Halloween blend: almost spooky edition

Happy Thursday Halloween!

It feels like a scarier, more foreboding Halloween than last year. Enjoy!

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One of the best Dilbert's in a while:

click for whole cartoon

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Harvard Now Offering Advanced Degrees In Unconstitutional Law:

Some experts were quick to point out that Harvard has technically taught Unconstitutional Law for decades, but this latest move makes it official.

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White House Orders Daring Mission Into Afghanistan To Mark Stranded Americans' Passports As 'Non-Binary'

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Picard Suspended From Twitter For Saying He Sees Only Four Lights

 

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You may have read about some "Youngkin supporters" with tiki torches (presumably an effort to resemble the tiki torch-carrying extremists at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017). 

Anyways, they were plants (shocking!): Lincoln Project takes credit for tiki torch stunt McAuliffe campaign passed off as genuine Youngkin supporters:

“Today’s demonstration was our way of reminding Virginians what happened in Charlottesville four years ago, the Republican Party’s embrace of those values, and Glenn Youngkin’s failure to condemn it," the Lincoln Project, a political action committee made up of ex-Republicans, said in a statement. 

Before the source of the stunt was known, former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s campaign portrayed the group as genuine supporters of his Republican opponent. 

The five people pictured outside Youngkin’s campaign bus holding tiki torches in the rain wore khaki pants, white button-up shirts, sunglasses, and baseball caps.

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The Bee is quick to follow up: Youngkin Keeps Lincoln Project Away By Holding Rally Within 500 Feet Of A School

Ouch.

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‘Frustration is at an all-time high’: Behind Biden’s falling poll numbers. The headline is right but the article is a Democrat sympathy crying circle along the lines of "Biden is not polling well because he's just too moderate! He needs to move further left!" Riiight. Now you know why Democrats are always shocked when Republicans win.

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Biden preparing to hand out treats this year:

The Wall Street Journal first reported on Thursday that the Biden administration is in talks to offer separated migrant parents and children around $450,000 per person. That would mean that if a parent and a child were separated at the border, together they would be eligible for a combined payment of $900,000.

The talks are part of negotiations between the Justice Department and lawyers representing the separated families in a number of tort cases that have claimed the families experienced harm when they were forcibly separated.

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In defense of dumb TVs (old but good):

Decreasing prices and decreasing margins on TVs combined with long replacement cycles have driven companies to take advantage of built-in smarts to enable a new revenue source: user data and advertising. As of Q2 2020, Vizio and HiSense are the only major brands making TVs that ship without advertising enabled in their UIs. Sony, Samsung, LG, and others have ads enabled by default, most of which can’t be disabled. All of the above brands have built capability to aggregate data on what content is being viewed, and again, not all of them have the option to disable that. TVs smart enough to help you are also smart enough to harm you.

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The forever Covid strategy has its advantages for the ruling class:

A senior NJ Transit worker, who was absolutely adamant that he/she must not be identified because they could get in serious trouble for talking to the media, later told me that employees who ordinarily work in that maintenance facility were instructed by their higher-ups to stay home that day. No chance that they’d be allowed to attend this event, it was decreed, even though the event was taking place in their literal workplace — a public facility to boot. The justification? Who knows. Probably some half-baked combination of COVID, terrorism, and whatever other hyped-up existential danger is said to be lurking in the background on any given week. They won’t explain their reasoning if you ask; just as with all manner of completely arbitrary policies deriving from COVID which still remain in effect, people in positions of authority typically can’t be bothered to even offer a rationale for this or that leftover measure — content instead to blithely acclimate to the “new normal” rather than buck the bureaucratic inertia.

Just this afternoon I spoke to my local city council member here in Jersey City, who’s up for re-election next week, and she claimed to me that the primary reason for requiring children as young as two to wear facemasks when playing outside at recess — something I continue to see around town disturbingly often — is “psychological.” Or in other words, children that age need to be taught that wearing a mask for hours on end, each and every school day, is the “right” thing to do. It was a candid admission in a sense, to acknowledge that children’s health is not really the thing guiding this policy calculation

We need to increase the cost of this strategy. Read the whole thing.

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One of the few newish and good things still on Netflix is the Witcher. Here's the trailer for the 2nd season:

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Last but not least,

The list of major Biden administration failures

• The Del Rio Haitian border crisis.
• Don't forget Afghanistan.
• Unity. Biden may be the Great Divider. Every president fails on this, but we should start holding them responsible.
• TBA 

Thursday blend: the good with the bad

It's Thursday and I have no time to properly draft this post. So here are some links in no particular order:

SpaceX Now Claims They Might Return Humans to The Moon Even Before 2024

Googlespeak™ – How Google Limits Thought About Antitrust

Previous link via Pixy.

 

New York governor reveals 12,000 more COVID-19 deaths than previously counted

Like many businesses, Ford might require vaccines for its employees.

From the WaPo, the GOP struggles with vaccine mandates (employer mandates). What about the Democrats? Surely they must also be struggling because half of their base is unvaccinated, and likely vaccine-hesitant. We will be lucky to hear about the left's internal struggles.

Speaking of which: Why vaccine mandates for teachers have been a harder sell than mask mandates for kids.

From Reuters, the White House says, about 13,400 people were evacuated from Afghanistan on Wednesday.

However, it is not 'going to be possible' to get all Americans out of Afghanistan, warns ex-advisor to U.S. special operations.

Republicans are "weaponizing Afghanistan Chaos." It's a post-2016 world, people. This kind of language and rhetoric is par for the course. Expect it, and expect it to get worse.

American In Taliban Prison Starting To Worry How This Will Affect Biden's Poll Numbers 

Biden To Make Sure No Americans Are Stranded In Afghanistan By Stripping Citizenship Of Everyone Stranded There

 

Disclaimer: some links may be satire. I think they are obvious, but I know satire is increasingly in competition with reality, so any confusion is understandable. Best click the links if you're not sure. 

The dystopian boiling pot

As the fable goes, the frog does not jump out of the gradually-heated pot of water--it doesn't even notice--and is boiled to death.

I think dystopia will arrive in such a fashion (arguably has already). But the heat keeps rising:

Colombia-based call center workers who provide outsourced customer service to some of the nation’s largest companies are being pressured to sign a contract that lets their employer install cameras in their homes to monitor work performance, an NBC News investigation has found. 

I work from home too. Shortly after, the company wanted to encourage camera use for online meetings. Around the same time, they put out this electronic policy that every employee had to sign. As with most short-sighted, greedy companies, there was nary a word about privacy in that electronic agreement. Theoretically, a person who signed that policy and installed a camera could be spied upon in their own home, without their knowledge and the company would at least have that signed document (and arguably, the employee's consent) in their defense. I made my objections clear, as any self, spouse, family, and privacy-respecting person should. My camera remains unplugged and I never signed that piece of trash.

You have to push back. You, me, we have more power than one might realize. It feels good to use it now and then.

from Redditor Revolv_er

Remember when Apple fought for privacy? Good times

Years ago, Apple famously (or infamously, depending on your POV) refused to create a backdoor for the government to get in criminals' phones. Here's the Wikipedia article.

Recently, as you might be aware, Apple announced it plans to scan users' photos in order to fight child abuse.

[Note: I am very much pro-privacy. I do not need and refuse to post a disclaimer saying I am against child abuse because that's insane, and would do little to protect me from idiots who have no issue assuming others are totally okay with child abuse.]

On Thursday, Apple surprised the tech world by announcing that it will actively scan some users’ iPhones for known images of child sexual abuse material. The company also plans to discourage Siri searches for this material and warn children against sending or receiving sexually explicit messages, all starting with the launch of iOS 15 this fall.

The news drew a quick backlash from security experts and civil liberties groups, who believe the company is standing on a slippery slope by adding these content-scanning systems to its devices. The news also seems to have raised some objections inside Apple, as the company has stood behind its system in a memo to employees.

Apple is doubling down. They described opponents of this terrible idea as the "screeching voices of the minority." With that logic, we should mandate that every smartphone record everything and compare the data to what other people decided was bad. It would surely save lives, prevent child abuse and much more! From Pixy at Ace's:

Dismissing the entire security community, which has universally decried this, and the entire privacy community likewise as "screeching voices of the minority" shows exactly where this is coming from.

They are fully aware that what they are doing is wrong. They know it will harm people. That's why they kept it secret. They just don't care.

This is the end result of intellectual monoculture. To whatever small extent they spoke to any security or privacy advocates about this, their concerns were overridden because by definition anyone objecting to this was evil.

Cupertino delenda est. 

The apparent and increasing inability of the upper echelons in tech to question their own beliefs, to be genuinely open to disagreement, and to do so without assuming bad faith of their opponents is frankly disturbing. 

Deplatforming works, but not the way you want

I saw a post on Minds.com (yes, an alternative social media site similar to twitter) by its COO, Jack. He argues deplatforming does not work:

...there is an immense amount of evidence that suggests deplatforming is causing far more division, radicalization and violence than ever before.

I think he's both right and wrong. Deplatforming works, especially as big-tech colludes, cooperates, and coincidentally sing the same tune on all things to the right of Mao. It works remarkably well in removing people from the platform, reducing their influence on said platform, and generally erasing them from said platform. Especially when you remove the person, many similar personalities, and many of their followers--basically, just remove the weed and everything else within a 20-yard radius. Do that a few times and you won't have any more weeds!

The former Reddit CEO knows what she's talking about:

Her tweet was a reply to another tweet containing a link to a study that found out that “deplatforming is effective in minimizing the reach of far-right channels like Alex Jones & cannot be compensated on alternative platforms.”

Pao was Reddit’s CEO for a few months, between November 2014 and July 2015. During her brief tenure, she earned the nickname “Chairman Pao” for her strict pro-censorship policies that changed the culture of the platform.

Segregation, excommunication, & ostracism work well in removing people from groups. But it does not remove them from society. They are still out there. Only now they are far less moderated, far less policed, and far less observed than they used to be. It's a recipe for radicalization and fringe factionalism. 

It's like prohibition. Lets ban alcohol because it causes bad things. Well now there are a lot worse bad things because all things alcohol are run by criminals. Prohibition drove the alcohol trade underground, and well, there's a lot to be said for sunlight.

Deplatforming just removes the sunlight. Not only is it wrong, it's dangerous.

Big-tech anti-trust legislation

 There are some new anti-trust laws being proposed in Congress aimed at big-tech. I am not optimistic. I suspect it is a lot of theater for the sake of voter appeal, while they continue to rake in donations from big-tech. Both parties get these huge donations, especially the Democrats of late.

American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which prohibits the use of a dominant platform to discriminate against rivals by giving preference to its own products. 

 

Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, which bars the use of acquisitions to smother competitive threats. 

 

Ending Platform Monopolies Act, which restrains dominant platforms from using their power across multiple types of business to give themselves unfair advantages. 

 

Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching Act, or Access Act, which promotes competition by making it easier for businesses and consumers to move data when they want to switch to a new provider.  

 

Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, which amends filing fees for the first time in two decades and provides the government funds to pursue antitrust actions. 

 

What matters is the end-result, if anything, to-what extent it was re-worded by big-tech lobbyists, and how nobody will talk about it once made law (funny how that happens). How many Republicans are on the take you think?

.@Google censored videos where Republicans discussed whether children should be forced to wear masks.

And now @Google is lobbying Republicans to oppose antitrust reform legislation. pic.twitter.com/GnjDZBEuH1

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) June 18, 2021

 

Relatedly, Facebook has been big on pushing new internet regulations lately (which sound nice, but mostly suck): 

Internet companies should be accountable for enforcing standards on harmful content. It’s impossible to remove all harmful content from the internet, but when people use dozens of different sharing services — all with their own policies and processes — we need a more standardized approach.

Forcing internet companies to police speech, how nice. Not only is this a dystopian nightmare, it would cripple any small competitor's ability to merely exist (conveniently for Facebook). Free speech isn't (and shouldn't be) always nice speech.

Online political advertising laws primarily focus on candidates and elections, rather than divisive political issues where we’ve seen more attempted interference. Some laws only apply during elections, although information campaigns are nonstop. And there are also important questions about how political campaigns use data and targeting. We believe legislation should be updated to reflect the reality of the threats and set standards for the whole industry.

If I can trust any of my American history and constitutional studies, then political speech was one of the big reasons for the first amendment. What is a political ad if not political speech? The laws we have are bad enough. Either you believe in free speech or you don't. The answer to bad speech (i.e., stuff you don't like, misinformation, fake news, etc.), is more speech (rebuttals, facts, logic), not censorship. And that is exactly what more political ad/speech regulation would be.

This all disturbingly corresponds to what Ace has been saying since about 2016, and today:

Now CNN assigns its Chief Deplatforming Officer Oliver Darcy to begin writing stories pressuring corporations to stop running advertising on the channel, pressuring their tech monopolist partners to limit and censor the channel, and asking hyperpartisan, pro-censorship Democrats if it's time to pass laws outlawing these channels.

6. The tech monopolies, now feeling pressure from corporations and threats of interference from state actors, do what they probably wanted to do anyway, and begin banning/limiting the channels the leftwing doesn't like.

And step 7:

7. Despite the fact that threats from the state contributed to the censorship by alleged "private corporations," NeverTrump and Conservative, Inc. say that the sovereignty of the tech monopolies must never be challenged and we must respect their completely-voluntary choice to censor alternative media. Which just happens to be a competitor of NeverTrump and Conservative, Inc. media as well.

In other words, they benefit personally, politically, and pecuniarily from these censorship campaigns just as the leftwing does, and support these censorship drives for the same craven, mercenary, disgusting reasons.

Remember, we have to "protect the public" from "disinformation," and force them to watch "real news."

"Real news," like CNN.

CNN, which suggested that the Indonesian airline was destroyed by a black hole.

Real news like that.

Tater has reason to push this agenda. I mean, apart from Jeff Zucker ordering him to.

He needs the competition to be outlawed more than almost anyone.

Facebook looks at step 6 like an opportunity: why not streamline it, get favorable state interference while making it harder for smaller competitors. Remember when the Wuhan lab-leak theory was a bannable fake-news conspiracy theory? Now it is at least a legitimate newsworthy question. Remember when buying masks were bad, then they were mandatory? Remember when coronavirus was not viewed as serious and banning travel was racist and excessive? Boy did that pendulum swing.

The experts, the consensus, the big-tech monopolists are and have been frequently wrong. Imagine them with more power over speech, with the help, support, and blessing of the government.