May 6, 2021

Joe Manchin goes down in flames when confronted with McConnell's pledge to totally obstruct Biden

https://www.rawstory.com/joe-manchin-bipartisan-hypocrisy/

On Wednesday, in discussion with CNN's Chris Cuomo, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) talked about his reverence for the Senate and his conviction that its existing rules can be used to forge compromise — but grew evasive and resistant when Cuomo reminded him the GOP's stated position is to block the Biden administration from doing anything.

"Robert C. Byrd used to explain to me ... he said Joe, the best way for me to explain it is why does every state — can you imagine the little state of Rhode Island, little state of Delaware, having the same representation in the great body of the Senate as California or New York, all these larger, much larger states, in landmass and population," said Manchin. "There's a reason for that. How these rules have evolved, the intent why they would have done — why they've done Jim Crow isn't acceptable. It wasn't acceptable then, is not acceptable now at all. I think we have to have a process but, also, you have to have a minority. If not, what we have is basically chaos. What goes around comes around here. I've been in the minority here."

"I don't think you play power politics as well as the other side," argued Cuomo. He noted to Manchin that McConnell said just this week that he is focused "100 percent" on stopping the Biden administration, which would leave little room for compromise with the minority. Manchin replied that "I still have confidence" in the Senate, and that "I can assure you there are Republicans working with Democrats," regardless of McConnell's words.

Once Cuomo began to fact check him on Republicans refusing to work in a bipartisan way, Manchin went down in flames.

Watch below:

May 6, 2021

Facebook's Toothless, Authoritarian 'Oversight Board' Is Downright Trumpy

https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebooks-toothless-authoritarian-oversight-board-is-downright-trumpy




Upheld. Ruled. Overturned. Remanded for further clarification. To listen to the news Wednesday morning, you might think that a Court had made a decision, one worthy of the analysis of legal scholars, plumbing it for precedent and meaning. In fact what happened is that Facebook—much like many other big corporations that pay outside consultants huge fees to help make decisions—hired a bunch of elites with good CVs. And then—like many corporate consultancies--it gave them a tiny little slice of corporate decision-making to review. The grandiosely named “Oversight Board” which “ruled” today that Donald Trump can’t yet re-join Facebook and Instagram—actually lacks any capacity to understand the financial motivations and metrics behind Facebook’s decisions, or to mandate a different business model. It is simply corporate consultancy rebranded as an “Oversight Board.”

The difference between this and most corporate consultancies is that it is first and foremost a public relations stunt, one designed to make people feel like Facebook somehow has a serious self-regulatory regime as news outlets report on the Board’s “ruling.” We should not make a bunch of paid corporate consultants into a Court. No matter how lovely and thick the theatrical curtain put between Zuckerberg and the consultants, they are not publicly accountable and there’s a real harm in normalizing the idea of a Court that is not, in fact, a Court, but a wholly private set of contracts. The consultants’ decision was catnip (to law professors of course, who love nothing more than a hard hypothetical) but also to people who long for some authoritarian entity to make hard decisions for us, the public, in a simple, non-democratic way. Facebook’s authoritarianism is a terrible response to Trump’s dangerous lies and bigotry. The enemy of your enemy is not your friend—they represent two competing visions of abuse of power.

The minute we start anticipating a corporate decision with the intensity that we anticipated today’s decision is the minute we should realize Facebook is way too powerful. It controls the faucets on the flow of information, and decides which news stories thrive and which ones are hidden, what is scientifically backed Covid advice and what is not, what is terrorism and what is expression and what constitutes a conspiracy and what does not. And it does all this based on cash flow. We still don’t know how much money it made on Qanon posts (billions?) but so long as we are fighting about whether or not to ban those posts, instead of fighting about whether we, as a society, should allow the arteries of information to be controlled by a business model that will keep propagating new conspiracies, we are having the wrong debate. Facebook loves it that we are debating the corporate consultant’s text as a legal document. It focuses our attention on the conflicts between the consultants and Zuck, instead of on the more fundamental conflicts between Facebook and democracy. It makes us ask, “what will Zuckerberg do?” when we should be asking, “when will Congress act decisively?” It puts our attention on some fancy academics when our attention should be on Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and the Republicans in the Senate.

Here’s what we should be talking about today: Is it enough for Facebook to be split up from Instagram and WhatsApp, or should we also split it up from all non-social media companies, like Messenger, to limit its outsized power? If we want to treat big social media companies as infrastructure, does that mean banning all behavioural advertising? How can we change our antitrust laws so we never again have to deal with gargantuan power like this after the fact? Facebook is a company that has little public trust for good reason: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg and their PR machine continually leak, lie and break the law. There’s reason to think executives could be prosecuted criminally because of price fixing allegations in current cases. Having monopolized social media, it steals from small businesses that pay jacked up advertising costs because they have no choice. The quality is horrific: the platform abuses people’s privacy with abandon, and is swampy with misinformation but again, small and local advertisers have no choice. What are they going to do, advertise on Facebook-owned Instagram in protest? Anytime you use the word “Court” or legitimize this panel’s decision by taking it seriously, you are part of Facebook’s effort to distract from the corporate and democratic disaster that it is.

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May 6, 2021

JUNGLE - KEEP MOVING (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

CREDITS
Directed by J Lloyd & Charlie Di Placido
Choreographed by Nathaniel Williams & Cece Nama

Starring:
Mette Linturi
Nathaniel Williams
Thanh Jason Nguyen
Zhané Samuels
Shawarah Battles
Miranda Chambers
Naomi Weijand
Joy Duckrell
Che Jones
Ken Nguyen
Jordan JFunk
Gabriel Goux
Tendai Chitate

Assistant Choreographer: Jordan Melchor
Assistant Choreographer: Yohémy Prosper

May 6, 2021

Billie Eilish - Your Power (UNDERHER Remix) [Free Download]

Download

https://hypeddit.com/track/7tbyhu

May 5, 2021

Harley & Lara Pair the McDonald's Big Mac with Wine -- Wine and Cheeseburger

On the premier of Wine and Cheeseburger, Harley Morenstein and his sommelier (he just learned that word) friend, wine whisperer Lara Amersey, are coming out buns blazin’ to find the perfect wine to pair with a McDonald’s Big Mac. Not only will Harley and Lara scrupulously sip and swirl to determine the best grapes for the job, but they’ll share some laughs and wine hacks to boot. Literally — Harley will show you how to open a bottle of wine with a boot. If you’ve ever wanted to pair wine with a burger and fries or see Morenstein with sauce in his beard, raise a glass!

Thrillist presents: Wine and Cheeseburger, featuring fry-gobbler and good dude Harley Morenstein. Wine, when not served from a box or being slapped in a bag, has a pinkies-out intimidation factor. Harley’s joined by professional wino Lara Amersey to swap all your food-pairing pains for champagne. In each episode, Harley brings an iconic fast food meal to the table, and Lara pulls up a chair with three prospective vinos. Learn all about mouthfeel, tannins and other fancy wine-speak courtesy of Lara while Harley mostly counters with chaotic energy and hacks he learned from the internet. It’s the perfect mélange! Does this mean they’ll start serving wine at drive-thrus?

May 5, 2021

ALL YOUR LOVE: Penguin Prison's 90s Flashback 💫

May 5, 2021

The Real Obstacle to a New Normal? Anti-Vaxxer Parents.

Vaccine skeptics have marred the rollout of safe and effective shots from the jump. Now things may get truly ugly.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-real-obstacle-to-a-new-normal-anti-vaxxer-parents



The U.S. government appears to be inching closer to green-lighting the first coronavirus vaccine for kids. According to The New York Times and other news organizations, the safe and effective two-shot vaccine from Pfizer could win FDA emergency-use authorization for children and teens aged 12 to 15 as soon as next week.

Opening up vaccinations to younger teens would add nearly 20 million people to the pool of Americans who are eligible for inoculation against the scourge that continues to ravage entire countries and has claimed well over half a million American lives. That, in turn, could juice the United States’ flagging vaccination campaign—and make the coming school year much safer for students, teachers, and school staff. But don’t count on those obvious benefits to convince potentially tens of millions of anti-vaxxer parents. In fact, experts say, resistance to America’s world-class vaccination campaign is stiffening among science-deniers and Fox News-bingeing right-wingers, and when kids are involved, it will get ugly.

The American anti-vaxxer movement has plagued public-health campaigns for years. And far-right skeptics who falsely suggested coronavirus shots were part of a mind-control plot or a scheme to alter DNA—among other outlandish claims—have tainted this vaccine rollout since before it even began. Epidemiologists expect even more ferocious pushback once America’s kids are up for jabs. “This is going to be a social and political battle,” Irwin Redlener, the founding director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, told The Daily Beast.

In early April, New York-based Pfizer submitted data to the FDA showing the company’s two-dose messenger-RNA vaccine is safe and effective for people aged 12 to 15. In contrast to the anxious situation of waiting for one’s age group to become eligible just weeks ago, there is now plenty of vaccine available for newcomers. Owing to a slow decline in the daily vaccination rate—from a peak of 3.3 million shots a day in mid-April to 2.3 million a day last week—U.S. states are sitting on nearly 70 million unused doses.

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May 5, 2021

Cops Trashed Attorney's Home In Retaliation For Successfully Defending Suspect Against Murder Charge

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210425/01253246676/lawsuit-cops-trashed-attorneys-home-retaliation-successfully-defending-suspect-against-murder-charges.shtml

An attorney in Virginia found out what happens when you make cops angry. According to Cathy Reynolds' lawsuit, the Roanoke PD targeted her for some extra attention after she successfully defended her stepson from murder charges.

Prosecutors really wanted Darreonta Reynolds for murder, but security camera footage from the convenience store where the shooting took place appeared to show Reynolds shooting Jean De Dieu Nkurunziza in self-defense when Nkurunziza came after him with a gun. The jury agreed with the defense's case, acquitting Reynolds after ninety minutes of deliberation.

This apparently angered someone somewhere in the Roanoke Police Department because this is what happened next. From the lawsuit [PDF]:

Just three days after D. Reynolds acquittal, Defendants targeted Ms. Reynolds for retaliation. Defendants broke down the front door of Ms. Reynolds‘ home after she had offered to let them in, "searched" Ms. Reynolds' home for an individual by destroying her personal possessions, including those entirely irrelevant to a search for a person and left Ms. Reynolds traumatized, knowing that she could be targeted by police for engaging in constitutionally protected activity.

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May 4, 2021

Berkshire Hathaway's questionable performance and governance

The world’s most famous conglomerate will struggle to outlast its feted founder in its current form

https://www.economist.com/business/2021/05/02/berkshire-hathaways-questionable-performance-and-governance



THE ANNUAL shareholders’ meeting of Berkshire Hathaway has been dubbed “Woodstock for capitalists”, so large is the throng it usually attracts. For the second year running, though, thanks to covid-19, the groupies have been denied their close-up love-in with Warren Buffett. The event on May 1st was online only, with Mr Buffett joined on screen by his longtime sidekick and fellow nonagenarian, Charlie Munger—a headline act that makes the Rolling Stones look like striplings. Nevertheless, Warren and Charlie outdid Mick and Keith for stamina, taking more than three hours of questions, covering everything from Berkshire’s first-quarter results, announced earlier that day, to the ways in which its subsidiaries do and don’t resemble children. For Buffettologists, the highlight was an apparent slip of the tongue by Mr Munger: “Greg will keep the culture”. The following day Mr Buffett, who had hitherto refused to publicly name an heir apparent, confirmed that the nod had gone to Greg Abel, the 58-year-old head of Berkshire’s non-insurance operations.

Mr Buffett has long held the stage as the world’s most celebrated investor, having turned a troubled textile firm purchased in the mid-1960s into a $630bn conglomerate spanning everything from railways and real estate to insurance and ice-cream parlours. Berkshire, which is essentially made up of two halves—a collection of owned or controlled businesses employing 360,000 people, and a $300bn portfolio of minority stakes in blue chips—has done long-term investors proud. Over the 56 years of Mr Buffett’s stewardship its stock has enjoyed a compounded annual gain of 20%, double that of the S&P 500 index (including dividends).

Berkshire’s more recent record looks less stellar, however—leaving some wondering if the company, like the Rolling Stones, is trading on its back catalogue, its greatest hits a thing of the distant past. That prompts another concern. At 90, Mr Buffett is still sharp and seemingly in good health. But no one lives forever. A change of front man, when it comes, will be a test of the endurance of Berkshire’s unique culture and its quirky (some would say anachronistic) governance. It will also test whether the sprawling group can remain in one piece at a time when conglomerates are out of fashion. Berkshire has long enjoyed a sort of corporate exceptionalism, thanks to the halo over Mr Buffett. With disquiet growing over so-so returns, poor disclosure and more, that benefit of the doubt looks threatened.

You got the silver

Start with the financial performance. Operating profit—the number Mr Buffett urges shareholders to focus on—fell by 9% in 2020, to $22bn, after a flat 2019 (though it rebounded in the latest quarter, up 20% year on year). Berkshire’s shares badly underperformed the S&P 500 index in both years. Over the past ten years, its per-share market value has handily beaten the index just twice, while lagging far behind it four times. In truth, Berkshire’s performance relative to the S&P has been slipping for decades (see chart 1).



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May 1, 2021

Monster 300-tonne fatberg blocks Birmingham sewer

Engineers are working around the clock to remove the mass, made up of congealed fat and oil and non-flushable items such as wet wipes, nappies and condoms.

https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/monster-300-tonne-fatberg-blocks-birmingham-sewer-981195



A giant one kilometre long fatberg has clogged a Birmingham sewer.

Engineers are working around the clock to clear the blockage believed to be more than a metre high and weigh around 300 tonnes, an equivalent to 250 cars. Fatbergs are made up of congealed fat and oil and non-flushable items such as wet wipes, nappies and condoms.

Water services company Severn Trent said the “monster” fatberg, clogging a sewer in the Hodge Hill area of the city, was one of the biggest it had ever had encountered and might take until June to remove.

Operations manager Scott Burgin said: “It’s a massive project and it’s not resolved yet. “This giant mass is the result of everyone occasionally washing and flushing the wrong things down the drains, and not realising the impact it’s having.”

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