Thursday, December 15, 2022

And another day of TX AG seeking data on gender changes to state IDs, stopgap bills, ending homelessness is under attack, why America doesn’t have $10 broadband, JFK docs, and Musk bans several prominent journalists from Twitter comes to a close:

“It’s just so damn surreal to go online and see tweets about Russians setting up literal torture chambers for CHILDREN and then also tweets from annoyed ‘middle-class American taxpayers’ who are pissed off that a tiny fraction of their taxes is helping us end this nightmare sooner.” — Oleksandra Povoroznyk

Covid Deaths

US: 1,112,797 (+1133)

World: 6,667,358 (+2885)

Covid Cases

US: 101,714,157 (+124,783)

World: 656,256,469 (+681,588)

White House reveals winter COVID-19 plans, more free tests. After a three-month hiatus, the administration is making four rapid virus tests available per household through covidtests.gov starting Thursday. COVID-19 cases have shown a marked increase after the Thanksgiving holiday, and further increases are projected from indoor gathering and travel around Christmas and New Year’s. -- Yeah, people. Covid is still a thing.

Texas attorney general sought data on gender changes to state IDs. The office of Republican Texas attorney general Ken Paxton this summer sought data on how many people had changed the gender information on their driver’s licenses, according to a newspaper report published on Wednesday that civil rights attorneys described as worrying. The Washington Post reported that public records obtained by the newspaper do not indicate why Paxton’s office made the request to the Texas department of public safety (DPS). The head of the driver’s license division told colleagues in June to compile the “total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months”.

Twitter suspends journalists who have been covering Elon Musk and the company. The accounts of Ryan Mac of The New York Times, Donie O'Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept, Steve Herman of Voice of America and independent journalists Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann and Tony Webster had all been suspended as of Thursday evening. — Musk is nothing but trash.

“It was never about free speech. It was always about freeing the right from the consequences for hate speech and advocating for violence while crushing left media. They didn't even try to hide it.” -- John Iadorola

“And another reminder that the point of punishing a few is to encourage the many to self-censor. Classic authoritarian tactics.” -- Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Senate passes stopgap bill to avert shutdown at end of the week. The vote was 71 to 19. Now that it has passed the Senate, it can go to President Joe Biden to be signed into law. The House approved the measure on Wednesday.

Senate sends Biden military bill that would lift Covid vaccine mandate for troops and authorize more Ukraine funding. The $858 billion legislation would allow for more security spending on Ukraine and Taiwan and authorize a 4.6% pay increase for U.S. troops.

The most successful strategy for ending homelessness is under attack. Advocates and researchers have never had stronger evidence about the best way to most effectively house people who need it: a model known as “housing first.” As the name suggests, its focus is getting people into permanent housing and offering them support services, rather than requiring them to address mental health conditions, substance abuse, or job training first. The housing-first model has enjoyed strong bipartisan support, and growing evidence about its effectiveness, for nearly three decades. But now it’s facing challenges on several fronts. Rising rents and a chronic shortage of affordable housing has meant it’s grown ever harder to find units for homeless people…Now “housing first” itself is experiencing new and unprecedented politicization. The model has been embraced by Congress, HUD, housing researchers, and national homeless organizations, but has faced growing criticism in the past few years. The Republican-led backlash is leading to new punitive approaches, including in liberal cities.

Why Doesn't America Have $10 Broadband? Every ISP in the nation can now watch and record every single website you visit (even in “Private Mode”), track how long you’re there, and record every message you send or receive. They can sell this information to anybody they choose and data brokerages have become a billion-dollar business, as I laid out in my book on Big Brother. And there’s no way for you to ever find out what they’ve recorded or what they’ve done with it because they simply refuse to make that information available, unless or until a government agency serves them with a subpoena and it ends up being used against you in court. Your phone company can’t listen into your phone calls because wiretapping is illegal, giving you privacy protections dating back to the 1930s. But that’s not true with your internet provider, thanks in part to Trump, Pai, and the GOP. And those companies are fighting like hell to keep it that way…In most of the rest of the developed world that’s illegal — whoever owns the cable into your home can charge an ISP an access fee but can’t block them out — which is why internet service in most other developed countries is competitive, with hundreds of providers. And, with that competition comes lower prices and better service.

Teens and Cyberbullying 2022. Nearly half of U.S. teens have been bullied or harassed online, with physical appearance being seen as a relatively common reason why. Older teen girls are especially likely to report being targeted by online abuse overall and because of their appearance.

National Archives releases thousands of JFK assassination documents. The cache of over 13,000 documents is the second of two JFK assassination-related document dumps that President Joe Biden ordered last year when the White House postponed a public release because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Jupiter’s moon Io, dotted with hundreds of volcanoes, set for a close-up. The Juno probe, which has been orbiting Jupiter since July 2016, is set to conduct a flyby of Io, one of the 80 known moons in Jupiter’s system. Io’s magma-encrusted surface is pockmarked with hundreds of volcanoes, and scientists are keen to understand how these eruptions change Jupiter’s magnetosphere and what effect they may have on the planet’s vivid auroras.

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

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