March 11, 2021

Shadi Hamid on Morning Joe. The single worst guest I think I have ever seen on that show.

ETA, single worst non Rethug guest.

A Muslim, but is arguing that the nation needs a nationwide resurgence of Christianity in the USA to fight the secular Democratic party's out of control 'wokeism' AND then, whilst defining wokeism, they then attack LGBTQ rights and BLM style racial justice. They are whingeing that 'Christians' (and they said mainstream, not RW MAGAts) feel 'cancelled' because LGBTQ rights are against Christian values and they are afraid to speak up now.

They tried to use Obama (who was against gay marriage and they painted that as his Christian values driving this) as evidence of a person being forced to turn on his values. Hamid said that Trump pulled 30% of the Muslin vote despite all the anti Muslim rhetoric because they saw him as upholding traditional 'values' and that the Democrats have to retake that initiative and fight against secularism. They are painting this bloke (and he claims it as well) to be anti RW.

FUCK this gaslighting shit!

March 11, 2021

Why Channel 37 Doesn't Exist (And What It Has to Do With Aliens)

Since the advent of analog TVs, channel 37 has always been static. Here's why.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8by7/why-channel-37-doesnt-exist-and-what-it-has-to-do-with-aliens




I’m endlessly fascinated by stories of the quirks that were built into the TV system where the well-laid plans of the system simply fell apart because it was asked to do too many things. Nearly five years ago, I wrote about one of them, the tale of how radio broadcasters were able to shoehorn an additional FM station into the radio because of the proximity of TV’s channel 6 to the rest of the radio feed. So when I was informed that there was another oddity kinda like this involving the TV lineups, I decided I had to take a dive in. It’s a tale that centers around channel 37, which was a giant block of static in most parts of the world during the 20th century. The reason for that was simple: it couldn’t fend off its scientific competition.

1952

The year that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission opened up the television system to use UHF, or ultra high frequency signals. The practical effect of this addition of bandwidth was that the total number of potential TV stations increased dramatically, from 108 to 2,051, overnight. The first UHF applications were granted on July 11, 1952, according to The History of UHF Television, a site dedicated to the higher-frequency television offerings.



The radio telescope that became a headache for the television industry

Within a 600-mile radius of the city of Danville, Illinois, population 31,246, are numerous major cities—among them Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Toronto, and Washington, DC. Nearly the entire length of the Mississippi River fits into that radius. If Danville was located just a little farther to the east, the radius would also include Philadelphia and New York City. For all intents and purposes, a 600-mile radius from Eastern Illinois covers basically the entire East Coast except the state of Florida and the Northeast. (Importantly to this story, New Jersey generally does not fall into this 600-mile radius.) But there was something located in Danville that was important enough to scientists that they didn’t want to share it with anyone else.

And that thing was a 400-foot-wide radio telescope, operating along the 610 MHz frequency. It was something of a monster of astronomy at the time, operating 12 to 16 hours per day, and researchers at the University of Illinois aimed to keep it that way. The research that led to the creation of the radio telescope was, basically, an accident—but a fundamental one that taught us more about the universe than we might have learned with a mere optical telescope. In 1931, a radio engineer and Bell Laboratories employee named Karl Jansky was trying to uncover the source of static that was interfering with radio waves … and found it had an extraterrestrial source, particularly at the center in the Milky Way galaxy. Jansky wasn’t an astronomer, but an engineer, and despite discovering a new field of astronomy, his position at Bell Labs did not allow him to pursue it further.

snip

March 11, 2021

Republican Jesus is old news. He's been replaced by the more hateful, more violent MAGA Jesus.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/maga-jesus



A decade ago, I wrote one of my first articles, “Republican Jesus”, for the now-defunct website Addicting Info. It was, by far, my most popular piece, not because it was well-written (I cringe when I read my saved copy now) but because it articulated exactly how broken the Republican Party was. Republican Jesus was the twisted version of Christ the right worshipped. He loved greed, White people, guns, and the Confederacy. He also hated the poor, minorities, liberals, and science. He was a snapshot of where the GOP’s base was back then. For a lot of people who had only recently discovered social media and been exposed to information sources outside traditional media outlets, the existence of Republican Jesus was something of a (pun intended) revelation. Until then, they had only known “bothsiderism.” Congress was to blame. Washington was gridlocked. Both sides, both sides, both sides. They could tell something wasn’t right with that analysis because while Democrats are not saints (and no one ever claimed they were), they were clearly not the equivalent of the raving lunatics on the right. I was far from the first to point out that Republicans were vile but that article was read over three million times and I got more than one death threat. Clearly, it hit a nerve. Here we are, a decade later, and while my “Republican Jesus” has more or less vanished from the internet, very little of it is disputed by mainstream journalists. It’s now widely accepted that the GOP is the party of racism and greed and anti-science. But Republican Jesus is old news. He’s been replaced by MAGA Jesus.

MAGA Jesus Take The Wheel...

After taking five weeks off from social media and the news, I was pleasantly surprised (OK, I was kind of shocked) to discover that we, as a country, are still talking about the January 6th terrorist attack on the Capitol. By way of comparison, we moved on from the Sandy Hook massacre in about a month. Look it up on Google Trends. It’s depressing. But not 1/6. Not only are Democrats still, justifiably, making a huge stink about it, but people are still being arrested and Republicans are almost certainly under investigation for aiding the terrorists. Amazingly, the press hasn’t started screaming that this is boring and why can’t Democrats talk about something else?! Even more stunning is that the press is still onboard with talking about the attack as terrorism instead of pretending it was just exuberant White people getting carried away. But despite what I can only assume to be an excruciating concession on the part of the media, they’re still not really talking about MAGA Jesus. MAGA Jesus is not Trump although you’d be forgiven for thinking so. Trump certainly thinks that and so do many of his most ardent followers. But Trump is simply the Moses of MAGA Jesus and when he keels over some time in the near future from his diet of grease and salt and rage, the cult will quickly realize that Trump is easy to replace. Hate always is. No, MAGA Jesus has been waiting for a long time to consume the Republican Party. He used to infect the Democratic Party and was disappointed the Civil War didn’t go his way. He tried again with the rise of the KKK but couldn’t maintain the momentum. But then the GOP gave him an opening that was too good to resist. A wedding of corporate greed to white nationalism with an added dose of religious fanaticism? That’s how that nice fellow in Germany got things done. MAGA Jesus had found his new home and he was welcomed with open arms.

Thou Shalt Kill In My Name

Fascists have been trying to overthrow America almost since fascism was first invented in the 1920s. A group of industrialists and bankers got together in the 1930s to plot a military coup against FDR. It failed before it started because they picked the wrong retired general to lead it. The 1/6 attack is just their latest attempt and it will certainly not be the last. MAGA Jesus and his disciples have plans for America.The nonsense about Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss is just smoke and mirrors. The base needs to be kept in a state of constant blind rage but the rest of the country needs to be kept distracted from paying attention to MAGA Jesus. 1/6 was a dress rehearsal. A dry run. It was proof of concept that a (relatively) small group of untrained imbeciles could be used as a weapon to almost topple the government of the most powerful nation on the planet. Now imagine those same imbeciles but organized and trained. MAGA Jesus is imagining it right now and has been for years. We call it the “militia movement” which is a nice euphemism for “domestic terrorist network.” We know this because militias like the Three Percenters and the Oathkeepers swore on the graves of their mothers and their honour as American soldiers that they were only arming themselves and training to prevent tyranny in the United States. Yet, the second an actual tyrant abused the power of the government, they cheered the prospect of a fascist regime.

Over a dozen of these self-proclaimed super patriots were among the wealthy rioters attacking the Capitol. And unlike the idiots around them, they were trained and organized. Not organized enough to keep their communications secure so we know for a fact they were planning this assault, but enough that they presented a very real and very lethal threat to the future of the country. There are hundreds of violent terrorist groups just like the Oathkeepers and Three Percenters with hundreds to thousands of members and even more devoted fans. So, yes, MAGA Jesus has an army of violent terrorists ready to do his bidding. They are not interested in compromise or meeting us halfway. We are either tools of the Great Jewish Conspiracy, baby-killing monsters, or race traitors. Or, more likely, all three. The actual made-up reason for them to go to war with the rest of society doesn’t really matter. They could insist we’re extra-dimensional slug people from the distant future and they would need just as much proof as they were loading us onto the cattle cars. Fascism is all based on lies and the truth is murdered in broad daylight. It’s important we understand this because it underscores that we are not dealing with rational people. Millions of MAGAs believe, really believe, that Trump won the election, meaning anything their terrorist wing does to correct this injustice will be completely justifiable. The Big Lie is the foundation of the Church of MAGA Jesus.

Blinded By The White (Nationalism).........

snip

great article, one of the best ever in The Banter IMHO, much more at the top link

March 9, 2021

Female Frogs Have "Noise-Cancelling Headphones" In Their Lungs, Tuning Out Unwanted Males

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/female-frogs-have-noisecancelling-headphones-in-their-lungs-tuning-out-unwanted-males/



Male frogs of many species rely on mating calls to attract mates. However, even after the female has fallen for the male with the sexiest ribbit, true love faces an obstacle: how to find the velvet-voiced charmer in amongst the noise. Some species have arrived at a truly remarkable solution – lungs that cancel out unwanted sounds so the amphibious Juliet can find her way to her froggy Romeo. As anyone who has wandered past a suitable pond can testify, things can get pretty loud when the time is right for breeding. These sounds can come from many different species, creating an epic “cocktail party problem”. So how does a female tune out all the other noise and hop her way to her handsome hero?

Dr Norman Lee of St. Olaf College Minnesota found it's all in the lungs. When inflated, these help the females tune out background noise. “In essence, the lungs cancel the eardrum's response to noise, particularly some of the noise encountered in a cacophonous breeding 'chorus','” Lee said in a statement. The lungs make the frequencies specific to the desired male's call stand out from background noise. "This is analogous to signal-processing algorithms for spectral contrast enhancement implemented in some hearing aids and cochlear implants," Professor Mark Bee of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities said. “We believe the physical mechanism by which this occurs is similar in principle to how noise-cancelling headphones work."

Human devices both amplify the frequencies used in human speech and filter out the rest. Frog lungs are only doing half the job, dimming frequencies between those used by the desired male, but that is still impressive enough. The curious connection between frogs' lungs and middle-ears had been suspected to play a role in their mating processes, but herpetologists were not quite sure how. One theory was it helped with directional finding. Bee and Lee tested this, and report in Current Biology that American green treefrogs are no better at assessing the direction from which a call comes when their lungs are inflated as when they are not. On the other hand, they found lung inflation affects the extent to which the frogs' eardrums vibrate in response to certain frequencies.

Specifically, male green treefrogs have calls that peak at 834 and 2,730 Hertz. Other species prefer different frequencies. By shining lasers on female green treefrogs' eardrums (a phrase we never expected to write), Bee and Lee confirmed the lungs reduce sensitivity to everything between 1,400 and 2,200 Hz. Other frogs that breed in the same locations use these in-between frequencies. Of course, green treefrogs still have to cope with the sounds of species that go really low or very high, not to mention those quite close to that of their own males. Until someone invents frog Tinder, however, every bit helps. Bee and Lee haven't extended their research to other species, but they note many frogs also have two, widely separated, peaks to their calls. They suspect other females are also tuning out an unwanted in-between range, the frequencies of which vary from frog to frog.

snip

March 9, 2021

Fair Pay Political Round table - CSW65 Parallel Event

https://www.feps-europe.eu/events/upcoming-events/730-fair-pay-political-round-table-csw65-parallel-event.html

March 9, 2021

The Differences Between the Vaccines Matter

Yes, all of the COVID-19 vaccines are very good. No, they’re not all the same.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/pfizer-moderna-and-johnson-johnson-vaccines-compared/618226/



Public-health officials are enthusiastic about the new, single-shot COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, despite its having a somewhat lower efficacy at preventing symptomatic illness than other available options. Although clinical-trial data peg that rate at 72 percent in the United States, compared with 94 and 95 percent for the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, many experts say we shouldn’t fixate on those numbers. Much more germane, they say, is the fact that the Johnson & Johnson shot, like the other two, is essentially perfect when it comes to preventing the gravest outcomes. “I’m super-pumped about this,” Virginia’s vaccine coordinator told The New York Times last weekend. “A hundred percent efficacy against deaths and hospitalizations? That’s all I need to hear.”

The same glowing message—that the COVID-19 vaccines are all equivalent, at least where it really counts—has been getting public-health officials and pundits super-pumped for weeks now. Its potential value for promoting vaccination couldn’t be more clear: We’ll all be better off, and this nightmare will be over sooner, if people know that the best vaccine of all is whichever one they can get the soonest. With that in mind, Vox has urged its readers to attend to “the most important vaccine statistic”—the fact that “there have been zero cases of hospitalization or death in clinical trials for all of these vaccines.” The physician and CNN medical analyst Leana Wen also made a point of noting that “all of the vaccines are essentially a hundred percent” in this regard. And half a dozen former members of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board wrote in USA Today, “Varying ‘effectiveness’ rates miss the most important point: The vaccines were all 100% effective in the vaccine trials in stopping hospitalizations and death.”

There’s a problem here. It’s certainly true that all three of the FDA-authorized vaccines are very good—amazing, even—at protecting people’s health. No one should refrain from seeking vaccination on the theory that any might be second-rate. But it’s also true that the COVID-19 vaccines aren’t all the same: Some are more effective than others at preventing illness, for example; some cause fewer adverse reactions; some are more convenient; some were made using more familiar methods and technologies. As for the claim that the vaccines have proved perfectly and equally effective at preventing hospitalization and death? It’s just not right. These differences among the options could matter quite a bit, in different ways to different people, and they should not be minimized or covered over. Especially not now: Vaccine supplies in the U.S. will soon surpass demand, even as more contagious viral variants spread throughout the country. In the meantime, governors are revoking their rules on face masks, or taking other steps to loosen their restrictions. It’s tempting to believe that a simple, decisive message—even one that verges on hype—is what’s most needed at this crucial moment. But if the message could be wrong, that has consequences.

The idea that all of the vaccines are pretty much the same, in that they’re perfect at preventing COVID-19 hospitalizations and death, got its legs on social media. The USA Today op-ed by the former members of the Biden team illustrated this by linking to a data table found on Twitter. Created by the infectious-disease doctor Monica Gandhi, it showed a variety of trial results for six different vaccines. One column was rendered in canary yellow—“Protection from hospitalizations/death”—and every cell read “100%.” A similar table, tweeted out a few days earlier by the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, Ashish Jha, conveyed the same idea through a grid of zeros—as in, zero people hospitalized, zero people dead. The prominent physician and researcher Eric Topol followed with his own clinical-trial data summary featuring a column of 100 percents. “That is impressive!” he wrote across the top. All told, their posts would be retweeted about 15,000 times. The data were indeed suggestive of an encouraging idea. Based on the numbers so far, we can expect the vaccines to provide extremely high levels of protection against the most dire outcomes. Still, we don’t know how high—and it’s clear they won’t uniformly cause hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 to disappear in vaccinated people.

snip

March 8, 2021

The Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die

Label:
Bad Boy Entertainment – R1-562969
Series:
Vinyl Me, Please. Record Of The Month – Vol. 57
Format:
Vinyl, LP, Red w/ White + Black Splatter
Vinyl, LP, White w/ Red + Black Splatter
Unknown, Album, Club Edition, Reissue, Remastered
Country:
US
Released:
Sept 2017
Genre:
Hip Hop
Style:
Gangsta

March 8, 2021

"Your body is a battleground"

‘Women’s Rights. Without Compromise’. But more than in any other country in the European Union, Polish women’s rights are under attack again, by regressive and government policies that amount to full-blown war on women in the name of traditional values. And the 1990s slogan ‘Your body is a battleground’ is true as rarely before.


https://progressivepost.eu/spotlights/your-body-is-a-battleground




Over 30 years ago, in 1991, when the battle for legal abortion in Poland began, and women’s rights were under attack, Barbara’s Kruger poster “Your body is a battleground” was shown in Warsaw for the first time. The poster had been created by the US artist Barbara Kruger for the Women’s March on Washington in 1989. The image of a woman’s face, disembodied, split in positive and negative exposures of black and red, accompanied by texts in favour of women’s rights, abortion and sexual education, was conceived at a time marked by numerous demonstrations against a new wave of antiabortion laws in the United States. It was originally tied to a specific moment, but the true power of the work lies in the timelessness of its declaration, which is clearly visible in the reality of women in 2021 in Poland.



Today, more than ever, women’s bodies are a political battleground. At the end of the harsh pandemic year, women in Poland have been stripped from their right to decide whether to terminate or maintain a pregnancy with foetus abnormality, as the Polish Constitutional Tribunal (regarded as unconstitutional and political by the democratic opposition in Poland and the European Parliament) has enforced a near-total abortion ban. On 22 October 2020, the tribunal has issued a verdict which declared unconstitutional a 1993 law, allowing abortion in cases of severe and irreversible foetal abnormalities. In the past few years, a majority (98 per cent) of legal abortions in Poland were carried out on those grounds. Therefore, the ruling banned most pregnancy terminations performed in hospitals. The decision by the country’s constitutional tribunal further tightened Poland’s abortion laws, which were already among the strictest in Europe.

In the past six years, with the Law and Justice Party (PiS) as the ruling party, Polish women have been losing their rights bit by bit. The Polish right-wing conservative politicians are strongly supported by the Catholic Church and ultra conservative organisations such as Ordo Iuris – an extreme anti-choice group whose founders were ‘inspired’ by the controversial Catholic fundamentalist network Tradition, Family and Property – that push the government further and further to the right. Since coming to power in 2015, the PiS government has targeted women’s rights as if they were dangerous to families and traditional values. Over the last six years, PiS leaders, politicians, and church officials advocated for laws and policies aiming to reinforce traditional gender roles, downgrading feminism, and publicly discouraging efforts to combat violence against women. Women in Poland have long faced restrictive abortion laws, limited access to sexual and reproductive health, information and care, inadequate services, and support in the face of violence, as well as the perpetuation of traditional and prescribed gender roles. Since PiS party came to power in 2015, the situation has regressed considerably. Yet what has happened on 22 October 2020, marked a total backlash of women’s rights in Poland in a way never seen before.

In the past few months, Polish streets have been flooded with women, men and young people marching in massive numbers to fight for women’s fundamental rights. Sweeping through Polish cities, town and even villages, these are the biggest protests since the communist times. Peaceful protesters were faced with excessive police violence, using forces gas, telescopic batons and kettling techniques – using blockades to keep a crowd in a limited area. Many have been detained and the organisers of protests in smaller towns, often young teenagers, have been charged with organising illegal events as the country was put under the pandemic regime, and have been threatened by the police with legal consequences for their actions.

snip

March 8, 2021

"Your body is a battleground"

‘Women’s Rights. Without Compromise’. But more than in any other country in the European Union, Polish women’s rights are under attack again, by regressive and government policies that amount to full-blown war on women in the name of traditional values. And the 1990s slogan ‘Your body is a battleground’ is true as rarely before.


https://progressivepost.eu/spotlights/your-body-is-a-battleground




Over 30 years ago, in 1991, when the battle for legal abortion in Poland began, and women’s rights were under attack, Barbara’s Kruger poster “Your body is a battleground” was shown in Warsaw for the first time. The poster had been created by the US artist Barbara Kruger for the Women’s March on Washington in 1989. The image of a woman’s face, disembodied, split in positive and negative exposures of black and red, accompanied by texts in favour of women’s rights, abortion and sexual education, was conceived at a time marked by numerous demonstrations against a new wave of antiabortion laws in the United States. It was originally tied to a specific moment, but the true power of the work lies in the timelessness of its declaration, which is clearly visible in the reality of women in 2021 in Poland.



Today, more than ever, women’s bodies are a political battleground. At the end of the harsh pandemic year, women in Poland have been stripped from their right to decide whether to terminate or maintain a pregnancy with foetus abnormality, as the Polish Constitutional Tribunal (regarded as unconstitutional and political by the democratic opposition in Poland and the European Parliament) has enforced a near-total abortion ban. On 22 October 2020, the tribunal has issued a verdict which declared unconstitutional a 1993 law, allowing abortion in cases of severe and irreversible foetal abnormalities. In the past few years, a majority (98 per cent) of legal abortions in Poland were carried out on those grounds. Therefore, the ruling banned most pregnancy terminations performed in hospitals. The decision by the country’s constitutional tribunal further tightened Poland’s abortion laws, which were already among the strictest in Europe.

In the past six years, with the Law and Justice Party (PiS) as the ruling party, Polish women have been losing their rights bit by bit. The Polish right-wing conservative politicians are strongly supported by the Catholic Church and ultra conservative organisations such as Ordo Iuris – an extreme anti-choice group whose founders were ‘inspired’ by the controversial Catholic fundamentalist network Tradition, Family and Property – that push the government further and further to the right. Since coming to power in 2015, the PiS government has targeted women’s rights as if they were dangerous to families and traditional values. Over the last six years, PiS leaders, politicians, and church officials advocated for laws and policies aiming to reinforce traditional gender roles, downgrading feminism, and publicly discouraging efforts to combat violence against women. Women in Poland have long faced restrictive abortion laws, limited access to sexual and reproductive health, information and care, inadequate services, and support in the face of violence, as well as the perpetuation of traditional and prescribed gender roles. Since PiS party came to power in 2015, the situation has regressed considerably. Yet what has happened on 22 October 2020, marked a total backlash of women’s rights in Poland in a way never seen before.

In the past few months, Polish streets have been flooded with women, men and young people marching in massive numbers to fight for women’s fundamental rights. Sweeping through Polish cities, town and even villages, these are the biggest protests since the communist times. Peaceful protesters were faced with excessive police violence, using forces gas, telescopic batons and kettling techniques – using blockades to keep a crowd in a limited area. Many have been detained and the organisers of protests in smaller towns, often young teenagers, have been charged with organising illegal events as the country was put under the pandemic regime, and have been threatened by the police with legal consequences for their actions.

snip

March 8, 2021

Manchin: I'll block Biden's next big package if Republicans aren't included (no more reconciliation)

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), America's ultimate swing voter, told me on "Axios on HBO" that he'll insist Republicans have more of a voice on President Biden's next big package than they did on the COVID stimulus.

Manchin's next power play

https://www.axios.com/joe-manchin-infrastructure-bill-c8408e99-17f3-4477-b5df-8e3d537c0bd9.html

The big picture: Manchin said he'll push for tax hikes to pay for Biden's upcoming infrastructure and climate proposal, and will use his Energy Committee chairmanship to force the GOP to confront climate reality.

Why it matters: My conversation yielded the most extensive preview yet of how Manchin — a Democrat from a Trump state, in a 50-50 Senate, who relishes standing up to a Democratic White House — will use his singular power. Manchin, 73, said Biden expects, and understands, the pushback: "He's the first president we've had to really, really understand the workings of the Senate since LBJ."

Manchin said that with just a few concessions, it would have been possible to get some Republicans on the COVID relief package that passed the Senate this weekend on a party-line vote. And he said he'll block Biden's next big package — $2 trillion to $4 trillion for climate and infrastructure — if Republicans aren't included.

"I'm not going to do it through reconciliation," which requires only a simple majority, like the COVID stimulus, Manchin said. "I am not going to get on a bill that cuts them out completely before we start trying."

snip