Wednesday, July 15, 2020

And another day of funneling data, rising virus cases, ICU bed shortages, shared driver’s license and state ID records, Twitter’s rough afternoon, secret Trump orders, circus tents, Flynn possibly back in, Deepfakes, and simulated shipwrecks comes to a close:

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” -- Socrates

Death

US: 140,140 (+998)

World: 586,821 (+5600)

Countdown: 111 days.

White House Strips CDC of Data Collection Role For COVID-19 Hospitalizations. The Trump administration has mandated that hospitals sidestep the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to send critical information about COVID-19 hospitalizations and equipment to a different federal database. -- Hmmm.

Coronavirus data is funneled away from CDC, sparking worries. “We know the administration has been trying to silence the CDC,” he said. “Now it looks like the administration might be trying to blind the CDC as well.” -- As I said, hmmm.

Virus cases rise in U.S. states amid new world restrictions. Arizona, Texas and Florida together reported about 25,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday as restrictions aimed at combating the spread of the pandemic took hold in the United States and around the world in an unsettling sign reminiscent of the dark days of April.

Florida hospitals face ICU bed shortage as state passes 300,000 COVID-19 cases.

Before July 1, the country had never seen a day in which 50,000 new coronavirus cases had been confirmed. Since that day, the record has been surpassed 11 times, according to an NBC News tally of cases.

Four states — Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina and South Dakota — have agreed to share their driver's license and state ID records to help the Trump administration figure out the U.S. citizenship status of every adult living in the country.

Harvard says Covid-19 surge across South did not come from northern vacationers, as CDC director claims. Coronavirus cases are surging in the South because states reopened too soon, not because northerners traveled to Southern destinations over Memorial Day, the Harvard Global Health Institute asserted in a statement Wednesday.

Oklahoma’s governor says he has tested positive for COVID-19.

Bitcoin scam breaches some of world's most prominent Twitter accounts. Suspected bitcoin scammers grabbed control of accounts belonging to the rich and famous, as well as lower-profile accounts, for more than two hours.

Secret Trump order gives CIA more powers to launch cyberattacks. “Our government is basically turning into f****ing WikiLeaks, [using] secure communications on the dark web with dissidents, hacking and dumping,” said one such former official.

White House officials sent document to Pentagon criticizing Vindman after impeachment testimony. -- Trump likes his revenge, doesn’t he?

Fact check: President Trump makes at least 19 false or misleading claims in wild anti-Biden monologue. — My favorite responses were the ones that said: “This is nonsense.”

Rice University Students Will Study in Circus Tents This Fall, Camp Chairs Necessary.

Inside Orange County’s bizarre school-reopening vote. The Orange County board’s white paper states that in K-12 classes, “social distancing of children and reduced census classrooms is not necessary and therefore not recommended.” It says that “children play a very minor role in the spread of COVID-19 and that “requiring children to wear face coverings may even be very harmful to the child.” 

Donald Trump Is Pushing Americans Into Harm's Way - And McConnell Is Helping Him.

President Trump says that he'd welcome Michael Flynn back to the White House. — WTF? No, really. WTF?

Trump reins in major environmental law to speed big projects. President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he is rolling back a foundational Nixon-era environmental law that he says stifles infrastructure projects, but that is credited with keeping big construction projects from fouling up the environment and ensuring there is public input on major projects.

Trump calls treatment of St. Louis couple who pointed guns at protesters 'a disgrace'. “They were going to be beat up badly, and the house was going to be totally ransacked and probably burned down like they tried to burn down churches," the president continued. — His racism knows no bounds.

Kenyan 12-year old girl married to two men within a month. Mr Kaputah added that poverty and the closure of schools due to the coronavirus pandemic have played a role in increasing cases of child marriages. — People are hungry, so they sell their daughters off for cows.

Mail could be delayed as new postal boss pushes cost-cutting. -- Their goal is to eliminate the United States Postal Service.

2021 Rose Parade canceled due to coronavirus pandemic.

Deepfake used to attack activist couple shows new disinformation frontier. The catch? Oliver Taylor seems to be an elaborate fiction. His university says it has no record of him. He has no obvious online footprint beyond an account on the question-and-answer site Quora, where he was active for two days in March. Two newspapers that published his work say they have tried and failed to confirm his identity. And experts in deceptive imagery used state-of-the-art forensic analysis programs to determine that Taylor’s profile photo is a hyper-realistic forgery - a “deepfake.”

The soothing beauty of Shipwreck YouTube. Watching the Titanic sink in real time is the only thing to soothe my frazzled nerves.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.