…I know this got a little out of hand last time…so I’ll try not to cram a crazy-person quantity of links into this one…hell, I might even have a shot since I actually have places to go & people to see that I haven’t in too damn long…so I was all ready to call it a good day, even…& there’ll be a brain drain soon enough so hopefully this won’t spoil that too badly…but I fear it still isn’t what you’d call a good news day?
First it was gas. Then it was meat. Now it’s local television stations.
At least two TV news stations have been completely offline since Thursday in what cybersecurity experts say appears to be a ransomware attack on their parent company.
[…]
So far both stations were able to still put together local broadcasts, but have been limited in what they can do. Cox didn’t reply to requests for comment. But the event appeared to be the latest U.S. incident of ransomware, where hackers will infect a network and hold its files hostage while demanding payment, said Allan Liska, an analyst at the cybersecurity company Recorded Future.“An ‘IT incident’ that spans multiple organizations in a company is almost always a ransomware attack,” Liska said.
[…]
Hackers have steadily attacked American businesses, schools and hospitals with ransomware for several years. But the problem only recently became an emergency for the federal government after an attack on the U.S.’s largest pipeline company, Colonial, shut down its fuel distribution for five days and caused some gas shortages.
[…]
Many of the most prolific ransomware gangs, including those responsible for the JBS and Colonial hacks, speak Russian and have at least some members based in Russia who appear to operate with impunity, leading President Joe Biden to say he’s “looking closely” at retaliating.On Thursday, the Biden administration announced it will begin to treat ransomware attacks as a national security threat rather than merely a criminal one, administration sources have said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/tv-news-stations-become-apparent-target-next-cyberattack-n1269662
…I mean…they say sometimes no news is good news…but I’m pretty sure that’s not what they meant…although given some of what’s coming…I’d get it if you just wanted to skip the whole news thing & enjoy your weekend?
Facebook said Friday that it plans to suspend former president Donald Trump for two years following his comments inciting violence in the wake of the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6.
The social media giant will reinstate him only if “the risk to public safety has receded,” according to a blog post on the company’s website.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/03/trump-facebook-oversight-board/
“Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols. We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs, said in a statement on Friday.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/04/facebook-donald-trump-oversight-board-instagram
Facebook said on Friday that Donald J. Trump’s suspension from the service would last at least two years, keeping the former president off mainstream social media for the 2022 midterm elections, as the company also said it would end a policy of treating posts from politicians differently from those of other users.
Facebook Says Trump’s Ban Will Last at Least 2 Years [NYT]
[…]
If reinstated, Mr. Trump would be subject to a set of “rapidly escalating sanctions” if he committed further violations, up to and including the permanent suspension of his account, Facebook said.
[…]
For years, Facebook and other social media companies had said they would not interfere with political speech because it was in the public interest. During Mr. Trump’s presidency, the companies did not rein in his inflammatory language as he attacked enemies and spread misinformation. They changed their stance after Mr. Trump’s use of social media on the day of the Capitol attack.
[…]
Yet Facebook’s moves, which create a more specific framework for how it handles political figures, are unlikely to satisfy its detractors and may reinforce what some see as the company’s disproportionate power over online speech.
[…]
But the company has still given itself a way to keep up controversial political speech in what it considers rare or special circumstances. If Facebook deems that a statement from a politician has broken its rules but is “newsworthy” enough and in the public interest, it can still decide to leave the post up. The company plans to disclose such instances when they occur, it said.
[…]
But the company has still given itself a way to keep up controversial political speech in what it considers rare or special circumstances. If Facebook deems that a statement from a politician has broken its rules but is “newsworthy” enough and in the public interest, it can still decide to leave the post up. The company plans to disclose such instances when they occur, it said.
[…]
Facebook has long said it does not want to be an arbiter of speech. Mr. Zuckerberg has called for lawmakers to create regulations for his company to follow regarding content decisions.
…now…I can see how that might qualify as good news to some people…despite the underlying current of “too little, too late” that underpins so much when it comes to facebook stemming the tide of right-wing asshattery
Once, when Mr. Zuckerberg was still talking to me, we argued about some much-less-serious violation of rules on Facebook, issues that now seem quaint in comparison. Trying to lighten the mood, I invoked the old journalism bromide: He should trust, yes, but always verify.
“If your mother says she loves you, check it,” I said to him, trying to convince him that he could not rely on the community or algorithms or anything else but his own decision making when push from bad actors inevitably came to shove.
He did not get the joke at all. He also missed my larger point that the world was an ugly place and that he had handed some very bad people in it a potent weapon of destruction. They would take advantage of his belief that the truth will always out.
Even now, I have a hard time describing the blank stare on his typically blank face. It was as if I was talking in another language to another species on another planet.
The Terrible Cost of Mark Zuckerberg’s Naïveté [NYT]
…but you know what’s funny about it?
European Union and British regulators are investigating whether Facebook’s “vast troves of data” give Facebook Marketplace an unfair advantage.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/business/facebook-eu-uk-antitrust.html
[…]
The inquiries intensify the already wide-ranging scrutiny that tech giants are facing from governments around the globe. Regulators in the United States, China, India, Australia, Russia and Latin America are investigating and pressing charges against the companies, accusing them of squashing rivals and harming consumers. On Friday, Germany’s competition authority announced an investigation into Google for its treatment of publishers using the company’s Google News Showcase. Google pays publishers for the content, and the regulator said it was exploring if the company treated publishers unfairly to have their stories featured on the tool.
[…]
The European investigations into Facebook open a new flank for the social media giant. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission and nearly every U.S. state accused the company of using mergers to squeeze out competition and create a monopoly.
…well, not funny-ha-ha or anything…but isn’t it a funny coincidence that these sporadic lurches in the direction of acknowledging that the reality of facebook is at odds with zuck’s aw-shucks responsibility-avoidance routine always seem to come right on the heels of people with legislative influence wanting to examine its business practices?
…not that facebook is the only one with a predictable pattern of knee-jerk responses
Donald Trump has appeared to drop his strongest hint yet at another presidential run in 2024, responding to news of his two-year ban from Facebook on Friday by saying he would not invite Mark Zuckerberg to dinner “next time I’m in the White House”.
It has also been widely reported this week that Trump believes he will be reinstated in the presidency by August.
He will not. But in his statement on Friday he did not say if he thought he would return to the White House because he would be reinstated or because he would run for the Republican nomination again and then defeat Joe Biden or another Democrat.
Trump’s statement read: “Next time I’m in the White House there will be no more dinners, at his request, with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. It will be all business!”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/04/donald-trump-facebook-white-house
[…]
Trump appears to be convincing himself the election was stolen and that some mechanism exists by which he might be reinstated, a belief apparently stoked by Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and a hardline Trump supporter.
Lindell’s wealth has made him a particularly loud voice among those clamoring about the election. He has the resources to hire various dubious “investigators” and to produce shakily constructed videos detailing what they’ve found. He also has the resources to respond to a 10-figure defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, not by acquiescing to having spread unverifiable claims but, instead, with a countersuit of his own in which he repeats and elevates those claims.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/04/mike-lindells-fraud-allegations-are-even-more-ridiculous-than-you-might-think/
…& you know what’s the wrong sort of funny about that?
…aside from the two firms whose voting machines this asshole (& others drinking the same kool-aid) like to claim were rigged…there’s a third firm that makes a lot of voting machines that they don’t mention a whole bunch…which is curious
First, a cautionary note. Close partisan associations and corruption involving voting machine vendors are inappropriate, and significant discrepancies between polling and official outcomes are unnerving and fair game for reporting, as are voting-system vulnerabilities and the many electronic “glitches” that occur in elections. But they do not prove fraud. Moreover, we cannot typically prove that election outcomes are wrong without conducting robust manual audits using hand marked paper ballots (with an exception for voters with disabilities). This is why the Democrats proposed the SAFE Act, which would have required robust manual audits for all federal races this year and banned most of the touchscreen voting machines currently in use. It also would have banned internet connectivity to voting systems. But the GOP killed the SAFE Act.
Republicans nonetheless have the audacity to complain after the election about lack of security and transparency, knowing full well that they are primarily responsible for these problems, that they did better (not worse) than polls predicted, and that they went out of their way to block manual recounts in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2016.
Meanwhile, Republicans have directed their belated election-security ire almost exclusively at Dominion Voting. They have conspicuously given short shrift to America’s largest and arguably most corrupt voting machine vendor, Election Systems & Software, LLC (ES&S), whose systems in Texas had a software “bug” as of September 2020 that could in theory have enabled ES&S or others to install unauthorized software. (For unknown reasons, the Texas Secretary of State waited until December to post the September report.) The GOP’s cherry picking is dangerous because it could give ES&S even more corrupt control over U.S. elections than it currently has.
The GOP’s apparent blind spot for problems involving ES&S is curious. Before the GOP began screaming “Dominion, Dominion, Dominion,” most of the negative press about the elections industry in the U.S. had for years focused on ES&S. And for good reason.
https://jennycohn1.medium.com/es-s-is-americas-largest-voting-machine-vendor
…there’s more to that article…& iirc that lady has been looking into this sort of thing for a fair while now (as a glance over her twitter history will attest to) & knows whereof she speaks
Conspiracy theories succeed by leveraging a grain of truth: There is usually some small connection to reality beneath even the most outlandish assertions. So while some people on the right-wing fringe spin crazed tales about a left-leaning cabal that indulges in pedophilia, there’s still the very real case of Jeffrey Epstein — showing that some rich predators do abuse teenage girls with impunity, while powerful friends look the other way.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/02/03/voting-machines-election-steal-conspiracy-flaws/
[…]
But although the conspiracy theories are nonsense, that doesn’t mean there’s anything unreasonable about mistrusting voting machines, about which experts have been sounding the alarm for years. Even before Bush v. Gore — with its disputes over missed votes and hanging chads — voting machines were a cesspool of low reliability and low security, not to mention profiteering. And they still are.
[…]
Both of the following claims can obviously be true: Trump’s team has spread outrageous lies about voting machines, and many of those machines are deeply flawed. Yet at least one voting machine company is trying to intentionally blur the line between libelous zealots and legitimate critics. As the nation recoils from the smear job that Trump loyalists have unleashed on Dominion Voting, one of Dominion’s competitors, the industry-leading, private-equity-owned ES&S, has seized on the moment to threaten members of SMART Elections, a journalism and advocacy group, with a lawsuit for spreading “false, defamatory and disparaging” information about one of its machines, the ExpressVote XL. These claims — factual observations, really — include that the machine “can add, delete, or change the votes on individual ballots” and that it is a “bad voting machine.”
After initially focusing on the surprisingly lopsided results of the senatorial election in Kentucky, DCReport broadened our scope to look at the electronic vote-counting software and electronic voting systems that we rely on to tally our votes. This prompted us to raise questions about Electronic Systems & Software (ES&S), America’s largest voting machine company. What we found was a revolving door between government officials and ES&S.
Voting results in three states that saw surprising majorities by vulnerable incumbent Republican senators—Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina—were almost all tabulated on ES&S machines.
Voting machine company behind so many surprise wins this year raises some questions [rawstory – also from december]
[…]
Owned by a private equity firm, ES&S has been elusive about identifying the people in its ownership.
A number of ES&S executives and lobbyists have ties to top GOP election officials and politicians.
The ES&S executive in charge of the security previously worked in the Trump administration as a government executive at Health and Human Services before leaving under a cloud.
Forty of the 50 states use ES&S to cast & count some of their votes.
Of the 25 states Trump won, all but 3 either partially or fully relied on ES&S machines. The states where Trump won that didn’t use ES&S machines were Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Alaska.
…but then you can generally tell a lot by who comes out on what side of an issue like electoral integrity
Less than two weeks from a first face-to-face with President Biden in Geneva, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday criticized the U.S. prosecution of rioters who took part in the January attack on the Capitol, calling it an example of American “double standards.”
[…]
“These are not looters or thieves, these people came with political requests,” Putin said of the pro-Trump mobs that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.The moderator at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum then asked Putin to clarify if he was defending the rioters, adding in a joking tone that the comments could lead to Putin “being banned online.”
“I’m not giving any evaluations to the actual event. I’m talking about what followed after,” he said, adding that he does “not give a damn” if he is banned from social media sites.
Applause from the crowd followed.
Putin questions U.S. prosecution of Capitol rioters, saying mob carried only ‘political requests’ [WaPo]
…imagine if you will the scene that might have ensued had hundreds of russian citizens attempted to bring similar “political requests” to his regime with the intention of forestalling the process of his being once more enshrined as the leader of that particular polity…but I digress
So, barring some extraordinary development over the next two weeks, the irresistible force of Chuck Schumer will fail to dislodge the immovable object that is Manchin. Republicans will be allowed to filibuster the For the People Act, Democrats’ sweeping voting-rights legislation. But that should be the beginning, not the end, of the fight to rescue American democracy.
[…]
After the For the People Act fails, the Senate should bring up its popular and unobjectionable provisions, one at a time. If by some miracle Manchin succeeds in getting Republicans to support their passage, all the better. In the likely event he fails, it will be obvious to America, and hopefully to him, that Republicans have no interest in cooperation.Democrats could begin by forcing Republicans to vote on the provision to restore enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, gutted by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in 2013. “Inaction is not an option,” Manchin, joined by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) wrote to congressional leaders last month about such a bill. Will Republicans filibuster this?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/04/force-republicans-filibuster-democracy-again-again/
…it goes on in that vein…& although the question it repeats seemingly begs for the answer to be in the negative we can be pretty much positive that they would absolutely do exactly that…which would be a miserable enough prospect…without it starting to sound like WaPo needs to get michael harriot in to run them a clapback mailbag column
I have devoted several past Memorial Day columns to urging readers to use the holiday to honor the fallen rather than pay monetary tribute to store sales. I did so again this year, but I also added recognition of Black lives lost to police violence. That thought brought an email response at 6:10 a.m. on the solemn Monday observance from “K.P.” (full name withheld, but recorded with Post editors).
I share K.P.’s message and others in unredacted form because — in their smoldering anger, hate and resentment — they inform the spirit of the state-instigated insurrection that launched a full assault on our democracy. It needs to be seen in all its ugliness.
The hate crawling back out into the open [WaPo]
…I’ll skip quoting the shit that piece quotes because I’m sure I’ve already filled this with more quotes that suck to read already & those ones frankly don’t deserve any more airing than they got a link away…but this kind of ignorance is…well, I would call it “studied”…but the point may be precisely that it isn’t?
By my recollection, four years of my education included studying American history. Fifth and eighth grades, two semesters in high school, three quarters at a community college. Since then, I’ve read history for pleasure and watched documentary films as a first option. Many of those works and those textbooks were about white people and white history. The few Black figures — Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — were those who accomplished much in spite of slavery, segregation and institutional injustices in American society.
But for all my study, I never read a page of any school history book about how, in 1921, a mob of white people burned down a place called Black Wall Street, killed as many as 300 of its Black citizens and displaced thousands of Black Americans who lived in Tulsa, Okla.
My experience was common: History was mostly written by white people about white people like me, while the history of Black people — including the horrors of Tulsa — was too often left out. Until relatively recently, the entertainment industry, which helps shape what is history and what is forgotten, did the same. That includes projects of mine. I knew about the attack on Fort Sumter, Custer’s last stand and Pearl Harbor but did not know of the Tulsa massacre until last year, thanks to an article in The New York Times.
[…]
We had lessons on the Emancipation Proclamation, the Ku Klux Klan, Rosa Parks’s daring heroism and her common decency and even the death of Crispus Attucks in the Boston Massacre. Parts of American cities had been aflame at points since the Watts riots in 1965, and Oakland was the home of the Black Panthers and the Vietnam War-era draftee induction center, so history was playing out before our very eyes, in our hometown. The issues were myriad, the solutions theoretical, the lessons few, the headlines continuous.The truth about Tulsa, and the repeated violence by some white Americans against Black Americans, was systematically ignored, perhaps because it was regarded as too honest, too painful a lesson for our young white ears. So, our predominantly white schools didn’t teach it, our mass appeal works of historical fiction didn’t enlighten us, and my chosen industry didn’t take on the subject in films and shows until recently. It seems white educators and school administrators (if they even knew of the Tulsa massacre, for some surely did not) omitted the volatile subject for the sake of the status quo, placing white feelings over Black experience — literally Black lives in this case.
How different would perspectives be had we all been taught about Tulsa in 1921, even as early as the fifth grade? Today, I find the omission tragic, an opportunity missed, a teachable moment squandered. When people hear about systemic racism in America, just the use of those words draws the ire of those white people who insist that since July 4, 1776, we have all been free, we were all created equally, that any American can become president and catch a cab in Midtown Manhattan no matter the color of our skin, that, yes, American progress toward justice for all can be slow but remains relentless. Tell that to the century-old survivors of Tulsa and their offspring. And teach the truth to the white descendants of those in the mob that destroyed Black Wall Street.
Tom Hanks: You Should Learn the Truth About the Tulsa Race Massacre [NYT]
…although it turns out speaking the truth is no guarantee you’ll be heard
A little more than four minutes into Barnard Kemter’s speech at a Memorial Day service organized by the American Legion post in Hudson, Ohio, an unusual thing happened: His microphone was silenced.
Mr. Kemter, 77, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who served in the Persian Gulf war, had been crediting formerly enslaved Black Americans with being among the first to pay tribute to the nation’s fallen soldiers after the Civil War when his audio cut out on Monday.
Soon after, he said in an interview on Thursday, he learned that he had been intentionally muted by the event’s organizers, who disapproved of his message.
[…]
One of the organizers of the event, James Garrison, resigned as a post officer, the commander of the American Legion Department of Ohio, Roger Friend, said in a statement on Facebook on Friday.
[…]
It said the censoring that took place was “premeditated and planned” by Mr. Garrison and another organizer, Cindy Suchan-Rothgery.“They knew exactly when to turn the volume down and when to turn it back up” because Ms. Suchan-Rothgery had received a copy of Mr. Kemter’s speech in advance and she had asked him to remove the specific section that was censored.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/us/american-legion-ohio-mic-cut-speech.html
…& you know what…that’s pretty nearly all I can manage today…I mean…there’s a legion of links I could have thrown in this thing instead…but I don’t know as they’d have been happier reading…china shutting down commemoration of tiananmen square in hong kong…or microsoft’s somehow losing the ability to find images or video if you searched for “tank man”…or the “unmeasurable cost” of that cargo ship disaster over sri lanka way…or…shit…a lot…so maybe I ought to have skipped these last few, too…but…I came across the two stories more or less side by side…&…goddamn if I can make sense out of this kind of senseless shit?
Judge Roger T. Benitez, who has favored pro-gun groups in past rulings, described the AR-15 rifle, used in many of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings, as an ideal weapon.
“Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment,” he wrote in Friday’s decision.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-rules-california-s-ban-assault-weapons-unconstitutional
[…]
He praised the AR-15 as a rifle that should be formally protected by the law for its “militia readiness.”
The judge said the ban was a “failed experiment.” California’s governor called the ruling “a direct threat to public safety.”
[…]
In a separate statement, [Attorney General Rob] Bonta called Judge Benitez’s decision “fundamentally flawed” and vowed to appeal it.“There is no sound basis in law, fact or common sense for equating assault rifles with Swiss Army knives — especially on Gun Violence Awareness Day and after the recent shootings in our own California communities,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/05/us/california-assault-weapons-ban.html
…& I know this guy didn’t use one of those…but do we get to call giving him his gun back “a failed experiment”?
“He shot me,” Megan Montgomery told doctors, according to an investigative report obtained exclusively by NBC News. By “he,” she meant her husband, a local police officer named Jason McIntosh.
Police took her husband’s pistol away. Nine months later, the state’s top law enforcement agency gave it back, despite pending domestic violence charges and an active protective order. Just 16 days after that, he used the gun to shoot and kill her during another late-night dispute.
[…]
Even the shooter’s lawyer was shocked he got his weapon back. “In my opinion it was irrational, illogical and not prudent to do so,” said attorney Tommy Spina, who emphasized he was not excusing his client’s actions. Spina said that without the firearm, “I don’t think what happened that night would have happened that night.”Women whose domestic abusers have access to a firearm are five times as likely to be shot and killed, according to research funded by the U.S. Department of Justice.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/state-of-alabama-took-his-gun-away-when-authorities-gave-it-back-he-shot-and-killed-his-wife
…& that’s a dude who gets paid to carry a gun…”to protect & serve” no less…I just…fuck…I don’t think I’m ever going to understand how this shit gets to be the way of things…sorry about anyone’s morning I done messed up & all…but…that shit is messed up, y’all
*lookst at links*
eh fuckit….its the weekend
you picked some good ones on the tunes tho
…yeah…that’s a fair point…& I did say I was sorry
…glad the tunes met with your approval, any road
…& that’s a dude who gets paid to carry a gun…”to protect & serve”
you know….over here only the cops are armed…..they rarely shoot people
considerable amount of paperwork and all that shit
its almost like feared fpr me life is related to arms
couldnt be that….as im told..yous rude fuckers has a polite society now.
I’ve read about the ESnS machines before – it seems incredibly hinky. It’s getting harder these days to separate the actual truth from conspiracy theories especially when the news seems to be coming from internet news agencies. Maybe I’m ignorant, but isn’t rawstory pretty much a “tabloid”?Who does really good investigative journalism these days? Who can afford it? We need a Woodward and Bernstein or Spotlight type investigation into it. I know that comes across as admitting there was fraud in the election – but if the repubs are screaming it from the rooftops – then you know they’re the ones committing all the fraud.
Also – I do not understand the incredible obsession of guns. I don’t own one and never felt the need to own one. We lived in a fairly rural area just outside of Atlanta when I was growing up. My parents had a 12 gauge and some kind of rifle. I used to sleep walk and one night I guess I actually walked out the front door. I woke up in the front yard with my mom screaming and my dad pointing the 12 gauge at me – so maybe that taints my view of guns. I think I was about 10 at the time. Before that, they did take me out and let me shoot the 12 gauge once. The kickback basically flipped me backwards. After the sleepwalking incident – I never saw either of those guns again. My aunt owns a couple of guns – she actually shot one of her windows out loading one. Thank god, her house wasn’t close to any others. I just think guns are a huge responsibility that most people really can’t handle.
…I think (& I’m open to being corrected) that rawstory more or less does what it says…that slap stories out in a somewhat unrefined manner…but I don’t know that I’d call them a tabloid the way I would something like the sun in the UK…there’s generally some attribution involved at least…but the link was handy & I was taking too long as it was?
…in terms of independent journalism though…you could check out bellingcat although I don’t know that they’ve done much about those voting machines…they’ve definitely produced some interesting stuff, though
I think every news publication has a tabloid-esque quality these days, they have to get you to read the story somehow, and attention grabbing headlines, often dramatically misrepresenting the story, is one way to do it. There used to be an art to writing a pithy headline that was not misleading. That is gone, nowadays you are lucky if the story doesn’t have spelling and grammatical errors.
@SplinterRIP – I wasn’t having a go at you about the rawstory thing – it was just a general observation about the state of investigative journalism. With all of the aggregate journo sites – who’s got the resources to actually investigate things like the ESnS machines? The NYT? The Washington Post? Vanity Fair actually has some very well researched articles but ultimately they’re an entertainment mag – not hard hitting journalists.
I’ve also read about the ES&S voting machines and McConnell’s statistically improbable victory. It sort of dovetails with his hands-off approach to the whole “audit” bullshit thing because he’s not interested in looking at his own “victory” for obvious reasons. But even if it’s true, ES&S has had months to cover their tracks now.
My favorite sites for investigative journalism are:
https://www.propublica.org/
https://www.motherjones.com/
https://www.vice.com/en_us/news
and for voting stuff:
https://www.gregpalast.com/
Those all may seem left leaning but that is because the right has no interest in journalism. I’ve also read lots of things about those voting machines and is the main reason I thought Biden couldn’t win. The McConnel thing I have said all along needs to be investigated but the Dems have a long history of not wanting to make people not have faith in elections. That ship has sailed. Part of why Trump is so pissed is he thought it was rigged for him to win and then he lost which means fraud (by fraud I mean fair election which wasn’t supposed to happen). The only good thing about the whole Covid 19 experience was that without it we still have president Trump and democracy would be well on its way to oligarchy.
A good list. I also check:
The Daily Beast
Frequently some solid journalism there but it’s got a paywall. I check the headlines and then see if further reading is warranted (which is when I check Raw Story who plagiarizes from them often).
Daily Kos
Don’t bother with the comments section — it’s unmoderated and filled with reductionist idiots who will miss the entire point of a comment to argue about some minor fact.
Axios
Solid reporting here, put into digestible chunks with links so you can dig deeper.
Sounds like we frequent similar places. Love Axios too.
I use Raw Story because they tend to aggregate information from other sources (which isn’t really responsible journalism but whatever). Often those sources are behind paywalls. I don’t give it any credence unless the story they’re reporting is sourced reputably. I don’t think they do any primary source journalism (like employing reporters and digging up stories), they just report on reports, if you will.
I guess I’m saying I find them useful but not necessarily credible. But that’s kind of true of the whole Internet. Gotta check the facts.
I’ve only had three instances in my life where I was scared/angry/paranoid enough to feel I needed a weapon in my hand.
1. When I was living with my parents and the 2-3 delinquent loser shitheads from the garbage house down the street decided to attempt a B’& E one night not knowing I was waiting in ambush with a bat if they came thru the door. I was also pretty sure those loser fucks had ripped off the car maker symbol on my car a few months earlier and I was looking for some payback. Fortunately for them, the door held.
2. When I was still quite paranoid about the cokehead narcissist and her imaginary alleged gangster pals. I thought it was them, but in reality it was the garage door contractor. I still scared the crap out of him when I semi-snuck up on him (sans bat.)
3. When the power went out for a long time (4 days, the great black out of 2003). I didn’t carry it like some idiot bat-slinger. I only did the first couple of hours when I feared roving gangs of powerless “marauders” coming to steal my non existent electricity. For the record, I didn’t wear my old hockey helmet and shoulder pads as armor.
I’ve only known one guy to ever WANT guns for home protection (and has bitched about Canada’s more stringent gun laws endlessly.) I’ve heard he has had some issues with his wife (I don’t know in detail) leading to (alleged) domestic problems. Also he’s a scared little racist shithead who I wouldn’t trust with almost any kind of weapon at all.
My Trump-loving boomer father wears his pistol everywhere because Missouri masturbates to the idea of open carry. You know, “for protection.”
And I’m always like FROM WHAT? What is there to be afraid of that necessitates being armed to just go about your life around here? I get that there are different situations in rural areas where you might need to scare away coyotes, etc. Or if you had a break-in you’re looking at a long time before someone can get there to help. But like in a boring ass suburb? No fucking need.
this^
Random thoughts.
What a world we live in.
Swiss army knife = AR-15? I can attest to the fact that the SAK has many functions not one.
Fuck Putin, cheeto and the GOP.
i keep telling gun nuts
a gun is a tool…you dont need it
arglkebarglke home defense………..
yeah …no…unless you are a dealer no ones gonna rasid your house with you in it
That’s right! A woman fended off a frickin bear without a gun!
seent that,,,,,could have ended poorly that one
but it didnt so it was awesome.
anyways i think ill stick to me dads home defence tips
whatever violence happens is what you chose to happen
dont bring a gun to fisticuffs
any fight you walk away from is a good one
Well, the fact that the bear was balancing on a narrow wall didn’t hurt. I would like to argue the statement ‘whatever violence happens is what you chose to happen’, that is true in a specific context, not true for random gun violence and I have a hard time believing someone chooses domestic violence, it is more of a willfully ignoring until it is too late and paralyzing fear takes over thing?
fair dinkum..on the domestic part
what can i say me dad was off the smacking someone around is okay generation
(the farscy has a thick skull….not all the sense got smacked out of me)
I lived in an apartment complex in Alabama for about a year that had dealers and other sketchy folks. And sometimes people got their doors kicked in and their apartments robbed.
I just moved when the lease was up and tried not to leave my apartment after dark. No one was interested in me, because I wasn’t buying or selling drugs. Dealers know who is going to involve law enforcement and who would not want to talk to cops.
To be fair, any kind of decent multitool is a better emergency tool.
I’ve used a SAK and a multitool in separate emergencies and I found out the SAK really really sucks (hence why I ended up getting the multi-tool.) The various bits including the knife blade were too small and delicate for what it was actually needed to do. I think hurt myself more than fixing what I needed to.
Still more useful than an AR-15/M-4 knock off.
Which multi-tool? I think an untapped multi-tool market is knitters/fiber artists. You could have a wpi gauge, a crochet hook, scissors, needle guage, ruler, scribe, seam ripper etc.
I have the Camillus 4-blade military knife, a leatherman Wingman and a KAF. I use the Camillus most often, I like the leatherman but my friend has a Gerber that opens with a flick of the wrist, that’s my #1 complaint with leatherman, hard to open. The KAF was a gift but I find it a little bulky for an everyday carry.
I like my Leatherman Super Tool 300. Yes, it isn’t that easy to open but it also doesn’t flop around (easy come easy go.) I used it for emergency repairs on a tent in the middle of the night in the rain and to temporarily fix a broken door knob in the winter.
I wish my leatherman had a regular knife blade, I don’t like the serrated one. Ugh, now I want another leatherman.
do it!
If there is an REI near you, it might be worth checking their used gear sale, I picked up a skeletool at one for like ~$20, and all that was wrong was a slightly loose pivot (which I fixed in like, 5 minutes…)
@lochaber Just what I need, someone to encourage my tool obsession! I’ve gone down the multi-tool rabbit hole and come up with this gem. Must have.
https://www.tigerjaw.com/product-page/p10-10-in-1-multi-tool-pocket-hand-pruner-with-sheath
@Sedevilc I don’t know… as much as I like shopping for and playing with multitools, I can be pretty picky about them, and don’t really trust many brands aside from Leatherman.
Also, despite owning several multitools, I am of the belief that a single-purpose, dedicated tool is going to be better suited for any given job than a multitool. I mostly carry my multitool for unanticipated events where I don’t have easy access to dedicated tools.
I think if you are doing gardening and such, it would be better to carry a dedicated pruning tool – if nothing else, it will be more comfortable to use. And maybe just carry a typical multitool in a pouch/pocket for those times where you might unexpectedly need a screwdriver or something.
I don’t think it’s in production anymore, but I think Leatherman once made a pruning shear multitool. Might be able to find it still being sold someplace, but odds are the price will be inflated due to “collectors” and such…
I hear you. Leatherman discontinued it’s gardening multi tool in 2008, I wonder if they would custom build one and how much that would be. I usually have my pruner in my pocket but often need a pruning saw, none of my knives has a saw. I think the tiger jaw is a good compromise but I can’t find any reviews so that is a concern.
makes sense. Ever since I was a kid with a Swiss army knife, I’ve been adamant about my mutlitool having a saw blade. And scissors are pretty handy as well. One of the reasons why I really love the Wave/Charge, is that it has both saw and scissors, and they use a decent steel for the knife blade.
And, if you are ever trying to start a fire with a ferrocerium rod/artificial flint, I haven’t found anything better than the back of the saw on a Leatherman for throwing sparks.
I’m not familiar with KAF, but I haven’t followed knives/multitools very closely in some time now.
Leatherman has a new tool line that’s easy to open, but I’m not a big fan of it. neat gimmick, I guess, but I think their Wave/Charge is the best current multitool design.
Granted, it’s not flickable/easy to open one handed, but I’ve often opened my multitool against my leg when I had my other hand occupied holding something together or whatever.
OMG, I meant SAK not KAF.
Have you seen the Deejo knives? Sweet looking but probably not the workhorse you want to carry every day.
ah, thanks, that makes more sense to me. 🙂
I think I’ve seen them before. pretty, and a neat concept, but not really what I’m looking for.
Now that I’m a bit more financially stable, I’ve been toying with the idea of hitting up a knife show and getting a handmade folder, or maybe even commissioning a custom one…
Except, I’m fairly certain a knife show will be overflowing with MAGAts and similar…
I’d be wary of the hunting crowd at a knife show. I bought a knife book at tractor supply because it had a good section on knife sharpening but it is depressingly focused on hunting related knife use.
eh, I grew up in a hunting area, and while I’ve never hunted myself, I’m somewhat neutral towards it. I can’t stand the assholes who participate solely to kill something and as a demonstration of “masculinity”. I think trophy hunting is silly, but I’m okay with those who do that, but donate the carcass. I’ve no problem with those that hunt for food. And, I figure if someone is getting a custom knife for hunting, they are likely doing some processing themselves, and less likely to be the type of hunter I hate.
Mostly, I’m concerned about the tacticool mallninja armchair commandos. The ones out there who are getting a knife with the intention of getting in a knife fight with a “terrorist” or some such bullshit. I think the prevalence of these deluded assholes is why there are so many useless knives on the market now – everything has to be a tanto point, a kerambit, have weird angles and bevels, and assorted other nonsense that makes the knife less useful as a tool, but I guess better for impressing drinking buddies, or something…
Like, a simple Drop-point can be nearly as strong as a Tanto-point, but it is still a useful shape, as it has a curve instead of an angle, and can be used for carving and whittling and such. Tanto-point blades are rather limited in their usefulness…
Sorry, I tend to get ranty about this stuff…
As to sharpening, I’m a big fan of the Spyderco Sharpmaker (the old version) – It’s easy to use, low maintenance, versatile, and it packs up nicely if you want to take it on a trip or something. The stones are artificial sapphire (I believe?), so they hold up pretty well compared to whetstones, and they don’t need water/oil added, and they clean up easy with scouring powder. They also work on weird blade shapes like serrations, recurves, etc. I think I’ve bought two or three since the 90s when I got my first one (left behind in moves, etc.), and if something happens to my current set, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy it again, even at double the price.
Today’s WTF in my local news…
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/traffic-control-flagger-shoots-at-delivery-driver-in-redmond-washington/281-69e7b247-e7f5-4f87-99d3-fe56228c4445
Wow . Blows the whole personal protection theory out of the water, doesn’t it? I can see the ads now, Tired of not getting your own fucking way? blah blah gunothemonth.
@butcherbakertoiletrymaker – here’s some garden weirdness. The other day I saw some red buds on a climbing Cecile Brunner [sweetheart pink] and thought she was sporting to red. Cool. Interesting. Today those buds are open and I can see that the rose is Dr. Huey. Dr. Huey is used as root stock all the time, but, my roses are ‘own root’. I have never seen a rose that is half Dr. Huey and half something else. I have a Dr. Huey that I planted at the end of the driveway but how the heck could he end up 50′ away? Either someone lied to me about a grafted rose or he self-seeded?
I’ve got nothing. I only plant edible things:)
I’m not a rose expert but I go with the lied to theory since Dr. Huey is used so often & grafted onto. I’ll ask my rose expert buddy.
Is it the entire plant, or just one/some branches?
Decades ago, when I worked landscaping, I vaguely remember something about some varieties of plants growing shoots/branches that “reverted” to the normal form – like a variegated plant growing an all green branch, or smooth/rounded needle juniper growing a spikey-needled branch. I don’t know how/why, it was just one of the things we looked for and trimmed off.
I need to take a closer look. I thought it was a branch off Cecile but today it looked like a shoot very close to Cecile’s main stem. I did plant Blaze in the general vicinity that I got from an Agway so maybe that is the culprit. I’m going to try to dig it up, that spot is not big enough for 3 rose bushes especially when Dr Huey is such a madman, he can fill in somewhere.
@Sedevilc, I spoke to my friend that is a master gardener he said it wasn’t seeds, it was grafted & the hybrid portion died. It happens here often when it freezes, the heartier original survives but not the hybrid portion. Do you live where that could happen?
Thank-you! I do, but what is strange is both of the other roses are alive. Cecile has had winter kill down to the ground before and come back the same so it must be Blaze. Dammit. I hope I can get the sucker out of there without damaging her roots.