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clairemann

Why Women Vote for Democratic Presidential Candidates More | Time - 0 views

time.com/...gender-gap-politics

US history Culture election gop

shared by clairemann on 01 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • As the electoral odds facing President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have continued to diverge in national and state polls, there’s at least one area where the divergence has been particularly striking: By early October, one national poll had Biden leading Trump by over 20 points among registered female voters; Trump and Biden were tied among likely male voters
  • Nationally, women in the U.S. have had the vote for 100 years. For the last 40 of those years, they have voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in greater numbers than men have.
  • It took 60 years for women to vote in the same proportion as men. In 1980, for the first time since the passage of the 19th Amendment, women voted at the same rate as men. That was also the first time they voted noticeably differently from men.
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  • The party removed support for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from its platform that year, after 40 years of relatively consistent support. Further, for the first time since Roe v. Wade was decided, there was a clear divide between the candidates on support for abortion rights, as Reagan was on the record supporting a constitutional amendment banning them.
  • What then was driving the gap?
  • Political analysts attributed this loss to the GOP’s continuing failure to win over women voters.
  • In the end, the explanation Hinckley offered was predictable and mundane: women were voting their economic interests.
  • Reagan spent quite a bit of time and energy in 1982 and 1983 trying to appeal to women. He nominated women to his cabinet and put energy into promoting accomplishments like expanded tax credits for childcare. He was not, however, willing to address the issue that his pollsters had identified as driving the gender gap; he continued to cut government benefits.
  • Reagan never really tried to win over Black women, for example; instead, he focused on white homemakers and professionals and tried to persuade those women that his economic policies were in their best interests.
  • At the same time, Democrats have recognized women more broadly as a key element of their coalition. The Democratic platform has continuously paid proportionally more attention to women’s issues such as abortion rights and family leave than the GOP platform.
  • That these were both bills specifically addressing women’s economic interests is unlikely to be an accident. Women drive Democratic victories, and women’s economic experiences drive their votes.
  • If Joe Biden manages to win in November, it is likely to be with the largest gender gap ever recorded. The question that should be on voters’ minds is what legislation women want him to act on first.
Javier E

On Trump, Keep it Simple (In 5 Points) - 0 views

talkingpointsmemo.com/...ump-keep-it-simple-in-5-points

trump personality analysis

shared by Javier E on 07 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • at this point we know Trump quite well.
  • 1: Trump is a Damaged Personality: Trump is an impulsive narcissist who is easily bored and driven mainly by the desire to chalk up 'wins' which drive the affirmation and praise which are his chief need and drive. He needs to dominate everyone around him and is profoundly susceptible to ego injuries tied to not 'winning', not being the best, not being sufficiently praised and acclaimed, etc. All of this drives a confrontational style and high levels of organizational chaos and drama.
  • 2: Trump is a Great Communicator: Trump has an intuitive and profound grasp of a certain kind of branding. It's not sophisticated. But mass branding seldom is. It is intuitive, even primal. 'Make America Great Again' may be awful and retrograde in all its various meanings. But it captured in myriad ways almost every demand, fear and grievance that motivated the Americans who eventually became the Trump base
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  • Despite his manic temperament, impulsiveness and emotional infantility, this acumen gives him real and in some ways profound communication skills. The two don't cancel each other out. They are both always present. They grow from the same root.
  • Despite all their differences, Trump meets his voters in a common perception (real or not) of being shunned, ignored and disrespected by 'elites'. In short, his politics and his connection with his core voters is based on grievance. This is a profound and enduring connection. This part of his constituency likely amounts to only 25% or 30% of the electorate at most. But it is a powerful anchor on the right.
  • the greatest single explanation of Trump is that his politics profoundly galvanized a minority of the electorate and only a minority of the electorate. Almost everyone who wasn't galvanized was repulsed. But once he had secured the GOP nomination with that minority, the power of partisan polarization kicked in to lock into place perhaps the next 15% to 20% of the electorate which otherwise would never have supported him.
  • As long as Trump remains "us" to Republican voters I see little reason to think anything we can imagine will shake that very high level of support he gets from self-identified Republicans. That likely means that, among other things, no matter how unpopular Trump gets, Republican lawmakers will continue to support him because the chances of ending their careers is greater in a GOP primary than in a general election
  • if Trump's ideology is fluid, he has drawn around him advisors who can only be termed extremists. I believe the chief reason is that Trump's authoritarian personality resonates with extremist politics and vice versa. We should expect them to keep catalyzing each other in dangerous and frightening ways.
  • What does all this mean? We should not think in terms of counter-intuition or 12 dimensional chess. Trump wants to be President and he wants to win and be the best. But he is generally unpopular, has a policy agenda which has great difficulty achieving majority support and a temperament which makes effective governance profoundly difficult.
  • That mix makes the praise and affirmation he craves as President extremely challenging to achieve. Like many with similar temperaments and personalities he has a chronic need to generate drama and confrontation to stabilize himself. It's that simple. It won't change. It won't get better.
Javier E

Prisons, Privatization, Patronage - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-privatization-patronage.html

privatization prisons corruption ideology conservative public policy politics US

shared by Javier E on 22 Jun 12 - Cached
  • Over the past few days, The New York Times has published several terrifying reports about New Jersey’s system of halfway houses — privately run adjuncts to the regular system of prisons
  • The horrors described are part of a broader pattern in which essential functions of government are being both privatized and degraded.
  • you really need to see it in the broader context of a nationwide drive on the part of America’s right to privatize government functions, very much including the operation of prisons. What’s behind this drive?
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  • it reflects conservative belief in the magic of the marketplace, in the superiority of free-market competition over government planning.
  • despite many promises that prison privatization will lead to big cost savings, such savings — as a comprehensive study by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, part of the U.S. Department of Justice, concluded — “have simply not materialized.”
  • To the extent that private prison operators do manage to save money, they do so through “reductions in staffing patterns, fringe benefits, and other labor-related costs.”
  • So what’s really behind the drive to privatize prisons, and just about everything else?
  • One answer is that privatization can serve as a stealth form of government borrowing, in which governments avoid recording upfront expenses (or even raise money by selling existing facilities) while raising their long-run costs in ways taxpayers can’t see. We hear a lot about the hidden debts that states have incurred in the form of pension liabilities; we don’t hear much about the hidden debts now being accumulated in the form of long-term contracts with private companies hired to operate prisons, schools and more.
  • Another answer is that privatization is a way of getting rid of public employees, who do have a habit of unionizing and tend to lean Democratic in any case.
  • But the main answer, surely, is to follow the money. Never mind what privatization does or doesn’t do to state budgets; think instead of what it does for both the campaign coffers and the personal finances of politicians and their friends. As more and more government functions get privatized, states become pay-to-play paradises, in which both political contributions and contracts for friends and relatives become a quid pro quo for getting government business
  • nonprivatized government has its own problems of undue influence, that prison guards and teachers’ unions also have political clout, and this clout sometimes distorts public policy. Fair enough. But such influence tends to be relatively transparent. Everyone knows about those arguably excessive public pensions; it took an investigation by The Times over several months to bring the account of New Jersey’s halfway-house-hell to light.
  • It is, instead, almost surely a glimpse of a pervasive and growing reality, of a corrupt nexus of privatization and patronage that is undermining government across much of our nation.
Javier E

What Jobs Will the Robots Take? - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...283239

jobs employment technology labor-replacement

shared by Javier E on 01 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Nearly half of American jobs today could be automated in "a decade or two," according to a new paper
  • The question is: Which half?
  • Where do machines work better than people?
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • in the past 30 years, software and robots have thrived at replacing a particular kind of occupation: the average-wage, middle-skill, routine-heavy worker, especially in manufacturing and office admin. 
  • the next wave of computer progress will continue to shred human work where it already has: manufacturing, administrative support, retail, and transportation. Most remaining factory jobs are "likely to diminish over the next decades," they write. Cashiers, counter clerks, and telemarketers are similarly endangered
  • here's a chart of the ten jobs with a 99-percent likelihood of being replaced by machines and software. They are mostly routine-based jobs (telemarketing, sewing) and work that can be solved by smart algorithms (tax preparation, data entry keyers, and insurance underwriters)
  • I've also listed the dozen jobs they consider least likely to be automated. Health care workers, people entrusted with our safety, and management positions dominate the list.
  • Although the past 30 years have hollowed out the middle, high- and low-skill jobs have actually increased, as if protected from the invading armies of robots by their own moats
  • If you wanted to use this graph as a guide to the future of automation, your upshot would be: Machines are better at rules and routines; people are better at directing and diagnosing. But it doesn't have to stay that way.
  • Higher-skill workers have been protected by a kind of social-intelligence moat. Computers are historically good at executing routines, but they're bad at finding patterns, communicating with people, and making decisions, which is what managers are paid to do
  • lower-skill workers have been protected by the Moravec moat. Hans Moravec was a futurist who pointed out that machine technology mimicked a savant infant: Machines could do long math equations instantly and beat anybody in chess, but they can't answer a simple question or walk up a flight of stairs. As a result, menial work done by people without much education (like home health care workers, or fast-food attendants) have been spared, too.
  • robots are finally crossing these moats by moving and thinking like people. Amazon has bought robots to work its warehouses. Narrative Science can write earnings summaries that are indistinguishable from wire reports. We can say to our phones I'm lost, help and our phones can tell us how to get home. 
  • In a decade, the idea of computers driving cars went from impossible to boring.
  • The first wave showed that machines are better at assembling things. The second showed that machines are better at organization things. Now data analytics and self-driving cars suggest they might be better at pattern-recognition and driving. So what are we better at?
  • One conclusion to draw from this is that humans are, and will always be, superior at working with, and caring for, other humans. In this light, automation doesn't make the world worse. Far from it: It creates new opportunities for human ingenuity.  
  • But robots are already creeping into diagnostics and surgeries. Schools are already experimenting with software that replaces teaching hours. The fact that some industries have been safe from automation for the last three decades doesn't guarantee that they'll be safe for the next one.
  • It would be anxious enough if we knew exactly which jobs are next in line for automation. The truth is scarier. We don't really have a clue.
Javier E

Top 10 books on U.S. interrogation-The Best Defense | FOREIGN POLICY - 0 views

ricks.foreignpolicy.com

interrogation torture

shared by Javier E on 09 Aug 13 - Cached
  • The Army bureaucracy and culture prizes information flow and reliance on assets and technology, making personal leadership a secondary priority. For example, reports --how to send them, what was the best format, and their content were the key priority prior to the commencement of DATE during our preparations. This over-emphasis on information flow and technology meant that during the actual exercise, there was little attempt to actually gain good situational awareness through battlefield circulations and terrain analysis.
  • in The Sling and the Stone. Hammes argues that during the 1990s and into the first years of the 20th century, DOD developed an institutional mindset completely centered around technology. The planning and vision papers put out "see increased technical capabilities of command and control as the key factor shaping future war." The command and control systems created would "exceed the capabilities of any opponent and will provide us with a near-perfect understanding of the battlefield."
  • Because of the emphasis on information flow and technology, it's natural for commanders to remain in their command posts where they can have access to the flow of reports from the front and UAV feeds from above. In theory, they can access a near-perfect view of the battlefield and micro-manage their formations thanks to the excellent communication and sensor technologies at their disposal. In such circumstances, commanders moving forward behind their lead assault elements aren't necessary to get a good idea of the battle or drive their subordinates to take action quickly.
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  • This viewpoint formed the basis for the Future Combat System (FCS) and drove our training and mindset for much of 1990s. As a retired general told me who played a key role in the initiation of FCS , "future combat system was hijacked by people who thought you could completely lift the fog of war." Although FCS was eventually scrapped, the ideas that underpin it still drive Army culture. "Currently, DOD has defined the future as technology and is driving all experiments in that direction."
  • DATE showed the fallacy of this mindset. The opposing forces we fought did not afford us the opportunity when they attacked to form a near-perfect view of the battle. Why? Because they moved so quickly and concentrated their forces so well that by the time reports and UAV feeds were processed, the information was already useless. This occurred because commanders never moved forward to get a good idea of the terrain, and so our enemy was able to utilize it effectively to bypass all of the obstacles and areas we planned to kill them in.
Javier E

Inferior Products and Labor Drive Modern Construction - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...drive-modern-construction.html

infrastructure quality ethic history culture

shared by Javier E on 28 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • When I see a commercial building under construction today, I see nothing like this in the materials and workmanship, perhaps because it is simply a function of finance, expected to survive only until it is fully amortized in a company’s budget.
  • This is not the fault of homeowners, but of the industries whose practices favor the use of inferior products and labor that drive modern construction: the developers, lenders, builders and Realtors who, to make quick money, have created a stock of domestic and commercial infrastructure that is a waste of resources and will not last.
  • this experience, multiplied by those of millions of homeowners, affects how we as a country view our public infrastructure. We have seen short-term fixes and shoddy workmanship at home, and we see our bridges and roads the same way.
Javier E

The Wrath of Volkswagen's Drivers - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...th-of-volkswagens-drivers.html

VW car fraud emissions

shared by Javier E on 22 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • When new emissions standards were introduced in 2009, Volkswagen was the first major carmaker to offer vehicles that could meet the new rules. In August, diesel sales accounted for 23 percent of all cars sold by Volkswagen in the United States.
  • “It’s a new level of cynicism in the auto industry,” said Jack R. Nerad, executive market analyst at Kelley Blue Book. “We have seen honest mistakes and lapses of judgment before, and tragic things happening, but this strikes me as different. The intent from the beginning seemed to be to evade standard norms.”
  • When he tried the Volkswagen diesel, he was enchanted with how much fun it was to drive, including the engine’s quick response and the sporty handling. The government’s rating for fuel economy was far less than the Prius got: 29 miles per gallon city and 39 m.p.g. highway with the automatic transmission. But he was sold on the Volkswagen.“It was pretty powerful and pretty fast, and now I know why: It is because they are not controlling emissions,” Mr. Decker said.
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  • “If the reason they are fun to drive is that they are spewing up to 40 times the amount of pollutants they are supposed to be, I just find it outrageous, frankly,”
  • “Of course, owners who bought these diesel vehicles in part because of any environmental benefits may have moral objections to driving them, and they may feel they have no other option but to keep their cars parked for the time being,” Ms. Caldwell said. “And then there are owners who just feel flat-out deceived and will want their money back.
katyshannon

'Anti-malarial mosquitoes' created using controversial genetic technology | Science | T... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ntroversial-genetic-technology

anti-malarial mosquitos genetic modification technology science the guardian health

shared by katyshannon on 24 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Hundreds of genetically modified mosquitoes that are incapable of spreading the malaria parasite to humans have been created in a laboratory as part of a radical approach to combating the disease.
  • The move marks a major step towards the development of a powerful and controversial technology called a “gene drive” that aims to tackle the disease by forcing anti-malarial genes into swarms of wild mosquitoes.
  • The procedure can rapidly transform the genetic makeup of natural insect populations, making it a dramatic new tool in the fight against an infection that still claims over 400,000 lives a year. The same technology is being considered for other human diseases and infections that devastate crops.
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  • But gene drive technology is so powerful that leading researchers have urged scientists in the field to be cautious. A warning published in August in the prestigious journal Science, by teams in the UK, US, Australia and Japan, said that while gene drives have the potential to save lives and bring other benefits, the accidental release of modified organisms “could have unpredictable ecological consequences.”
  • They call on scientists to ensure that experimental organisms cannot escape from their labs, be released on purpose, or even find their way out accidentally in the event of a natural disaster. Researchers should also be open about the precautions they take to prevent an unintended release, they said.
  • In the latest study, mosquitoes were engineered to carry genes for antibodies that target the human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. When released into the wild, researchers believe the modified insects will breed with normal mosquitoes and pass the anti-malarial genes on to their young, making an ever-increasing proportion of future generations resistant to the malaria parasite.
  • In lab tests, the modified mosquitoes passed on their anti-malarial genes to 99.5% of their offspring, suggesting that the procedure was incredibly effective and efficient. To track which insects inherited the antibody genes, the scientists added a tracer gene that gave carriers red fluorescent eyes.
Javier E

Cars' Voice-Activated Systems Distract Drivers, Study Finds - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tract-drivers-study-finds.html

drivers car distraction

shared by Javier E on 27 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • When driving, don’t talk to your car — or your phone.
  • research found that the most complicated voice-activated systems can take a motorist’s mind off the road for as long as 27 seconds after he or she stops interacting with the system. Even less complex systems can leave the driver distracted for 15 seconds after a motorist disengages, the research shows
  • This lingering distraction reflects the time required for drivers to reorient themselves to the road after interacting with their cars’ voice-activated technology
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  • He said that using this technology required the same kind of brain power as “balancing a checkbook while driving.”
  • “When you hang up, you have to figure out where you are, how fast you’re going, where other vehicles are,”
  • Texting while driving, an activity that is almost universally condemned as dangerous, is becoming more commonplace, not less so, according to survey
  • Carmakers have said that their voice-activated systems provide a safer alternative to manipulating phones with hands that should be on the wheel.
brookegoodman

Indian Ocean system that drives extreme weather in Australia likely to worsen with glob... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-to-worsen-with-global-heating

crisis

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Researchers believe the Indian Ocean Dipole is more clearly influenced by climate change than previously thought
  • Indian Ocean surface temperatures that helped drive hot and dry conditions in eastern Australia last year were more clearly influenced by climate change than previously thought and are likely to worsen in future, researchers have found.
  • The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is the difference in temperature between the western and eastern Indian Ocean. When the IOD is in positive mode, warmer waters develop off the Horn of Africa and cooler waters develop off Indonesia. This leads to hotter and drier weather in Australia.
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  • The scientists used fossil and modern coral cores to examine how frequently these events occurred back to 1240. Analysing data from 500 of those years, they found an extreme positive Indian Ocean Dipole like the one Australia experienced in 2019 was rare, occurring just 10 times.
  • The strongest event on the instrumental record occurred in 1997. But using the coral records the researchers were able to find another more extreme case in 1675.
  • The findings, published in Nature, are the largest record developed for the Indian Ocean Dipole. Other research has also suggested that Indian Ocean Dipole events have become more frequent in recent decades.
  • “Looking at the tropical oceans in this interconnected way improves our understanding of seasonal to decadal climate variations in regions that profoundly impact Australia,” England said.He said this could help Australia “to be better prepared for future climate risks caused by the Indian Ocean Dipole”.
anonymous

Self-driving shuttle bus in crash on first day - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...technology-41923814

technology development US

shared by anonymous on 09 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • A self-driving shuttle bus in Las Vegas was involved in a crash on its first day of service.
  • Nobody was injured in the incident which city officials say was the fault of the human driver of the lorry. The man was subsequently given a ticket by police.
  • A spokesman for the City of Las Vegas told the BBC the crash was a “fender bender” - a minor collision - and that the shuttle would likely be back out on the road on Thursday after some routine diagnostics tests.
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  • Self-driving technology has been involved in crashes before, but almost all reported incidents have been due to human error.
anonymous

Texas Republicans Look To Curb Local Efforts To Expand Voting Access : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...fforts-to-expand-voting-access

shared by anonymous on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Harris County is home to Houston, and is one of the most populous and diverse areas of the country. Longoria says figuring out how to make polling locations less crowded was a main focus in the leadup to the 2020 elections, but she had always wanted to make voting easier as well.
  • One of her solutions was to increase the hours that voting centers were open. Some polling locations were open 24 hours at one point. Longoria says being open late at night gave shift workers — including first responders — more opportunities to vote. She says it also "spread out the number of people voting at any time" at a location.
  • Longoria also looked to local businesses, which were shifting to curbside options for their customers. She came up with drive-thru voting.
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  • Longoria and her team also tried to make mail voting easier by sending out ballot applications to all eligible voters, in case people didn't know they had that option.
  • During a recent news conference, Gov. Greg Abbott argued that local election officials — including those in Harris County — were doing things not explicitly allowed by law. He also accused them of effectively opening the door to voter fraud.
  • In response to those local efforts, Republicans who control the state legislature filed a series of restrictive voting bills. Researchers last year said "Texas is the state with the most restrictive voting processes," but it's likely its laws will become stricter.
  • But mostly Davis says he feels like lawmakers are accusing election administrators of doing bad things, which he says just isn't true.
  • Davis says the proposed changes to how local officials run elections are "incredibly short-sighted" and could lead to a misuse of public resources. And he also takes issue with proposals that would allow people to record video and sound in polling locations and ballot counting sites. He says that creates election security concerns.
  • One measure that's been proposed would make distributing ballot applications to voters who didn't ask for one a felony. Others would outlaw drive thru-voting, and not allow polling locations to be open for more than 12 hours — specifically beyond 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Another would require that election administrators put the same amount of voting machines in every one of their polling sites, no matter what.
  • Committees in the Texas House and Senate began hearing two of the most notable Republican voting bills this week — including House Bill 6 and Senate Bill 7. Texas Democrats have raised concerns that certain bills would make running elections harder because of the fear of prosecution looming over many possible mistakes.
  • Harris County's Longoria says the reaction from state leaders has been disappointing because she was successful in getting more people to vote while also limiting the potential spread of the coronavirus. Turnout in Harris County hit about a 30-year high in 2020.
  • Longoria, as well as voting rights advocates in Texas, are also worried these voting bills could make it harder for marginalized communities to vote. Longoria says it's difficult to disregard the role of race in this effort as lawmakers zero in on things like drive-thru voting.
anonymous

As inauguration nears, law enforcement scrutiny drives U.S. extremists into internet's ... - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...ets-dark-corners-idUSKBN29K20U

capitol riot parler trump extremists

shared by anonymous on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Shortly after rampaging Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a fan of the president posted a message on the pro-Donald Trump website TheDonald.win. Inspired by the mob’s attempt to stop lawmakers from confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral win, user CONN_WYNN said in an all-caps message, replete with an expletive, that it was “TIME TO LEAVE THE KEYBOARD” and “FIGHT FOR MY...COUNTRY.”
  • Before the Capitol attack, such a post may not have elicited a follow-up visit. But in the aftermath of the riot, which left five people dead, federal law enforcement agencies have intensified their scrutiny of extremist chatter online, activity that officials warn could be early warning signals of planned attacks around Biden’s inauguration in Washington on Jan. 20.“You don’t want to be the ones to have FBI agents knocking on your door at 6 a.m.,” Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday during a televised briefing with Vice President Mike Pence. “Anybody who plots or attempts violence in the coming week should count on a visit.”
  • Extremists seeking a politically motivated civil war and those seeking a race war “may exploit the aftermath of the Capitol breach by conducting attacks to destabilize and force a climactic conflict in the United States,” officials wrote in a joint bulletin issued on Wednesday by the National Counterterrorism Center and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and seen by Reuters
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  • The upside of driving extremists underground, Sena said, is that it is harder for them to radicalize others when they do not have access to more mainstream platforms.Law enforcement is also in the difficult position of determining whether people saying “despicable” things online intend harm or are “just practicing keyboard bravado,” Steven D’Antuono, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, told reporters on Tuesday.
annabelteague02

Tesla's Cybertruck is made of the same stainless steel alloy that SpaceX is using for S... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...t-spacex-is-using-for-starship

tesla stainless steel

shared by annabelteague02 on 22 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the much-anticipated Cybertruck electric pickup in LA on Thursday, and the vehicle is obviously getting a lot of attention for its eye-catching and unique design.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 22 Nov 19
       
      It's going to be crazy seeing people driving around in something that looks like this
  • Musk’s other company SpaceX
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 22 Nov 19
       
      off topic a bit, but it is crazy how much Elon Musk does / owns
  • Musk had previously revealed at an event unveiling the full-height Starship Mk1 prototype that it would go with stainless steel for the outer shell, with an additional glass tile covering layer for the half of the space craft that will endure the highest heat from re-entry (the ship is designed to essentially belly-flop down through Earth’s atmosphere prior to landing).
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 22 Nov 19
       
      is this material necessary for a car? i guess it could be useful if there's a car fire, but generally being fireproof is not what I'd think of as being important for a car. However, it is a luxury care and if people are willing to spend that extra money so be it
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  • Mars will need ground transportation, too.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 22 Nov 19
       
      you could drive around the same car they drive on mars! crazy!
  • especially if the Cybertruck manages to become a high-volume production vehicle (unlikely because of its controversial design, but perhaps possible based on the economics if Tesla can stick to the price points it revealed on stage)
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 22 Nov 19
       
      if I had to guess now I think it's gonna be really popular because people consider tesla's to be a symbol of wealth, and having the newest tesla would be important to some
Javier E

H-Debate on Versailles Tr. - Google Drive - 0 views

drive.google.com/...Y6IivTRpbhUV2GVDIqKfGnPvMsN5Rh

Versailles Treaty history

shared by Javier E on 25 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • She points out that the territorial settlement, which deprived Germany of 13% of its territory, 10% of its population, and 13.5% of its economic potential, in fact involved the transfer of much German land that “was French, Walloon, Danish, or Polish in population and culture” (652).
  • hose forced territorial cessions were much less that the huge swath of
  • Her main insight about reparations—which has been highlighted by Mark Trachtenberg6 and others-- is that the Allied leaders in Paris were caught in a terrible dilemma: they recognized that post-war Germany would be incapable of bearing the enormous financial burden of rebuilding the territories ravished by its armies during the war. But they also knew that their publics had been led to expect Germany to pay for the entire cost of reconstruction and would cashier any head of government who settled for anything less than full payment.
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  • territory that Germany wrested from Bolshevik Russia in the March 1918 Treaty of Brest- Litovsk and planned to force France and Belgium to cede if Germany had won in the west.
  • But Marks notes that no amount of reparation payment would have been acceptable to the leaders of the Weimar Republic because such payments were erroneously connected in the mind of the German public with the widespread myth of the “war guilt clause.” As she has reminded us in her earlier work, the word “guilt” does not appear in the notorious Article 231, and virtually identical language was included in the treaties signed with Germany’s allies. Yet the myth of the “war guilt clause” unilaterally imposed on Germany, which was propagated in the early 1920s by Weimar officials and opinion makers, has stood the test of time and continues to find its way into histories of the peace settlement.
  • They therefore resorted to a masterly sleight-of-hand: Under Article 231 of the peace treaty, Germany would be required to acknowledge full responsibility for the damage done. Article 232 would concede that Germany could not be expected to pay beyond its capacity. Thus, the Allied publics would have the satisfaction of knowing that Germany would be required to accept responsibility for the damage caused by its military forces in northeastern France, Belgium, and elsewhere. The Weimar Republic should have been relieved to learn that it would it not be required to pay a war indemnity or the actual costs of the war, as France had after 1871 at the end of a war in which no German territory had been damaged. Germany should also have been pleased to note that the reparation bill would be based not on the total amount of damage caused but rather on Germany’s economic wherewithal to pay.
  • On the question of Germany’s capacity to pay, Marks is merciless in dissecting and disproving the various claims of penury. “There are those, not all German, who claim that reparations were unpayable,” she observes. “After 1871, France, with a much smaller economy than Germany’s fifty years later, paid nearly as much in two years (by French estimate) to liberate its territory as the Weimar Republic paid from 1919 to 1932”
  • She points out that “Germany’s tax rates [in the 1920s] were abnormally low and remained so....Raising taxes would have provided ample funds, as the Dawes Committee discovered. Weimar could have borrowed from the citizenry, as France did after 1871.”Moreover the postwar German economy “was intact, having been spared devastation and denudation [which the major reparation recipients France and Belgium had experienced.] There were lavish social subsidies, unmatched by the victors.
  • In the end, as Stephen A. Schuker has shown, the Weimar Republic actually paid no net reparations at all, discharging its reparation bill with the proceeds from American bank loans and then defaulting on both reparations and foreign debts in the Great Depression.
  • So much for the claim that the ‘burdensome’ reparations requirement of the peace treaty led to the collapse of the German economy and the advent of Hitler.
brookegoodman

5-Marx's Comm M. - Google Drive - 0 views

drive.google.com/...0BxWXwwoF4MF-U2xGbnRZYjcwQlU

homework

shared by brookegoodman on 15 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism.
  • Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.
  • It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.
  • ...32 more annotations...
  • The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
  • village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland.
  • the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms.
  • The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie.
  • The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.
  • It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves.
  • the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
  • The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.
  • The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production,
  • Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
  • The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.
  • The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property.
  • Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune*
  • In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
  • He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth.
  • Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.
  • Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.
  • Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.
  • And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
  • Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman.
  • But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.
  • Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers.
  • Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.
  • At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois.
  • the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes.
  • But every class struggle is a political struggle.
  • a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
  • The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for
  • The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois.
  • The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.
  • It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.
  • Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
anonymous

Democrats in Congress to begin drive to force Trump from office after Capitol violence ... - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...capitol-violence-idUSKBN29G0DT

congress trump impeachment pelosi

shared by anonymous on 11 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional Democrats begin their drive to force President Donald Trump from office this week, with a House vote on articles of impeachment expected as early as Wednesday that could make him the only president in U.S. history to be impeached twice.
  • officials have opened 25 domestic terrorism investigations.
  • When the House convenes at 11 a.m. (1600 GMT) on Monday, lawmakers will bring up a resolution asking Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the never-used 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which allows the vice president and the Cabinet to remove a president deemed unfit to do the job. A recorded vote is expected on Tuesday.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Pelosi said the House could vote to impeach Trump on a single charge of insurrection.
  • McGovern said he expected Republican lawmakers to object to the request to invoke the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove Trump
  • Only four Republican lawmakers have so far said publicly that Trump should not serve out the remaining nine days in his term.
yehbru

Opinion: Trump is considering a move that would prolong Yemen's misery - CNN - 0 views

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

Trump Yemen Civil War Politics United Nations Funding Supplies Terrorism

shared by yehbru on 02 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • In one of its final foreign policy acts before leaving office, the Trump administration is considering designating Yemen's Houthi movement as a foreign terrorist organization.
  • The move is part of President Donald Trump's and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's campaign to impose more sanctions on Iran and its allies in the Middle East—and to create new hurdles that would make it difficult for the incoming Joe Biden administration to resume negotiations with Tehran.
  • this designation could prolong Yemen's brutal civil war and drive millions of Yemenis into starvation
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Yemen is already facing what UNICEF calls the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with around 80% of the population—more than 24 million people—needing food and other aid.
  • United Nations Secretary General António Guterres warned that Yemen was "in imminent danger of the worst famine the world has seen for decades." He added, "In the absence of immediate action, millions of lives may be lost."
  • If the Trump administration goes ahead with designating the Houthi rebels as terrorists, the UN and many international humanitarian groups likely would stop delivering aid to Houthi-held territory in Yemen for fear of running afoul of the United States
  • By March 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two of Washington's closest allies in the Arab world, intervened in the war with massive air strikes and a blockade of Houthi-controlled areas.
  • Since taking office in 2017, Trump has repeatedly claimed that he wants to end US involvement in foreign wars, especially in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • Trump and his advisers blamed the war on Iran and its support for the Houthis, ignoring war crimes by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which could implicate US officials who continued to sell weapons to the two allies.
  • Despite international criticism and growing evidence of war crimes, Trump continued to support Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is a major proponent of the Yemen war. In 2019, Trump used his veto power four times to prevent Congress from ending weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and its allies.
  • Designating the Houthis as a terrorist organization is likely to make the group more intransigent and to drive it closer to Iran.
  • Because of constraints imposed by the Houthis on humanitarian work, Washington has already cut nearly half of its assistance to Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen this year. In 2019, US aid amounted to more than $700 million.
  • The UN also decreased its food rations to millions of Yemenis because of reduced aid from the US and other donors. If the terrorism designation is finalized, Washington would immediately stop its remaining aid to Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen.
  • A terrorist designation would also have a ripple effect beyond hampering the work of UN and humanitarian groups: it would dissuade insurance, commercial shipping and trade firms from operating in Yemen because they would be afraid of violating US laws.
  • As a result, it would become far more difficult and expensive to ship crucial supplies into Yemen, which is almost entirely reliant on imported food. The threat of sanctions or US prosecution could also devastate shipments of medical aid and other supplies intended to shore up a healthcare system that has been devastated by years of war and, more recently, the coronavirus pandemic.
  • It's also unlikely to be a top priority of the new administration, which could be worried about being portrayed as "soft" on terrorism.
  • The full scope of suffering in Yemen has gone partly unnoticed because of an unreliable death toll.
xaviermcelderry

Live Trump vs. Biden Election Updates: Texas Court Denies G.O.P. Push to Throw Out Vote... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-biden-election

Biden Trump election PA

shared by xaviermcelderry on 01 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The Texas Supreme Court denied an effort by Republicans to throw out more than 120,000 votes that had already been cast at drive-through locations in Harris County, leaving Republicans’ only remaining option at the federal level.
  • The effort to get rid of the votes from largely Democratic Harris County now hinges on a nearly identical effort at the federal level, where a judge has called an election-eve hearing for Monday.
  • More than 127,000 voters have cast ballots at the sites and the number could grow to more than 135,000 through Election Day on Tuesday, said Susan Hays, a lawyer for Harris County. She said county officials planned to vigorously challenge the suit, which she described as an act of “voter suppression.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • In a statement on Twitter on Saturday, Mr. Hollins said drive-through voting “is a safe, secure and convenient way to vote. Texas Election Code allows it, the Secretary of State approved it, and 127,000 voters from all walks of life have used it.”
  • “My message is simple: Pennsylvania is critical in this election,” Mr. Biden said at a “Souls to the Polls” event at Sharon Baptist Church on Sunday afternoon.
  • “Every single vote matters,” he added, noting that President Trump had only won the state in 2016 by roughly 44,000 votes. “The power to change this country is literally in your hands.”
  • “We need to get every soul in Philadelphia to the polls,” he said, urging voters to get their absentee ballots to a drop box “as soon as you can” if they still had one or to vote in person on Election Day. Mr. Biden will also hold a drive-in rally in Philadelphia on Sunday evening.
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