Greetings of the new year to you. Thank you for your well-wishes and correspondence, especially the very cute Pu-present-postcard I received from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tinchen and the postcards with snow. Nature did not provide us with any snow for the holidays, and so having pictures of that was nice.
For those of you in Iowa or elsewhere, have a quick reminder as to why Ron Paul is not, in fact, a good candidate for President. Not that it mattered, as Santorum, Paul, and Romney split one-quarter of the vote between themselves, and the remainder was fought over by the other candidates. No clear frontrunner, certainly. (I think it has to do with none of the candidates having any sort of clear background. - Mitt Romney's work at Baen Capital makes him a favorite of those that want to gut the economy for their own profit, for example.) It's easy to forget the dance of the marionettes sometimes, but it's always true that nobody (or near nobody) in politics has your interests at heart.
Elsewhere,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
xenologer does a pair of linkdumps of excellent information for building your storehouse of knowledge about how other people see the world. Topic One: Misogyny, or why most men have the perfume of Privilege. (And the reason why that person is mad at you for what you thought was innocent or complimentary.) Topic Two: Racism, or why being White still has advantages, even if people aren't so explicit about saying so.
Perhaps as the proper final note to these things, Kate Harding points out that when your first instinct to a problem appearing is anything other than "How do we fix this problem?", then you are auful, too. Because there are a lot of Unfortunate Implications to many of the common responses to seeing jerk behavior on the Internet and in your circles.
Out in the world today, the cost of the Iraq War is not just in treasure, although it cost plenty of that, certainly. Lots of blood, lots of lives shattered, lots of costs that are not quantifiable, but will definitely be felt. All because fear allowed falsehoods to take over and pride prevented rationality from allowing an exit.
Israel is treating a credit card data breach as if it were a terror attack and vowing to retaliate against it.
And finally, a new constitution in Hungray has demonstrators and international observers concerned that human rights in the country just took a giant step backwards, as marriage is codified solely as one man, one woman relationships, life is officially defined to begin at conception, and the statutes provide no discrimination protection against QUILTBAG individuals.
In the domestic sphere, authorities have petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States is deciding whether or not an alert signal from a trained drug-seeking dog is sufficient grounds to obtain a warrant to search a private home for drugs. SCOTUS has not yet decided on whether or not they will hear the case.
The investigation into the race-based abuse and harrassment that drove a Untied States Army private, Danny Chen, to suicide, continues, with the family of the soldier asking for open proceedings in the United States to ensure that justice is done. The allegations include additional work details, degrading treatment, and excessive physical punishment.
Operators of a livestream feed for the Occupy Wall Street movement were arrested by the New York Police Department and their livestream shut down. Elsehere, a protest of senior citizens over usury to those with fixed incomes closed a Bank of America branch in San Francisco.
Appointees of anti-union activist Scott Walker (when he was a county executive) have been implicated in a scandal where they stole almost half of the government money allocated for veterans and used it for their own pleasure. That's of the charges that have been leveled so far - there may be even more charges coming.
The United States Justice Department has updated their official definition of rape to include men and those who are intoxicated or otherwise unable to give consent. Better late than never, and hopefully more accurate statistics will help Justice realize what sort of resources they should devote to it.
Last out, continuing the march of progress, transgender individuals are trying to get New York state to change the requirements for getting their legal sex changed to something less onerous than gender reassignment surgery. Because of the requirements to show birth certificates for many documents and services, transgender persons often find themselves dealing with clerks that will misgender them based on that certificate information and not on their presentation.
Oh, and thinking that Michigan's attempt is worthy of emulation, Tennessee lawmakers have advanced a bill that would class anti-QUILTBAG speech on religious grounds as not-bullying, so long as the speaker was not advocating harm or property destruction.
In technology, CVDazzle, a set of tips on how to apply makeup and paint to fool software from recognizing your face, yet not appear to be wearing a mask or other face-covering that could be illegal.
Microsoft was awarded a patent for a mechanism that would allow a GPS to plot a route to "avoid the ghetto", lest a driver be disturbed by the sight of the working poor.
Unsurprisingly, media outlets who support (or whose parent companies support) the control of the Internet by media cabals are not devoting much time to covering legislation that allows those media cabals to take over.
Finally, the Mandriva Linux distribution is in danger of abandonment, as the Mandriva corporation that supports it faces bankruptcy. One can only hope that the distribution and it's progression is open-sourced and given to the Linux community should the corporation fold up.
Last for tonight, what a truly universal and generic version of the Christian Lord's Prayer might look like.
tinchen and the postcards with snow. Nature did not provide us with any snow for the holidays, and so having pictures of that was nice.For those of you in Iowa or elsewhere, have a quick reminder as to why Ron Paul is not, in fact, a good candidate for President. Not that it mattered, as Santorum, Paul, and Romney split one-quarter of the vote between themselves, and the remainder was fought over by the other candidates. No clear frontrunner, certainly. (I think it has to do with none of the candidates having any sort of clear background. - Mitt Romney's work at Baen Capital makes him a favorite of those that want to gut the economy for their own profit, for example.) It's easy to forget the dance of the marionettes sometimes, but it's always true that nobody (or near nobody) in politics has your interests at heart.
Elsewhere,
xenologer does a pair of linkdumps of excellent information for building your storehouse of knowledge about how other people see the world. Topic One: Misogyny, or why most men have the perfume of Privilege. (And the reason why that person is mad at you for what you thought was innocent or complimentary.) Topic Two: Racism, or why being White still has advantages, even if people aren't so explicit about saying so.Perhaps as the proper final note to these things, Kate Harding points out that when your first instinct to a problem appearing is anything other than "How do we fix this problem?", then you are auful, too. Because there are a lot of Unfortunate Implications to many of the common responses to seeing jerk behavior on the Internet and in your circles.
Out in the world today, the cost of the Iraq War is not just in treasure, although it cost plenty of that, certainly. Lots of blood, lots of lives shattered, lots of costs that are not quantifiable, but will definitely be felt. All because fear allowed falsehoods to take over and pride prevented rationality from allowing an exit.
Israel is treating a credit card data breach as if it were a terror attack and vowing to retaliate against it.
And finally, a new constitution in Hungray has demonstrators and international observers concerned that human rights in the country just took a giant step backwards, as marriage is codified solely as one man, one woman relationships, life is officially defined to begin at conception, and the statutes provide no discrimination protection against QUILTBAG individuals.
In the domestic sphere, authorities have petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States is deciding whether or not an alert signal from a trained drug-seeking dog is sufficient grounds to obtain a warrant to search a private home for drugs. SCOTUS has not yet decided on whether or not they will hear the case.
The investigation into the race-based abuse and harrassment that drove a Untied States Army private, Danny Chen, to suicide, continues, with the family of the soldier asking for open proceedings in the United States to ensure that justice is done. The allegations include additional work details, degrading treatment, and excessive physical punishment.
Operators of a livestream feed for the Occupy Wall Street movement were arrested by the New York Police Department and their livestream shut down. Elsehere, a protest of senior citizens over usury to those with fixed incomes closed a Bank of America branch in San Francisco.
Appointees of anti-union activist Scott Walker (when he was a county executive) have been implicated in a scandal where they stole almost half of the government money allocated for veterans and used it for their own pleasure. That's of the charges that have been leveled so far - there may be even more charges coming.
The United States Justice Department has updated their official definition of rape to include men and those who are intoxicated or otherwise unable to give consent. Better late than never, and hopefully more accurate statistics will help Justice realize what sort of resources they should devote to it.
Last out, continuing the march of progress, transgender individuals are trying to get New York state to change the requirements for getting their legal sex changed to something less onerous than gender reassignment surgery. Because of the requirements to show birth certificates for many documents and services, transgender persons often find themselves dealing with clerks that will misgender them based on that certificate information and not on their presentation.
Oh, and thinking that Michigan's attempt is worthy of emulation, Tennessee lawmakers have advanced a bill that would class anti-QUILTBAG speech on religious grounds as not-bullying, so long as the speaker was not advocating harm or property destruction.
In technology, CVDazzle, a set of tips on how to apply makeup and paint to fool software from recognizing your face, yet not appear to be wearing a mask or other face-covering that could be illegal.
Microsoft was awarded a patent for a mechanism that would allow a GPS to plot a route to "avoid the ghetto", lest a driver be disturbed by the sight of the working poor.
Unsurprisingly, media outlets who support (or whose parent companies support) the control of the Internet by media cabals are not devoting much time to covering legislation that allows those media cabals to take over.
Finally, the Mandriva Linux distribution is in danger of abandonment, as the Mandriva corporation that supports it faces bankruptcy. One can only hope that the distribution and it's progression is open-sourced and given to the Linux community should the corporation fold up.
Last for tonight, what a truly universal and generic version of the Christian Lord's Prayer might look like.
