June 25, 2020

Nurse Karen Goes On A Rant Claiming Black People Have Too Much Privilege (she got sacked for it now)

Indiana nurse loses job after rant slamming George Floyd and ‘Black privilege’ goes viral

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/indiana-nurse-faces-backlash-after-rant-slamming-george-floyd-and-black-privilege-goes-viral/

A nurse in Indiana lost her job this week after posting a rant suggesting Black people have special privileges. A video shared on Twitter on Tuesday identifies the woman as Kristy Ann Wilker, a trauma nurse from Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana. “Black privilege is thinking you are deserved or entitled to something because of the color of your skin,” the woman explains in the video. “They — people, black people especially do get special scholarships. They are also shielded from a lot of scrutiny because of the color of their skin.”

“I’m not a racist,” she insists. “I would never treat any patient differently, I would never treat any human being differently. I think God loves everyone. I’m on the same page. However, I don’t think that any race is above scrutiny, including black people.” The woman goes on to suggest that George Floyd, who was killed by a Minnesota police officer, had been wrongly made into a martyr.

“He started to have a freakout panic attack when they put him in the car probably because he was high on meth, Fentanyl and positive for COVID,” she opines. “Was the police officer’s foot in the wrong spot? Maybe but, you know, um, meth and Fentanyl and positive COVID are probably more leading factors to an [myocardial infarction] so do your research.”

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“Because I feel like Black privilege is bringing that up and throwing it in white people’s face so that they can get what they want and get respect,” the nurse continues. “But racism is dead.” Twitter users launched a campaign to contact Wilker’s work about the video. One Twitter user said she had told coworkers not to worry about black children with gunshot wounds because “none of them are innocent.”

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June 25, 2020

YouTube suspends account of Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/youtube-suspends-account-of-proud-boys-founder-gavin-mcinnes/



“I’m kicked off YouTube y’all,” McInnes wrote in a Telegram post on Monday afternoon. “350k sub[scriptions], 155 videos, 30 [million] views, 15 years. I’m told they are also going after [accounts] that feature me in any positive light.”

McInnes included an image of a message that purportedly came from YouTube in which the platform said that his account had been suspended for “content glorifying or inciting violence against another person or group of people.”

McInnes has already been kicked off Twitter and Facebook and appears to have been previously banned by YouTube in 2018 for copyright infringement. He recently created a video streaming platform of his own for fellow far right commentators like Jacob Wohl and Laura Loomer.

“We have strict policies that prohibit hate speech on YouTube,” a YouTube spokesperson told Salon by email in a statement. “We terminate channels that repeatedly or egregiously violate our policies.” According to YouTube, the company updated its hate speech policy in June 2019 to ban content such as speech that claimed one group is superior to another. This led to a fivefold increase in the number of channels and videos that the streaming platform had to remove for violating its hate speech policies, and included 107,000 videos, 2,600 channels and 43 million comments in the first quarter of 2020.

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June 25, 2020

"Blue Flu" May Be Just What America Needs

The police have gone on strike before so we know exactly what happens when they do.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/blue-flu-may-be-just-what-america



Once upon a time, I was in training to be a district manager at EB Games. My boss, Steve, decided to send me far away from my home district in Queens to a store in the godforsaken wasteland known as New Jersey to “observe” a store whose manager Steve wanted to fire for personal reasons. We all knew why I was there and I was supposed to spend 8 hours essentially nitpicking the manager to death. I couldn’t do any real work because they wouldn’t let me touch the register, unpack any boxes, etc. I spent the day taking notes, staying out of the way, and finding the most pointless tasks to fill my time. I was a middle manager and it was a humiliating experience. I could not have been there at all and nothing would have changed. I refused to ever do it again and dropped out of the district manager training program a month later. If you have to do unnecessary things to justify your job, that job shouldn’t exist. Which brings us, in a Rachel Maddow sort of way, to the current round of “Blue Flu” afflicting American law enforcement.

Blue Flu Is Spreading

Right now, the police of Atlanta are “demoralized” and a number of them are refusing to work:



So this is both a temper tantrum and extortion. Got it.

Mind you, it’s not like the city is calling for a 20% cut to their salary or an end to their pensions or medical benefits. Rather, the Atlanta police are having a sad because two of their fellow officers are being held accountable for unnecessarily shooting Rayshard Brooks, an unarmed black man, in the back as he was drunkenly running away. I know, I know, he had grabbed a taser gun and tried to shoot the cops with it, clearly he was dangerous, right? That’s a cool story except the police had already zapped Brooks with that taser twice, meaning it couldn’t be used again. Brooks was pulling the trigger on a spent taser that was as dangerous as a Nerf gun and the cop who shot him knew it. So let’s move on, shall we? This blue flu is not happening in a vacuum. We are in the middle of nationwide protests against police brutality that are moving public consciousness and political will away from their traditional reflexive support for men in uniform. That, I submit, is the actual cause of the Atlanta PD’s outrage. Atlanta is not alone in their efforts to extort the public into compliance.

Nice City...Shame If Something Happened To It…

According to the NY Post, elements of the New York Police Department, the largest police department in the country, are threatening to strike on July 4th, a particularly hectic time for the city:



So, again, both a temper tantrum and extortion for being held accountable. At least they’re consistent about how awful they are?

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June 25, 2020

Jonathan Pie - Glastonbury & The Arts: Cancelled!

June 25, 2020

Siriusmo - Mein Neues Fahrrad (Boys Noize Edit) ♥

Label:
Boysnoize Records ?– BNR021, Boysnoize Records ?– BNR21
Format:
Vinyl, 12", Mini-Album, 33 ⅓ RPM
Country:
Germany
Released:
25 Feb 2008
Genre:
Electronic
Style:
Tech House, Electro

June 25, 2020

Stuck at Home, Scientists Discover 9 New Insect Species

Without a DNA sequencer, two Los Angeles entomologists relied on two of biology’s oldest tools: microscopes and lots of free time.



https://www.wired.com/story/stuck-at-home-scientists-discover-9-new-insect-species/

WHEN THE NATURAL History Museum of Los Angeles County shut down due to the pandemic in mid-March, Lisa Gonzalez headed home with the expectation that she would be back in a few weeks. But once it became clear that she wouldn’t get back anytime soon, Gonzalez, the museum’s assistant entomology collection manager, converted her home’s craft room into a makeshift lab. Then she began sifting through thousands of insects the museum had previously collected via a citizen science project. Normally, Gonzalez and other biologists would use DNA bar-coding to identify different species. It’s a multistep process that takes a few hours of chemical preparation and gives spot-on results. The museum’s DNA sequencer uses a method called polymerase chain reaction to amplify the genetic material from each insect, which then can be compared to a reference of existing DNA barcodes.

With that device back at the museum, Gonzalez switched to the analog instrument that has served biologists since the 17th century: a microscope. “It definitely makes me appreciate what scientists of the past were able to accomplish with rudimentary tools,” Gonzalez says. “I don’t have an ergonomic chair at home; I don’t have a fancy microscope. We are all feeling appreciation for things we take for granted.” Using a microscope she'd taken home from the lab, Gonzalez identified dozens of insect species by looking at features like tiny hairs or the shape of a fly’s wings. She also found some unusual insects that she turned over to her colleague, Brian Brown, the museum’s curator of entomology. Using a larger Leica stereoscope that he hauled in from the office, as well as a smaller compound microscope he found on craigslist, Brown discovered nine species of small flies, all new to science. “It’s always cool to find new things, and it is one of the great joys of this job,” says Brown. “It's not just finding slightly different new things—we find extravagantly different things all the time.”


Dr. Brian Brown, head of NHMLAC’s Entomology Department and Curator of Entomology, working from home. COURTESY OF THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY

The insects, mostly small flies, wasps, and wasplike flies, had been collected through the BioSCAN project, which began in 2012 with insect traps set at 30 sites throughout Los Angeles, mostly in backyards or public spaces. The pair recruited volunteers who were then trained in how to use the “Malaise traps,” which resemble two-person pup tents that force bugs to fly upward into collecting nets before the volunteers can put them into vials. Even though Los Angeles is a jumble of cultures from around the world, very little research has been done into its urban wildlife, especially the insects that call the broad basin home. The BioSCAN project started when Brown bet a museum trustee that he could find a new species of insect in her backyard in West LA. He did, and the project took off. In its first three years, Brown and the backyard collector discovered 30 new species of insects and published their results. The museum team found an additional 13 new species in the past two years, plus he and the staff have discovered nine more since the pandemic shutdown.

Although BioSCAN participants haven’t collected any new insects since November, the painstaking work of identifying thousands of individual specimens has continued during the Covid-19 shutdown. It’s the scientific equivalent of cleaning out your closets: tedious but ultimately rewarding. “We can’t go into the lab right now, so we are back to identifying things with microscopes and looking for characteristics that are difficult to see,” Brown says. “These time-consuming tasks are confronted with people who have a lot of time. The insects are 2 millimeters long, with minute genitalia. Identifying one of those specimens using morphology can take 10 minutes or 20 minutes.” The nine new species are all phorid flies, some of which are known for their ability to run across surfaces and or enter coffins to consume dead bodies. Brown and Gonzalez have also found botflies, parasites of rats and wasplike flies. They likely arrived from Central America, perhaps hitching a ride on a flowering plant or piece of food.

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June 25, 2020

Banish Trump to the Anticanon

A president’s behavior need not be precedent-setting.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/trump-anticanon/613366/



Tallying up the lengthy list of constitutional harms done by the Trump administration’s extraordinary deployment of National Guard troops and other federal agents to disrupt peaceful protests in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, it is hard not to include the fear that this president has set yet another precedent that could warp the nature of the American presidency. After all, what past presidents have done unquestionably shapes the way the presidency runs today, both in setting norms of day-to-day operations inside the executive branch, and in shaping how the public understands what behavior counts as “presidential.” Indeed, the Supreme Court has noted more than once that interpreting the words executive power under Article II of the Constitution without recognizing “the gloss which life has written upon them” would be a mistake. What presidents do can change the way the people and public officials alike understand what the Constitution permits. Do the recent events at Lafayette Square now count as part of the canon of presidential precedent?

The good news, such as it is, is that Trump’s actions need not necessarily have any such effect. From President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive order targeting Japanese Americans during World War II to President Richard Nixon’s decision to fire the special Watergate counsel, there is what we might call an executive-branch “anticanon” of sorts—conduct that has come to be so widely recognized as unacceptable in character, it has not produced any of the common precedential effects. No court relies on it as evidence of constitutional meaning. And neither presidents nor the public sees it as belonging to the defining norms of presidential behavior, save perhaps as part of a case study illustrating how no American president should behave.

So how does some presidential conduct become part of the anticanon, or more to the present point, how might Americans today help ensure that the attack at Lafayette Square comes to join it? As it turns out, unlike the decisions of the Supreme Court, presidential precedent is less born than made—or unmade, as the anticanon shows. And there is more than one way to unmake it. Formal legal rejection, for example, is not required. President Roosevelt’s Japanese American exclusion order was welcomed at the time with broad popular support, congressional inaction, and indeed formal approval by the Supreme Court. Nearly 30 years passed before Congress enacted a law aimed at preventing the future military detention of Americans in similar circumstances, closer to 40 before the civil-rights activist Fred Korematsu personally saw his record cleared, and more than 70 before the Supreme Court formally repudiated its initial decision (in 2018). But whether measured by public officials’ and scholars’ negative references or by the generations of American schoolchildren assigned to read Farewell to Manzanar, race-based internment had clearly entered the executive-branch anticanon long before then.

For the particular conduct to have resulted in punishment is also not necessary. The Nixon administration’s elaborate efforts to keep secret from Congress its air-bombing campaign in Cambodia—including falsifying military records—was the subject of intense constitutional criticism when it finally came to light. But the House Judiciary Committee tried and failed to include the air campaign among the articles of impeachment against Nixon. Instead, Congress enacted a new law, over the president’s veto, making clear that presidents were required to report to Congress all commitments of American forces abroad. Just more than a decade later, the Reagan administration attempted a similar brand of foreign-policy concealment, trading arms for hostages and funneling funds to a military venture in Nicaragua. This time, the resulting scandal triggered investigations engaging the public and all three branches of government. The special counsel’s investigation produced more than a dozen criminal indictments; Congress eventually passed legislation that further expanded reporting requirements; and the otherwise popular president saw a record drop in public approval. Significantly, President Reagan didn’t cite Nixon’s Cambodia precedent in his defense. Instead, he announced the creation of his own investigating commission, and later apologized. The Nixon crew had been spared direct punishment for Cambodia. But the presidential practice of hiding foreign military ventures from Congress had become anticanonical nonetheless.

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June 25, 2020

There are unexplainable blobs under the Earth's surface and they are bigger than we thought

https://www.mic.com/p/there-are-unexplainable-blobs-under-the-earths-surface-they-are-bigger-than-we-thought-23076422



Beneath the Earth's crust, where the mantle meets the outer core, there is a collection of unexplainable rock blobs that are hundreds of miles long. This isn't the exposition for a sci-fi flick about monsters living under the planet's surface, it's a genuine mystery. These so-called "large low-shear velocity provinces" (LLSVPs) have been deep down in the planet's core for an unknown period of time, and new research suggests that they might be even bigger than we first thought.

These blobs, also sometimes referred to as thermochemical piles, are likely not new, but there is still much to learn about them. In 2016, researchers took a look at two of the largest blobs, which are hanging out beneath the Pacific Ocean and under Africa. The study estimated the rock piles accounted for nearly 10 percent of the mass of the Earth's entire mantle, but it turns out the blobs might be even bigger than that. A recent study published in the journal Science found that there are previously undiscovered features along the edges of the Pacific blob, described as being thousands of kilometers across.



Scientists discovered these previously unknown features by studying seismic waves, or sound waves that are generated by earthquakes. These waves are typically slowed down by the blobs, which are hotter and denser than other parts of the surrounding mantle. This is particularly true of the ultralow-velocity zones (ULVZs), which are found around the edges of the blobs.

To get a better idea of just how big these masses are, the researchers decided to create a new map of the ULVZs found around the Pacific Ocean blob. To do this, they used an algorithm known as "the Sequencer." While it was initially developed to find patterns in stellar radiation, the algorithm proved useful in mapping parts of the blob because of its ability to identify objects of different temperatures. Researchers collected 7,000 seismograms, which are measures of seismic waves, created by earthquakes that were recorded in Asia and Oceania between 1990 and 2018. All of the quakes were of magnitude 6.5 or greater. They ran those measures through the algorithm, which allowed them to trace the shape of the blobs, revealing more details about their size and structure. They found that the previously undetected ULVZs stretched for about 620 miles, reaching the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Another part of the blob extended all the way to the Hawaiian Islands.

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June 25, 2020

The Decline of the American World

Other countries are used to loathing America, admiring America, and fearing America (sometimes all at once). But pitying America? That one is new.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/06/america-image-power-trump/613228/



“He hated America very deeply,” John le Carré wrote of his fictional Soviet mole, Bill Haydon, in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Haydon had just been unmasked as a double agent at the heart of Britain’s secret service, one whose treachery was motivated by animus, not so much to England but to America. “It’s an aesthetic judgment as much as anything,” Haydon explained, before hastily adding: “Partly a moral one, of course.” I thought of this as I watched the scenes of protest and violence over the killing of George Floyd spread across the United States and then here in Europe and beyond. The whole thing looked so ugly at first—so full of hate, and violence, and raw, undiluted prejudice against the protesters. The beauty of America seemed to have gone, the optimism and charm and easy informality that entrances so many of us from abroad. At one level, the ugliness of the moment seems a trite observation to make. And yet it gets to the core of the complicated relationship the rest of the world has with America.

In Tinker Tailor, Haydon at first attempts to justify his betrayal with a long political apologia, but, in the end, as he and le Carré’s hero, the master spy George Smiley, both know, the politics are just the shell. The real motivation lies underneath: the aesthetic, the instinct. Haydon—upper class, educated, cultured, European—just could not stand the sight of America. For Haydon and many others like him in the real world, this visceral loathing proved so great that it blinded them to the horrors of the Soviet Union, ones that went far beyond the aesthetic. Le Carré’s reflection on the motivations of anti-Americanism—bound up, as they are, with his own ambivalent feelings about the United States—are as relevant today as they were in 1974, when the novel was first published. Where there was then Richard Nixon, there is now Donald Trump, a caricature of what the Haydons of this world already despise: brash, grasping, rich, and in charge. In the president and first lady, the burning cities and race divides, the police brutality and poverty, an image of America is beamed out, confirming the prejudices that much of the world already have—while also serving as a useful device to obscure its own injustices, hypocrisies, racism, and ugliness.

It is hard to escape the feeling that this is a uniquely humiliating moment for America. As citizens of the world the United States created, we are accustomed to listening to those who loathe America, admire America, and fear America (sometimes all at the same time). But feeling pity for America? That one is new, even if the schadenfreude is painfully myopic. If it’s the aesthetic that matters, the U.S. today simply doesn’t look like the country that the rest of us should aspire to, envy, or replicate. Even in previous moments of American vulnerability, Washington reigned supreme. Whatever moral or strategic challenge it faced, there was a sense that its political vibrancy matched its economic and military might, that its system and democratic culture were so deeply rooted that it could always regenerate itself. It was as if the very idea of America mattered, an engine driving it on whatever other glitches existed under the hood. Now, something appears to be changing. America seems mired, its very ability to rebound in question. A new power has emerged on the world stage to challenge American supremacy—China—with a weapon the Soviet Union never possessed: mutually assured economic destruction.

China, unlike the Soviet Union, is able to offer a measure of wealth, vibrancy, and technological advancement—albeit not yet to the same level as the United States—while protected by a silk curtain of Western cultural and linguistic incomprehension. In contrast, if America were a family, it would be the Kardashian clan, living its life in the open glare of a gawping, global public—its comings and goings, flaws and contradictions, there for all to see. Today, from the outside, it looks as if this strange, dysfunctional, but highly successful upstart of a family were suffering a sort of full-scale breakdown; what made that family great is apparently no longer enough to prevent its decline. The U.S.—uniquely among nations—must suffer the agony of this existential struggle in the company of the rest of us. America’s drama quickly becomes our drama. Driving to meet a friend here in London as the protests first erupted in the States, I passed a teenager in a basketball jersey with jordan 23 emblazoned on the back; I noticed it because my wife and I had been watching The Last Dance on Netflix, a documentary about an American sports team, on an American streaming platform. The friend told me he’d spotted graffiti on his way over: i can’t breathe. In the weeks since, protesters have marched in London, Berlin, Paris, Auckland, and elsewhere in support of Black Lives Matter, reflecting the extraordinary cultural hold the United States continues to have over the rest of the Western world.

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June 25, 2020

This Has Been a Long Time Coming. Two New York Candidates Now Poised to Become First Openly Gay

Black, Afro-Latino Men in Congress

https://time.com/5858705/ritchie-torres-mondaire-jones-gay-black-congress/


(L-R) Mondaire Jones and Ritchie Torres Al J. Thompson—The New York Times/Redux; Richard Drew—AP

Two Democratic candidates appear poised to become the first openly gay Black members of Congress. The final results of Tuesday’s Democratic primary in New York aren’t all in yet, as a large number of New Yorkers voted via absentee ballot due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These ballots which won’t be tabulated until June 30, per the Associated Press. However, early results in two races show that New York City Councilman Ritchie Torres and progressive lawyer Mondaire Jones are each in a strong position to win their primaries. Both candidates are running in districts viewed as Democratic strongholds; if they win come November, Torres and Jones would be the first openly gay Black members of Congress. Torres would also be the first openly gay Afro-Latino congressman.

“Growing up poor, Black and gay, I would never have imagined that someone like me could run for Congress, let alone be a leading contender for the Democratic nomination,” Jones tells TIME. “I’m really grateful for this opportunity to inspire people and to change history.”

Ritchie Torres

Torres, 32, is running to represent New York’s 15th Congressional District in the Bronx. He’s has been a breakout star in city politics; he was elected to New York City Council back in 2013 at 25, becoming the youngest member of the council and the first openly gay elected official in the Bronx. The Democratic primary for the 15th District has been crowded: At least 12 candidates ran to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Jose Serrano, including controversial New York City Council member Rubén Díaz Sr., who has a long history of homophobic comments, has praised President Donald Trump and opposes abortion. As the Wall Street Journal reported on June 17, national Democrats had worried that the crowded field would split the progressive vote and allow Díaz to prevail, given his high name recognition in the borough. A June 3 poll from liberal think tank Data for Progress found that Diaz led the crowded field with only 22% of the vote, followed by Torres at 20%.

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Mondaire Jones

Progressive candidate Mondaire Jones appears poised to win New York’s 17th Congressional District in the lower Hudson Valley. Jones was among a pool of candidates running to replace long-time Democratic Rep. Nita Lowey, who is stepping down after serving in Congress for more than three decades. The 33-year-old worked in the Department of Justice during the Obama administration and recently served as an attorney in the Westchester County Law Department. He has the backing of the progressive wing of the party, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (Ocasio-Cortez resoundingly won her own primary in New York’s 14th district on Tuesday night.) The race — described by the Times as a “seven-way- free-for-all” — also included Adam Schleifer, a former California federal prosecutor, Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense under the Obama administration and David Carlucci, a New York state senator. Schleifer, the son of billionaire Leonard Schleifer, had spent more than $4 million on the race, around $1 million more than the other six candidates combined, according to the Times. As of 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Jones had around 44.8% of the vote with Schleifer following with 20.6%, per the Times.On Tuesday night, Wasserman of the Cook Political Report called the race for Jones.

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cross-posted in GD

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213649621