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caelengrubb

How Galileo Changed Your Life - Biography - 0 views

www.biography.com/...ories-modern-physics-astronomy

shared by caelengrubb on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Galileo’s contributions to the fields of astronomy, physics, mathematics, and philosophy have led many to call him the father of modern science.
  • But his controversial theories, which impacted how we see and understand the solar system and our place within it, led to serious conflict with the Catholic Church and the long-time suppression of his achievements
  • Galileo developed one of the first telescopesGalileo didn’t invent the telescope — it was invented by Dutch eyeglass makers — but he made significant improvements to it.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • His innovations brought him both professional and financial success. He was given a lifetime tenure position at the University of Padua, where he had been teaching for several years, at double his salary.
  • And he received a contract to produce his telescopes for a group of Venetian merchants, eager to use them as a navigational tool.
  • He helped created modern astronomyGalileo turned his new, high-powered telescope to the sky. In early 1610, he made the first in a remarkable series of discoveries.
  • While the scientific doctrine of the day held that space was perfect, unchanging environments created by God, Galileo’s telescope helped change that view
  • His studies and drawings showed the Moon had a rough, uneven surface that was pockmarked in some places, and was actually an imperfect sphere
  • He was also one of the first people to observe the phenomena known as sunspots, thanks to his telescope which allowed him to view the sun for extended periods of time without damaging the eye.
  • Galileo helped prove that the Earth revolved around the sunIn 1610, Galileo published his new findings in the book Sidereus Nuncius, or Starry Messenger, which was an instant success
  • The following year, the Church banned all works that supported Copernicus’ theories and forbade Galileo from publicly discussing his works.
  • Kepler’s experiments had led him to support the idea that the planets, Earth included, revolved around the sun. This heliocentric theory, as well as the idea of Earth’s daily rotational turning, had been developed by Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus half a century earlier
  • Their belief that the Sun, and not the Earth, was the gravitational center of the universe, upended almost 2,000 years of scientific thinking, dating back to theories about the fixed, unchanging universe put forth by the Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle.
  • Galileo had been testing Aristotle’s theories for years, including an experiment in the late 16th century in which he dropped two items of different masses from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, disproving Aristotle’s belief that objects would fall at differing speeds based on their weight (Newton later improved upon this work).
  • Galileo paid a high price for his contributionsBut challenging the Aristotelian or Ptolemaic theories about the Earth’s role in the universe was dangerous stuff.
  • Geocentrism was, in part, a theoretical underpinning of the Roman Catholic Church. Galileo’s work brought him to the attention of Church authorities, and in 1615, he was called before the Roman Inquisition, accused of heresy for beliefs which contradicted Catholic scripture.
  • He became close with a number of other leading scientists, including Johannes Kepler. A German astronomer and mathematician, Kepler’s work helped lay the foundations for the later discoveries of Isaac Newton and others.
  • In 1632, after the election of a new pope who he considered more liberal, he published another book, Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, which argued both sides of the scientific (and religious) debate but fell squarely on the side of Copernicus’ heliocentrism.
  • Galileo was once again summoned to Rome. In 1633, following a trial, he was found guilty of suspected heresy, forced to recant his views and sentenced to house arrest until his death in 1642.
  • It took nearly 200 years after Galileo’s death for the Catholic Church to drop its opposition to heliocentrism.
  • In 1992, after a decade-long process and 359 years after his heresy conviction, Pope John Paul II formally expressed the Church’s regret over Galileo’s treatment.
huffem4

Twitter aims to limit people sharing articles they have not read | Twitter | The Guardian - 1 views

www.theguardian.com/...ng-articles-they-have-not-read

social media bias knowledge

shared by huffem4 on 13 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • “Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting” – the fake news website the Science Post has racked up a healthy 127,000 shares for the article which is almost entirely lorem ipsum filler text.
  • Twitter’s solution is not to ban such retweets, but to inject “friction” into the process, in order to try to nudge some users into rethinking their actions on the social network.
  • In May, the company began experimenting with asking users to “revise” their replies if they were about to send tweets with “harmful language” to other people.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • It is an approach the company has been taking more frequently recently, in an attempt to improve “platform health” without facing accusations of censorship.
  • Twitter is trying to stop people from sharing articles they have not read, in an experiment the company hopes will “promote informed discussion” on social media.
  • We’re trying to encourage people to rethink their behaviour and rethink their language before posting because they often are in the heat of the moment and they might say something they regret
  • A 2016 study from computer scientists at Columbia University and Microsoft found that 59% of links posted on Twitter are never clicked. 
lucieperloff

Facebook Decides Holocaust Denial Content Is Bad, Actually | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...als_n_5f8478dec5b62f97bac625c3

social media bias technology

shared by lucieperloff on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • A “well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally and the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especially among young people,” Bickert said, prompted the long-overdue change.
  • A “well-documented rise in anti-Semitism globally and the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especially among young people,” Bickert said, prompted the long-overdue change.
    • lucieperloff
      lucieperloff on 03 Nov 20
       
      Changing something once they realized something had to be done
  • The social media platform has become a clearinghouse for misinformation concerning virtually every subject, including Holocaust denials and anti-Semitism in general.
    • lucieperloff
      lucieperloff on 03 Nov 20
       
      Facebook (and other social media platforms) have lots of influence on today's society
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Politicians have enjoyed lax enforcement of Facebook’s community standards, thanks to a loophole the social media company created that protects their posts as “newsworthy content.”
  • “By allowing this hate propaganda on Facebook,” the group warned the company in a letter, “you are exposing the public and, in particular, youth to the anti-Semitism which fueled the Holocaust.”
    • lucieperloff
      lucieperloff on 03 Nov 20
       
      There are major reasons to fix this
  • The FBI has classified the group as a potential domestic terrorism threat.
ilanaprincilus06

Are shows like Dexter to blame for inspiring violent crimes? | Steve Lillebuen | Opinio... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...inal-season-tv-violence-murder

TV Dexter crime pop culture

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • serious crime has always been tied to pop culture.
  • The attempted assassination of US President Ronald Reagan was even linked to watching Taxi Driver.
  • But the scientific evidence backing up such a link has never been very clear, leading many to quite rightly discount the level of influence.
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  • how Twitchell's crimes challenge this new way of thinking that totally exonerates pop culture from contributing to real-life violence.
  • In 2008, he had been completing a Dexter-inspired film production when police charged him with a missing man's murder and an attack on another. An unimaginable court case then revealed all: the filmmaker had re-enacted his horror script in real-life.
    • ilanaprincilus06
      ilanaprincilus06 on 03 Nov 20
       
      How do you regulate something like this? Many people like myself, watch these shows for the plot lines or topics addressed. People would eventually maneuver around watching shows like these even if they were banned/cancelled.
  • This didn't seem like a case of insanity, mental illness or a drug-induced psychosis. Twitchell was a married father with no history of violence or criminal convictions before he transformed seemingly overnight into a would-be serial killer.
  • We just need to distinguish what it really means to be inspired rather than who is responsible.
  • Like other tragedies before it, this finger-pointing stems from an intense need to find tangible explanations for horrific violence when the answers can be far more layered, far more complex.
  • Millions around the world are now watching. The uncomfortable truth remains that so is Mark Twitchell and many others who are like him.
runlai_jiang

Black Representation in Government - 0 views

www.thoughtco.com/entation-in-government-4155827

shared by runlai_jiang on 15 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • Although the 15th Amendment passed in 1870 legally prohibited denying black men the right to vote, major efforts to disenfranchise black voters promoted the passage of the Voters Rights Act in 1965. Prior to its ratification, black voters were subject to literacy test, false voting dates, and physical violence.
  • Constance Baker Motley was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1921. Motley became interested in civil rights matters after she was banned from a public beach for being black. She sought to understand the laws that were being used to oppress her. At an early age, Motley became a civil rights advocate and was motivated to improve the treatment received by black Americans. Soon after she became the president of the local NAACP youth council.
  • Harold Washington was born on April 15, 1922, in Chicago, Illinois. Washington began high school at DuSable High School but did not receive his diploma until after World War II — during which time he served as first sergeant in the Air Army Corps. He was honorably discharged in 1946 and went on to graduate from Roosevelt College (now Roosevelt University) in 1949, and Northwestern University School of Law in 1952
runlai_jiang

Trump suggests arming teachers as a solution to increase school safety - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by runlai_jiang on 22 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • "We need more security, we need more firearms on campus, we need better background checks, and we need to study more on mental health."Read MoreFred Abt, father of Parkland shooting survivor Carson Abt, said he had discussed with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over lunch that rather than waiting for first responders to arrive, it would be more efficient to have firearms locked on school campuses.
  • "I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun," he wrote in his 2000 book, "The America We Deserve." "With today's Internet technology, we should be able to tell within 72 hours if a potential gun owner has a record."Trump disavowed those statements during the 2016 campaign.Polls have found, however, that most Americans blame Trump and Congress for not doing more on guns. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday found that 62% of respondents said Trump is not doing enough to prevent mass shootings and 77% say Congress is doing an inadequate job on the issue.
  • We're fighting hard for you and we will not stop... I just grieve for you, I feel so -- to me, there could be nothing worse than what you've gone through."
knudsenlu

Andrew Anglin: The Making of an American Nazi - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...544119

nazi language isolation change social media

shared by knudsenlu on 20 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • “You fucking wicked kike whore,” Andrew Auernheimer, The Daily Stormer’s webmaster, said in a voicemail for Gersh. “This is Trump’s America now.”
  • Over the next week, the Stormers besieged Whitefish businesses, human-rights groups, city-council members—anyone potentially connected to the targets. A single harasser called Judah’s office more than 500 times in three days, according to the Whitefish police. Gersh came home one night to find her husband sitting at home in the dark, suitcases on the floor, wondering whether they should flee. “I have never been so scared in my entire life,” she later told me.
  • That Anglin, a 33-year-old college dropout, could unleash such mayhem—Whitefish’s police chief, Bill Dial, likened it to “domestic terrorism”—was a sign of just how emboldened the alt-right had become.
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  • Anglin is an ideological descendant of men such as George Lincoln Rockwell, who created the American Nazi Party in the late 1950s, and William Luther Pierce, who founded the National Alliance, a powerful white-nationalist group, in the 1970s. Anglin admires these predecessors, who saw themselves as revolutionaries at the vanguard of a movement to take back the country. He dreams of a violent insurrection.
  • Anglin has the internet. His reach is exponentially greater, his ability to connect with like-minded young men unprecedented.
  • Anglin and his ilk like to talk about the Overton Window, a term that describes the range of acceptable discourse in society.
  • They’d been tugging at that window for years only to watch, with surprise and delight, as it flew wide open during Donald Trump’s candidacy. Suddenly it was okay to talk about banning Muslims or to cast Mexican immigrants as criminals and parasites—which meant Anglin’s even-more-extreme views weren’t as far outside the mainstream as they once had been
  • Until the Roof massacre, Burkholder hadn’t thought about the “adorable,” “happy-go-lucky” boy in her class who loved dinosaurs. Anglin was a normal kid back then, whose only remarkable quality was his extraordinarily nasal voice—it was so bad that Burkholder thought he might have a sinus problem, and raised the issue with his mother, Katie, at a parent–teacher conference.
  • y all outward appearances, Andrew Anglin had an ordinary, comfortable childhood, at least until adolescence. He grew up in a big house in Worthington Hills, an upper-middle-class neighborhood, where he collected X-Men comics, played computer games, ate burgers at the original Wendy’s restaurant, and got into music with his best friend, West Emerson. And he loved to read. One book that left a deep impression on him was Weasel, which tells the story of a boy in frontier Ohio seeking revenge against a psychopath who, having run out of American Indians to murder, takes to slaughtering white homesteaders.
  • A declared atheist, he styled his reddish hair in dreadlocks and favored jeans with 50-inch leg openings. He often wore a hoodie with a large fuck racism patch on the back.
  • Anglin was one of only two vegans at Linworth
  • But people who knew Anglin in high school told me that, for reasons that were unclear, his behavior became erratic and frightening sometime around the beginning of his sophomore year at Linworth
tongoscar

iPhone 11 Pro has just been defeated by Huawei's Google-less Mate 30 Pro | Express.co.uk - 0 views

www.express.co.uk/...o-smartphone-camera-comparison

shared by tongoscar on 10 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • “Overall, the iPhone is among the very best for exposure; it’s only in very low light when can’t keep up with devices with larger image sensors, such as the Huawei Mate 30 Pro.
  • Even though DxOMark claims the Mate 30 Pro has a better camera system overall, the iPhone 11 Pro remains the only phone of the two you can buy right now.
  • Although Huawei revealed the Mate 30 Pro at a glitzy hardware event in September, its European release remains elusive. There’s currently no word on when it’ll finally arrive.
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  • The US’s trade ban on Huawei is the most likely to blame for the delayed release. This prevents Google from granting the Mate 30 Pro an Android licence, therefore the device can’t come pre-installed with Google apps and services like the Play Store, Gmail, Chrome and Google Maps.
tongoscar

What's at Stake for Women's Rights in 2020? by Françoise Girard - Project Syn... - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...ts-by-francoise-girard-2020-01

shared by tongoscar on 22 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • EW YORK – From US Republicans’ effort to get the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a woman’s right to an abortion, to Poland’s increased restrictions on access to emergency contraception, to Brazil’s clampdown on sexual health education, this is a difficult time for women. But if the global feminist movement has proved anything over the years, it is that it can overcome powerful resistance to defend the rights of marginalized groups. In 2020, it will do so again.
  • According to “strongman” leaders like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and India’s Narendra Modi, women are born to be wives and mothers; immigrants and racial, religious, and ethnic minorities are dangerous and inferior; and LGBTQI+ persons deserve ostracism, detention, or even death. These leaders have emboldened people who share their views to engage in discrimination and violent attacks against racial or other minorities, migrants, women, and other marginalized groups.
  • Achieving social change to protect marginalized groups is never an easy process. There are no quick victories over weak opposition. But, as feminists have proved time and again, with sustained commitment, changes that once seemed impossible can later seem inevitable.
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  • Yet, as president of the International Women’s Health Coalition and a longtime women’s rights advocate, I have seen firsthand what the feminist movement can do. Consider Argentine feminists’ fight against highly restrictive abortion laws.
  • In the last year alone, there have been numerous examples of such changes. The Mexican state of Oaxaca and the Australian state of New South Wales decriminalized abortion, as did Northern Ireland, while others liberalized their laws, expanding the circumstances in which women can access safe, legal abortion services. In April, South Korea’s Supreme Court struck down the country’s abortion law as unconstitutional, setting the stage for decriminalization this year.
  • Particularly inspiring are the young female and non-binary activists who are leading movements for transformative change. For example, Emma González is demanding gun reform in the US; Bertha Zúñiga is defending the land rights of Honduras’ indigenous people; and Jamie Margolin and Greta Thunberg have emerged as leading climate activists.
  • Feminist activists will continue this work at the Beijing+25 Generation Equality Forum, convened by Mexico and France, in Mexico City in May and Paris in July. There, they will call for bold new commitments to address crosscutting challenges like climate change and the refugee crisis.
  • This broader perspective is vital. In fact, feminists must strengthen their alliances with other progressive movements, especially those fighting for environmental sustainability, racial justice, and LGBTQI+ rights. Only by mobilizing together and supporting one another’s agendas can we overcome white supremacist, heteronormative, patriarchal, and exploitative forces to build a more just, equitable, and sustainable world.
mmckenziejr01

The Most Egregious Straw Men of 2016 | Inverse - 0 views

www.inverse.com/...aw-men-arguments-politics-2016

straw man fallacy cognitive biases politics

shared by mmckenziejr01 on 24 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • Fallacies are illicit shortcuts in reasoning, bad arguments that sound good but don’t actually make logical sense. Politicians and other public figures use them all the time ad nauseam in speeches and debates in order to better capture the hearts and minds of their audience.
  • But of all the logical fallacies out there, one stands out as being particularly powerful and popular, especially in politics: the straw man.
  • But that’s the truth, and the truth is irrelevant when it comes to fallacies. Just the fact that Clinton mentioned the term open borders, combined with her more liberal stance on immigration, was enough for Trump to say that she’s in favor of totally open borders
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  • The straw man fallacy involves the construction of a second argument that to some degree resembles, in a simplified or exaggerated way, the argument that your opponent is really making. It is much easier for you to attack that perverted point than it is to address the original point being made.
  • Clinton did not say she wanted to get rid of the Second Amendment in any sense. She had expressed support for expanding background checks and a possible assault weapons ban. Those things are reasonable (moderate, even), so it’s much simpler for Trump to ignore her argument and make one up for her
  • What are in large part reasonable measures taken to avoid unnecessary offences are recast by these Republicans to be softness or attacks on people’s freedom of speech. By connoting political correctness with these attributes, Republican politicians can ensure that their constituent remains hostile to the idea. Then, when they come across an argument in need of simplification, they can call back to that already-crafted association.
  • Sanders’s healthcare plan would have ended Medicare and the ACA as we know them, but only to replace them with a universal healthcare system. No one stood to lose their coverage, but the way Clinton was arguing, it looked like people might. By essentially leaving out half of Sanders’s argument, Clinton made a case against a fictional version of Sanders that seemed just real enough to fool the average voter.
  • Still, mostly everyone today understands that the Earth isn’t flat. They recognize that, as Scaramucci said, “science” got one wrong there. By equating these two concepts, he assumes any argument that recognizes climate change to also be one that claims the Earth is flat. For that reason, this particular brand of climate change denial wins the award for best (or maybe worst) straw man of 2016.
  • mmckenziejr01 on 24 Nov 17
     
    Here are a few examples of candidates using straw man fallacies to try to win over voters during the 2016 election. This shows just how prevalent cognitive biases are in our everyday lives without us even noticing them.
katherineharron

Why Donald Trump can't grasp this moment (Opinion) - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 02 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • In his mind, he seems to think it's the riots of the 1960s all over again, and his reaction appears both terrified and angry. "LAW & ORDER!" was the response he voiced via Twitter on Sunday and again in a public address on Monday.
  • a hellscape governed by a man frozen in his childhood and out of step with the times. The world is spiraling out of control and its most powerful man is abjectly unprepared and unqualified.
  • he convulsive 1960s was America's most trying period of unrest in modern times.
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  • By 1989, when he spoke out about the infamous assault on a jogger in Central Park he would decry "the complete breakdown" of society and yearn for the days "when I was young" and he saw cops rough-up two loudmouths who had harassed a waitress. He wanted a return of that sort of policing and called on New York State to adopt the death penalty after the arrests of the five young black and Latino men in the jogger case. Years later, those men were found to be innocent.
  • Trump didn't seem to consider the suffering that caused the crises of his youth.
  • the trauma of the violent response to the civil rights struggle and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy led to a lifelong struggle to understand and address the pain of our fellow citizens who sought dignity and equality
  • His drive for the presidency ended with him in the Oval Office thanks to an Electoral College system that lets the loser of the national vote gain the presidency.
  • When asked about when America was great he recalled the time of his childhood, the 1940s and 1950s, when "we were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody, we had just won a war, we were pretty much doing what we had to do." He also remains nostalgic for the stereotypical 1950s housewife, speaking wistfully of women like actress Donna Reed, who always seemed to play the role of a gentle and accommodating woman.
  • With no experience in government, the military, or genuine civic engagement, Trump brought his true self to the White House, where his team included many who seemed to share his back-to-the-50s mentality. At the Justice Department federal efforts to safeguard civil rights were curbed. The Department of Education rolled back protections for the rights of women and minorities. The Pentagon barred transgender recruits.
  • There was an inevitability in the way that he first denied the problem and then banked on solutions that reeked of his pre-'60s childhood, when polio was defeated by a vaccine and new drugs arrived to vanquish infectious diseases.
  • he had never noticed that the world and its problems are complex and require respectful study and difficult, collaborative work.
  • That the US is a country in crisis, without a leader, is now so obvious that as Time magazine reported last week, cracks are forming in his once-unbreakable base. The doubts the magazine documented before the country was convulsed by recent protests against police brutality reflected his failed response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which contributed to a death toll now exceeding 100,000
  • he economic toll that includes 40 million unemployed, hit the poor and working class harder than others. Then George Floyd died on a Minneapolis street as a police officer pressed his knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes.
  • That the President has been deaf to the suffering, and incapable of responding like any previous president would, reminds us that his character, his view of humanity, and his life experience, made him wholly unqualified for the role he now occupies.
tongoscar

Coronavirus economic impact: Australia could be among world's hardest hit nations | Wor... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ong-worlds-hardest-hit-nations

shared by tongoscar on 22 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • Australia could be one of the countries worst affected by the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak as factories in China remain shuttered and millions of people are confined to their homes and banned from travelling.
  • But evidence is mounting that China is suffering a significant slowdown. S&P has downgraded its growth forecast for the world’s second biggest economy to 5% this year from 5.75%, predicting that the impact would spread around the world, while it seems clear that China’s lockdown is set to deprive Australia of billions of dollars in revenue from big spending tourists and students.
  • “When you look at how this will affect other countries, what their exposure is to China, how big the economy is, what type of companies it has, then Australia ticks a lot of the boxes,” he said. “In terms of which countries will be most affected, we’re right up there.”
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  • “It’s not just the numbers of tourists – it’s that they spend quite a lot because of the way they travel with packages, how they get around and spending on shopping,” he says. “If that gets cut off it’s a material impact on the economy in Australia.”
  • However, some partial data released on Friday suggests the scale of the problem that is emerging, with figures showing that property sales in China’s so-called first-tier cities fell by 93% on 3-5 February compared with the same days last year. Railway passenger traffic was down 89% on 5 February.
tongoscar

US still out front in tech race, China experts say in response to Pentagon claim | Sout... - 0 views

www.scmp.com/...ace-china-experts-say-response

shared by tongoscar on 03 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • these technologies had not only military applications but were also critical for long-term economic prosperity, making them important to the future of US-China
  • China exhibited hypersonic missiles and drones at last month’s National Day parade, and has just launched a commercial 5G – fifth generation mobile network – service on Friday, which is the biggest in the world.
  • Despite breakthroughs in certain fields like 5G, there was more generally a clear gap between China’s digital information and electronics technologies and the world’s technological leaders, according to Beijing-based naval expert Li Jie.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “Imagine what the world would look like if China was setting standards,” he said. “Over time, that means we have fewer levers to shape what the US wants to do, both from a global technology standpoint and also what are the values that are highlighted around the world as ones to be looked up to.”
  • Chinese experts have rejected the claim by a senior Pentagon official that the US is lagging behind China in some key dual-use technologies.
  • But, Brown warned, for China to set the pace for these technologies would be “game-changing”.
  • For the past 50 to 80 years, the US had led the way and set the standards in almost all important technologies and industries,
  • Huawei, China’s telecommunication giant has won contracts to construct the 5G infrastructures for many countries, despite the US campaign to ban Huawei equipment over security concerns.
tongoscar

'The Police Do Nothing': Thugs Attack Protesters with Impunity in Bolivia - 0 views

www.breitbart.com/...st-protesters-impunity-bolivia

shared by tongoscar on 03 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • Protesters noted that, even disregarding the fact that the constitution banned him from running before the judicial intervention, Morales appeared to be only narrowly defeating opponent Carlos Mesa before the electoral commission abruptly shut down an electronic count.
  • A woman can be heard echoing the journalist, saying, “The police aren’t doing anything!”
  • “Most of the injured who arrived at clinics and hospitals showed injuries produced by firearms, stab wounds, burns, and concussions,”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The mining industry has traditionally supported Morales.
  • “The interim OAS (Organisation of American States) mission report has identified substantial shortcomings of the electoral process, notably the unexpected interruption of the publication of the voting results, that undermine the necessary credibility and transparency,”
tongoscar

Cut off from family, unable to travel: how US sanctions punish Iranian Americans | US n... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...an-americans-us-sanctions-iran

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Following the US assassination of a top Iranian general earlier this month and Iranian airstrikes against US military bases in Iraq, Donald Trump once again imposed biting sanctions against the regime in Tehran.
  • Iranian Americans across the United States told the Guardian about their worries for their family members and friends affected by US sanctions. And they spoke of the ways the policies affect their own lives, work and communities in the US. “I was raised under sanctions my entire life,” said Nazanin Asadi, 34,
  • Under sanctions law, people are forced to apply for specific licenses when they seek to be exempted from prohibited transactions, and even for allowed activities, there are complicated reporting requirements.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • During floods in Iran last year, it was painful that the sanctions blocked Iranian Americans from being able to offer basic donations,
  • That feeling of guilt is even worse when there’s a threat of war,
  • “Whether sanctions, the travel ban, or your loyalty being questioned … it’s really isolating,” she said, adding of sanctions: “It’s an ineffective policy that is also harming Americans themselves.”
tongoscar

3 gun bills, including one handgun a month law, pass Virginia Senate | WSET - 0 views

wset.com/...month-law-pass-virginia-senate

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • The three bills include requiring background checks on all firearm sales, limiting gun purchases to one in a 30-day period, and allowing localities to ban guns from public events.
  • Democrats said they were reasonable measures that would improve public safety while respecting the rights of law-abiding gun owners. They said the public had made clear by voting for Democrats in recent elections that new gun laws were needed.
  • Governor Ralph Northam has a package of gun legislation that he's pushing for that include prohibiting all individuals subject to final protective orders from possessing firearms, requiring that lost and stolen firearms be reported to law enforcement within 24 hours, and creating an Extreme Risk Protective Order.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • More than 100 counties, cities, and towns have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries and vowed to oppose any new "unconstitutional restrictions" on guns.
tongoscar

Trump says Second Amendment is 'under very serious attack' in Virginia ahead of gun-rig... - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...ond-amendment-gun-rights-rally

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • “Your 2nd Amendment is under very serious attack in the Great Commonwealth of Virginia,” the president tweeted.
  • Pro-gun activists have challenged that order. But a Richmond Circuit Court judge upheld Northam’s order, denying a lawsuit brought forth by the Virginia Citizens Defense League as well as Gunowners of America seeking an injunction against the Democratic governor's ban.
  • Republicans decried the legislation as an assault on the Second Amendment. They said the bill was aimed at appeasing special interest groups and donors such as Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg. GOP senators said the new laws would entrap innocent people and do nothing to stop bad actors.
tongoscar

Climate change and the UN Security Council: a short history | World Economic Forum - 0 views

www.weforum.org/...ge-and-the-un-security-council

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • The nature of conflict has changed in the 21st century. Developments in technology, the emergence of non-state actors and the social implications of globalization are altering the global policy regime at an accelerating pace. Since the start of the second millennium, the world has also experienced multiple paradigm shifts on climate change - from ignorance, to engagement, to collective head-scratching.
  • In 2011, a Security Council Presidential Statement asked the UN Secretary General at the time, Ban-Ki Moon, to provide contextual information about climate change in his reporting to the Council. However, the response from the system was lukewarm.
  • In 2018, China adjusted its position in the Security Council and declared climate change to be relevant in a security context, in light of its wish to enhance multilateral cooperation and to take a comprehensive approach to security risks.
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  • Simultaneously, the US had withdrawn its engagement and had backed away from even paying lip service to climate change in all UN fora, following the change of administration in Washington.
tongoscar

Coronavirus: Russia to ban Chinese citizens from entry - as it happened | Financial Times - 0 views

www.ft.com/...28-043c-36e7-a1b9-a90359655dbb

shared by tongoscar on 19 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • Hubei reports 93 new coronavirus deaths Hubei, the centre of the coronavirus outbreak in China, reported 93 new deaths to the end of Monday, down from the previous day’s tally of 100. The province’s health commission also reported 1,807 new cases, lower than that recorded for Sunday.
  • Apple has warned that disruption in China from the coronavirus will cause its revenues to fall short in the current quarter, marking the second time in little over a year that weakness in China has forced the world’s most valuable technology company to issue a financial alert.
  • The California-based company said its factories were “ramping up more slowly than we anticipated had anticipated” after the Chinese government extended the lunar new year break and restricted the movement of people and when businesses could reopen.
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  • China says coronavirus death toll reaches almost 1,900
  • Japanese stocks slide almost 1% after Apple sales warning
  • Gauging the weakness in China's economy
  • Economists broadly expect China's growth rate to cool sharply in the first quarter of this year — although the extent of the slowdown is the subject of debate.
  • Traffic congestion Congestion in 100 major Chinese cities typically picks up in the days following the lunar new year holiday. That has not been the case this year.
  • Coal consumption Major electricity producers consumed 35 per cent less coal during the first 16 days of February than "normal seasonality would suggest", Goldman said.
  • Asia Apple suppliers slip after warning from iPhone maker Share prices for Apple suppliers in Asia fell after the Californian company warned that disruptions in China from the coronavirus will cause revenues to fall short in the current quarter.
Javier E

The Masks Masquerade - INCERTO - Medium - 0 views

medium.com/...-masks-masquerade-7de897b517b7

masks pandemic response statistics decision-making forecasting

shared by Javier E on 18 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • Highlight
  • First error: missing the compounding effect
  • People who are good at exams (and become bureaucrats, economists, or hacks), my experience has been, are not good at understanding nonlinearities and dynamics.
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  • The WHO, CDC and other bureaucracies initially failed to quickly realize that the benefits of masks compound, simply because two people are wearing them and you have to look at the interaction.
  • Let us say (to simplify) that masks reduce both transmission and reception to p. What effect on the R0(that is, the rate of spreading of the infection)?
  • Simply the naive approach (used by the CDC/WHO bureaucrats and other imbeciles) is to say if masks reduce the transmission probability to ¼, one would think it would then drop from, say R0= 5, to R0=1 ¼. Yuuge, but there is better.
  • For one should count both sides. Under our simplification, with p=1/4 we get R0'= p² R0 . The drop in R becomes 93.75%! You divide R by 16! Even with masks working at 50% we get a 75% drop in R0.
  • Second error: Missing the Nonlinearity of the Risk of Infection
  • we are in the convex part of the curve. For example, to use the case above, a reduction of viral load by 75% for a short exposure could reduce the probability of infection by 95% or more!
  • Third Error: Mistaking Absence of Evidence for Evidence of Absence
  • “There is no evidence that masks work”, I kept hearing repeated to me by the usual idiots calling themselves “evidence based” scientists. The point is that there is no evidence that locking the door tonight will prevent me from being burglarized. But everything that may block transmission could help.
  • Unlike school, real life is not about certainties. When in doubt, use what protection you can
  • Fourth Error: Misunderstanding the Market and PeoplePaternalistic bureaucrats resisted inviting the general public to use masks on grounds that the supply was limited and would be needed by health professionals — hence they lied to us saying “masks are not effective”
  • Fifth Error: Missing Extremely Strong Statistical Signals
  • they fear to be presenting “anecdotes”, and fail to grasp the broader notion of statistical signals where you look at the whole story, not the body parts.
  • evidence compounds.
  • We have a) the salon story where two infected stylists failed to infect all their 140 clients (making the probability of infection for bilateral mask wearing safely below 1% for a salon-style exposure)
  • plus b) the rate of infection of countries where masks were mandatory
  • plus c) tons of papers with more or less flawed methodologies, etc.
  • Sixth Error: The Non-Aggression Principle
  • “Libertarians” (in brackets) are resisting mask wearing on grounds that it constrains their freedom. Yet the entire concept of liberty lies in the Non-Aggression Principle, the equivalent of the Silver Rule: do not harm others; they in turn should not harm you.
  • Even more insulting is the demand by pseudolibertarians that Costco should banned from forcing customers to wear mask — but libertarianism allows you to set the rules on your own property. Costco should be able to force visitors to wear pink shirts and purple glasses if they wished.
  • Note that by infecting another person you are not infecting just another person. You are infecting many many more and causing systemic risk.
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