Mitch's Blog

Cisco rolls out new solutions for remote work, learning, post-pandemic

For instance, one solution combines video collaboration hardware and software to offer virtual visitations for inmates in correctional facilities. Another solution uses Wi-Fi and analytics software to monitor social distancing in workplaces."

Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic: The technology of Uyghur oppression: How China uses technology to oppress Uyghurs and Kazakhs: While the concentration camps imprisoning 1M+ people are most visible, the entire region “has been turned into an open air prison where technology tracks and controls predominantly Muslim Turkic people while allowing Han people to go about their business largely unhindered.”

The people who are “free” – that is, not interred in a concentration camp – were nevertheless forced to provide blood, DNA, fingerprint, iris and facial biometrics to the security apparatus. The penalty for noncompliance was imprisonment.

Authorities set up a dense network of biometric scanning points throughout the region, points that Han people were typically waved through, while Turkic people had to stop and be scanned – more than 10 times/day.

And while Xinjiang is its own unique horror, it has its roots in the US post-911 counterinsurgency theory (COIN), pioneered by US Army General Petraeus, and in the EU’s “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) programs.

China’s motto: “teach like a school, be managed like the military, and be defended like a prison.”

American companies supply tools to China, and those companies sell consumer products in the US, provide funding to universities such as MIT, and collaborate with scientists.

The US can end complicity with the program and put pressure on the Chinese state and companies to end human rights abuses in the region.

Cory: How covid spreads: Research shows covid is less likely to spread outdoors than indoors, long-duration contacts are more dangerous, and “good air circulation is a powerful preventative.” Also, mysteriously, most positive cases won’t spread the disease, while “a small minority [of ‘superspreaders’] will spread it widely; the mechanism for that is unclear.

Crooked Timber’s John Quiggin has a cynical take on yesterday’s surprise pro-LGBTQ decision by the US Supreme Court: The court follows election returns. If the court had overturned LGBTQ protections yesterday, it would have fired up Democrats to win more elections, pass even broader civil rights protections, and encouraged Democrats' belief that Gorsuch is an illegitimate right-wing hack. As it stands now, the court is free to make more decisions like Citizens United, which entrench Republican power.

Quiggins expects “hard neoliberals” on the right “to welcome the fact that this unwinnable fight is over,” but “culture warriors who back Trump will be furious.”

In other words, the court sees the country swinging to the left, and conservatives are shifting from seeking gains to protecting against losses.

Mo Rocca: Sammy Davis Jr. Death of the Entertainer: Sammy Davis Junior loved to perform so much that he once said he wanted to die on stage. He very nearly did, delivering a barnstorming performance just before his death from cancer in 1990.

From the age of three Sammy Davis, Jr. did it all better than anyone else – singing, dancing, acting, even gun spinning.

There Is No ‘Second Wave.’ The U.S. Is Still Stuck In The First One

Mo Rocca: Audrey Hepburn: Death of an Icon: Lithe and elegant, Audrey Hepburn survived girlhood malnutrition in Nazi-occupied Belgium. For the rest of her life, she wore her gratitude for surviving that experience.

Oracle BrandVoice: 4 Questions To Ask SAP During SAPPHIRE: IT teams need to focus on innovation, not deploying and managing on-premises systems. “Companies don’t want a driveway full of tools and car parts.”

After my Mom passed away in 2000, and then my Dad in 2004, I inherited my Mom’s rolltop desk. It’s in my home office. If you’ve ever done a Zoom call with me, you can see it behind me. It’s not my primary desk; it’s just sitting there with piles of stuff on it.

Yesterday I was looking through the drawers of the desk for a Post-It note. The drawers are mostly empty; I don’t use them. The wide drawer in the top center had some USB thumb drives in the front tray, which I’d put in there myself a few years ago and then forgot about them. In the big wide space behind the tray, there were some bills that have been sitting there since before Dad died. Behind those, two envelopes: One was from 1989, containing two tickets to my middle brother’s college graduation ceremony. They still looked new, red and shiny.

The second envelope had a handwritten address on the front, written by a child in pencil. It looked like one of my brothers' handwriting. Interesting! The return address was Harley Avenue Elementary School. That’s the school my brothers and I attended. Even more interesting!

I opened the envelope and found a letter that my brother had written to his future self, part of a class project. My youngest brother was then 9 years old, and he wrote it to himself at 19. I would have been about 15 then. It was 1976.

I took a photo with my iPhone camera and sent it to my brothers for their enjoyment. In situations like this, I marvel at what my 1976, 15-year-old self would have thought about that technology. I was a die-hard science fiction fan then; I would have loved it

The message was unremarkable. I don’t think my brother’s head was in the assignment. He is wondering what the prices will be 10 years in the future, and whether inflation will still be a big deal. Inflation was a big deal in 1976.

My youngest brother and I both had the same teacher when he was in second grade and I was in third, Arlene Kaufman, who of course we called Miss Kaufman. I actually heard from her two years ago on Facebook. Yesterday, I looked her up again on Facebook to let her know about the new find, but she seems to have deleted her account. When I heard from her, she was living in Queens, NY, parts of which were hard hit by Covid. I hope she’s doing OK.

Here’s how I heard from Miss Kaufman (I’m just going to stick with that name) two years ago: A year or so before that, in my random Internet cruising, I came across the cover of an early edition of the science fiction novel Red Planet, by Robert A. Heinlein. Miss Kaufman had a small library in the corner of her classroom, which contained that edition of that book. It was one of the first two chapter books I read. The other was a biography of Helen Keller. And I loved Red Planet. It awakened a love of reading, science fiction, and Heinlein that sticks with me to this day.

A year after the first post, Miss Kaufman wrote to me on Messenger; she said a former student of hers had forwarded the post to her, and she said she remembered me too. I received the message from her while I was in a hotel room in Florida on a business trip.

I wonder what that must have been like for her. You remember a 9-year-old-boy and you turn around and he’s a 50-something man writing from a hotel room in Florida. I mentioned this insight to a friend recently, who said Miss Kaufman is probably used to it. I guess that happens to teachers frequently, if they are good teachers with long careers who touch many students' lives.

Now that I think of it, regarding the Helen Keller biography: I love history now too. So thanks again, Miss Kaufman!

I never did find the Post-Its. It turned out I did not need them. I used a memo pad instead — from my first job in tech journalism, at Open Systems Today, 30 years ago. They gave me far too many of those memo pads and I rarely have a need for them, so they sit around my office. I photographed that with the iPhone, too, and sent it to my editor on that job, who I recently reconnected with about freelance work.

My office is like an archeological site. I really need to declutter. 📓

Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, 1910s. She wore pants, smoked publicly — often on the roof of the White House — kept a pet snake and a dagger, partied all night and slept until noon.

“I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt. I cannot possibly do both.” — Theodore Roosevelt

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On Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic:

Mad Magazine’s Al Jaffee is retiring young – he’s only 99.

Jaffee launched “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” and the fold-out.

Marie Foulston and her friends held a pandemic party in a spreadsheet.

The pandemic is rising in red states because it turns out you can’t just ignore healthcare and trust that only brown-skilled people, who are Democrats, will die.

The GOP is trapped in a prison of its own making. To keep the fortunes of the 1% intact, they need to restart American commerce. But doing so will not just murder racialized people who don’t typically vote Republican, but also the GOP’s base: elderly and rural people.

The US has virtually no cyberdefense; it’s virtually all offense.

[Jason Healey on the Lawfare blog:] “There are tremendous risks when a fearsome offense is paired with a weak defense,” because “a more fearsome cyber offense makes it more likely they will get in a sucker punch on the U.S. before Cyber Command can bring its big guns to bear.

NYC community activists are scraping traffic-cam to find evidence of police brutality against Black Lives Matter protesters.

Security researchers find a huge trove of data belonging to customers of “niche dating sites.”

Why the Pandemic Is Driving Conservative Intellectuals Mad. Conservative intellectuals view respect for life and health as symptoms of civilizational decay.

What We Know About the White House’s Secret Bunker Popular Mechanics: “There’s a whole city’s worth of stuff underneath the White House and other government buildings in and around Washington, D.C.”

“Is God Dead?” at 50

54 years ago, Time Magazine put an essay on its cover: “Is God Dead?”

The authors did not mean to claim that religion was irrelevant (which was my interpretation of the question).

The article was far more nuanced than the cover might suggest, but [theologians William Hamilton and Thomas Altizer] were not hedging in their views. It’s tempting to take them metaphorically, to say “death” and mean “irrelevance,” but they were speaking literally. The idea was not the same as disbelief: God was real and had existed, they said, but had become dead.

Jesus Christ was a better model than God for the work that needed to be done by man, of which there was a lot—particularly, for him, within the civil rights movement. He saw religion’s place in the human realm, not in heaven. Altizer took that idea a step further: Jesus Christ had to die in order for the resurrection to happen all those Easters ago, and likewise God had to die in order for the apocalypse to take place.

Today, religion is a far more powerful world force than it was in 1966.

“Nobody would ask whether God is dead [today],” says Rabbi Donniel Hartman, author of the new book Putting God Second. “You can’t understand three-quarters of the conflicts in the world unless you recognize that God is a central player.”

And yet, 97% of Americans professed belief in God in 1966; by 2014, only 63% of Americans “believed with absolute certainty.” And while religious conservatives control the White House, Senate, and judicial benches, the biggest religious affiliation in America is “none.”

The GOP is rolling over its 2016 platform for 2020, with numerous criticisms of the “current President.”

Alexis Madrigal: America Is Giving Up on the Pandemic

Jesus Christ, Just Wear a Face Mask!: There is plenty of evidence that face masks and social distancing are effective and easy methods of blocking the spread of COVID-19 and permitting safe reopening, and no good reason not to use them.

Civil Rights Law Protects L.G.B.T. Workers, Supreme Court Rules

A good day. And Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch led the decision.

Conservative hypocrites who claim to support the literal interpretation of the law are now tying themselves up in knots trying to criticize this this decision, which is based on literal interpretation of the law.

Also, Justice Samuel Alito says it’s a terrible decision because women go crazy if they see a penis.

Supreme Court lets stand California’s ‘sanctuary’ law on undocumented immigrants

A victory for decency and common sense.

Mo Rocca: The Forgotten Forerunners: Three people who changed history, but who you’ve probably never heard of: Black woman Elizabeth Jennings integrated New York public transit a century before Rosa Parks and years before the Civil War; Black man Moses Fleetwood Walker played pro baseball more than a half-century before Jackie Robinson, and Lois Weber was a highly paid, successful and prolific movie director in 1910s Hollywood.

As a Jewish New Yorker I’m supposed to be appalled by thin-sliced bagels – particularly thin, longitudinally sliced bagels – but honestly I think they are a great idea and I’m surprised they didn’t become popular before now.

Nathan Lane’s performance in “City of Angels” is particularly amazing because, well, he’s Nathan Lane. He’s always been talented and charismatic but I only ever associate him with roles like he’s played on “The Bird Cage” and “Modern Family.”

We hate “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels,” but can’t stop watching.

We don’t hate Nathan Lane though. He’s outstanding.

The reality show “Cops” was canceled a short time ago. Should scripted police dramas follow? On the Today, Explained podcast www.listennotes.com/podcasts/…

I know that depiction of police on TV is problematic, but I loved “Hill Street Blues” and “NYPD Blue.”

On Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic: LA schools returned grenade launchers but kept their assault rifles. And a voting machine company won’t give election officials a login to inspect the integrity of their own voting machines. pluralistic.net/2020/06/1…

Mo Rocca investigates sitcom deaths and disappearances, including Richie’s older brother Chuck on “Happy Days,” the two Darrens on “Bewitched,” etc. With Henry Winkler and Sandy Duncan. www.mobituaries.com/the-podca…

Mo Rocca: For a year, JFK impersonator Vaughn Meader was one of the most famous and successful entertainers in the US. He’s virtually forgotten today. The Kennedy assassination ended his career in a single moment, and he never got over it. A surprisingly poignant story. www.mobituaries.com/the-podca…

Bottlenecks? Concerns about a possible shortage of glass vials to contain and distribute the coronavirus vaccine. If and when we get a vaccine. www.reuters.com/article/u…

In a time of quarantine, car sex isn’t just for kids anymore. melmagazine.com/en-us/sto…

But what about love in an elevator?

Trump Hates Losers, So Why Is He Refighting the Civil War—on the Losing Side? www.newyorker.com/news/lett…

Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police www.nytimes.com/2020/06/1…

Spike Lee refuses to say Donald Trump’s name on ‘Da 5 Bloods’ press tour, refers to him only as ‘Agent Orange’ www.yahoo.com/entertain…

A serious conversation about UFOs podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0…

UFOs are one of those topics that it’s hard to take seriously because they’re covered in kitsch and conspiracy. But there are those who take them seriously, which means approaching the question with humility. The history, frequency, and consistency of these events point toward something that merits study. But the explanations we force onto them — from religious visitations to aliens — confuse us further. We’re working backward from beliefs we already have, not forward from phenomena we don’t understand.

Ezra Klein talks with Diana Walsh Pasulka, professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and author of “American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology.” In her book, Pasulka describes how she “embeds in the world of UFO research and tries to understand it using the tools of religious scholarship.”

“There’s something here that’s very strange,” Pasulka says. But she doesn’t know what it is

Klein talks about how society ridicules UFOs and fringe beliefs as a means of shutting down discussion about them. Ridicule can be more effective than outright censorship.

Unbundle the Police www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc…

We require too much of police – solving crimes, controlling traffic, providing psychiatric intervention, controlling the homeless. And many towns depend on traffic citations as a form of revenue (which basically means these towns are funded by armed robbery but sure whatever). Too much of that work is contradictory; it’s unreasonable to expect the same person to take down an armed shooter and calm down a domestic disturbance or provide help to a homeless person.

The solution: Unbundle those jobs and give then to different people.

This solution doesn’t address police corruption. Many police departments seem to see themselves, not as public servants, but as occupying armies subjugating unruly natives.

Exercise is not just important to health; it also stimulates the mind. For example, when I was exercising recently I had the insight that “I Dream of Jeannie” and “Bewitched” are essentially the same show.

Julie has picked up a few words of Tswana, one of the two major languages of Botswana. The other major language is English:

Kealeboga =thank you Dumela mma= good morning - different ending if you’re talking with a man vs. talking with a woman.
Re mono fela= we are just here
Re kgobile= we are relaxed 📓 🌍