it to refer to people as “him” or “her” — Google is playing it safe on that front. Product leaders have revealed to Reuters that Google removed gender pronouns from Smart Compose’s phrase suggestions after realizing that the AI-guided feature could be biased. When a scientist talked about meeting an investor in January, for example, Gmail offered the follow-up “do you want to meet him” — not considering the possibility that the investor could be a woman.
These are Heinlein’s Crazy Years — we just live in them.
INDOCTRINATED, NOT EDUCATED: Half of Younger Millennials Think Barack Obama Had a Bigger Impact Than George Washington.
He really was the perfect fit for the Preen Generation.
THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IS NOT TO PLAY: A Conservative’s Survival Guide to the Twitter War.
If you thought a confidential, $99 DNA test was too good to be true, well, it was.