Kitchen Sink Omelet

When voting on the proposed NECEC corridor project, we need to ask simple questions:  How does CMP stand to profit from this project?  What if the profits don't go to Central Maine Power, but to its parent companies?  Suppose all the earnings go upwards, never to come back down:  How will CMP continue to maintain the NECEC corridor?  The burden of maintaining the NECEC corridor won't be absorbed by CMP—nor its parent corporations.  It will be transferred directly to the people of Maine, be it increasing the delivery fee, or raising the kilowatt hourly rates.  And what if there is a natural disaster, such as ice storms or wind storms, that damage the towers and high-tension lines; who will then pay for the repairs?  Again, the people of Maine.  We don't need this unwanted burden imposed on us with no hope of benefit.  Vote to ban the NECEC corridor.

"Maryland School Shooter killed by Armed School Resource Officer." Let's unpack this: A student brings a gun to school.  The armed student opens fire on other students, wounding two students.  The armed student specifically targets a young female.  An armed school resource officer intervenes.  Both fire at each other.  The armed shooter dies in EMR.  The armed school resource officer is lauded as a hero.  We shrug and say, "Too bad."  The armed school resource officer is now touted as proof that we need armed school personnel to counter the threat of rage-student-revenge shootings.  I can't go any further than this because the sheer insanity of this, the mass hysteria of this, is mind-numbing. We shrug, and this is the new normal . And of course the answer is more guns . The student doesn't have a gun to bring to school.  This horrible syllogism, this mad freight train of conservative mythology stops in its tracks. The...

xkcd strikes again!

Shorter Watson: We're not addressing the underlying issues resulting in juvenile gun deaths.

Does the potter make his own tools? (I suspect so?) From Colossal

Ophelia Benson's sharp eyes spotted this gem of information : ProPublica: A trove of internal documents reviewed by ProPublica sheds new light on the secret guidelines that Facebook’s censors use to distinguish between hate speech and legitimate political expression. The documents reveal the rationale behind seemingly inconsistent decisions. For instance, Higgins’ incitement to violence passed muster because it targeted a specific sub-group of Muslims — those that are “radicalized” — while Delgado’s post was deleted for attacking whites in general. Ophelia: "Who ya gonna suck up to? Established power, or rebels? The question answers itself, doesn’t it." A trove of internal documents reviewed by ProPublica sheds new light on the secret guidelines that Facebook’s censors use to distinguish between hate speech and legitimate political expression. The documents reveal the rationale behind seemingly inconsistent decisions. For instance, Higgins’ incitemen...

What I think is amazing is there are still steam trains operating around the world, with engines sometimes over a hundred old. Here's Sort Of What It Would Look Like If Steam Trains Didn't Need Rails

I keep reading about how there are typically 100 applicants for every one job opening. I don't know how anyone can look at figures like that and assume the unemployed are lazy, rather than victims of a vicious numbers game. I say vicious because far too many corporate business owners are spreading around far too much money to keep it that way. We're not unemployed by some statistical fluke; we're unemployed by design . It's deliberate. I can't help thinking about the early 1980's when computer electronics were taking off. PC's would save the world. Some of the chip foundries and manufacturers were setting up tents in their parking lots and literally hiring people off the streets. All these generous employment benefits you read about today (and wish you had) began in that frenetic time. But then someone, who surely has a special place reserved in Hell, came up with a brilliantly simple solution: set up the hiring tents in developing countries and just forg...

I just love this. It's a fascinating look at what we can achieve in a just a few short years. The concept works. Now it's just a matter of scaling it up.