Collected Links (06/10/2022)

•  At least 20 million people watched the prime time coverage of yesterday's Congressional hearing on the events around January 6, 2022. That is roughly equivalent to a Monday Night Football broadcast, and does not include watchers on PBS, which may have been several million. Presidential debates, by comparison, get numbers around 68 million -- three times as much. Fox News, of course, did not broadcast the debate live, with sound. During the first part of the debate Tucker Carlson was on, who said, among other things:

It’s deranged, and we’re not playing along,. . . . This is the only hour on an American news channel that will not be carrying their propaganda live. They are lying, and we are not going to help them do it. What we will do instead is to try to tell you the truth.

(Quoted in the NYT article linked; see also Fox News itself, or this similar article at Huffington Post.) The hearings were also covered or reported on by news networks outside the United States, and even on Fox News, eventually, so, I guess Tucker thinks there is a worldwide conspiracy against him.

• Also as reported in the NYT, a report from CDC data and analyzed by the Williams Institute at UCLA law school, the number of youth identifying as transgender has sharply increased. To quote the article:

The number of young people who identify as transgender has nearly doubled in recent years, according to a new report that captures a stark generational shift and emerging societal embrace of a diversity of gender identities.

The analysis, relying on government health surveys conducted from 2017 to 2020, estimated that 1.4 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds and 1.3 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds were transgender, compared with about 0.5 percent of all adults.
   . . .

But the numbers, which vary widely from state to state, also raise questions about the role of peer influence or the political climate of the community.

The article has superlative graphs of the variance by age and among states.

Collected Links (06/09/2022)

• “‘Needless to say’ is needless to say, needless to say.” — Enoch Haga, via Futility Closet
• A (simplistic) slyt video on the Langland Project in mathematics, video by Quanta Magazine Science Channel, link via Nag on the Lake.
• Fox News has been pestering me with stuff today, none of which suggests I watch (or which even references) tonight's Congressional hearings regarding the events of January 6, 2021. It does have an article regarding the hearing on its website. They suggest George Takei doesn't understand the Second Amendment because he says the millions of AR-15 rifles Americans have could be better used in Ukraine to fight the war there (yeah really, Fox News said that -- it is liberally mixing idiocy and mendacity on this one); "Fox News contributor Joe Concha took sharp aim at late-night host Jimmy Kimmel's ‘tee ball’ interview with President Biden [hitting] Kimmel for being a ‘political activist’ and leaving all of Biden's claims unchallenged" (Concha's description of the interview is inaccurate, to be kind, but it's particularly absurd for a supposed news channel regularly engaging in distortion to accuse an overt comedian of not asking hard enough questions); Fox News claims false that "dem leaders" are supporting "menacing protests" outside of Supreme Court Justices homes (that is ridiculous and false for several reasons -- such protests have been denounced by "dem leaders" -- and such protests are not new or one sided); Fox News calls (or supports calling) Democrats "the party against civil rights" by seeking a ban on assault rifles; "Kayleigh McEnany blasts Biden's [supposed] silence on Kavanaugh murder attempt: 'Where are you, President Biden?'" -- these are just stories Fox News is pushing to me on social media -- its other overage remains the same shit-storm of bias and dishonesty it always is.
• Meanwhile, in Missouri the Governor signed a bill that, among other things, shields doctors who write and pharmacists who fill ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine prescriptions. That's because these medicines "work so well" in treating COVID that we better make sure the doctors and pharmacists don't face consequences for using them. 
• Key points from the Congressional hearing regarding January 6, 2021, tonight:
• Donald Trump was explicitly told by the Attorney General and others that the evidence showed Trump was (a) going to lose the election as the votes were counted, and (b) lost the election;
• An independent investigatory body was sought originally: the Republicans in Congress torpedoed that;
• Trump and Mark Meadows were explicitly told by Trump's and the Republican's actual election experts, as well as their Attorney General (Bob Barr), that the allegations of fraud were groundless, and their claims regarding Dominion Voting Systems were false.
• Trump and his cronies lost over 60 lawsuits claiming the election was rigged;
• Donald Trump spent millions of dollars of campaign funds advertising his claims of election fraud even though he knew those claims were groundless and what he was saying was false;
• Trump and Jeffrey Clark at the Justice Department falsely claimed the Attorney General supported the fraud claims and tried to get Clark appointed as Attorney General so he could support Trumps false claims;
• Trump repeatedly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election -- Pence refused and knew if he had capitulated to the pressure it would be illegal;
• John Eastman, a lawyer, hatched a legal plan to try to get the Vice President to not properly certify the election but send it back to the States even though he knew the legal arguments for that action was meritless;
• Trump secretly met at the Whitehouse with cronies, excluding his Whitehouse advisors and lawyers, to hatch a plan to overthrow the election;
• Immediately following that secret meeting Trump tweeted, calling for his supporters to come to D.C. and engage in action against certifying the election results on January 6;
• Jared Kushner took the threats by Whitehouse counsel and others to resign as "whining" -- many officials, of course, had threatened to resign (and some did);
• On January 5 Steve Bannon said that "all hell is going to break loose tomorrow";
• At a speech on January 6 to a large crowd Trump told the crowd to march on the Capitol and to "fight like hell";
• The Joint Chief of Staff did not immediately act regarding the January 6 events because although the Vice President repeatedly and forcefully called for action, the President did not;
• Very compelling video of the January 6 attack on the Capitol shown;
• A police officer (Officer Edwards) testifies about her experience of the attacks -- it was very violent -- she was left unconscious -- she describes the officers injuries and calls it carnage -- she says she was in the middle of a battle -- hours of hand-to-hand combat;
• A documentary filmmaker (Mr. Quested) testifies about his experience on January 6 as well as a meeting between the leaders of the Proudboys and Oathkeepers the night before, which he filmed. The Proudboys and Oathkeepers on January 6 headed to the Capitol while the President was speaking -- he describes the events there as very violent;
• Rioters (on video) stated that Trump asked them to come and march on Capitol.

Excellent Advice from Galileo Feynman Jezebel

This is not the Dick you're looking for

What with Anthony Weiner's weiner in the news again, Erin Gloria Ryan has come forward with some timely advice at Jezebel in an article entitled "Should You Send a Lady a Dick Pic? A Guide for Men."

The answer appears to be "no." Who knew?

I assure you the article and its comments are worth reading in full.

Wikipedia Live Monitor

Wikipedia Live Monitor is a major event tracking site that takes edit traffic at Wikipedia, concurrently comparing multiple different language versions of the site, and then compares them in "real time" to international social media edits. The information is used to generate notes (lists? posts? ticklers? I'm not sure what to call these) of rapidly emerging stories around the world. In short, it's a news monitoring service.

I used it during the recent Boston Marathon bombing unfolding story to see how well it worked; I think it is sort of meh right now, but could emerge into a great tracking device. I think it would be better, in the short term, for human editors to review and further edit the output -- at least more than they do -- as well as develop a much better output display.

Wikipedia Live Monitor has it genesis in articles on the possibility of using Wikipedia edits as a news alert, an idea that came from the crash of Wikipedia after Michael Jackson died and edit wars erupted.

"False Flags and Roof Terrorists: Your Guide to All the Internet Horseshit"

"Roof Guy"

An article at Gawker a few days ago, "False Flags and Roof Terrorists: Your Guide to All the Internet Horseshit," if fun of short reading of all an example of the crap nonsense people were spouting on the web and social media after the Boston Bombings when few if any of us really knew what was going on. We get a primer of "false flag attacks," "the roof guy," "crisis actors," and the "fact" that the show Family Guy supposedly predicted the attack. Of course, the readers at Reddit and 4chan were also actively trying (and failing) to solve the crime. (As Matt Buchanan said in an article at The New Yorker on the trend, "This moment is, for better or for worse, the shape of things to come.")

It is a brave new world where everybody has ready access to information on how to maim and kill hundreds or thousands and then we can all play FBI together, speculating on who did it.

Today's Crazy Values In Ceramics

As reported at NBC News (via Miss Celania), a bowl purchased at a garage sale for $3 turned out to be a 1000 year old relic from China. Naturally, following a suitable period sitting on the family fireplace mantel followed by a suitable period for verification, it was off to auction and was sold for $2.2 million.

This stuff never happens to me.

Note: this embedded video is from NBC News, whose embedding sucks, and I am too tight on time to fool with it. You'd think a big media company like that would have a clue, but nooooo ...

Renata Adler Rips The New York Times a New One

A few years ago Renata Adler wrote a book about the decline of The New Yorker at the departure of its long term editor, William Shawn, and happened to quote a letter she had written Shawn declining to review a book about Judge John Sirica, famous from the Watergate scandal. "Contrary to his reputation as a hero," Adler wrote, "Sirica was in fact a corrupt, incompetent, and dishonest figure, with a close connection to Senator Joseph McCarthy and clear ties to organized crime."

This single sentence led to a firestorm, mostly in The New York Times. It published no less than eight pieces critical of Adler and her book and mostly critical of the single sentence quoted above. It also refused to print a letter from Adler defending it. Harpers, however, did publish an essay by Adler. There she discusses the sentence and lays out her substantial support for it and, in the process, demolishes the Times's approach, as well as Sirica. Adler's essay is a masterwork of rhetoric and careful thought.

The New York Times Stands Corrected

Coped from media maven :
Megan Amram

Corrections

The New York Times would like to issue corrections for the wedding announcement of Mr. Adam Penview to Ms. Katie Jasper that ran in yesterday’s paper.

We incorrectly identified in the announcement that Mr. Adam Penview and Ms. Katie Jasper were married at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Manhattan. They were married at St. Brigid’s.

Additionally, we inaccurately wrote that the groom “attended Cornell University and double-majored in English and Humping Other English Majors’ Girlfriends.” Mr. Penview, in fact, only majored in English. He did not major in “Humping Other English Majors’ Girlfriends,” as that is not currently an existing track of study at Cornell or any other accredited university.

We erroneously wrote yesterday that Mr. Penview was the “son of Dr. Ryan Penview, a third-generation ophthalmologist, and Mrs. Claire Penview, a Zuckerberg-ass beaver-bitch.” Mrs. Penview practiced law in New York State until 2004, and is considered by many to be a friendly and beautiful member of her community, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to Mark Zuckerberg or his rear end. “Beaver-bitch” is not a profession.

We mischaracterized the bride as having worn “a peace [sic] of shit mayonnaise tent. Also, you know how sometimes people see the Virgin Mary in stuff? It was like that, except you could see Hitler in the wedding dress, but specifically because she had hand-embroidered a picture of Hitler in her dress.” In truth, Ms. Jasper wore Amsale.

The Mirage and the Chicago Sun-Times

Thirty five years ago the Chicago Sun-Times ran a 25 part story about graft and corruption in Chicago. It uncovered shakedowns by city and state inspectors who let flagrant violations pass if they were sufficiently paid off, accountants and accounting schemes acting to defraud the State and city of enormous amounts of sales taxes, misuse of government property and demand for payment for routine government services, and criminal shakedowns by a jukebox and gaming vendor. The scene for the story was the aptly named Mirage Tavern:

It looked like any neighborhood tavern in Chicago. The beer was cold, the bratwursts hot.

But the Mirage, 731 N. Wells St., was never quite what it seemed.

It was a tavern operated by the Sun-Times and the Better Government Assn.

The bartenders were reporters and investigators. The repairmen were photographers headed for a hidden loft.

All were investigating years of complaints from small businesses about the day-to-day corruption they face in Chicago, the city that works if you know how to work it.

The Sun-Times will tell the Mirage's story -- with names, dates and amounts -- in the days to come.

The Sun-Times is running the story again. It's an interesting tale, and I wonder if they'd find the same thing today. I suspect the graft is less rampant, and the sales tax fraud is still widespread.

An Incredible Fact: The Deadliest Fire in U.S. History Happened the Same Day as the Great Chicago Fire but was in Wisconsin

Image from a mural at the Peshtigo Fire Museum

October 8, 1871, was an incredibly bad day for disasters in U.S. History. In Chicago the Great Chicago Fire began and over two days burned through the center of the city up to the northside. It ended at Lake Michigan and killed several hundred, rendering homeless a hundred thousand, and destroying about 1/3 of the property, by value, in the City. Although the fire did begin, as in legend, at the O'Leary's barn, the actual cause is unknown. The O'Leary's house, south of their barn, was unscathed.

In Wisconsin that same day another fire broke out in the forest north of Green Bay. (N.B. Green Bay is about 210 miles (c. 335 km) due north of Chicago -- this was a completely separate fire.) There had been a drought that summer with only a few inches of rain (this also affected Chicago), and there were very strong winds blowing out of the southwest towards the northeast (again, same in Chicago). This led to the formation of a massive wall of flame which rapidly moved northeast scorching the forest killing hundreds and 900 to 2000 (estimates vary) as it blew through the town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and surrounding villages until exhausting itself at an inlet of Lake Michigan.

The Best New York Times Graphics of 2012

I am going to be publishing some 2012 wrap-ups today and tomorrow -- there are too many to post them all in one night, and I've refused to start wrapping up 2012 before the end of the year. 

A great place to start is The New York Times's wrap up of its best interactive graphics of 2012. Every single one of these is an incredible piece of work and eclipses the most of the work I seeing elsewhere. They're so informative, so well designed, so beautiful that they deserve a separate post ... I'll be revisiting a few of these in subsequent posts related to some of their substance (I've published on a few in the past).

Why, Yes, General Petraeus Does Look Natty in this Photo (Which Must Be Why the Washington Post Buried this Significant News Story in the Style Section)

On December 3 legendary reporter Bob Woodward disclosed that Rupert Murdoch (who, of course, owns a huge media empire and has come under suspicion for his organizations' illegal use of wiretaps, among other things) and Roger Ailes (president of Fox News and chair of Fox Television Stations), via their subordinate K.T. McFarland, asked David Petraeus (former US 4 star general and then head of operations in Afghanistan) to run for US President. Murdoch would finance the campaign, and Ailes would serve as the media adviser or chief of staff of the campaign. Petraeus refused. (N.B. I'd like to say "to his credit Petraeus refused," but he didn't refuse due to Murdoch's and Ailes's obvious conflicts of interest -- instead he said were he to ever run he'd take them up on their offers.)

A tape of the full recording is here; a transcript of the tape is here.

The Connecticut School Shootings (I Hesitate to Post)

Yesterday saw the horror of the murder of some 28 people in first grade classrooms in a grade school in Connecticut. I hesitate to post because people try to make such tragedies into political gains; I've made my own support for stricter gun control laws clear before (and commented on the constitutional scope of this), and I do not need to reemphasize it here. The tragedy simply leaves me bereft and at tears.

I have seen a number of interesting and provoking posts and comments about it, though, and I thought I'd round a few of them up.

• Professor Glenn Reynolds of the influential blog Instapundit quotes William S. Burroughs for the statement “After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.” That's both a little true and a lot idiotic. This was a temporary step up for Professor Reynolds, though. His usual claim, which he's since reiterated in an editorial in editorial in USA Today, is that regulating firearms (which he always calls "banning" them) leads to shooting sprees. You see, if people are armed to the teeth, then the killers will be easily gunned down and criminals will be afraid to shoot anybody, or something like that. That is so stupid it buggers belief. Anyway, its patent dumbness becomes evident in a case like this as little first graders and their teachers can't go around carrying guns. It is an outrage that Professor Reynolds would try to politicize this situation given his prominent role in advocating for the type of weapon used in this situation, but he has.

The Rayogram "Newseum"

The "Newseum" or "NEWScan" is a website operated by the design and creative agency Rayogram that provides daily readable scans, side by side, of the front pages of a variety of national and international newspapers, as well as links to their websites. It's an interesting take on the different approaches of different publishers and regions/societies to the ledes of the day.

If you're interested in English language versions of news sources from around the world -- of which there are many for many different cultures -- I listed with links those that I think are the key ones in a post here.

The Hostess Bankruptcy: America in Crisis (A Galileo Feynman Special Report)

Twinkies were served to the Indians at the first Thanksgiving

(IRVING, TEXAS) America's leading snack cake provider, Hostess Brands, Inc., announced Friday (November 16) that it was seeking to liquidate its business in response to a strike by workers. In liquidating Hostess would fire about 18,300 workers. The strike arose after union rejection (by over 95% of its members) of reductions in wages as well as benefits, pension, and retirement obligations.

Hostess or its predecessor companies have been in and out of bankruptcy and receivership since 2004. The cuts were trustee ordered, but the problem has been exacerbated since the Hostess CEO was given a $1.5 million compensation package the prior year (with $2 million more to follow), and a few executives had been given raises of up to 80%. The Hostess CEO has been replaced and the executives involved who remain with the company are working for $1 under court order.

Events are unfolding rapidly, with President Obama considering a TARP style bailout and Governor Christie now personally consuming as many Ding Dongs as possible to keep Hostesses afloat. Hostess executives, however, have exacerbated the situation saying "let them eat cake" while themselves having their cake and eating it too. (I deeply regret that last sentence.) Twinkies are now being rapidly loaded into Fort Knox to replace less valuable gold bars, and Ron Paul is insisting that our economy be placed on the "new gold" standard. Rush Limbaugh has asserted the crisis is due to President Obama (really he said this), while middle America is experiencing extreme Twinkie hoarding (okay, it's cubical stuffing, but whatever). This, people, is yet another sign that the world will end in 2012.

Nation Horrified To Learn About War In Afghanistan While Reading Up On Petraeus Sex Scandal

Per The Onion (via Cynical C):

WASHINGTON—As they scoured the Internet for more juicy details about former CIA director David Petraeus’ affair with biographer Paula Broadwell, Americans were reportedly horrified today upon learning that a protracted, bloody war involving U.S. forces is currently raging in the nation of Afghanistan. “Oh my God, this is terrible,” Allie Lipscomb, 29, said after accidentally stumbling on an article about the war while she tried to ascertain details about what specific sexual acts Petraeus and Broadwell might have engaged in. “According to this, 2,000 American troops have died, 18,000 have been wounded, and more than 20,000 civilians have been killed. Jesus Christ. And it’s been happening for, like, 11 years.” Sources confirmed that after reading a few paragraphs about the brutal war, the nation quickly became distracted by a headline about Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash’s alleged sexual abuse of a 16-year-old boy.

Well, I thought we were "in" Afghanistan on a peacekeeping mission. This is very disturbing.

Also recently from The Onion:

• Kim Jong unnamed as the sexiest man alive for 2012. Whoops, I may have misread that. It was Kim Jong-Un named as the sexiest man alive for 2012. Sorry. Of course he was named sexiest man alive.
• "Elmo Admits He's Uncomfortable Working With Gay Puppeteer."
• "Widening Petraeus Scandal Reveals Human Race Has Been Having Sex For 200,000 Years."

What the World has been Up To Lately

At Foreign Policy there's a good summary of significant recent world events (still with a U.S. spin): in Syria 32,000 have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011, and Islamic fundamentalists are trying to hijack the opposition; in China Xi Jinping is taking control, it seems, from Hu Jintao (Xi, by the way, has doctorate degrees in chemical engineering and political science, his extended family may have billions, and his daughter attends Harvard -- imagine the fallout if one of Obama's daughters attended college in China!); the European Union is still having problems with employment at 11.5 percent and Britain talking about leaving;  in Mali Islamic extremists have seized an area the size of France, are imposing sharia, and 300,000 have fled; and in Yemen the U.S. is very aggressively using drones with the blessing of Yemen's president; in Israel elections will be held soon but Netanyahu has merged Likud with an ultra-nationalist, pro-settlement party, which looks really bad for peace; in North Korea Kim Jong Un, benevolent leader and gift from God, may have executed one or more military leaders by having mortars rounds fired directly into them at close range; in Bahrain, an ally of the U.S. and the liberal corner of Arabia, political protests have been banned; in Russia, which I want to mention has one hell of a national anthem, Putin may or may not be ailing and there's been a crackdown on opposition groups and two members of Pussy Riot have been sent to brutal prison camps; and in Cuba a new open door policy of accepting expatriots back has been implemented. 

See also Harper's Weekly Review.