Live in Obediant, Fear, Citizen

Amazon is routinely listening to your Alexa without your knowledge:

Tens of millions of people use smart speakers and their voice software to play games, find music or trawl for trivia. Millions more are reluctant to invite the devices and their powerful microphones into their homes out of concern that someone might be listening.

Sometimes, someone is.

Amazon.com Inc. employs thousands of people around the world to help improve the Alexa digital assistant powering its line of Echo speakers. The team listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners’ homes and offices. The recordings are transcribed, annotated and then fed back into the software as part of an effort to eliminate gaps in Alexa’s understanding of human speech and help it better respond to commands.

The Alexa voice review process, described by seven people who have worked on the program, highlights the often-overlooked human role in training software algorithms. In marketing materials Amazon says Alexa “lives in the cloud and is always getting smarter.” But like many software tools built to learn from experience, humans are doing some of the teaching.

The team comprises a mix of contractors and full-time Amazon employees who work in outposts from Boston to Costa Rica, India and Romania, according to the people, who signed nondisclosure agreements barring them from speaking publicly about the program. They work nine hours a day, with each reviewer parsing as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift, according to two workers based at Amazon’s Bucharest office, which takes up the top three floors of the Globalworth building in the Romanian capital’s up-and-coming Pipera district. The modern facility stands out amid the crumbling infrastructure and bears no exterior sign advertising Amazon’s presence.

Well, that's reassuring, isn't it, Romanian hackers and Indian robocallers listening in on your home.

The work is mostly mundane. One worker in Boston said he mined accumulated voice data for specific utterances such as “Taylor Swift” and annotated them to indicate the searcher meant the musical artist. Occasionally the listeners pick up things Echo owners likely would rather stay private: a woman singing badly off key in the shower, say, or a child screaming for help. The teams use internal chat rooms to share files when they need help parsing a muddled word—or come across an amusing recording.

And then, you become a running gag at the next Christmas party.

If they want people in a petri dish so that they can tweak their algorithms, all they need to do is get their informed consent, pay them, and tell them when it is on or off, but that is inconvenient and expensive, so once again Eric Arthur Blair is spinning in his grave.

You May Not Be Allowed to Know the Law

The International Code Council is trying to enforce copyright over law2s, which means that people cannot freely read or shore, or(more importantly) understand the law:

UpCodes wants to fix one of the building industry’s biggest headaches by streamlining code compliance. But the Y Combinator-backed startup now faces a copyright lawsuit filed against it by the International Code Council, the nonprofit organization that develops the code used or adopted in building regulations by all 50 states.

The case may have ramifications beyond the building industry, including for compliance technology in other sectors and even individuals who want to reproduce the law. At its core are several important questions: Is it possible to copyright the law or text that carries the weight of law? Because laws and codes are often written by private individuals or groups instead of legislators, what rights do they continue to have over their work? Several relevant cases, including ones involving building codes, have been decided by different circuits in the United States Court of Appeals, which means the UpCodes lawsuit may potentially be heard by the Supreme Court.
………

UpCodes’ first product, an online database, gives free access to codes, code updates and local amendments from 32 states, as well as New York City. For building professionals and others who want more advanced search tools and collaboration features, UpCodes sells individual and team subscriptions. In 2018, UpCodes released its second product, called UpCodes AI. Described as a “spellcheck for buildings,” the plug-in scans 3D models created with building information modeling (BIM) data and highlights potential errors in real time.

………

It argues that its use of building codes is covered by fair use. The ICC, on the other hand, claims that products like UpCodes’ database harm its ability to make revenue and continue developing code. The ICC wants UpCodes to take down the building code on which it claims copyright, and has also sued for damages.

The law should be freely sharable, period.

If the ICC does not like that, then it should sue the code authorities making copies of its code, which they won't because then code authorities would find some way to develop common code without out the ICC looting them.

As an aside, this is a potential application for AI, so for example the section of code from the ICC (Chapter 10, Section 1003.2), which reads "The means of egress shall have a ceiling height of not less than 7 feet 6 inches (2286mm)," could be automatically rewritten to read, "A ceiling height of at least  7 feet 6 inches (2286mm) is required."

The information (2286mm) is not subject to copyright, just the exact expression is.  (It's why, for example, the exact text of a recipe is copyrighted, but instructions that are functionally identical are not.)

I either case, I would like to see Congress change copyright law to explicitly make all regulatory code public domain.

Assange Expelled from Embassy and Arrested

The British charges are for jumping bail, which is not in dispute, he spent 7 years in the Ecuadoran embassy avoiding an extradition hearing.

However, the US government also has an extradition request, claiming conspiracy to hack (but not actual hacking of) government servers.

According to the indictment filed by the Department of Justice this consisted of: (See also this tweet storm)

• Receiving leaked documents from Manning.
• Using encrypted communications.
• Deleting logs to protect Manning's identity.
• Encouraging Manning to dig up more documents.

It looks increasingly like the jailing of Chelsea Manning is an attempt to get her to testify (lie) that Assange engaged in a specific conspiracy with her to hack government computers.

Assange is a complete asshole.

He is also a biased^* journalist, thought it is understandable:   while Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton called for his apprehension and/or murder.

But he is still a journalist, and what he is being prosecuted for is classic journalism.

Here are links from from Craig Murray, Matt Taibbi, Just Security, and The Intercept.

Murray is a SitRep on Assange, and the other 3 are on the potential 1^st amendment issues, which are legion.

My guess is that the Poodles in the UK will extradite Assange, and he will be convicted at a trial where he won't have meaningful access to the evidence against him, and the judge will disallow any arguments that his actions were journalistic in nature.

Also, he will be tortured through prolonged solitary confinement while in custody.

^*Kind of understandable though, since many avatars of conventional political and foreign policy wisdom were calling for his assassination.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Scientists have reconstructed an antediluvian creature from fossil, and it looks a lot like something from the mind of HP Lovecraft:

A creature with more than a passing resemblance to HP Lovecraft’s terrifying Chthulu once actually existed, palaeontologists have revealed – although at just three centimetres wide, it was hardly a danger to shipping or buildings.

Not, of course, that there were any human-made structures around when Sollasina cthulhu prowled across the ocean floor some 430 million years ago.

The creature, a very distant ancestor of sea cucumbers and sea slugs, is revealed in a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

It was found in fossilised form in the UK county of Hereford. A team of researchers led by Imran Rahman from the University of Oxford then spent months painstakingly grinding it away, taking photographs at every stage, resulting in an accurate 3D computer reconstruction.

It has a face only a mother could love:

The Eye of Sauron?

Separated at Birth


High rez version

Using a sh%$ load of radio telescopes and image processing software, astronomers have released the first images ever of a black hole:

Astronomers announced on Wednesday that at last they had captured an image of the unobservable: a black hole, a cosmic abyss so deep and dense that not even light can escape it.

For years, and for all the mounting scientific evidence, black holes have remained marooned in the imaginations of artists and the algorithms of splashy computer models of the kind used in Christopher Nolan's outer-space epic “Interstellar.” Now they are more real than ever.

“We have seen what we thought was unseeable,” said Shep Doeleman, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and director of the effort to capture the image, during a Wednesday news conference in Washington, D.C.

The image, of a lopsided ring of light surrounding a dark circle deep in the heart of a galaxy known as Messier 87, some 55 million light-years away from Earth, resembled the Eye of Sauron, a reminder yet again of the implacable power of nature. It is a smoke ring framing a one-way portal to eternity.


To capture the image, astronomers reached across intergalactic space to Messier 87, or M87, a giant galaxy in the constellation Virgo. There, a black hole several billion times more massive than the sun is unleashing a violent jet of energy some 5,000 light-years into space.

………

To see into the shadows, astronomers needed to be able to tune their radio telescope to shorter wavelengths. And they needed a bigger telescope.

Enter the Event Horizon Telescope, the dream child of Dr. Doeleman. By combining data from radio telescopes as far apart as the South Pole, France, Chile and Hawaii, using a technique called very long baseline interferometry, Dr. Doeleman and his colleagues created a telescope as big as Earth itself, with the power to resolve details as small as an orange on the lunar surface.

In April 2017, the network of eight telescopes, including the South Pole Telescope, synchronized by atomic clocks, stared at the two targets off and on for 10 days.

For two years, the Event Horizon team reduced and collated the results. The data were too voluminous to transmit over the internet, so they were placed on hard disks and flown back to M.I.T.’s Haystack Observatory, in Westford, Mass., and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, in Bonn, Germany. 

Get your astronomy geek on.

Corruption Much?

In their infinite wisdom, Congress is planning to outlaw government offering free online tax filing, because Turbotax gives lots of campaign donations:

Just in time for Tax Day, the for-profit tax preparation industry is about to realize one of its long-sought goals. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system.

Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee, led by Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., passed the Taxpayer First Act, a wide-ranging bill making several administrative changes to the IRS that is sponsored by Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Mike Kelly, R-Pa.

In one of its provisions, the bill makes it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system of tax filing. Companies like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block have lobbied for years to block the IRS from creating such a system. If the tax agency created its own program, which would be similar to programs other developed countries have, it would threaten the industry’s profits.

“This could be a disaster. It could be the final nail in the coffin of the idea of the IRS ever being able to create its own program,” said Mandi Matlock, a tax attorney who does work for the National Consumer Law Center. Experts have long argued that the IRS has failed to make filing taxes as easy and cheap as it could be. In addition to a free system of online tax preparation and filing, the agency could provide people with pre-filled tax forms containing the salary data the agency already has, as ProPublica first reported on in 2013.

This is unbelievably f%$#ed up.

When Government Works

Unfortunately, it's not my government, it's the government of New Zealand, which just passed a law banning semi-auto weapons in response to the terrorist attack on a mosque in Christchurch:

Less than a month after 50 Muslim worshipers in the city of Christchurch were fatally shot in terrorist attacks on two mosques, New Zealand passed a law banning most semiautomatic weapons on Wednesday — a measure supported by all but one of Parliament’s 120 lawmakers.

The passage of the bill means temporary restrictions imposed by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern six days after the massacre, to prevent New Zealanders from stockpiling guns before the law went into effect, will now be permanent. The swift action by lawmakers stands in stark contrast to similar efforts in the United States, where nationwide gun control proposals have stalled despite a series of mass shootings in recent years.

………

The law outlaws military-style semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles, and violators face five years in prison. Some semiautomatic guns will still be allowed, including .22 caliber rifles with magazines holding less than 10 rounds, and shotguns with internal magazines that hold no more than five rounds. All of the weapons used by the Christchurch gunman will be banned, as well as parts and magazines that can convert lower-powered guns to higher-powered versions.

………

But while sports shooters and farmers were among those who pleaded for exemptions to the restrictions, lawmakers allowed just two: for commercial pest-control businesses and for licensed collectors of guns, or those who want to keep particular guns as heirlooms or mementos. Collectors will be required to remove a part, making the weapons nonoperational, and store that part at a different location.

And in our case, we had elementary school students, and all we got were insincere thoughts and prayers.

F%$# that.

Also, F%$# the NRA.

Another Stopped Clock Moment

[UPDATE: I did not look at the date on the article.  It was from over a year ago, but he is looking at cutting its budget again this year.]

In Trump's latest budget request, he is cutting the funding to the National Endowment for Democracy by ⅔.
Seeing as how the NED is, and always been, little more than a front group for CIA, this is a good thing:

Thank you, President Trump! Finally you have made a foreign policy recommendation that is logical, overdue, and in the long-term interest of the United States. Congress will probably reject it, but you deserve credit for making the effort.

Trump’s budget for the coming fiscal year proposes to gut the National Endowment for Democracy by cutting two-thirds of its budget. The endowment is one of the main instruments by which the United States subverts and undermines foreign governments. In a less Orwellian world, it might be called the “National Endowment for Attacking Democracy.” Cutting the budget would signal that we are re-thinking our policy of relentlessly interfering in the politics of other countries.

That kind of interference is the National Endowment’s mission. Whenever the government of another country challenges or defies the United States, questions the value of unrestrained capitalism, limits the rights of foreign corporations, or adopts policies that we consider socialist, the Endowment swings into action. It pours over $170 million each year into labor unions, political factions, student clubs, civic groups, and other organizations dedicated to protecting or installing pro-American regimes. From Central America to Central Asia, it is a vivid and familiar face of US intervention.

President Ronald Reagan established the program in 1983, following years of scandals that tarnished the Central Intelligence Agency. Soon it took over many of the tasks that the CIA used to perform. When the United States wanted to interfere in the Italian election of 1948, for example, the CIA did the job. Decades later, when Washington sought to push its favored candidate into the presidency of Nicaragua, our instrument was the National Endowment for Democracy. More recently, it has sought to influence elections in Mongolia, Albania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” one of the organization’s founders explained during the 1990s.

………

Because its job is to shape the course of other countries, the Endowment has become a darling of Washington’s regime-change crowd. Shortly after ordering invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, President George W. Bush pushed to double its budget. That made sense, because bombing and organizing “peaceful” revolutions are two ways of achieving the same goal: forcing countries to bend to our will. Both reflect our insistence on judging foreign governments, deciding which may survive and which must be attacked.

Leaders of the Endowment include some of our country’s most militant interventionists. One of its board members is Elliott Abrams, who helped direct anti-Sandinista projects in Nicaragua during the 1980s and was later convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. Another is Victoria Nuland, who as assistant secretary of state in 2016 flew to Ukraine to encourage protesters to overthrow their government.

The US efforts at regime change have been a constant source of misery for their targets, and a constant source of blow-back for US foreign policy goals.

The only thing wrong about reducing the budget of the NED by ⅔ is that it's not been completely defunded.

Bad Day at the Office

Japan has grounded its F-35 fleet after one of the aircraft crashed:

The Japan Air Self-Defense Force confirmed Wednesday morning local time that a missing F-35A has crashed, pointing to debris sighted and recovered Tuesday night by ships and helicopters searching for the aircraft.

The pilot remains missing. U.S. military assets have also joined the search, including a U.S. Navy Boeing P-8A Poseidon multi-mission aircraft on temporary duty in Japan.

The crashed aircraft, which the JASDF identified as serial number 79-8705, was the first of 13 Japanese F-35As assembled so far by Mitsubishi’s final assembly and check out facility in Nagoya. In addition to the 12 JASDF F-35As affected by the temporary Japanese grounding order, the 14th aircraft assembled, which is still at Nagoya and undergoing pre-delivery flight tests, has also been grounded.

Local media reported Tuesday that contact with the Lockheed Martin-made stealth fighter was lost just before 7:30 p.m. local time, with the aircraft’s last reported location identified over the Pacific Ocean about miles 85 miles east of Misawa city in Aomori prefecture, in the northern part of Japan’s main island of Honshu.

Japan’s national public broadcaster, NHK, quoting Japan Air Self-Defense Force officials, reported that the missing F-35A was one of four JASDF F-35As that had taken off from nearby Misawa Air Base for a training mission at 7:00 p.m. local time.

The squadron has been operating the JSF for only about a month.

 Not good.

Cue Queen Again

Another One Bites the Dust

So now the acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has quit ……… or was fired ……… I'm not sure which:

Claire Grady, acting deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), offered President Trump her resignation Tuesday as the agency finds its upper ranks thinned after a string of departures.

Her exit comes after DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced Sunday she was leaving her post. Trump subsequently withdrew his nominee to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the White House announced that Secret Service Director Randolph "Tex" Alles would be departing the agency.

“For the last two years, Claire has served @DHSgov w excellence and distinction. She has been an invaluable asset to DHS – a steady force and a knowledgeable voice,” Nielsen tweeted in announcing Grady’s resignation, adding it will be effective Wednesday.

“Her sound leadership and effective oversight have impacted every DHS office and employee and made us stronger as a Department. Clair has had a remarkable career in public service - 28 years at the Departments of Homeland Security & Defense - that is coming to a close. I am thankful for Claire’s expertise, dedication & friendship & am filled w gratitude for her exemplary service to DHS & to our country," she continued in a series of tweets.


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Claire Grady, acting deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), offered President Trump her resignation Tuesday as the agency finds its upper ranks thinned after a string of departures.

Her exit comes after DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced Sunday she was leaving her post. Trump subsequently withdrew his nominee to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the White House announced that Secret Service Director Randolph "Tex" Alles would be departing the agency.

“For the last two years, Claire has served @DHSgov w excellence and distinction. She has been an invaluable asset to DHS – a steady force and a knowledgeable voice,” Nielsen tweeted in announcing Grady’s resignation, adding it will be effective Wednesday.

“Her sound leadership and effective oversight have impacted every DHS office and employee and made us stronger as a Department. Clair has had a remarkable career in public service - 28 years at the Departments of Homeland Security & Defense - that is coming to a close. I am thankful for Claire’s expertise, dedication & friendship & am filled w gratitude for her exemplary service to DHS & to our country," she continued in a series of tweets.

Grady’s departure was expected after Nielsen’s resignation became public, though it means the department will still be without a Senate-confirmed deputy secretary as the White House works to replace the agency’s top leadership. It also clears the way for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) head Kevin McAleenan to come on as the new acting DHS secretary.

Ernst Röhm would call this brutal.

And Now it Goes to the Floor

Net neutrality legislation just cleared the Commerce Committee, beating back Republican attempts to emasculate the bill.

I expect that there will be a further push by lobbyists before it hits the floor, and after that, it has to go to the Senate, so I am not optimistic.

Between big cable, the Baby Bells, and the other rat-f%$#ers out there, I do not expect it make it through the legislative process unscathed.

Welcome to the 3rd World

The newest career path in the Bay Area is picking through billionaire's trash:

San Francisco trash pickers rummage through their billionaire neighbours’ garbage and sell the discarded treasures they find, The New York Times revealed in a story published Sunday.

One man The Times profiled – Jake Orta, a 56-year-old military veteran – lives in government subsidized housing near Mark Zuckerberg’s roughly $US10 million home. Orta has uncovered a hair dryer, a vacuum cleaner, and a coffee machine (all still in working condition) in the Facebook CEO’s trash, and an iPad in someone else’s.

Orta sells what he finds, with a goal of earning about $US30 to $US40 a day, according to The Times.

Yeah, the whole "Welcome to the 3^rd World seems to be approaching meme status, but this sounds like something out of a Delhi slum.

Why Ordinary People Don't Believe Scientists

Because they correctly observe that our whole society is profoundly corrupt, and this includes the most prestigious scientific and research institutions.

Seriously, it does not get any more "White Shoe" than Sloan Kettering:

Top officials at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center repeatedly violated policies on financial conflicts of interest, fostering a culture in which profits appeared to take precedence over research and patient care, according to details released on Thursday from an outside review.

The findings followed months of turmoil over executives’ ties to drug and health care companies at one of the nation’s leading cancer centers. The review, conducted by the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, was outlined at a staff meeting on Thursday morning. It concluded that officials frequently violated or skirted their own policies; that hospital leaders’ ties to companies were likely considered on an ad hoc basis rather than through rigorous vetting; and that researchers were often unaware that some senior executives had financial stakes in the outcomes of their studies.

In acknowledging flaws in its oversight of conflicts of interest, the cancer center announced on Thursday an extensive overhaul of policies governing employees’ relationships with outside companies and financial arrangements — including public disclosure of doctors’ ties to corporations and limits on outside work.

Welcome to the wages of the neo-liberal society, where everything, including scientific integrity, is for sale, or at least for rent.

As a result, on issues where we are dependent upon expertise, we live in George Akerlof's Market for Lemons, where the level of fraud results in the degradation of the "market" for scientific research.

Headline of the Day

Facebook Are 'Morally Bankrupt, Pathological Liars

— The New Zealand Privacy Commissioner John Edwards by way of The New Zealand Herald

He was talking about how Facebook (#DontGiveAZuck) has dissembled and obfuscated on the mosque shooting video, but applies pretty much universally.

Vote for This Guy

Stanislovas Tomas, who is running for a seat in the EU Parliament, kjust smashed a plaque commemorating Nazi collaborator Jonas Noreika:

A Lithuanian lawyer smashed a controversial plaque honoring a Nazi collaborator in Vilnius, which a local court recently ruled may stay.

Stanislovas Tomas, a human rights lawyer running for election to the European Parliament, was filmed smashing the plaque honoring Jonas Noreika on Sunday and streamed it on Facebook. He reported his actions to police and waited to be arrested next to the plaque with a sledgehammer.

Last month, a Vilnius court dismissed an American Jew’s lawsuit against a state museum’s glorification of Noreika, citing the complainant’s “ill-based” intentions.
………

Efraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Eastern Europe director, for years has argued that Noreika became a mass murderer after his appointment in 1941 as head of Siauliai County under the German Nazi occupation.

The case is thought to be the first in which civil servants publicly defended in court the actions and good name of an alleged collaborator with the Nazis.

In documents submitted to the court, the center claimed Noreika’s actions could not be judged posthumously and that in any case there is no evidence to suggest he perpetrated war crimes.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Jewish Community of Lithuania, and one of Noreika’s grandchildren, Silvia Foti, dispute this.

(emphasis mine)

The court ruled no evidence, despite the fact that one of his own grandchildren was a part of a lawsuit calling him a genocidal monster.

Here's a hint for the people of Eastern Europe:  Just because the Soviets Union did bad things does not mean that Nazis, or those who enthusiastically prosecuted genocide for the Nazis, were good people.

Linkage

• Put Bernie Sanders' Face on Those Joe Biden Photos, Then Imagine What Party Leaders Would Be Saying (naked capitalism) If it had been Bernie, they would have hanged him in Effigy, New York.
• Wolf pack living west of Cascade Mountains for first time in decades (The Seattle Times) Good.
• Mobile phone electromagnetic radiation affects Amyloid Precursor Protein and α-synuclein metabolism in SH-SY5Y cells (ScienceDirect) Cell phones and Alzheimers, preliminary, but disturbing.
• How Neoliberalism Reinvented Democracy (Jacobin) Replacing the citizen with the consumer. 
• New York State Overhauls Discovery Process in Criminal Cases (The Marshall Project) Reforming New York State's broken discovery process.
• Was Ending the Draft a Grave Mistake? (Truthdig) I don't know, but it bears consideration.

Woke military recruiting ads.  Who Knew?

Cue Queen

Another One Bites the Dust

And Kirstjen Nielsen has resigned as Director of Homeland Security:

President Trump announced Sunday that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will leave her post, ending a rocky run as the top official in charge of implementing the president’s hard-line immigration policies.

The decision, which Trump announced on Twitter, comes just two days after the president abruptly pulled back his nominee to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement because he said he wants “to go in a tougher direction.” The moves signal that Trump is seeking to shake up his team amid frustration over the spike in migrant families crossing the southern border.

Trump tweeted that Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, will lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on an acting basis until a permanent replacement for Nielsen is chosen.

………

In her resignation letter, Nielsen wrote that she had “determined that it is the right time for me to step aside.”

I don't know what led to this, but it further reinforces the fact that the Trump administration is a complete sh%$ show.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One: A Polish Nationalist Goes to a Demonstration ………

Yeah, it degenerated into an anti-Semitic sh%$ show:

Polish nationalists demonstrated in Manhattan Sunday against a proposed U.S. law that would provide compensation to victims of the Holocaust who had their property seized during the war. Their contingent of several dozen protestors was met by a counter-protest group.

The demonstration comes as there has been considerable pushback from Poland and the Polish government against the historical evidence of Polish participation in the carrying out of the Holocaust in Poland. Last year, Poland passed a law effectively making it illegal to blame Poland or the Polish people for Nazi crimes. The law passed amid widespread sentiment in the country that Poland has been falsely accused of playing a role in the Holocaust, and its government has insisted that international media not use phrases like “Polish death camp” when referring to Auschwitz, which is in Poland.

On Sunday, several protestors carried signs reading “Holocaust Industry,” “Treat anti-Polonism like anti-Semitism” and “Stop slandering Poland in the media.” Others spoke to the considerable losses that the Polish population endured under Nazi occupation.

………

Jewish author and artist Molly Crabapple reported hearing anti-Semitic comments from the protestors.

“There were over a hundred Polish nationalists out- everyone from the elderly to mothers with little kids,” Crabapple wrote on Twitter. “One woman touched my arm and told me the Jews of Warsaw were mostly killed by other Jews.”

Crabapple also noted that one person told her that the Jews were responsible for Russian invasions of Poland.

There are so few Jews left in Poland.

Why can't the knuckle draggers find someone else to hate?

Look Out Below

Boeing, signalling what might be an extended grounding, has announced that it is curtailing production of the 737 MAX:

Boeing’s decision Friday to reduce the production rate on the 737 MAX was a surprise in timing and scope.

This came so quickly and was steep, cutting production from 52 MAXes per month to 42. It comes on the heals [sic] that a second software problem was found, delaying submission of the MCAS software upgrade to the FAA for review and approval.

The production rate cut is effective in mid-April. This is lightning speed in this industry, where rate breaks, as changes are called, typically have 12-18 month lead times.

Boeing hasn’t announced what the second software problem is. LNA is told it is the interface between the MCAS upgrade and the Flight Control System, but specifics are lacking.

LNA interprets these combined events as indicative the MAX will be ground well past the Paris Air Show in June.

The impact to Boeing is going to be huge: customer compensation, deferred revenue, lost revenue, potentially canceled orders and potential lost orders in sales campaigns. The hit to the Boeing brand and impacts of multiple investigations won’t become clear for months to come.

Also, we are seeing airlines scrambling to lease aircraft to replace their grounded MAX airliners.

Boeing is in a world of hurt.

Welcome to the Third World

The cases of Measels have skyrocketed in the past few months.

Thank the anti-vaccine movement:

The US has seen more reports of measles cases in the first three months of 2019 than in the whole of last year, health officials said this week.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday reported 387 measles cases so far in 2019, 15 more than the total number of cases last year. The numbers make 2019 the second-worst year for measles since the United States declared itself measles-free nearly two decades ago.

………

The number of measles cases typically declines in the summer months, but experts worry the early 2019 numbers indicate the disease is on the rise.

“My concern is that this is trending the wrong way,” said Dr Peter Hotez, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and author of the book Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism.

“It’s getting worse, it’s not getting better,” he added.

………

Dr Barbara McAneny, president of the American Medical Association, cautioned against exemptions to immunizations “solely as a matter of convenience or misinformation” because they increase the risk for vulnerable people, such as children who are too young to be vaccinated or children who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons, such as cancer.

“Getting vaccinated not only keeps individuals from becoming ill with the measles but also helps prevent further spread to loved ones, neighbors, co-workers and others in close contact,” McAneny said.

What has happened is that a bunch of selfish idiots have been relying on herd immunity, and the inevitable has occurred:  there is now a sufficient number of unvaccinated people that herd immunity is no longer effective.

Authorities need to get seriously medieval on the anti-vaxxers.

I'm With France on This One

The French have instituted a digital services tax, and the United states is unamused:

France will stick to plans for a tax on digital giants such as Facebook and Apple, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Friday, despite angry opposition from Washington.

Last month, France unveiled draft legislation to set a three percent tax on digital advertising, the sale of personal data and other revenue for any technology company that earns more than 750 million euros ($841 million) worldwide each year.

The effort comes amid rising public outrage at the minimal tax paid by some of the world's richest firms which base operations in jurisdictions that charge low rates.

"We are determined to implement a tax on the largest digital companies to bring more justice and efficiency to the international tax system," Le Maire said as he arrived in Bucharest for talks with his eurozone counterparts.

"All states take their own free and sovereign decisions on tax matters," Le Maire added.

………

Le Maire spoke just hours after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo raised his objections to the tax as he met French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in Washington.

Pompeo said the tax would hurt US companies "and the French citizens who use them," according to the State Department.

The US has opened several fronts against the tax, announcing in March that Washington was considering a complaint to the World Trade Organisation that the levy was discriminatory.

Tax evasion is central to the business models of many (most) of the internet giants, and all of the talk of changing the tax code to work with this is just that, talk.

What France has enacted is a relatively elegant solution to the problem, and it address a problem present in more universal solutions:  That aggressive lobbying by the tech firms, the economics term is "rent seeking", would have watered down any proposal to meaninglessness.

Linkage

• MIT and NASA engineers demonstrate a new kind of airplane wing (Phys.org) Legos, the future of aviation.
• Revealed: Amazon employees are left to suffer after workplace injuries (The Guardian) Juck Feff.
• How the Church Left Depoliticizes DSA Branches (Benjamin Studebaker) Money quote, "They can only do this because many of the people in these DSA branches are materially comfortable members of the professional class. ……… They don’t care about the citizens in their community who are confronted everyday with the visceral misery of poverty."
• List: Attorney General William Barr Summarizes Famous Broadway Musicals (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency) Best listicle ever.
• How a guy called Colin Platt became the richest person in the world (FT Alphaville) It was a joke crypto currency issue, but aren't they all joke crypto currency issues?.

John Oliver observes the obvious about Vince McMahon and WWE, that their personnel policies are abusive beyond belief, "When you've lost the moral high ground to the f%$#ing NFL, you are morally subterranean." 

Shut Up and Take My Money!

It appears that Democratic Party rich pig donor types are upset at small donor donations becoming a bigger part of the process:

………

Friction within the Democratic Party over how its members should raise money is nothing new. But in the early stages of the 2020 election, it’s become a thornier topic than in campaigns past. Top donors have grown increasingly convinced that campaigns are foolish in their belief that online fundraising will be a panacea. A new class of younger campaign operatives, meanwhile, see the traditional big-moneyed donor as a relic of the past, desperately clinging to an outdated model that amplified their influence.

So far, the latter side is winning the argument. To date, almost all of the candidates running for president have said that they will not raise money from political action committees. Others, like Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have pledged not to host high-profile fundraisers or even place phone calls with wealthy donors. And others, like Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), have said they will forgo contributions from executives in specific industries.

………

Several major party fundraiser told The Daily Beast that donors have signalled to the campaigns that they want the field to narrow before deciding who to back. “Most high level donors are staying on the sidelines anyway,” said Tim Lim, a Democratic strategist and fundraiser. “They won't want to pick sides right now in this insane primary.” But in private conversations, a more damning assessment is offered: The campaigns themselves just aren’t that good at cultivating donor networks beyond their home turfs.

Translation: The big donors are upset that they aren't being schmoozed.

………

For all those complaints, few were willing to draw direct lines between the lack of engagement with big-dollar donors and the fundraising totals that the four top Democrats reported. But several among more than a dozen donors, operatives, and campaign veterans interviewed argued that it was a contributing factor and all described the totals as a variation of “underwhelming.”

Translation: Where are our consulting fees for schmoozing said big donors?

………

“What Obama did is he decided he would run in three primaries. And in order to do that David Plouffe [his campaign manager] ran a Republican campaign. It was businesslike. They decided what they needed financially for those three primaries and they raised what they needed to. That was really smart. And when Iowa occurred things just exploded,” said another major Democratic donor. “Now you have the reverse where Bernie and certainly Beto are betting on the internet. And that’s fine. But are you going to be able to raise $125 million in a year online? More importantly, if these campaigns aren’t run like a business, you are screwed.”

Yeah, and that worked out so well: Half-assed policies led to historically disastrous Democratic Party routs, no prosecution of corrupt bankers, a health plan that was a big wet kiss to the insurance companies, etc.

………

“A good fundraising program is like a good retirement portfolio,” said Robby Mook, who managed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run. “You’re not depending on any one thing. Low-dollar donors are like equity or stocks. It is very volatile. Everybody thinks about windalls but no one thinks about deserts. But both happen.”

Operatives on some of the current Democratic campaigns argue that a mixed-bag approach along the lines of what Mook outlined comes with some downsides. A candidate who is willing to embrace big-dollar fundraisers and bundled money (numerous maxed-out contributions raised by a network of donors) will become inherently less attractive to small-dollar givers. And as that happens, the candidate will become ever more reliant on the former than the latter.

But not everyone buys this logic. There is a brewing fear among some operatives that the party has overestimated voter aversion to big donor culture and are foregoing financial support for no reason other than they think it will sell with the public.

Ummm ……… Robby Mook set over a billion dollars on fire, and still lost to an inverted traffic cone.

Sorry, but the fact the usual suspects are whining is a plus, not a minus.

What is the Difference Between the British Army and Oswald Mosley?

Video has emerged of soldiers on a shooting range in Kabul firing at a target of Jeremy Corbyn. MOD confirms it as legit: pic.twitter.com/qOr84Aiivj

— Alistair Bunkall (@AliBunkallSKY) April 3, 2019

Fascist Much?

Not much, it appears.

A video has emerged showing British soldiers engaging in target practice of a Jeremy Corbyn poster :

A video showing soldiers firing at a Jeremy Corbyn poster for target practice demonstrated a serious error of judgment, an Army chief has said.

Brigadier Nick Perry said the Army was taking the matter "extremely seriously" and would fully investigate.

"The video shows totally unacceptable behaviour that falls far below the behaviour that we expect," he said.

Labour leader Mr Corbyn said he was "shocked" by the clip; his party said it had confidence in the investigation.

Mr Corbyn added: "I hope the Ministry of Defence will conduct an inquiry into it and find out what was going on and who did that."

The short clip shows four paratroopers in uniform firing down the range before the camera pans to the target, a large portrait of the Labour leader.

Brig Perry, commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, said there were currently 400 soldiers from his brigade working with Nato and Afghan partners in Afghanistan, where the footage is thought to have been filmed.

I'm wondering whether these are simply idiots who should be expelled from the military, or if it's some sort of message that someone is trying to send to Corbyn.

I really hope that it is the first.

Charlie Just Had a Politicsgasm

Bernie Sanders was on The Daily Show, and I thought that he slayed.

My son was in paroxysms of political bliss.

Both were intensely amusing.

But Cat's Don't Give a Sh%$

Researchers have determined that cats actually know their names, but they just don't care:

More than 3,000 years ago in Egypt, a tabby called Nedjem is thought to have roamed the royal household of Thutmose III. History doesn’t record whether Nedjem — whose name means ‘sweet’ or ‘pleasant’ — learnt to respond when called. But a study published on 4 April in Scientific Reports1 suggests that at least some modern housecats can distinguish their names from similar-sounding words, although they register recognition with the merest twitch of the head or ear.

“Cats are just as good as dogs at learning — they're just not as keen to show their owners what they've learnt,” says John Bradshaw, a biologist at the University of Bristol, UK, who specializes in human–animal interactions.

The study took advantage of a technique known as ‘habituation–dishabituation’, commonly used in animal-behaviour studies. Atsuko Saito, a cognitive biologist at the University of Tokyo, and her colleagues visited 11 households with pet cats (Felis catus) and asked the owner to read a list of four nouns to their pet. These words were of the same length and rhythm as the cat's name.

Most cats showed subtle signs that they were paying attention at first, by moving their head or ears. But by the fourth word, many had essentially stopped listening and their physical response was less pronounced. When their owners uttered a fifth word — the cat’s name — Saito’s team watched closely to see whether the pet displayed a stronger physical response than it had to the previous word.

The team found that 9 of the 11 cats showed a statistically significant (albeit subtle) heightening of their response when they heard their names. That alone does not prove that the felines recognized their monikers: a cat might have shown a stronger response to its name because that word was more familiar than others used in the test.

I am so not surprised.

Yemen War Powers Resolution Passes House

Trump has strongly opposed this, so a veto is likely, but the War Powers Act resolution requiring a US withdrawal from Yemen is the proverbial big f%$#ing deal:

The effort was a top priority for House Democrats after they took control in January amid a worsening humanitarian crisis on the ground in Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthi rebels have sought to overthrow the country’s government, prompting a Saudi bombing campaign that has lasted nearly four years.

It also reflects broad dissatisfaction on Capitol Hill with Trump’s foreign policy — in particular, his posture toward Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

“The president will have to face the reality that Congress is no longer going to ignore its constitutional obligations when it comes to foreign policy,” said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The situation in Yemen is appalling, and the actions, politics, and ideology of our erstwhile ally, the House of Saud, is even more appalling.

Our continued support for the maniacs in Riyadh serves no one but a handful of psychopathic royals.

A Feature, Not a Bug

A study has shown that Facebook's advertising algorithms are a bigotry machine.

While a part of this is the inherent bias of the programmers, and a blithe attitude about the tech industry in general, and Facebook in particular, but a bigger part is because pandering to people basest inclinations is profitable.

You wave a wand, and call it tech, and suddenly not renting to black people (Air BnB), not giving rides to black people, and Facebook's ads as shown below, but (because it's all "science" and computers) it's all good:

How exactly Facebook decides who sees what is one of the great pieces of forbidden knowledge in the information age, hidden away behind nondisclosure agreements, trade secrecy law, and a general culture of opacity. New research from experts at Northeastern University, the University of Southern California, and the public-interest advocacy group Upturn doesn’t reveal how Facebook’s targeting algorithms work, but does show an alarming outcome: They appear to deliver certain ads, including for housing and employment, in a way that aligns with race and gender stereotypes — even when advertisers ask for the ads to be exposed a broad, inclusive audience.

………

The new research focuses on the second step of advertising on Facebook, [what they do after the customer fills out their ad preferences] the process of ad delivery, rather than on ad targeting. Essentially, the researchers created ads without any demographic target at all and watched where Facebook placed them. The results, said the researchers, were disturbing:

Critically, we observe significant skew in delivery along gender and racial lines for “real” ads for employment and housing opportunities despite neutral targeting parameters. Our results demonstrate previously unknown mechanisms that can lead to potentially discriminatory ad delivery, even when advertisers set their targeting parameters to be highly inclusive. [emphasis mine]

Rather than targeting a demographic niche, the researchers requested only that their ads reach Facebook users in the United States, leaving matters of ethnicity and gender entirely up to Facebook’s black box. As Facebook itself tells potential advertisers, “We try to show people the ads that are most pertinent to them.” What exactly does the company’s ad-targeting black box, left to its own devices, consider pertinent? Are Facebook’s ad-serving algorithms as prone to bias like so many others? The answer will not surprise you.

For one portion of the study, researchers ran ads for a wide variety of job listings in North Carolina, from janitors to nurses to lawyers, without any further demographic targeting options. With all other things being equal, the study found that “Facebook delivered our ads for jobs in the lumber industry to an audience that was 72% white and 90% men, supermarket cashier positions to an audience of 85% women, and jobs with taxi companies to a 75% black audience even though the target audience we specified was identical for all ads.” Ad displays for “artificial intelligence developer” listings also skewed white, while listings for secretarial work overwhelmingly found their way to female Facebook users.

………

In the case of housing ads — an area Facebook has already shown in the past has potential for discriminatory abuse — the results were also heavily skewed along racial lines. “In our experiments,” the researchers wrote, “Facebook delivered our broadly targeted ads for houses for sale to audiences of 75% white users, when ads for rentals were shown to a more demographically balanced audience.” In other cases, the study found that “Facebook delivered some of our housing ads to audiences of over 85% white users while they delivered other ads to over 65% Black users (depending on the content of the ad) even though the ads were targeted identically.”

Facebook appeared to algorithmically reinforce stereotypes even in the case of simple, rather boring stock photos, indicating that not only does Facebook automatically scan and classify images on the site as being more “relevant” to men or women, but changes who sees the ad based on whether it includes a picture of, say, a football or a flower. The research took a selection of stereotypically gendered images — a military scene and an MMA fight on the stereotypically male side, a rose as stereotypically female — and altered them so that they would be invisible to the human eye (marking the images as transparent “alpha” channels, in technical terms). They then used these invisible pictures in ads run without any gender-based targeting, yet found Facebook, presumably after analyzing the images with software, made retrograde, gender-based decisions on how to deliver them: Ads with stereotypical macho images were shown mostly to men, even though the men had no idea what they were looking at. The study concluded that “Facebook has an automated image classification mechanism in place that is used to steer different ads towards different subsets of the user population.” In other words, the bias was on Facebook’s end, not in the eye of the beholder.

So, not only does Facebook allow advertisers to discriminate, bigotry is baked in their whole "Social Graph".

This is not surprise.

Even if Facebook weren't evil, and they are very evil, this is a part and parcel of the whole techno-utopian delusion that permeates the whole misbegotten industry.

I'm Not Sure that Boeing Can Make Aircraft Anymore

It now appears that the Ethiopian Air pilots followed Boeing's protocols for dealing with a runaway trim and that the system still drove the aircraft into the ground:

The pilots of Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 apparently followed the proper steps to shut down an errant flight control system as they struggled to regain control of the 737 MAX aircraft shortly after takeoff. But according to multiple reports, data from the ill-fated aircraft’s flight recorder revealed that the anti-stall feature of the aircraft’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) was triggered at least three times—and at least one time after the pilots followed the correct steps to shut it down.

Both Reuters and The Wall Street Journal report that the air crew followed procedures laid out by Boeing following the crash of a Lion Air 737 MAX in October, according to officials briefed on the initial findings of the investigation. But the pilots failed to regain control of the system, and the MCAS was reactivated again—triggering yet another automated correction of the aircraft’s stabilizers that would have pushed the nose of the plane down.

………

To prevent the MCAS from continually pushing the nose down in the event of bad sensor data or some other software failure, Boeing instructed pilots to deactivate the system using procedures already in place for dealing with runaway stabilizer control systems in other 737 aircraft—flipping two stabilizer trim “cutout” switches to the “cutout” position. Failure to do so could result in the system pushing the stabilizers to their movement limit—putting the aircraft into a steep dive. The pilots of the Ethiopian Airlines flight did flip the cutout switches, and they cranked the controls to attempt to regain positive stabilizer control. But they continued to have difficulty controlling the aircraft.

It is not clear at this point whether the pilots purposely reactivated the MCAS’ stabilizer control or if the software reactivated on its own after shutdown. While a Wall Street Journal source said that it appeared the pilots turned the system back on in hopes of regaining control over the stabilizers, Reuters reports that the software may have reactivated without human intervention, and further investigations of that possibility are ongoing.

………

If the air crew did follow Boeing’s instructions on recovering from an MCAS system failure, the information emerging from the Ethiopian Airlines crash investigation raises more questions about Boeing’s response to the Lion Air crash five months earlier and the Federal Aviation Administration’s review of that response.

Every time we get more information on MCAS and the crashes, it just gets worse and worse, and now it seems that there are some very basic problems on their factory floor, as the Air Force has paused deliveries of the KC-46 tanker because of problems with foreign objects being found in delivered aircraft.

Seriously, that is aircraft building 101:  Don't leave sh%$ in a plane when it rolls off the production line:

The Air Force has stopped accepting deliveries of Boeing Co.’s new refueling tanker aircraft for the second time in a month because of debris found in closed compartments, according to Secretary Heather Wilson.

The halt in deliveries of the KC-46A Pegasus is the latest issue to plague the $44 billion effort to create the first U.S.-built flying gas station for the Pentagon’s fleet since the KC-10A Extender in 1981.

“We actually stopped again,” Wilson said Tuesday at a House Armed Services Committee hearing. Wilson told lawmakers that the Air Force found "foreign object debris" in closed compartments of the aircraft.

Elaborating on the trash left behind by workers, Wilson told the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee later in the day that it was a “manufacturing discipline” issue on the assembly line where “we saw a breakdown.”

“If you drop a wrench you have to find a wrench,” she said. “You have to wipe down surfaces so you don’t have pieces of aluminum that over time get in the midst of things and cause serious problems.”

Boeing has lost its way.

It has been relentlessly chasing MBA-think and over-inflated executive compensation, and making aircraft has become secondary.

I so hope that I am flying Airbus to Portland in June.

Shocks the Conscience*

A judge has reinstated Michigan Governor Snyder as a defendant te Flint water lawsuit, and it appears that said judge is unamused:

A federal judge on Monday allowed a major class-action lawsuit over the Flint water contamination crisis to move forward and reinstated claims against former Gov. Rick Snyder.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Judith Levy authorizes new evidence in the case that plaintiff attorneys argue shows Snyder was aware of significant risks posed by Flint River water as early as April 2015 but did not inform residents until five months later, when the crisis could no longer be denied.

Levy had dropped Snyder from the case in the fall 2018. But new allegations, if proven true, would show Snyder was “deliberately indifferent” and showed “callous disregard” for the health and safety of Flint residents, she wrote in a 128-page decision reinstating Snyder as a defendant and addressing other claims.

The consolidated class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of Flint residents claiming personal injury and/or property damage as a result of the city's water contamination crisis, including those exposed to lead and at least one person who died due to possible Legionnaires’ disease.

………

Levy on Monday also rejected motions to dismiss “bodily integrity” claims against former Michigan Treasurer Andy Dillon, several other state officials and former Flint emergency managers Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose.
………

The amended complaint allowed under Monday’s decision alleges that Snyder did not do enough to intervene in the lead contamination crisis or warn the public about outbreaks of deadly Legionnaire’s disease.

………

The complaint targets the former governor for alleged “injuries he caused to plaintiffs resulting from his deliberately indifferent deprivation of plaintiffs’ constitutional and civil rights.”

In her decision, Levy called the plaintiffs' claims against Snyder “plausible” and worthy of additional consideration in court.

………

Furthermore, Levy said, plaintiffs “plausibly state” that Snyder showed a “callous disregard” for the plaintiffs right to bodily integrity. Viewed as a whole, the allegations plausibly describe ‘conscience shocking’ conduct,” she wrote.

………

The class includes about 25,000 individuals but could grow if plaintiffs' attorneys and the state reach a settlement in the case, Pitt said.

There is a possibility that with that many clients, that Rick Snyder will exhaust his whole fortune in lawyers and penalties.

I hope that this rat-f%$# has his own Eddie Ray Valentine moment.


^*Yes this is actually a legal term.

Well, That's Very White of You

I just came across an article suggesting that the Jewish practice of Shmita could save sustainable architecture.

For those not up on obscure biblical laws, it is the requirement for a field to lie fallow once every 7 years.

When all is said and done, allowing fields to lie fallow, and thus allowing the soil to rest is a good idea.

My problem is not that it's a just a Jewish idea.

It has been practiced almost universally around the world since the introduction of agriculture by almost every farming society until the advent of modern fertilizer technology.

The idea that this is some sort of uniquely Jewish (and by implication "white") secret is bullsh%$.

Tweet of the Day

During the 90s, the influencers said millions of lost jobs for the sake of free trade and globalization were worth it. Now, they tell us the loss of several hundred thousand jobs in the insurance industry for the sake of Medicare For All is intolerable. pic.twitter.com/krGH9kdHgC

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) March 24, 2019

The reality of the situation here is that their objection is not to the loss of jobs, but the losses of the idle rich shareholders.

H/t Naked Capitalism

Things I Won't Discuss in 2019

Until 2020, I will no longer discuss the fundraising hauls of various candidates. (the link is about Bernie crushing it)

I understand that campaign donations numbers are a fixture in political coverage, but that is bad and lazy journalism.

This sort of coverage is more than bad, it is damaging.

It replaces the discussion of real issues with meaningful horse race coverage.

I fear that the press coverage this cycle will make 2016 coverage look like Edward R. Murrow.

Listen to Admiral Ackbar

Theresa May is planning to reach out to Jeremy Corbyn to get out of her Brexit mess.

This is not a good faith offer. May is incompetent, and her only governing principle is her repeated attempts to appeal to racists for political advantage. (See the Windrush scandal)

She has lost all credibility, and most of her influence with, her own party.

She literally has nothing to offer, and the only reason to do this is as part of an attempt to somehow paint Labour in the most vile and racist manner.

Listen to Admiral Ackbar.

Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday broke with her own party, appealing to the opposition to work with her on a plan in a move that could keep Britain closely tied to the European Union after the country leaves the bloc.

Mrs. May made the announcement after her cabinet had met for seven hours, amid a growing sense of crisis. With only 10 days left until Britain is due to leave the European Union, she also said she would ask leaders of the bloc for an extension.

A seven hour cabinet meeting?  That doesn't sound good.

………

Her overture to the Labour Party could mark a turning point in Brexit, as Britain’s exit from the European Union is known, ending months of stalemate between Mrs. May and Conservative hard-liners, who have adamantly refused to support the deal she negotiated with the European Union.

……….

The prime minister said the withdrawal agreement must stand, even though Parliament has rejected it three times already. European leaders have insisted upon this.

Under the withdrawal agreement, Britain would remain in the European Union customs and trading system until at least the end of 2020.

………

Mrs. May’s plan had envisioned eventually severing ties with the bloc’s customs and trading system, and taking control over immigration from continental Europe.

Until now, she has refused to consider softening any of these so-called red lines.

She's trying to make Corbyn her patsy.

Linkage

• Barack Obama represents the old Democratic party (The Guardian) Money quote, "The former president says he’s worried about ‘purity’ tests in the Democratic party. What he’s really worried about is his surrogates losing control of the party"
• Why does the Left sneer at the traditional working class? (UnHerd) The UK, addressing the all to common trope that addressing issues of the working class is just pandering to white people.
• Buy Yourself a F*^king Latte (The Big Picture) Barry Ritholtz runs the numbers, and Suze Orman's numbers on this, noting that Orman's numbers assume a return of 12% AFTER inflation, more than double of the market's rate of return. Wage increases of 2% a year do a lot more.
• That mental health app might share your data without telling you (The Verge) We don't just need regulation, we need executives behind bars.
• Was There a Civilization On Earth Before Humans? (The Atlantic) The so-called, "Silurian Hypothesis." The authors of the peer reviewed paper don't believe it, but present it as a mental exercise on how evidence of such things are fleeting.
• Nancy Pelosi shows no restraint on disparaging young progressive women (The Guardian) Pelosi really needs to go.
• Pete Buttigieg Trivializes the Impact of Trade on US Job Losses (Truthout) As a matter of settled law, we have been subsidizing jobs moving overseas for decades, and automation is an excuse to do nothing to call capital, and the body politic, to account.
• The Kushner Family Passover Haggadah, 2019 Edition (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency) Read this. it is brilliant.

A tour of an old machine shop. I love this sh%$:

How Bad do You Have to F%$# Up in Order for Ben F%$#ing Carson to Call You Out for Discrimination?

I am not sure where that line is, but Zuckerberg's Monster, aka Facebook has crossed this line.

Truth be told, when you sell advertising with the level of granularity that Facebook offers, it is clear that a significant portion of your customers will use it to indulge in their own bigotries.

In fact, this problem appears to be endemic to internet businesses, which raises the question, "Is this a bug, or a feature?"

The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Thursday it is suing Facebook for violating the Fair Housing Act by allowing advertisers to limit housing ads based on race, gender and other characteristics.

The agency also said Facebook’s ad system discriminates against users even when advertisers did not choose to do so.

ProPublica first reported in 2016 that Facebook allowed housing advertisers to exclude users by race. Then in 2017, ProPublica found that — despite Facebook’s promised changes — the company was still letting advertisers exclude users by race, gender, ethnicity, family status, ability and other characteristics.

“Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement. “Using a computer to limit a person’s housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face.”

………

HUD’s suit comes a week after Facebook announced sweeping changes to its advertising portal, preventing landlords, employers and lenders from discriminating in housing, employment or credit ads.

Facebook also disputed HUD’s conclusion that the system itself discriminates beyond advertisers’ choices: “HUD had no evidence and finding that our AI systems discriminate against people.”

A Facebook spokesperson told ProPublica that the company declined to give HUD data about who is actually seeing ads because of privacy concerns.

………

Facebook’s previous response to HUD contended that advertisers — not the company — were responsible for targeting ads. In March 2018, Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne said at the time: “There is absolutely no place for discrimination on Facebook. We believe this lawsuit is without merit, and we will defend ourselves vigorously.”

Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?  (Mandy Rice-Davies applies)

There Were Elections in (Sort of) Europe………

It looks like corruption of political elites on both sides of the aisle are a major issue in European elections.

In Slovakia, a neophyte environmental activist defeated a European Commission Vice President in an election that was largely about corruption among the existing elites.

The assassination of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak brought festering discontent out into the open, resulting in protests that forced the PM's resignation a year ago.

In related news, massive discontent in the Ukraine over elite corruption has had a comedian who plays an accidental President on TV won the first round of Presidential elections, and will face the incumbent President, Petro Poroshenko, in a runoff in 3 weeks.

Are you noticing a pattern yet?

In the last election, corruption was less of a factor, though, to be fair, 95% of the country is not in Europe, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Islamist AKP suffered major defeats in local elections, with his party losing the Mayoral races in both Ankara and Istanbul, which is significant not only because it provides opportunities for political party building, and political patronage, for his opponents, but also because Istanbul has been his political base for his entire political career.

If the opposition can keep fratricidal idiocy to minimum, and that is a very big if, it looks like he may face a meaningful challenge at the next national elections.

This May be the Most Epic Exchange on Twitter

Jim Carey, comedian and anti-vaxxer, made what any sensible person would be a fairly anodyne statement about the wages of fascism:

If you’re wondering what fascism leads to, just ask Benito Mussolini and his mistress Claretta. pic.twitter.com/uc2wZl0YBu

— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) March 30, 2019

Alessandra Mussolini, honest to God fascist and grand daughter of il Duce, took umbrage:

You are a bastard

— Alessandra Mussolini (@Ale_Mussolini_) March 31, 2019

Again, a fairly anodyne, and typical, response, at least for a fascist daughter of Mussolini.

But Twitter user, and Italian cartoonist, Sted (@zerorisposte) has a response that knocks it out of the park:

🙃 pic.twitter.com/C8FjM9wcT7

— sted (@zerorisposte) March 31, 2019

This is just beautiful.

I did Nazi This Coming

This is Jacob Rees Mogg.

He does not have a mustache, but this is not Photoshop, just the work of a tremendously skilled lighting artisan.

Telling a story with light and shadow is a particular shill, and whoever did this is a giant in the field.

Linkage

• Rachel Maddow, the left’s powerhouse on cable, won’t let the Mueller probe go. (Washington Post) I am not the only one to notice.
• Stupid Patent Of The Month: Veripath Patents Following Privacy Laws (Techdirt) We really need to fix our broken IP system.
• Shining a light on presidential libraries — the unrenowned pay-to-play scandal (Opensecrets.org) Yet another form of back-loaded bribery.
• JAB Holdings: Reimann family, who own stake in Krispy Kreme and Panera Bread, admits Nazi past (Washington Post) The wages of sin, huh?
• BofA, Wells Fargo sour on blockchain (American Banker) Not surprising.  I've yet to see a meaningful real world application beyond crypto currencies, even among the Slashdot crowd.
• Trump’s Financial Statements Are So Full Of Lies That His Accountants Put a Warning Label on Them (Vanity Fair) But instead of covering this, we got phony pee tapes.
• Trump administration awards $1.7 million family planning grant to anti-abortion clinics (The Hill) Some policy consequences of Trump.
• The good old days? In many ways, yes (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis) Note the source. "Less-educated Americans born in the 1960s fare much worse than those born 20 years earlier due to wage changes, shorter life expectancy, and higher medical costs."

A mashup from just 1 Maddow show of all the Russia references: