I'm an ex white supremacist and klansman. AMA : IAmA

I'm an ex white supremacist and klansman. AMA : IAmA: "These days violence is largely by the wayside. Hate crime legislation was very effective. You see a lot of courthouse activity in the Klan now. Idea is to watch the news, find towns where a black commits a crime against a white. Book the courthouse for a protest. Flier the black areas with inflammatory fliers announcing the protest. The black community will show up enraged. And the few cells of white people that show up will be a mixture. By the end you've divided the community and found a few sympathetic whites. Wash, rinse, repeat."



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My Strict Mother Forced Me to Marry a Stranger When I Was 15

My Strict Mother Forced Me to Marry a Stranger When I Was 15: "I just graduated from high school — the first in my biological family to do so! In September, I'm going to Illinois State University and just learned that I won a full scholarship, which means my tuition will be waived for the next five years. I plan to study mass communications, and may want to do something with computers, considering they are literally what saved me.

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"Vinegar Boy", as told by Aaron - Customers Suck!

"Vinegar Boy", as told by Aaron - Customers Suck!: "The “Vinegar Boy” Saga, as told by Aaron
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We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack — and found a conspiracy in the making - The Washington Post

We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack — and found a conspiracy in the making - The Washington Post: "There was little sign on the chat boards of any unease about singling out Parkland survivors and their families for personal attacks. Instead the mood seemed jubilant, with posters celebrating that the campaign had reached a broader audience of “normies,” meaning people who typically keep their distance from racist, anti-Semitic and far-right extremist conversation.

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Here’s How Cornell Scientist Brian Wansink Turned Shoddy Data Into Viral Studies About How We Eat

Here’s How Cornell Scientist Brian Wansink Turned Shoddy Data Into Viral Studies About How We Eat: "In correspondence between 2008 and 2016, the renowned Cornell scientist and his team discussed and even joked about exhaustively mining datasets for impressive-looking results. They strategized how to publish subpar studies, sometimes targeting journals with low standards. And they often framed their findings in the hopes of stirring up media coverage to, as Wansink once put it, “go virally big time.”

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Dashcam shows teen firing at cops before being fatally shot | New York Post

Dashcam shows teen firing at cops before being fatally shot | New York Post: "NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — North Little Rock police released dashcam video Wednesday that shows a 17-year-old pull a gun and fire it during a traffic stop before officers fired back, killing him.

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Why Norway Is So Good at the 2018 Winter Olympics | Time

Why Norway Is So Good at the 2018 Winter Olympics | Time: "Ovrebo says that in Norway, organized youth sports teams cannot keep score until they are 13. “We want to leave the kids alone,” says Ovrebo. “We want them to play. We want them to develop, and be focused on social skills. They learn a lot from sports. They learn a lot from playing. They learn a lot from not being anxious. They learn a lot from not being counted. They learn a lot from not being judged. And they feel better. And they tend to stay on for longer.”

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Winter Olympics figure skating: Evgenia Medvedeva is talented and terrifying - Vox

Winter Olympics figure skating: Evgenia Medvedeva is talented and terrifying - Vox: "Many of Medvedeva’s programs appear to echo a consistent statement: The looming specter of death waits for us all. Beneath their artistry and elegance, Medvedeva’s most recent performances, both before and during the Olympics, would seem to indicate that she’s spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about human mortality.

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California hiker found after 6 days missing in Yosemite park

California hiker found after 6 days missing in Yosemite park: "He “did the right thing by setting up his tent, using melted snow for drinking water, had some food, had warm clothing and was able to stay put,” the ranger said.

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djellison comments on To celebrate its 5,000th day on Mars, NASA last week commanded the Opportunity rover to take a self portrait with its microscope camera- something it was never designed to do.

djellison comments on To celebrate its 5,000th day on Mars, NASA last week commanded the Opportunity rover to take a self portrait with its microscope camera- something it was never designed to do.:

Why?

Because it was Sol 5000! That only happens once. Infact, it shouldn't have EVER happened - despite many armchair experts saying we knew they'd last longer the expected lifetime really wasn't beyond the 90-100 sol range. We're coming out of winter, our solar panels are fairly clean so we're generating quite a lot of power. To use it we keep the rover awake from when it gets it's uplink (around 11.30am rover time) until the one mars relay pass it usually gets per day ( around 6pm each day ). So there was plenty of time and power to do something a bit unusual.......so we took damn selfie because we can, and she's 5000 sols old, and we've never seen her like this before.

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Vaccinations Drop in Europe, and the Result Was Over 21,000 Cases of Measles

Vaccinations Drop in Europe, and the Result Was Over 21,000 Cases of Measles: "Over 21,000 people caught measles across the continent in 2017, “following a record low of 5,273 cases in 2016,” the WHO wrote in a press release. Some 35 people died as a result, with 15 countries seeing large outbreaks:

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A Researcher Just Found A 9,000-Video Network Of YouTube Conspiracy-Related Videos

A Researcher Just Found A 9,000-Video Network Of YouTube Conspiracy-Related Videos: "A review of the raw data that Albright shared with BuzzFeed News shows how YouTube's recommendation algorithm can push a user deeper into the murky world of conspiracy theories. Albright's initial search for "crisis actor" videos initially surfaces videos about the Parkland children, but then quickly branches off into recommended videos for dozens of other popular conspiracies about subjects including 9/11, the JFK assassination, Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing, Pizzagate, the Illuminati, chemtrails, vaccines, Freemasons, and the Sandy Hook, Aurora, and Las Vegas shootings.

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Former slave, two-time Olympian becomes an Airman > Joint Base San Antonio > News

Former slave, two-time Olympian becomes an Airman > Joint Base San Antonio > News: "After enduring countless hardships and overcoming unimaginable obstacles, Airman 1st Class Guor Maker, a dental assistant currently in technical training, found his way out of war-torn South Sudan, Africa and into the U.S. nearly 20 years ago."



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Russian spies hacked the Olympics and tried to make it look like North Korea did it, U.S. officials say - The Washington Post

Russian spies hacked the Olympics and tried to make it look like North Korea did it, U.S. officials say - The Washington Post: "Analysts surmise the disruption was retaliation against the International Olympic Committee for banning the Russian team from the Winter Games due to doping violations. No officials from Russia’s Olympic federation were allowed to attend, and while some athletes were permitted to compete under the designation “Olympic Athletes from Russia,” they were unable to display the Russian flag on their uniforms and, if they won medals, their country’s anthem was not played.

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The NBA needs to send a no-tolerance message to Mark Cuban, Mavericks

The NBA needs to send a no-tolerance message to Mark Cuban, Mavericks: "Cuban told MacMahon: “It was bad, but we made a mistake about the whole thing and didn’t pursue what happened with the police after the fact. So we got it mostly from Earl’s perspective, and because we didn’t dig in with the details — and obviously it was a horrible mistake in hindsight — we kind of, I don’t want to say took his word for it, but we didn’t see all the gruesome details until just recently.”

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John Oliver: ‘I’m used to audiences not liking me’ | Television & radio | The Guardian

John Oliver: ‘I’m used to audiences not liking me’ | Television & radio | The Guardian: "“I think one of the problems in America is that it has this gigantic military that a large amount of the population has no connection to. You can functionally be at war, as they’ve been in Afghanistan, for over a decade, and not really have any emotional sense that that is happening, because the disconnect is so big.” All that changed, for Oliver, after talking to his wife and her friends, and watching her have very different reactions to the news. “There was this one time that Donald Rumsfeld was on The Daily Show and Jon [Stewart] was interviewing him. And Jon said something like, ‘Yeah but the Iraq war had nothing to do with 9/11’, and Rumsfeld kind of laughed and said, ‘Yeah, of course, of course.’ And I remember feeling my wife sort of sink into herself. And she said, ‘That’s not what they told us.’ And that’s hard. It’s hard to watch someone glibly dismiss an idea that had been actively sold to the people who were about to go and, if not die, then witness death.”

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Team U.S.A.? More Like Team Minnesota - The New York Times

Team U.S.A.? More Like Team Minnesota - The New York Times: "That Minnesotans are leading American success in these sports should not be surprising. Minnesota produces more girls and women hockey players than any other state by far, according to U.S.A. Hockey, and the second-most curlers after Wisconsin, per U.S.A. Curling. And Minnesota, with a thriving cross-country community, is one of the few states where Nordic skiing is a varsity sport.

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America Loves Curling — Until It Forgets About It For Four Years | FiveThirtyEight

America Loves Curling — Until It Forgets About It For Four Years | FiveThirtyEight: "But for an Olympic darling like the “roaring game,” the flip side of big popularity during the games is waning interest, or generally no interest, in the 206 weeks in between Olympic sessions. According to the same Google Trends data as above, none of the sports we looked at had a bigger drop-off in its average search traffic index between months with the Winter Olympics and those without them.

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The story of John Shuster and the underdog U.S. men’s curling team would make a great movie.

The story of John Shuster and the underdog U.S. men’s curling team would make a great movie.: "There’s a great, crowd-pleasing movie to be made about the 2018 U.S. men’s Olympics curling team. Their story conforms to every slobs-vs.-snobs cinematic underdog narrative you’ve ever seen. The unheralded group of USA Curling castoffs, led by skip John Shuster, had to struggle against long odds to even make it to the Olympics. In Pyeongchang, they’ve dispatched one more-heralded team after another. After beating the fearsome Canadian squad on Thursday, the Americans have made it to the gold medal match for the first time ever. They are the Bad News Bears with brooms.

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Skiing or Snowboarding? Ester Ledecka Chose Both - The New York Times

Skiing or Snowboarding? Ester Ledecka Chose Both - The New York Times: "Now Ledecka plans to plunge into a much bigger fishbowl by becoming the first athlete to compete in both sports at the Olympics.

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Rhamni comments on TIL Harriet Tubman, in addition to organizing the Underground Railroad, served with the U.S. Army as a scout, spy, nurse and soldier during the Civil War, leading a raid with the African-American 2nd South Carolina regiment that freed over 700 slaves.

Rhamni comments on TIL Harriet Tubman, in addition to organizing the Underground Railroad, served with the U.S. Army as a scout, spy, nurse and soldier during the Civil War, leading a raid with the African-American 2nd South Carolina regiment that freed over 700 slaves.: "Take the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta. In a war with two sides (and a lot of unwilling allies with little choice), Alcibiades managed to become a quadruple traitor. Like how do you even do that? He's my favourite character in all of history."



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Father and daughter: Surviving a 6-year battle with an eating disorder - CNN

Father and daughter: Surviving a 6-year battle with an eating disorder - CNN:

I'll never forget the words that changed my life, the words that changed the perspective I had of myself.

The words that led to a six-year struggle with anorexia and depression: A friend said to me, "I finally got the abs I've always wanted, and look at you with all that belly fat."

The word "fat" was punctuated by the same person pinching my stomach trying to show me just how "fat" I was. I was too bewildered to respond. It threw me for a loop.

I was never an overweight child. I was a fit, somewhat muscular and thin 15-year-old at the time. I practically lived outside, either on my bike or the back of a horse.

My mom always kept healthy food in the house and cooked every night, but we still ate a reasonable amount of dessert. She never uttered the words, "I'm going on a diet." Instead, she said, "Everything in moderation."

My dad routinely worked out, showing my brother and me the importance of physical fitness. When we were young he used to take us in the jogging stroller or out on bike rides, and those are some of my fondest memories. Dad also encouraged us to play sports; it didn't matter which ones, but he understood the value of them.

Unfortunately, growing up in an environment that emphasized a healthy well-being was no match for the comment. It completely changed my life.

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Figure Skating: Alina Zagitova Wins Russia’s First Gold Medal - The New York Times

Figure Skating: Alina Zagitova Wins Russia’s First Gold Medal - The New York Times: "Zagitova became the second-youngest women’s skater to win Olympic gold with a program of shrewd design, remarkable stamina, precise jumping and youthful certainty. What she lacked in the full elegance that comes with maturity, Zagitova compensated for with a keen understanding of skating’s current rules.

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AnathemaMaranatha comments on Military Honors for School Shooting Victim

AnathemaMaranatha comments on Military Honors for School Shooting Victim: "I may be wrong about that. I know it. Just talking about such things sounds jingoistic to me, bunch of chest pounding and man-ape noises about "honor" and "duty" and "heroism." I feel it needs to be said, and I apologize for saying it so badly. But these things - honor, duty, heroism, courage - are real to me. They are real. I have stood in their shadow. I associate them with military service,

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the involuntary admission barrier to care – Fredrik deBoer

the involuntary admission barrier to care – Fredrik deBoer: "But the final event that drove me to seek emergency care was that I had accused a friend of hacking into my bank account and threatened to harm them in revenge. That they didn’t have me arrested was an act of mercy. When I got to the hospital, I knew that if I revealed that I had threatened physical harm to someone, I would be at risk of a 9.13(b), New York’s involuntary admissions policy. Most other states, I believe, have similar laws. I could not risk the disruption to my life, and the total loss of control, a 72 hour stay would entail. And since I was not willing to divulge that detail, which would have made my crisis clear, the psychiatrist who treated me would not allow me a voluntary admission and I was left to pursue outpatient care. This is the lacuna into which you may find yourself when you have a psychiatric crisis: how to receive appropriately urgent care without losing control of your life."



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Do you live in a bubble? A quiz | PBS NewsHour

Do you live in a bubble? A quiz | PBS NewsHour: "Do you live in a bubble?

"



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What I learned in two years of moving government forms online

What I learned in two years of moving government forms online: "Flexible credit card processing — As I mentioned, 86 forms require some form of payment. To move those online requires an easy way to set up new transactions. I’ve learned over the last year that credit card processing is secretly the hardest part of any online enterprise. Legacy credit card processors have a lot of built-in advantage, but don’t have the flexibility most governments need to add services.
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‘Extralife’ by Darlingside Review: Folk Meets A Cappella - WSJ

‘Extralife’ by Darlingside Review: Folk Meets A Cappella - WSJ:

With “Extralife,” Darlingside leaps ahead of where it had been on earlier works like its 2015 album, “Birds Say.” The voices remain as strong as ever while the arrangements are more adventurous, blurring the lines between genres and giving the group access to several audiences. When I mentioned to Messrs. Mukharji and Paseltiner that I couldn’t quite figure out where they fit in the contemporary rock-and-pop landscape, they conceded, in unison, that they couldn’t either. Neither musician seemed particularly troubled by the thought.

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Billy Graham, 99, Dies; Pastor Filled Stadiums and Counseled Presidents - The New York Times

Billy Graham, 99, Dies; Pastor Filled Stadiums and Counseled Presidents - The New York Times: "Albin Krebs, a Times obituary writer who died in 2002, contributed reporting.

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Why is the Manhattan DA Looking at Newsweek’s Ties to a Christian University?

Why is the Manhattan DA Looking at Newsweek’s Ties to a Christian University?: "Note from the Editors: As we were reporting this story, Newsweek Media Group fired Newsweek Editor Bob Roe, Executive Editor Ken Li and Senior Politics Reporter Celeste Katz for doing their jobs. Reporters Josh Keefe and Josh Saul were targeted for firing before an editor persuaded the company to reverse its decision. As we continued working on the story, we were asked to take part in a review process which, we ultimately learned, involved egregious breaches of confidentiality and journalism ethics. We believe that subjects of the story were shown parts of the draft, if not the entire piece, prior to publication by a company executive who should not have been involved in the process. At an on-the-record interview with the subjects of this story, a company official asked editors to identify confidential sources. On-the-record sources were contacted and questioned about their discussions with Newsweek Media Group reporters. We resisted their efforts to influence the story and, after learning of the review’s ethical failings, the reporters and editors involved in this story felt they would be forced to resign. At that point, a senior Newsweek Media Group executive said the company's owners would ensure independent review and newsroom autonomy going forward. This story was written and edited Tuesday, free of interference from company executives.

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The 22nd-Largest Team at the Olympics: Zamboni Drivers - The New York Times

The 22nd-Largest Team at the Olympics: Zamboni Drivers - The New York Times: "GANGNEUNG, South Korea — The Winter Olympics are a global competition, with athletes representing 92 countries. But one event is dominated by Americans and Canadians like no other: Zamboni driving.

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American Airlines agent saves teens from suspected human trafficking plot :: WRAL.com

American Airlines agent saves teens from suspected human trafficking plot :: WRAL.com: "When sheriffs deputies arrived, the girls, 15 and 17, told them they met a man called "Drey" on Instagram amd he invited them to New York for the weekend to earn $2,000 for some modeling in music videos.They had told their parents they were spending the night at each others' homes.

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Flu vaccine might have saved my toddler. - The Washington Post

Flu vaccine might have saved my toddler. - The Washington Post: "Is it likely the flu vaccine saved my son’s life? Could it have saved Joseph’s? It’s impossible to know, but research does offer some clues. In recent flu seasons, 4 in 5 children who died of the flu hadn’t been vaccinated — and that’s almost certainly not a coincidence. Research shows vaccination helps reduce the risk of healthy children dying from the flu by two-thirds. While the best time to get the vaccine is in September or October before flu season begins in earnest, public health and medical experts continue to stress it’s not too late to get a flu shot.

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(1) Justin Bieber - Fast Car (Tracy Chapman cover) in the Live Lounge - YouTube

(1) Justin Bieber - Fast Car (Tracy Chapman cover) in the Live Lounge - YouTube: "Justin Bieber performs a cover of Fast Car by Tracy Chapman in the Live Lounge
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The Names and Faces of the Florida School Shooting Victims - The New York Times

The Names and Faces of the Florida School Shooting Victims - The New York Times: "So he was seen as someone who looked out for students who got in trouble, those who were struggling, those without fathers at home. “They said he was like another father,” Mr. Feis’s grandfather, Raymond, recalled. “He’d go out of his way to help anybody.”

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Drunk on genocide: how the Nazis celebrated murdering Jews | Aeon Ideas

Drunk on genocide: how the Nazis celebrated murdering Jews | Aeon Ideas: "While intoxication was not a prerequisite for genocide, it is clear that alcohol and drinking rituals were an important element in the celebration of genocidal massacre in the Nazi East – whether taken in shots from a table laden with smoked sausage and vodka, swilled from a bottle at the edge of a ditch, or consumed in post-execution beer parties. The SS man celebrating his 1,000th killing was not only intoxicated at his party, but in a real sense drunk with the act of murder itself.

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Did Russia Affect the 2016 Election? It’s Now Undeniable | WIRED

Did Russia Affect the 2016 Election? It’s Now Undeniable | WIRED: "The Russian efforts described in the indictment focused on establishing deep, authenticated, long-term identities for individuals and groups within specific communities. This was underlaid by the establishment of servers and VPNs based in the US to mask the location of the individuals involved. US-based email accounts linked to fake or stolen US identity documents (driver licenses, social security numbers, and more) were used to back the online identities. These identities were also used to launder payments through PayPal and cryptocurrency accounts. All of this deception was designed to make it appear that these activities were being carried out by Americans.

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Skiing or Snowboarding? Ester Ledecka Chose Both - The New York Times

Skiing or Snowboarding? Ester Ledecka Chose Both - The New York Times: "“If she played golf and tennis at the level she skis and snowboards, she would be a household name in the United States and be on ‘SportsCenter’ every night,” said Ledecka’s snowboard coach, Justin Reiter, a retired American snowboarder and 2014 Olympian. “The winter sports give it a different twist, but it doesn’t take away from the essential. I firmly believe she’s one of the greatest living athletes.”

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An open letter to Holocaust denier Arthur Jones - Chicago Tribune

An open letter to Holocaust denier Arthur Jones - Chicago Tribune:

We didn’t ask you to join us. We don’t have the legal authority to take your name off our line on the ballot (but I wish we did).

However, we would welcome your decision to leave us, now that you know who we are. We don’t choose to associate with you; we don’t know you, and we won’t miss you.

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Student reporter interviews classmates during shooting | Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Student reporter interviews classmates during shooting | Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "David Hogg, a senior and student reporter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, recorded interviews with some of his classmates on February 14 as they were hiding from an active shooter in the school. Hogg told the Sun Sentinel, a newspaper he told Storyful he volunteers with, that he heard gunshots during a science class, followed by a fire alarm going off. After initially trying to run away, Hogg was gathered with other students in a classroom by a culinary instructor."



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Nikolas Cruz, Florida Shooting Suspect, Was Expelled From School - The New York Times

Nikolas Cruz, Florida Shooting Suspect, Was Expelled From School - The New York Times: "Ms. Pasciolla said that the boys’ mother, Lynda Cruz, had regular problems with their behavior. On occasion, she said, the mother would resort to calling the police to have them come over to try to talk some sense into her sons.

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PTSD--throwaway comments on Shooting at South Florida high school

PTSD--throwaway comments on Shooting at South Florida high school:

After I got shot, I kept hoping someone would just tell me what to expect. On the very slim chance you, person who is reading this right now, was at Parkland or knows someone who was:

Whoever you are, I remember what today feels like, and how alone and overwhelmed you must feel. You are not alone. There are thousands of us shooting survivors around, and we are all rooting for you to get through this. I'm going to lay out the advice I wish someone had given me, but the key pieces of advice are that it is okay for this to be big and scary and messy and overwhelming right now, and that it will get better.

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Someone Is Sending Amazon Sex Toys to Strangers. Amazon Has No Idea How to Stop It.

Someone Is Sending Amazon Sex Toys to Strangers. Amazon Has No Idea How to Stop It.: "Over the next few days, Nikki claims she was repeatedly ignored, lied to, or not taken seriously by countless customer service representatives in an effort to find out why cryptic packages with her name on them were winding up on her doorstep.

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teh_booth_gawd comments on On the useless distraction from class struggle - Nationalism

teh_booth_gawd comments on On the useless distraction from class struggle - Nationalism: "That’s pretty much the end of my rant. I received a PM from someone asking me a similar question and asking how s/he can reach or talk to white nationalists today. I said the same thing I always say when this comes up... I don’t know. Nobody talked me out of it. I didn’t learn it with some big life epiphany. It happened over lots of time and even more denial. You can’t teach empathy and decency. Some people are beyond fixing, I’m just lucky I’m not one of them.

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How One Las Vegas ED Saved Hundreds of Lives After the Worst Mass Shooting in U.S. History - Emergency Physicians Monthly

How One Las Vegas ED Saved Hundreds of Lives After the Worst Mass Shooting in U.S. History - Emergency Physicians Monthly:

• Flow is king. Destroy the choke points to allow patients to flow to definitive care.
• By organizing patients into clear physical zones, they were able to avoid wasting time writing too many tags. That’s precious time that could be spent with resuscitations.
• The Orange tag in triage allowed Menes’s team to focus on the most critically wounded while keeping a very close eye on those who were badly wounded but would soon crash.
• Don’t have enough ventilators? Pair patients of similar size, double the tidal volume, and use Y tubing to ventilate two patients on one vent.
• Mentally rehearse difficult scenarios ahead of time. This can be just as valuable as actual practice. Think through what you will do if/when your current plan of action fails.
• Not enough monitors? Place all patients in line of sight, and use clinical judgment to find the crashing patients.

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Terrorist macho culture

GearBrain comments on No, Obama not facing indictment for spying on Trump:

What's interesting is that "terrorism talk" is macho stuff in Middle Eastern cultures. Way back when ISIS wasn't even a thing, back when it was just Al Qaeda, I remember listening to interviews with authors and cultural experts about how they recruit people. They did it through soccer clubs.

Soccer's this macho sport, there. Rough-and-tumble, you take some hits and keep on playing. It's a manly thing. These young guys - and it's all guys, very male-centric - are together egging one another on, applying social pressure to be macho, tough dudes.

Some guy hangs out, bros out with them, and then starts talking about the West. Haha, wouldn't it be great if they all just went away? Anyhoo, how's your family doing?

Slowly - too fast and it'll scare 'em off - they get more extreme. The laughter comes out thin and way too late. This guy is serious about killing people and strapping bombs to one another. And some of the other guys are getting into it. All this talk about death and glory. Fighting for what's right, for the future of our people, for a land free of interference from invaders who just Do Not Get us.

And everyone keeps egging one another on. Applying social pressure. Before you know it, you're taking a trip to a training camp. Not a hardcore bootcamp, but maybe just shooting some guns in the desert. Camping under the stars. Bro stuff. Macho stuff. More talks around the fire at night about how things used to be awesome, how people could defend themselves and their families and countries without being called a "terrorist". Without being vilified.

A few more trips. Deeper shit. Egging one another on - you don't want to pussy out in front of your friends, yeah? These guys aren't killing bad people - that's just propaganda. That's what The Man is telling you.

It's slow. But it happens. And it happens within this cocoon of weird macho bullshit.

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Former Slaves' Stories of Abraham Lincoln in the South - The Atlantic

Former Slaves' Stories of Abraham Lincoln in the South - The Atlantic: "The stories weren’t limited to one corner of the South. Lincoln didn’t just visit central Texas; he also visited the Mississippi Delta, the Kentucky Pennyroyal, and the Georgia Piedmont. In fact, as late as the 1980s, African Americans in the South Carolina Sea Islands claimed that Lincoln traveled there in 1863 to announce the Emancipation Proclamation in person; some even said they knew the exact tree under which he stood.

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Armed Fan Invades YouTube Stars' Home [Update]

Armed Fan Invades YouTube Stars' Home [Update]: "The Albuquerque Journal reports that the intruder Christopher Giles—described by police as “single, lonely and disturbed”—drove 11 hours from New Mexico to the couple’s home in Austin after growing infatuated with Turney’s YouTube videos. Turney and Free were woken at 3:40am on January 26 by “the sound of breaking glass and a gunshot”.

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The Sublimated Grief of the Left Behind – Erin Bartram

The Sublimated Grief of the Left Behind – Erin Bartram:

I teach my undergrads skills through content, and I keep the amount of content low, but as both a teacher and a scholar, I personally know so much stuff. I have forgotten more about Martin Van Buren than most people around me will ever know. I might find a job that uses that content, but in all likelihood, I won’t. I knew what job would pay me to know a lot about stuff that happened in the past. I just couldn’t get that job, and now I have to do something else.

Now, there are people who get PhDs and don’t want to be professors, and that’s great for them and I’m glad they find the PhD a useful part of their personal and professional lives. But let’s be honest: most graduate programs in history are preparing students to be history professors. We can talk all we want about alt-ac careers, but when it comes down to it, few of them actually require a PhD, and almost none of them need you to have learned as much as I’ve learned about the day-to-day operations of rural 19th century parishes. I learned all that because I wanted to be a history professor, and because that’s what my program trained me to be. I certainly didn’t learn all that because I wanted to find a new career at 35.

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He Predicted The 2016 Fake News Crisis. Now He's Worried About An Information Apocalypse.

He Predicted The 2016 Fake News Crisis. Now He's Worried About An Information Apocalypse.: "Another scenario, which Ovadya dubs “polity simulation,” is a dystopian combination of political botnets and astroturfing, where political movements are manipulated by fake grassroots campaigns. In Ovadya’s envisioning, increasingly believable AI-powered bots will be able to effectively compete with real humans for legislator and regulator attention because it will be too difficult to tell the difference. Building upon previous iterations, where public discourse is manipulated, it may soon be possible to directly jam congressional switchboards with heartfelt, believable algorithmically-generated pleas. Similarly, Senators' inboxes could be flooded with messages from constituents that were cobbled together by machine-learning programs working off stitched-together content culled from text, audio, and social media profiles.

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He Predicted The 2016 Fake News Crisis. Now He's Worried About An Information Apocalypse.

He Predicted The 2016 Fake News Crisis. Now He's Worried About An Information Apocalypse.:

Worse because of our ever-expanding computational prowess; worse because of ongoing advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning that can blur the lines between fact and fiction; worse because those things could usher in a future where, as Ovadya observes, anyone could make it “appear as if anything has happened, regardless of whether or not it did.”

And much in the way that foreign-sponsored, targeted misinformation campaigns didn't feel like a plausible near-term threat until we realized that it was already happening, Ovadya cautions that fast-developing tools powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and augmented reality tech could be hijacked and used by bad actors to imitate humans and wage an information war.

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Black With (Some) White Privilege - The New York Times

Black With (Some) White Privilege - The New York Times: "Erin Cloud, a public defender in the South Bronx, has similar concerns. “At my job, there’s actually a lot of biracial people that are in more leadership opportunities, and I think about that. I’m like, ‘Well, is that because there’s something about their whiteness and our whiteness that is giving us space to communicate and that’s why we’re getting promotions and why we’re moving forward?” she said. “I am a black woman. I see myself as a black woman, but I also have to be honest. I love my mother. I can’t say for many of my black friends that they deeply, intimately, without any bounds love a white person.”"



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This Republic of Suffering - Drew Gilpin Faust - Book Review - The New York Times

This Republic of Suffering - Drew Gilpin Faust - Book Review - The New York Times: "Americans had never endured anything like the losses they suffered between 1861 and 1865 and have experienced nothing like them since. Two percent of the United States population died in uniform — 620,000 men, North and South, roughly the same number as those lost in all of America’s other wars from the Revolution through Korea combined. The equivalent toll today would be six million.

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Xirema comments on One of my all time favorite lines, and the reason I love this show.

Xirema comments on One of my all time favorite lines, and the reason I love this show.:

If I make a racist joke,

• I should not be arrested for it,
• but I might get heckled/booed/receive angry tweets,
• I might be no longer invited to perform at that function/hang out with that circle of friends
• I might face professional consequences (because your company might not want to be associated with you anymore)
• and I definitely don't have the moral high ground to complain that everyone who got upset are just thin skinned/didn't 'get it'/snowflakes/SJW's/whatever.
• and if it was on accident, or I didn't personally see the joke as offensive/racist, I should be receptive to the people who did get upset, and try to understand their perspective, even if I don't ultimately agree with it.

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Andrew Sullivan: When Two Tribes Go to War

Andrew Sullivan: When Two Tribes Go to War: "Since the tax law passed, the Democratic lead in the generic congressional polling has been more than halved from 13 points to a mere 6. Trump’s own approval ratings were negative 20 points in mid-December. Now they are negative 15. Still terrible, I know, but it’s the direction I’m concerned about. Pretty soon, most middle-class workers will also find their take-home pay slightly higher because of the tax law — while Democrats repeatedly told them they would get nothing. In December, according to the Monmouth poll, only 26 percent supported the GOP’s tax legislation. Now that number is 44 percent — a pretty staggering leap. As I recently noted, wages in manufacturing and construction are also finally moving upward. If you keep an eight-year recovery going artificially — through massive deregulation and tax cuts — the very bottom of the workforce is going to feel the dividends simply because of supply and demand. And they will react accordingly.

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Hautamaki comments on I'm a Stanford professor accused of being part of a 'terrorist group'. McCarthyism is back

Hautamaki comments on I'm a Stanford professor accused of being part of a 'terrorist group'. McCarthyism is back: "Ideologies founded on resentment or arrogance are both doomed to fail. What works is taking personal responsibility to try improve your own life in a way that also improves or at least doesn’t harm the lives of all the people around you. That is why capitalism mostly works. While imperfect, it is founded on the principal of be as productive as you possibly can be and you will naturally be rewarded for it. Of course things like regulatory capture temporarily allow unproductive people to reap undue rewards, but selfish abusive people are always going to exist and that’s at least a damn sight better than tens of millions of people dying pointlessly."



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Michigan Teenager Expected to Testify at Rape Trial Is Found Dead - The New York Times

Michigan Teenager Expected to Testify at Rape Trial Is Found Dead - The New York Times: "But on Jan. 25, three days after the April 9 trial date had been set, Mujey’s family, who live near Grand Rapids, reported her missing to the police. Three days later, her body was found in a wooded area about 50 miles away, according to the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety.

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With extraordinary political optics, Winter Olympics begin

With extraordinary political optics, Winter Olympics begin: "The sister of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, shook hands with South Korean President Moon Jae-in — and appeared genuinely pleased — while they watched an elaborate show of light, sound and human performance. Minutes later came a moment stunning in its optics and its implications: the United States, represented by Vice President Mike Pence, sitting a row ahead of Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, and the North’s nominal head of state, all watching the games begin — officials from two nations that many worry have been on the brink of nuclear conflict.

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How ‘The Good Place’ gets people thinking about God | The Outline

How ‘The Good Place’ gets people thinking about God | The Outline:


Unsure of whether Michael is trustworthy but convinced that he is their best hope, they choose to follow his clues, waiting for him underneath the train that ferrets the rest of their neighbors away to the real Bad Place. Michael, who has been frantically searching for the four friends, finally spots them once the train has rumbled away. The look in his eyes is wild with fear, then shocked, then teary. He hugs Eleanor tight. “I was so scared,” he says. “You’re my friends, and I wanted to save you.”

“No longer do I call you servants,” Jesus says in John 15, “but I have called you friends.” And at the very end of his life, when he is near death on a cross between two thieves, Jesus asks God to forgive the men who are killing them, because “they know not what they do.” They were his friends, and he wanted to save them.

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The dumbest shutdown ever - POLITICO

The dumbest shutdown ever - POLITICO: "“This is the stupidest thing to happen to Congress in three weeks,” said one Senate GOP aide. “This is even more stupid than the name of the new Kardashian baby (Stormi). This is dumber than a screen door on a submarine. This is even stupider than the kid who didn’t recognize Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl.”

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(1) Northwestern University Trombone Choir performs the National Anthem 2/6/18 - YouTube

(1) Northwestern University Trombone Choir performs the National Anthem 2/6/18 - YouTube:




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(1) amazing grace - YouTube

(1) amazing grace - YouTube:




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(1) Last Men on the Moon - Apollo 17's Goodbye Speech - YouTube

(1) Last Men on the Moon - Apollo 17's Goodbye Speech - YouTube:




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MaximumEffort433 comments

MaximumEffort433 comments on ooof Trump: "22% of Republicans and 37% of Democrats supported President Obama issuing missile strikes against Syria in 2013, 86% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats supported President Trump striking Syria in 2017, a 64 point swing for Republicans, a 1 point change for Democrats."



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House Intel Republicans plan to wall off their aides from Democratic staffers - CBS News

House Intel Republicans plan to wall off their aides from Democratic staffers - CBS News: ""I swear to God I didn't know that," said Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Florida, when asked about the plan. While acknowledging a wall might not be constructive for the committee's work, he said, "The level of trust and the level of everything down there is – it's poison. It's absolute poison down there."

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Forgotten: The Battle Thousands of WWII Veterans Are Still Fighting

Forgotten: The Battle Thousands of WWII Veterans Are Still Fighting:

He’s a proud World War II veteran — but also an unrewarded one. Seventy years ago, Caleda became one of the many Filipinos stripped of the military benefits promised to them by the government for their service during the war for the U.S.

Caleda, along with more than 250,000 Filipinos, answered President Franklin D. Roosevelt's call to serve in WWII. As scouts, guerrillas, and enlisted soldiers in the Philippine Army, they were told they would get full benefits in exchange for putting their lives on the line, fighting side-by-side with the U.S. military.

But when the war was over, the promise was rescinded. The Rescission Act of 1946 voided their service and deemed their time of duty as not being “active military, naval, or air service for the purposes of any law of the United States conferring rights, privileges, or benefits upon any person.”

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UN official: Unexploded devices in "every inch" of Raqqa - Axios

UN official: Unexploded devices in "every inch" of Raqqa - Axios: ""The level of explosive hazard contamination in areas liberated from ISIS is the worst we’ve seen in the 20+ years of our program’s existence. The extent to which ISIS has intentionally targeted civilians and humanitarian aid workers by booby-trapping places such as homes, hospitals, and schools with IEDs isn’t something that we’ve seen before, and it speaks volumes to their truly evil nature.”
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The Eagles’ Offense Needed To Be Virtually Flawless. And It Was. | FiveThirtyEight

The Eagles’ Offense Needed To Be Virtually Flawless. And It Was. | FiveThirtyEight: "Defensive coordinators Matt Patricia and Jim Schwartz, who both received heavy head-coaching buzz this hiring cycle, watched helplessly on the sidelines as the offenses combined for 1,151 yards. Forget Super Bowl records or even playoff records, that’s most total yards in any game in NFL history.

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Elon Musk says the Falcon Heavy has a 50-50 chance of success | Ars Technica

Elon Musk says the Falcon Heavy has a 50-50 chance of success | Ars Technica: "“I feel super optimistic. But I feel as though that optimism has no basis in fact.”
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TIL in 1958 a white girl kissed two African American boys aged 9 and 7 on the cheeks. The two boys were arrested, detained for 6 days without access to their parents or legal counsel, & were severely beaten by the police. The boys were detained for a total of 3 months. : todayilearned

TIL in 1958 a white girl kissed two African American boys aged 9 and 7 on the cheeks. The two boys were arrested, detained for 6 days without access to their parents or legal counsel, & were severely beaten by the police. The boys were detained for a total of 3 months. : todayilearned: "This shit is not generations past. My father carried those scars with him the rest of his life, he could never trust the police after that. He was a college professor with a PhD and 2 masters degrees. Back before the days of cell phones I remember getting lost and my father vehemently refusing to ask the police for directions. My white mother never understood the fear he carried and how it shaped his adult life, the hotels that said there was no room until my mother went in and asked, the jobs he missed out, the university programs that wouldn't accept him. These micro biases haunt you daily, affect your self esteem and outlook on life. Things aren't getting worse, but let's not pretend everything is solved and happy today. We still have generations trying to recover from lifetimes of this.

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How Author Timothy Tyson Found the Woman at the Center of the Emmett Till Case | Vanity Fair

How Author Timothy Tyson Found the Woman at the Center of the Emmett Till Case | Vanity Fair: "But as Carolyn became reflective in Timothy Tyson’s presence, wistfully volunteering, “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him.” She also admitted she “felt tender sorrow,” Tyson would note, “for Mamie Till-Mobley”—Emmett Till’s mother, who died in 2003 after a lifetime spent crusading for civil rights. (She had bravely insisted that her son’s casket remain open at his funeral in order to show America what had been done to him.) “When Carolyn herself [later] lost one of her sons, she thought about the grief that Mamie must have felt and grieved all the more.” Tyson does not say whether Carolyn was expressing guilt. Indeed, he asserts that for days after the murders, and until the trial, she was kept in seclusion by her husband’s family. But that “tender sorrow” does sound, in its way, like late-blooming regret.

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Chicago Bears fans had 'amazing' encounter with Aaron Rodgers

Chicago Bears fans had 'amazing' encounter with Aaron Rodgers:

“He just started talking to us again like we were all neighbors and friends. We walked with him again for the next 15 minutes, 20 minutes to Michigan Avenue,” Julia said. “The thing for me that really stood out as so awesome was he asked us questions. I would say he asked us more questions than I asked him, because I didn’t want to be nosy and because I didn’t want to invade his privacy.”

He asked about the Nicoll family’s Thanksgiving plans and their daughter who will be attending the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire next year. 

“He was asking me questions that most people would think, ‘Why would Aaron Rodgers care?’ It was so amazing. It was really something, I have to say. It still is,” Julia said. “I told so many people. We just couldn’t believe it, my son and I.”

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The search for Jackie Wallace | NOLA.com

The search for Jackie Wallace | NOLA.com:

I meandered a bit as I returned to my car, wondering what possibly could have wrecked the scene. I was not prepared for what I saw next: a half-naked man sleeping on a rusty box spring.

I couldn’t have been more startled if he had been an alligator. His bed was overlaid with cardboard and tucked into a cleft of piers and brush. He was covered in a sheet of thick, clear plastic. His head rested on a wadded yellow jacket, also wrapped in plastic. Alongside the bed lay two discarded automotive floor mats, a five-gallon bucket for bathing, a pair of neatly-arranged sneakers, a clean set of clothes, a jug of water and a carefully folded copy of The Times-Picayune. He slept in the fetal position in only his briefs and undershirt.

[...]

We talked for a minute or two, about my editor’s idea and journalism in general. After a brief pause, he said, “You ought to do a story about me.”

I’ve heard this line many times before, and many more since.

“And why would I want to do that?” I said.

“Because,” he said, “I’ve played in three Super Bowls.”

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Asking the Right Questions About AI – Yonatan Zunger – Medium

Asking the Right Questions About AI – Yonatan Zunger – Medium:

This particular bias was a combination of “invisible whiteness” and media bias in reporting: if three white teenagers are arrested for a crime, not only are news media much less likely to show their mug shots, but they’re less likely to refer to them as “white teenagers.” In fact, nearly the only time groups of teenagers were explicitly labeled as being “white” was in stock photography catalogues. But if three black teenagers are arrested, you can count on that phrase showing up a lot in the press coverage.

Many people were shocked by these results, because they seemed so at odds with our national idea of being a “post-racial” society. (Remember that this was in mid-2016) But the underlying data was very clear: when people said “three black teenagers” in media with high-quality images, they were almost always talking about them as criminals, and when they talked about “three white teenagers,” they were almost always advertising stock photography.

The fact is that these biases do exist in our society, and they’re reflected in nearly any piece of data you look at. 

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Asking the Right Questions About AI – Yonatan Zunger – Medium

Asking the Right Questions About AI – Yonatan Zunger – Medium: "And if we want to be able to have real discussions about this as a society, we need to fix that. So today, we’re going to talk about the realities of AI: what it can and can’t actually do, what it might be able to do in the future, and what some of the social, cultural, and ethical challenges it poses are. I won’t cover every possible challenge; some of them, like filter bubbles and disinformation, are so big that they need entire articles of their own. But I want to give you enough examples of the real problems that we face that you’ll be situated to start to ask hard questions on your own.

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Prescription Pain

Prescription Pain:

According to the National Institutes of Health, one out of every 10 people in America deals with chronic pain. People live with it all of the time. Now those same people also live with a government that prolongs their suffering through its late, sloppy, and misguided crusade. 

The government’s attempt to stop feeding the monster crisis that pharmaceutical companies created is also serving as punishment for patients who dare to need a drug that is suddenly taboo. Chronic pain patients suffer as pharmaceutical companies back away with their fingers pointed at patients. The patients are the ones to blame. They are addicts. 

And the drug companies are getting away with it, just as they got away with the epidemic they created.

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CitizenMurdoch comments on 'They Couldn't Hide all the Death.' 5 More Rohingya Mass Graves Found in Myanmar

CitizenMurdoch comments on 'They Couldn't Hide all the Death.' 5 More Rohingya Mass Graves Found in Myanmar:

The reason why the West isn't doing anything is probably because it can't do anything. While it feels good to say that we should just invade and save the day it ignores important geopolitical realities, namely, we don't have any allies in the region that would cooperate, and we would make a lot of rivals that would make life difficult in the best possible case scenario, and cause us to get into a conflict that would possible last decades. In the worst case scenario it could spiral, a war in a strategic region between 2 nuclear rivals, executed by an alliance of other nuclear rivals cannot be taken lightly. The first world war was started over a lot less.

I don't believe the UN should be doing nothing, but the reality is that they can't do much, and unilateral action by other actors would be extremely dangerous, perhaps even catastrophic.

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Want Secure Cloud Deployments? GSA's Cloud.gov Leader Offers Best Practices - FedTech

Want Secure Cloud Deployments? GSA's Cloud.gov Leader Offers Best Practices - FedTech: "But how can agencies best move to the cloud, and do so securely? Agencies need to adopt a series of best practices that increase the automation and security of their cloud environments, according to Shashank Khandelwal, acting director of cloud.gov, who spoke at FCW's "Security Innovation in the Cloud" workshop on Jan. 30 in Washington, D.C.

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What It’s Like to Be Rolodexed: One Candidate’s Journey Into the Reality of Political Fundraising

What It’s Like to Be Rolodexed: One Candidate’s Journey Into the Reality of Political Fundraising: "“Look, fundraising sucks. Almost anybody who runs for office who has any scruples at all will tell you that it sucks, but it is a necessary part of the business, and if you believe in yourself and believe that you can do good, and that good will help people and improve their quality of life, you do it because you want to, you do it because it’s necessary to get in a position to effectuate the change you want to effectuate. So I don’t have any sympathy for Paul. He knew going in that money was going to play a big part. He couldn’t communicate his message, he couldn’t tell people about himself and tell people about his ideas without the money to communicate,” he said.

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See Darlingside's New Animated Video for 'Futures' - Rolling Stone

See Darlingside's New Animated Video for 'Futures' - Rolling Stone: "Like a church choir staring down the apocalypse, Darlingside sing about the modern world's iffy future – including political unrest and nuclear fallout — on the Massachusetts band's anxious, harmony-heavy Extralife. The new album arrives February 23rd, with the lead single "Futures" kicking things off on a cautiously optimistic note.

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Call Time For Congress Shows How Fundraising Dominates Bleak Work Life | HuffPost

Call Time For Congress Shows How Fundraising Dominates Bleak Work Life | HuffPost:

One member of Congress said that the fundraising takes up so much time that members don’t even have time to become experts on bills they sponsor. “One thing that’s always been striking to me is even the members playing a leading role on specific issues actually could not talk about the issues,” said the member, who didn’t want to be quoted by name. “They didn’t have enough knowledge on their own issues to talk about them at length. I’m probably guilty of that.” He recalled one meeting early in his career, where he brought several members together to try to hash out a compromise, just as he had done earlier as a state legislator.

“Staff members were all twitching at the discussion, because their principals were saying things that were just flat-wrong or uninformed or wondering aloud about what the industry practices really were,” he recalled. “The staff members of course had a pretty good idea. ... The members were sitting around the table having a remarkably uninformed and unproductive discussion.”

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