2020
David Frumat the Atlantic, about Roger Stone: The Most Conspicuous Scandal in American History.
Trump and his cronies commit their treasonous crimes in plain sight, and that helps them get away with it.
David Gerroldâs 1983 novel âA Matter for Menâ features the Earth facing a biological menace which many people believe is a hoax, and the US in decline but still powerful and threatening.
Oh, that old-time science fiction! So unrealistic!
This may sound like Trumpâs wackiest conspiracy theory. But itâs actually true. Republicans have been peddling insane conspiracy theories for decades, and now it is coming back to destroy them, as rank-and-file Republicans are refusing to vote using mail in ballots or to take precautions to protect themselves against coronavirus.
Scientists thought they found evidence of a new planet at the edge of the solar system. Now they think it might be a black hole.
On Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic: Hospitals are using homebrew dongles with code from a Polish hacker to repair ventilators, getting around thieving licensing by manufacturer Medtronic. Datamir helps cops spy on protesters with Twitter. How arms dealers make billions on police militarization. local California businesses used clamshells as currency during the Depression. And France’s Macron demands a national database of porn preferences
For me, texting is a full-duplex conversation. I think possibly most people think of texting as half-duplex, like speech, and consider my approach rude.
âGhislaine, Is That You?â: Inside Ghislaine Maxwellâs Life on the Lam
I did not know this: Ghislaine Maxwell is the daughter of the late media mogul Robert Maxwell, briefly famous as a rival to Rupert Murdoch. Robert Maxwellâs body was found floating near his yacht in 1991.
Maybe his death was an accident. Maybe it was suicide. Maybe he was murdered to cover up ⊠something.
The yacht was named the Lady Ghislaine, for his daughter.
The elder Maxwell and Richard Epstein had a lot in common. They were both parvenus who bought their way into high society and respectability, and who fell to disgrace.
Ghislaine Maxwell idolized both men.
Mark Seal reports at Vanity Fair:
To Ghislaine, her mother, three brothers, and three sisters, Robert Maxwell was Samson, tearing down the gates of Gaza, as he was depicted in a stained-glass window in their 51-room Oxford mansion: a titan of luck, impossible achievement, and unlimited wealth. âIf Bob Maxwell didnât exist, no one could invent him,â Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock would say. Born Jan Ludvik Hoch into a Hasidic family in a tiny village in Czechoslovakia, he was so poor that he and his six siblings had to wear shoes in shifts. He evolved into a warrior, surviving the Holocaust, in which 300 of his immediate and extended family members perished, to join the Czech resistance. When his country fell to the Nazis, he fled to France and joined the British Army, fighting in bloody battles from Normandy to Germany. After the war, he married the daughter of a prosperous British silk merchant, christened himself Robert Maxwell, and bought Pergamon Press, a publisher of scientific journals. It became the anchor of an empire that would, at the time of his death, include hundreds of companies, among them the publishing giant Macmillan and newspapers from The Mirror in London to the New York Daily News. As big as or maybe even big-ger than his rival, Rupert Murdoch, Maxwell was a bombastic, demanding patriarch who dined with kings and presidents and exhibited a bottomless appetite for family, food, fortune, and fame.
Now he was dead, and it wasnât long before the mighty house of Maxwell was exposed as a house of cards. Maxwell, it turned out, had pledged millions from his companyâs pension funds to shore up his tottering empire, exposing his 32,000 employees to retirement ruin and racking up debts of nearly $5 billion. The conspiracy theories multiplied: He committed suicide rather than face his financial crimes; he died aboard his yacht while engaged in sex with a mistress; he fell overboard during his regular postmidnight piss over the railings; he was murdered by British security agents panicked that he had taken possession of tapes that could incriminate the MI6 intelligence service in crime and espionage; he was injected with a poisonous syringe by frogmen sent by his Mossad spymasters to silence him from revealing their secret arms deals.
Bill Murray dances with Gilda Radner at Studio 54. via
In the 70s, overalls and high heels were considered perfectly acceptable ladies' wear for a night on the town. The 70s were a very strange decade.
Gilda’s rocking it. She looks fantastic.
How AI makes policing more racist: AI is biased as the people who program it.
I like writing things by hand ⊠in theory.
I like the idea of being the guy who carries around a notebook, like Indiana Jonesâs father, and writes down all my brilliant thoughts. In my mind, it’s a simple but beautiful notebook, and I write in it using a fountain pen.
In reality, I type everything on my MacBook and if I’m not at my MacBook I use my phone. On the phone, I’m using voice transcription more and more.
Al Pacino with his parents, Salvatore and Rose, in 1940. via
He’s just a few months old and he already looks like Al Pacino.
I often see this bus parked around the corner. I keep expecting 11-year old Danny Bonaduce to emerge. đ·
I installed the new iPad beta and I think I like the scribbling feature it takes getting Used to. I don’t handwrite anything anymore
Incoherent Conspiracy Suggests Ghislaine Maxwell Is a Powerful Redditor: Because a supercriminal setting up pseudonymous social media account to rule the Internet would absolutely use a variation on their real name.
Cory Doctorow: Cops are buying breach data. Why get a warrant when the crooks can do the work for you?
3 Mac apps I'm not using anymore
I configured a new MacBook Pro a month ago. Usually I use Migration Assistant for that kind of thing but this time I started from scratch and moved data and apps over manually.
Three apps that still haven’t made the transition.
- Alfred
- Keyboard Maestro
- TextExpander
All three are apps I previously used daily and would have sworn were essential to my workflow. Apparently not.
I do have an idea for a thing I want to do with Keyboard Maestro â set up a series of palettes to remind me of keyboard shortcuts. But I’m in no rush on that.
Spies, Lies, and Stonewalling: What Itâs Like to Report on Facebook: â… operating with the secrecy of an intelligence agency and the authority of a state government, Facebook has arrogated to itself vast powers while enjoying, until recently, limited journalistic scrutiny.â