MLK was right: a riot is the language of the unheard

by philg

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (not to be confused with Dr. Jill Biden, M.D.), at 1:51 in this 1966 interview:

A riot is the language of the unheard.

Is it fair to say that Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook have moved this statement from “possibly true” to “definitely true”? There were some rioters and now they (and some additional millions of people who also failed to support Presidents Biden and Harris) will be “unheard” for the next few decades.

From the service that unpersoned Donald J. Trump:

Leading to a question:

Twitter was comfortable with potentially inflammatory speech, apparently, in 2017:

Can Donald Trump and his supporters don the mantle of victimhood or survivorship? Signs of abuse:

Should we look at some these these, e.g.,

  • Control what you read, watch and say
  • Punish you for breaking the rules, but the rules keep changing!
  • Tell you it is for your own good and that they know better
  • Call you names or shame you for being stupid or selfish
  • Dismiss your opinions

Related:

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Maine coast helicopter photo series: Phippsburg

by philg

The series continues… near the peak of foliage season (mid-October) we decided to fly from Boston to Bar Harbor, Maine, following the shoreline, in a Robinson R44 helicopter. Tony Cammarata was in back with a door removed (frosty!) and a Nikon D850. Instrument student Vince Dorow was with me in the front seats.

After departing Brunswick, we picked up the shoreline again in Phippsburg:

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Marie Antoinette of Covid

by philg

While gathering at a friend’s house (following the examples of politicians and public health officials, rather than their statements), we were pondering the question of whether it was legal to do what we were doing under the 59 orders issued thus far by our governor. “Why is it a maximum of 10 people,” our hostess wondered, “regardless of the size of the house? Shouldn’t it be adjusted for square footage?” She’s an immigrant from Europe and the house, if you count the finished basement area, is close to 8,000 square feet in size. I said “That statement makes you the Marie Antoinette of Covid.”

Explicit virtue declaration: We were a group of 9.

Related, Versailles in 2016, completely unspoiled by tourism:

(and who could have imagined that a respiratory virus would evolve to take advantage of the above situation?)

Also, five gals who are perfect candidates for a forced COVID-19 vaccine “for their own benefit”:

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Government determines COVID-19 outcomes, so Congress will work on impeachment

by philg

Government action determines the death rate from/with COVID-19. With the right laws, and/or female leadership, we could have a death rate of 0 (see Cambodia), in fact. We’re at the height of Plague Wave #2. Californians donned the hijab and observed the sacraments of the Church of Shutdown, yet still the God of Corona was not appeased (NYT):

Plainly we need some different laws. Is Congress right now fully engaged in passing those new laws that would save hundreds of thousands of American lives? “House Democrats plan to vote Wednesday to impeach Trump” (CNN):

House Democrats plan to vote Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told Democrats on a caucus call Monday, setting up an impeachment vote one week after rioters incited by Trump overran Capitol police and breached some of the most secure areas of the US Capitol.

The House will vote Tuesday evening on a resolution urging Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power, and then plan to vote Wednesday at 9 a.m. ET on the impeachment resolution, Hoyer said.

Democrats formally introduced their impeachment resolution Monday, charging Trump with “incitement of insurrection” as they race toward making him the first president in history to be impeached twice.

In other words, rather than beat COVID-19 with muscular government action, Congress will devote full time to impeaching a president who is already effectively gone (as far as anyone without a Chinese IP address can determine).

Related:

  • “Democrats were for occupying capitols before they were against it” (Washington Post): “Thousands of protesters rushed to the … Capitol Wednesday night, forcing their way through doors, crawling through windows and jamming corridors.” That is how one newspaper described the storming of the Capitol — not the one in Washington last week, but the state Capitol in Madison, Wis., a decade ago. Back then, thousands of pro-union activists — many bused in from out of state — rampaged through the historic building in an effort to stop a vote on collective bargaining reform legislation. … House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) praised the occupiers for an “impressive show of democracy in action” and tweeted as they assaulted the Capitol that she continued “to stand in solidarity” with the union activists. In other words, Democrats were for occupying capitols before they were against it.
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Aerial photos of Bowdoin College and Brunswick

by philg

The series continues… From our Robinson R44 helicopter. Tony Cammarata used his Nikon D850 to get these images of the rich kids’ liberal arts college, Bowdoin, in Brunswick, Maine, formerly best known for its Naval Air Station (now KBXM).

Choose from Africana Studies, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Latinx Studies, Coastal Studies, and Cinema Studies (I would love to sit in on the Zoolander lecture!).

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My pronouns are He/Her

by philg

A physicist friend lives in San Francisco and likes to have fun with psychology. Thus, whenever asked for pronouns, which is a common occurrence out there, the physicist’s response is “He/Her”. This leads to a brain freeze in the recipient of the information and an inability to form sentences.

This does raise a question of why people ask for “pronouns” rather than “pronoun”. Most of the customer support notes that I get from people at Linode, where this blog is hosted, are signed “Joe (He/Him)”, “Mary (She/Her)”, or similar. To avoid the cross-pronoun situation above, wouldn’t it be better to sign “Joe (He)” or “Mary (Her)”?

Part of an email from our local public school (in which, thanks to the First Amendment, there is no possibility of insisting that people follow an established religion…):

The link goes to a Human Rights Campaign Foundation page, “Talking About Pronouns in the Workplace” (why talk about work when you can talk about pronouns?)

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Maine coast helicopter photo series: Portland to Freeport

by philg

Seventh of a series… near the peak of foliage season (mid-October) we decided to fly from Boston to Bar Harbor, Maine, following the shoreline, in a Robinson R44 helicopter. Tony Cammarata was in back with a door removed (frosty!) and a Nikon D850. Instrument student Vince Dorow was with me in the front seats.

From just north of Portland, Maine to the shopping Mecca of Freeport:

LL Bean, which closed during the March 2020 coronapanic for the first time in its history (since opening in 1912, it had never previously been closed for more than 24 hours), is back up and running.

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COVID-19 and the MIT community

by philg

The January/February 2021 MIT News reports on 140,000 living (and recently dead) MIT alumni, 11,000+ current students, and thousands of faculty and staff members.

Alex Meredith reports on her final semester on campus:

The Class of 2021 was given just 12 weeks in the dorms, stretching from the end of August to mid-November. … I spent all spring and all summer 3,000 miles from MIT, attending virtual classes from my parents’ basement in Seattle. … I would finally close Zoom and immediately open FaceTime to talk to a pixelated version of my girlfriend… This fall, after spending one week in quarantine at the start of the semester, MIT allowed me to see a small group of five friends, called my “pod,” without physical distancing. As long as our dorm isn’t on a “pod pause for public health,” we can hang out in each other’s rooms without masks, and we can ride in each other’s cars. … Beyond my pod, I can p-set with my friends outdoors on a terrace, and it’s a major upgrade over our usual p-set Zooms. I can see my girlfriend, who recently graduated from MIT and lives in Somerville, for picnics in a local park; we have to sit on separate picnic blankets, but six feet is nothing compared to 3,000 miles.

I hope that Ms. Meredith is never sentenced to prison here in the Land of Freedom (TM), but if she does become part of the world’s largest imprisoned population, it sounds as though she has the right attitude for life in the Big House.

What’s happening with the alums? George Kossuth of the Class of 1965 (age 77?) is a hero of optimism. He reports getting married and having heart valve replacement surgery. Frank Helle, Class of 1971, is a straight up hero. He reported losing 20 lbs. during the pandemic.

Roughly half the news regarding these earlier classes relates to the deaths of alumni. People were killed by cancer (e.g., “four-year, well-fought battle with pancreatic cancer”), heart disease, “a long illness”, Parkinson’s disease, “peacefully at home”, etc. Alumni write about losing wives to cancer (nobody describes being in an LGBTQIA+ relationship or having lost a same-sex spouse). What’s missing? Out of 140,000 alumni, I learned of two killed by or with COVID-19. One was 62-year-old Peregrine White Jr., SM ’84, who “was 62” and “died from complications of cancer that had impacted his brain, slowly causing a significant cognitive deficit over the last year. He also had covid-19.” The other was of Myron Kayton, PhD ’60 (87 years old?) who was an inertial guidance expert and “deputy director for guidance and control for the lunar module that landed man on the moon.”

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VPN for Americans to get a Chinese IP address and see what Trump and other Deplorables have to say?

by philg

Donald Trump has been unpersoned by U.S. tech companies, deplatformed from Twitter and Facebook. Parler, the social media competitor to Facebook that had become popular with Trump supporters, has been deplatformed by Amazon Web Services (AWS, which provides Parler’s servers; the site will go dark tomorrow night). Parler has also been deplatformed by Google/Android from phones and will presumably be banned by Apple from the App Store in due course. Amazon previously deplatformed from their ad network anyone who expressed disagreement with the CDC (post from May; maybe Amazon was right… California’s governor followed the CDC’s guidance (old and new) to the letter and California has not been troubled by coronavirus).

Is there a business opportunity here? How about VPNs for Americans to get a Chinese IP address and surf the Internet from inside the Great Firewall so that they can see all of the stuff that has been banned in the U.S.? If they want to do this with apps they can get a Huawei phone (top-rated for camera performance by dxomark), which will soon run software free from American control.

What’s a good name for our VPN-to-China service? “FreePeking”? “YunnanGonnaBeBlocked”?

Separately, I think this is the time to admit that I was wrong about Docker (“platform as a service”). From a senior software engineer friend:

Docker is a form of Kool-Aid. Think Jim Jones. We all drink it here in the Valley.

If Parler wants to spin itself up somewhere other than Amazon (is that feasible given the 24 hours of notice that Amazon gave Parler? They must have a crazy amount of photos/videos to transfer), Docker could actually be useful!

During my November 2019 trip to Shanghai/Suzhou/Hangzhou (awesome!), the U.S.-educated MBAs with whom I talked said that (a) they preferred living in China to living in the U.S. (they’d previously worked in Manhattan), and (b) they had more freedom of speech in China than in the U.S. (there was a clear line of permissible/impermissible drawn by the Party for published speech (they felt free to say whatever they wanted to at a restaurant table)). I wonder if Americans would experience more practical freedom on the Chinese-run Internet than on the Amazon/Google/Apple/Facebook-run Internet.

From Shanghai:

Finally, is it fair to say that Donald Trump is the new Hannibal Lecter and even the most casual contact with him, such as reading some words that he has written, could be dangerous? This Hannibal Lecter-style power is why my Facebook friends are talking nonstop about all of the ways that Trump can be imprisoned forever. It isn’t enough that Trump will disappear in 11 days. They need him inside a Supermax prison solitary cell in order to feel secure.

The Trump Twitter Archive captured some of the hated dictator’s tweets before Twitter put them into the memory hole. Here’s what he wrote just as the Capitol was being trashed:

  • Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!
  • I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!

Related:

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Maine coast helicopter photo series: Portland

by philg

Sixth of a series… near the peak of foliage season (mid-October) we decided to fly from Boston to Bar Harbor, Maine, following the shoreline, in a Robinson R44 helicopter. Tony Cammarata was in back with a door removed (frosty!) and a Nikon D850. Instrument student Vince Dorow was with me in the front seats.

Portland, Maine:

Thanks to MAC Jets for the great stop, as usual, and for the crew car that enabled us to take Tony on his first visit to Tony’s Donut Shop:

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