2020
Americans only started calling our country "America" around the turn of the 20th Century. Previously, we called ourselves the "Union," "Republic," and even "Columbia" and Freedonia.
The transition to “America” came about the time the US became a bloody, brutal global empire, committing genocide in the Philippines and conquering Puerto Rico and Hawaii.
Cisco WebEx, Google and other companies are offering free videoconferencing to help restrict coronavirus (and encourage people to subscribe and pay when the emergency is over!)
Republican Darrell Issa moves on to face Democrat opponent Ammar Campa-Najjar in the November election for CA-50
Issa’s primary campaign against Republican Carl DeMaio was dirty. The campaign against Campa-Najjar is going to be dirtier.
ICE's New York office uses a rigged algorithm to keep virtually all arrestees in detention. The ACLU says it's unconstitutional
“… this ostensible problem-solving software was rigged to provide only one solution: detention,” writes Sam Biddle at The Intercept.
According to a lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union and Bronx Defenders:
While waiting for those hearings, those detained suffer under harsh conditions of confinement akin to criminal incarceration. While incarcerated, they are separated from families, friends, and communities, and they risk losing their children, their jobs, and their homes. Because of inadequate medical care and conditions in the jails, unmet medical and mental-health needs often lead to serious and at times irreversible consequences.
Via Cory pluralistic.net
Why America is so vulnerable to coronavirus
Ryan Cooper:
America’s atrociously inadequate welfare state makes it by far the most vulnerable rich country to a viral pandemic, and the vicious, right-wing ideology of the Republican Party has wrecked the government’s ability to manage crises of any kind….
Indeed, U.S. health care is not only by far the worst system among rich countries, it is much worse than that of many middle-income or poorer countries when it comes to confronting a fast-moving epidemic.
The US has no national healthcare system for testing and treatment. Working people with symptoms like a cold (which is how the virus presents) can’t afford to go to the doctor. And the coup de grace is there’s no national policy mandating paid sick time off, which means infected workers in food service, retail, and personal healthcare have financial incentive to go out there and infect the public.
In healthcare policy, as with gun control and education, American Republicans are convinced of the impossibility of policies that work in every developed country in the world, and many undeveloped ones. The point of Sanders' comments about Cuba is not that Cuba is awesome, but rather that even Cuba, with its broken, awful, government, manages to get healthcare and education right.
Via Cory pluralistic.net
Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet
It is one of the few remaining places that retains the faintly utopian glow of the early World Wide Web.
Wonderful article.
American taxpayers have paid $152 million for Trump to play golf, making him the 10th highest paid American athlete.
We have watched two episodes of the second season of “Altered Carbon.” We are almost enjoying it. Does it get better?
I just remembered Joe Biden is fine
“Please don’t show me any footage of Joe Biden saying or doing things.”
A Fantastic Night . . . If You Don’t Like Bloomberg, Warren, or Sanders
AP: Bloomberg is thinking about dropping out after a disappointing Super Tuesday showing.
Inside the race to build the best quantum computer on Earth
Google and IBM are dueling to commercialize a new generation of computing technology, quantum computing. While Google is working on a breakthrough to achieve “quantum supremacy,” IBM is dismissive of that approach, working on evolutionary development with a steady stream of commercial applications from the outset.
Gideon Lichfield goes in depth at MIT Technology Review, along with explaining the principles of quantum computing and differences between the two approaches. Based on Lichfield’s article, Google is ahead but IBM looks ready for a marathon:
Regardless of whether you agree with Google’s position or IBM’s, the next goal is clear… to build a quantum computer that can do something useful. The hope is that such machines could one day solve problems that require unfeasible amounts of brute-force computing power now, like modeling complex molecules to help discover new drugs and materials, or optimizing city traffic flows in real time to reduce congestion, or making longer-term weather predictions. (Eventually they might be capable of cracking the cryptographic codes used today to secure communications and financial transactions, though by then most of the world will probably have adopted quantum-resistant cryptography.) The trouble is that it’s nearly impossible to predict what the first useful task will be, or how big a computer will be needed to perform it. …
As for quantum supremacy itself, it will be an important moment in history, but that doesn’t mean it will be a decisive one. After all, everyone knows about the Wright brothers’ first flight, but can anybody remember what they did afterwards?
I tried to go 24 hours without touching my face. I made it 18 minutes
Nestor Ramos at the Boston Globe:
Surely I could give up wiping my mouth, rubbing my eyes, and scratching my nose, too. How hard could it be? I’m not a 4-year-old licking the buttons in the elevator; I’m a grown man in control of my various scratching and rubbing functions.
Wonderful article. While I read it I became aware I was scratching my nose.
China is using Uighur slave labor camps for manufacturing for US brands including Nike, Apple and Dell.
Miss Staten Island banned from St. Pat’s parade after coming out as bi — still shows up
Jeff Huang: My productivity app is a single .txt file
One file to track to-dos and have-dones.
Aaron Sorkin on his new play based on “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The West Wing,” “Studio 60,” and how he’d write the 2020 Democratic primary.