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demi-shoggoth · 1 year ago

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2023 Reading Log, pt 13

I've been putting off writing this one for a while, because all of these books are... fine? I didn't feel very strongly about them any way, either positively or negatively. Plus, I've been strongly burnt out on writing in general, and it's been hard for me to push myself to even write little 100 word blurbs about books.

61. Strange Japanese Yokai by Kenji Murakami, translated by Zack Davisson. It’s rare that I get the opportunity to read a yokai book originally written in Japanese, seeing as I don’t speak the language, so I jumped on the chance to get a copy of this when I found out it existed. It’s cute, with cartoony artwork and little data file sidebars that remind me of a Scholastic book… except the content is far weirder than what American kids books contain. The theme of the yokai stories here is that a lot of yokai… kind of suck. The stories told about the big hitters, like oni, kappa, kitsune and tanuki, are about them being foolish or having easily exploited weaknesses, and a lot of the other stories are about gross or pathetic yokai more than scary or impressive ones. The book is overall charming, but a very quick read. More of a supplement to other yokai books than a one-stop shop.

62. Mythical Creatures of Maine by Christopher Packard. This is a bit of an odd duck, seeing as it combines multiple monster traditions (fearsome critters, cryptids and Native American lore) under the same set of covers. It’s a pretty typical A-Z monster book, with some good information about obscure fearsome critters and Wabanaki monsters. There are, however, two things about the book I actively dislike, that keep me from strongly recommending it. The art is terrible. The illustrations by Dan Kirchoff are done in a style I can only describe as “fake woodcuts with flat colors” and are ugly (and in some cases, difficult to decipher). The other is that most, but not all of the monsters, get little microfiction epigrams in the character of Burton Marlborough Packard, the author’s great-great grandfather who worked in the Maine lumberwoods. It’s a weird touch, especially since the epigrams are only a sentence or two, and are typically pretty pointless.

63. Mushrooms: A Natural and Cultural History by Nicholas P. Money. There have been a number of books about fungi for the educated lay audience that have been published in the last couple of years. This one doesn’t really stand out from the crowd. The photography is nice, and there’s some coverage of the history of mycology and some of the prominent people in the field. But the book isn’t very well organized, bouncing from one topic to another within the same paragraph, and there are a number of passages that feel more like rants (the chapter on culinary uses for mushrooms, for example).

64. The Lives of Beetles by Arthur V. Evans. This book serves as an introduction to entomology in general, and beetles in particular. It covers core topics like insect body plans, introduces cladistics and covers the evolution, ecology, behavior and conservation of beetles in broad strokes. These strokes feel particularly broad because there are a lot of beetles; much of the book covers groups on the levels of family, which makes it feel a little bit shallow. These are alternated with descriptions of individual species, and this is where the book shines, as it gives good information about both well known species and some pretty obscure ones. The real value of the book, to someone who has been around the entomological block as I have, is in its production values—this book is quite simply gorgeous, and there are lots of nice photos of many different species.

65. Hoax: A History of Deception by Ian Tattersall and Peter Névraumont. This book has an identity crisis. You would think, with a title like that, that the main topic would be about hoaxes and cons. Some of it is. Some of it is about people who believed what they were pushing, even if it wasn’t true (apocalypse prophecies, homeopathy). Some of it is about misconceptions in archaeology, even if nobody was intentionally lying (the Piltdown Man is an actual hoax. Mary Leakey misidentifying rocks as human artifacts isn’t). And the organization is frankly baffling—it’s arranged in chronological order for some part of a topic, regardless of how much of the chapter is actually about when it’s set. For example, a chapter on fixed games is set at 260 BCE, but spends more of its length talking about modern pro wrestling than gladiator matches. The book is a somewhat bizarre reading experience.

#reading log #hoaxes #mushrooms #mycology #monster book #yokai #fearsome critters #entomology #beetles

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xtruss · 9 days ago

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60 Years Ago, Congress Warned Us About The Surveillance State. What Happened?

"We must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

— By Jennifer Holt | September 27, 2024 | The MIT Press Reader

In the 1960s, Congress turned the tables and began to address the threat that the state and its use of computerized technologies posed to the privacy of its citizens. Much of this was in response to President Johnson’s proposal for a “National Data Center” in 1965 to consolidate federal databases as part of the Great Society project. Congress became alarmed and held numerous hearings in the House and Senate between 1966 and 1967 to discuss the many potential invasions of privacy represented by government control of individual data. The idea of a state repository of citizen data created quite an uproar, as explored in the text that follows, and the “National Data Center” did not come to pass.

This article is excerpted from Jennifer Holt’s book “Cloud Policy.”

A decade later, in 1975, the Church Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church, convened to investigate widespread intelligence abuses by federal agencies, including the CIA, FBI, NSA, and IRS. Prompted by whistleblower Christopher Pyle’s exposé of the Army’s domestic surveillance, the committee revealed extensive government spying on American citizens, often based on political beliefs with no link to violence or foreign threats. In a chilling interview on Meet the Press that summer, Church amplified his warnings, pointing to “a future in which technological advances could be turned around on the American people and used to facilitate a system of government surveillance.” If the U.S. continued down this path, he cautioned, “No American would have any privacy left,” emphasizing that “we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

Cultural Fears about the state’s ability to track its citizens have circulated at least since the 1930s when the New Deal ushered in Social Security and a panic ensued over being assigned an identification number that would follow one all the way to the grave. These fears continued through the 1950s with the Red Scare, loyalty oaths, and the anti-Communist crusades of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. However, Congress did not devote much attention to the privacy of individual citizens until the 1960s, when concerns reached new heights, thanks in part to technological advances.

Portable recording technologies and computing began to sound alarms, as their capabilities elicited new threats to privacy rights. Such worries were amplified by the Supreme Court, as Chief Justice Earl Warren stated in a 1963 opinion regarding recording devices and entrapment: “The fantastic advances in the field of electronic communication constitute a great danger to the privacy of the individual.” In addition, a wave of writing by scholars and journalists at this time, focused on technology, privacy, and personal autonomy, helped inform public debate. In many ways this work anticipated current anxieties about the price of life under Big Tech.

In many ways this work anticipated current anxieties about the price of life under Big Tech.

Vance Packard’s “The Naked Society” (1964), Alan F. Westin’s “Privacy and Freedom” (1967), and Arthur Miller’s “The Assault on Privacy” (1971) were among the most influential in this genre. Miller understood then that the time would soon come when “our primary source of knowledge will be electronic information nodes or communications centers located in our homes, schools, and offices that are connected to international, national, regional, and local computer-based data networks.” Westin evoked many present-day issues in his wide-ranging, foundational book, paying great attention to “data surveillance” and how new technologies were affecting norms of privacy in order to recuperate this “cornerstone of the American system of liberty.” He viewed privacy and freedom as inextricably linked, defining privacy as “the claim of individuals … to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others.” “Privacy and Freedom” is still useful today for thinking about the malleable parameters of privacy, and its power in defining an individual’s relationship to the state.

This was the context in which President Lyndon B. Johnson proposed a federally controlled data center called the National Data Bank in 1965 as part of the Great Society project. The data center was imagined as a tool for efficiency and organization that would consolidate federal databases at the dawn of computerized record-keeping. However, concerns about technology and privacy were becoming widespread enough that a congressional Special Subcommittee on the Invasion of Privacy was established in the House of Representatives. Four separate hearings were held in the House and Senate between 1966 and 1967 to discuss the threats to privacy posed by the computer and the government control of data. They were dominated by overwhelming expressions of concern about the sanctity of individual privacy and civil liberties. The government’s power combined with the yet-unknown capabilities of digital technology were positioned as the main potential threat. The determination that the public needed to be protected from the centralized state collection of data above all else, without sufficient attention to the dangers lurking elsewhere, was a defining moment for cloud policy that has only grown more consequential over the decades that followed.

The chair of the Subcommittee on the Invasion of Privacy running the House hearings, Representative Cornelius “Neil” Gallagher (D-NJ), introduced the investigation of the National Data Center in July 1966 by saying, “The possible future storage and regrouping of such personal information … strikes at the core of our Judeo-Christian concept of ‘forgive and forget,’ because the computer neither forgives nor forgets.” Representative Frank Horton (R-NY) warned that “the magnitude of the problem we now confront is akin to the changes wrought in our national life with the dawning of the nuclear age.… It is not enough to say ‘It can’t happen here’; our grandfathers said that about television.” One of the original network architects of the Internet, Paul Baran, alluded to threats posed by the future cloud in his expert-witness testimony, noting that “a multiplicity of large, remote-access computer systems, if interconnected, can pose the danger of loss of the individual’s right to privacy — as we know it today.” Author Vance Packard called attention to the “suffocating sense of surveillance” engendered by a centralized government database, noting the “hazard of permitting so much power to rest in the hands of the people in a position to push computer buttons, … [because] we all to some extent fall under the control of the machine’s managers.”

Gallagher had a remarkably prescient grasp of technological threats to individual privacy, which was likely a result of being persecuted and having his own privacy violated for many years by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Gallagher’s speech to the American Bar Association in 1967, titled “Technology and Freedom,” was quite striking in its predictive accuracy. It included the following, partially adapted from the statement of Professor Arthur Miller at the Senate hearings that same year:

Although the technology of computerization has raised new horizons of progress, it also brings with it grave dangers.… The computer, with its insatiable appetite for information, its image of infallibility, its inability to forget anything that has been put into it, may become the heart of a surveillance system that will turn society into a transparent world in which our home, our finances, our associations, our mental and physical condition are laid bare to the most casual observer. If information is power, then real power and its inherent threat to the Republic will not rest in some elected officials or Army generals, but in a few overzealous members of a bureaucratic elite.

The final report from the House Committee was clear about the links between data privacy and democracy: “A suffocating sense of surveillance, represented by instantaneously retrievable, derogatory or noncontextual data, is not an atmosphere in which freedom can long survive,” the authors wrote. “This report, therefore, charges the Federal Government as well as the computer community with a dual responsibility.… They must … guarantee Americans that the tonic of high speed information handling does not contain a toxic which will kill privacy.” The committee further noted that the dangers of unauthorized access to information was great, and “a grave threat to the constitutional guarantees exists in the National Data Bank concept,” leading to their emphasis on prioritizing privacy in the center’s eventual design and implementation. However, the committee’s ultimate recommendation was to stop working on the National Data Bank until privacy protections were fully explored and guaranteed “to the greatest extent possible to the citizens whose personal records would form its information base.” Once again linking privacy to politics, the authors emphasized, “While computerized data bases hold great promise, they must contain procedures which can assure the continuation of freedom of thought and action that is such a vital part of the American tradition. The collection and processing of statistical data should not and need not be gained by sacrificing the guiding principles of our democracy.”

From the November 1967 cover of the Atlantic. Credit: Drawing by Edward Sorel.

At the same time, the reporting in the popular press was highly alarmist. One representative article in Look magazine titled “The Computer Data Bank: Will It Kill Your Freedom?” posed various questions that could easily be answered by “any snooper with a computer,” such as, “Did your sister have an illegitimate baby when she was 15? Did you fail math in junior high? Are you divorced or living in a common-law relationship? Do you pay your bills promptly? Are you willing to talk to salesmen? Have you been treated for a venereal disease? Are you visiting a psychiatrist? Were you ever arrested?” Chairman Gallagher was quoted in the same article, warning, “Computer data banks are at the same stage of development as the early railroads and the first telephone companies, which took a number of years to link themselves together in a nationwide network. Welfare departments, credit bureaus, hospitals, police departments and dozens of other institutions are putting their files into hundreds of relatively small data centers. No matter what you call them, they’re still data centers, and they can be linked.” The public uproar in response to all these developments led to National Data Bank discussions and debate being shut down by 1970.

Unfortunately, it would be a pyrrhic victory. The focus on protecting public data from the perceived dangers of centralized state collection and storage blinded legislators to the problems created by the solution: putting data in the hands of private companies. Corporations ultimately filled the vacuum created by the National Data Bank’s failure, and became the chief custodians of U.S. citizens’ private data. As the historian Margaret O’Mara has argued, these decisions actually created the very problem they were trying to prevent. “The privacy warriors of the 1960s would have been astounded by what the tech industry has become. They would be more amazed to realize that the policy choices they made back then — to demand data transparency rather than limit data collection, and to legislate the behavior of government but not private industry — enabled today’s tech giants to become as large and powerful as they are.” The congressional attempt to defend US citizens from experiencing “big brother” and the world as imagined in Orwell’s “1984,” which were mentioned relentlessly during the hearings, ended up creating exactly what they were trying to avoid, albeit serving a different master. This is not to suggest that government control over public data is preferable, but instead to emphasize that private control without regulatory oversight has proven to be undeniably disastrous for individual and collective privacy, and a signature failure of contemporary cloud policy. To his credit, Senator Long (D-MO) who presided over the Senate hearings in 1966 and 1967 did warn that if the proposals for a National Data Bank ��concerned themselves only with Government interests, and if individual, private interests were ignored, we might be creating a form of Frankenstein monster,” but his words went unheeded.

The report of the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare’s Advisory Committee on Automated Personal Data Systems, 1973.

The cultural tensions around surveillance lingered, as evident in the 1973 report, Records, Computers, and the Rights of Citizens, put out by the Secretary’s Advisory Committee of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. This report was about computerized record-keeping, privacy safeguards, and the issue of the social security number. It is a stunning document that catalogs record-keeping practices going back to the Stone Age through the advent of automated systems. It included similar work on computerized record-keeping and privacy being done in Canada, Great Britain, and Sweden. The report also newly identified citizens as “data subjects,” emphasizing privacy safeguards and the individual’s loss of control over the use of their personal data. In so doing, this 1973 report predicted many of the problems created by Big Tech business models, arguing that concerns about computerized records usually center on privacy, particularly as “privacy is considered to entail control by an individual over the uses made of information about him. In many circumstances in modern life an individual must either surrender some of that control or forego the services that an organization provides. Although there is nothing inherently unfair in trading some measure of privacy for a benefit, both parties to the exchange should participate in setting the terms.”

The report also recommended a federal “Code of Fair Information Practice,” which contained principles for transparency, autonomy over one’s personal data, and safeguard requirements regarding data usage by third parties. None of these recommendations were adopted at the time. However, they went on to inform future agency recommendations and early privacy legislation such as the Privacy Act of 1974, which was enacted in the wake of President Nixon’s resignation. And yet, as O’Mara has pointed out, much of this legislation concentrated on the right to know about what information that federal databases held, but none of it “addressed the question of whether this information should have been gathered in the first place.” The 1974 act did not stop data collection, it merely revealed how much of it was taking place on the federal level. According to historian and author Sarah Igo, despite being “designed to empower citizens vis-à-vis the record keepers, the law would wind up stoking fears that the United States had become a full-fledged surveillance society in which individuals were outmatched from the outset.”

The 1974 act did not stop data collection, it merely revealed how much of it was taking place on the federal level.

These widespread concerns at the dawn of the computerized era led to yet another round of hearings in the Senate in 1975. This time the focus was on “surveillance technology,” as news had emerged about the Pentagon’s surveillance of Vietnam War protestors, and journalists exposed the Johnson and Nixon administrations for utilizing a computerized, networked domestic spy operation that, the report stated, linked “the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, more than 20 universities, and a dozen research centers, like the Rand Corporation.” Echoing the foreboding words of Frank Church issued just a month earlier, Chairman John Tunney (R-CA) opened the hearings saying, “Technological developments are arriving so rapidly and are changing the nature of our society so fundamentally that we are in danger of losing the capacity to shape our own destiny.” He further stated that “control over the technology of surveillance conveys effective control over our privacy, our freedom, and our dignity — in short, control over the most meaningful aspects of our lives as free human beings.” MIT President Jerome Wiesner testified that the surveillance problem had become a crisis because “information technology puts vastly more power into the hands of government and private interests that have the resources to use it” and “to the degree that the Constitution meant for power to be in the hands of the ‘governed,’ widespread collection of personal information poses a threat to the Constitution itself.” Ultimately, Weiser argued that there is “serious danger of creating an ‘information tyranny’ in the innocent pursuit of a more efficient society.” The committee echoed his tone, raising alarm that the “continued ignorance of surveillance technology — its size and structure as a separate industry, the justifications for its growth, its impact on society — could prove to be an Orwellian catastrophe for our privacy and our freedoms.” As it turned out, all of these fears were well-founded. These proceedings contained vital warnings and lessons for the future of cloud policy that have since been lost to history.

In the end, history is always our best teacher. If cloud policy has taught us anything, it is that the same legal and cultural struggles will await the next critical infrastructural technology and the one after that — until the issues they represent are widely understood as those necessary to defend civil liberties and the health and vitality of democracy, and they are regulated accordingly. Sadly, most citizens remain unaware, uninterested, or unsure of what to do about our current predicament. This is in part attributable to a lack of public education about the issues and stakes of cloud policy, to impoverished and compromised political leadership, and to the poor quality of media coverage about the regulation of cloud infrastructure. In turn, the breakdown of public values in this policy domain has snowballed at a truly alarming rate — bringing us ever closer to the “abyss from which there is no return” that we were warned about so many years ago.

— Jennifer Holt is Professor and Chair of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a former Fellow with the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington, DC. She is coeditor of “The SAGE Handbook of the Digital Media Economy” (Sage) and author of “Empires of Entertainment” (Rutgers University Press) and “Cloud Policy,” from which this article is excerpted.

#Surveillance State #US Congress #Agencies

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trustsnew · 3 months ago

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The first post-mortem examinations on two victims of the Bayesian superyacht sinking have been carried out.Seven people died when the luxury boat, owned by British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, capsized of...

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head-post · 3 months ago

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Details of Sicily yacht incident

Divers were searching for six missing people, including British technology tycoon Mike Lynch, who were on board the British-flagged luxury yacht Bayesian, which sank off the coast of Sicily during a storm.

Specialist cave divers, in 12-minute underwater shifts, were searching for six missing passengers and crew members on Tuesday. The yacht Bayesian was carrying a crew of 10 people and 12 passengers when it suddenly sank near a Mediterranean island around 4 a.m. on Monday. One body was recovered and 15 people survived.

Fire and rescue officials said six people believed to have remained in the hull of the sailboat would be considered missing until they were found among the wreckage.

Italian civil defence officials believe a sudden and severe storm that hit the Sicilian coast in the early hours of Monday caused a water tornado at the very spot where the 56-metre (184-foot) British-flagged Bayesian vessel was moored. Karsten Borner, the captain of another yacht moored nearby, found a lifeboat with 15 people, some of whom were injured. They brought them aboard their yacht and alerted the coastguard.

Rescue services reported that the wreck rested at a depth of 50 metres (163 feet) about half a mile off the shore of Porticello fishing village.

Missings and survivors

In June, Lynch was acquitted of all charges in a US fraud trial related to the $11bn sale of his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. However, Lynch still faces a potentially huge bill stemming from a civil case in London that HP largely won in 2022. The amount of damages in that case has yet to be determined, but HP is seeking $4 billion.

Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah was reportedly among those missing. His wife, Angela Bacares, and 14 others survived. One of Lynch’s US attorneys, Christopher Morvillo of Clifford Chance, and Morvillo’s wife, Neda, went missing on Tuesday, according to the civil protection agency.

Jonathan Bloomer, non-executive chairman of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Judy are also missing. One body was recovered on Monday, identified as a flight cook.

Charlotte Golunski was among the survivors. She said she lost her one-year-old daughter Sofia in the water for a moment, but then managed to grab her and hold her above the waves until a lifeboat inflated. The father, identified by ANSA as James Emslie, also survived.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry stated that the Dutchman, whose identity was withheld for privacy reasons, also managed to survive.

More details

Sicily has been languishing in a heatwave this summer, and a panel of UN climate change experts says the Mediterranean Sea is particularly vulnerable to climate change, with the rate of warming about 20 per cent higher than the global average. Experts say it is extremely rare for a luxury sailing yacht of this size to capsize due to weather events.

Skip Novak, a lifelong sailor who has taken part in multiple round the world yacht races and written books about sailing, said:

“This just doesn’t happen. You know, boats sink because things like keels fall off, or they run aground and breach the hull … whereas just from a weather angle, a boat that big being pushed over on its side is absolutely extraordinary.”

When you’re at anchor, even if it’s blowing with a storm in the Mediterranean, you rarely shut the whole boat down because nobody expects something like this to happen. So if the boat wasn’t completely watertight at the deck, you’d have flooding going in. It would take a couple minutes and that would be it.

As the search for the missing continues, authorities have already begun trying to reconstruct an accurate picture of what happened. Prosecutors in the Sicilian town of Termini Imerese have launched an investigation, as is usual in such cases, even when no suspects have been identified.

The British Marine Accident Investigation Branch said four of its inspectors were on their way to Palermo.

Read more HERE

#world news #news #world politics #sicilia #bayesian #mike lynch #mike lynch missing #mike lynch uk #mike lynch super yacht sinks #uk #uk politics #uk news #england #britain #united kingdom

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poligrafoserio · 6 months ago

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Novo relatório revela enorme escala de financiamento bilionário verde para reportagens de 'emergência climática' na grande mídia

Um enorme programa de preparação global destinado principalmente à grande mídia, envolvendo o catastrofismo climático e a promoção do Net Zero, é detalhado em um relatório publicado recentemente pela Earth Journalism Network (EJN), da Internews, financiada por bilionários verdes. O trabalho é uma visão chocante sobre a corrupção do jornalismo investigativo independente. A certa altura, o relatório observa “uma tendência preocupante entre os jornalistas de alguns países que ainda procuram 'equilibrar' as suas reportagens sobre as alterações climáticas”. O relatório mostra claramente que os multimilionários verdes são os que dão as cartas na promoção de histórias de colapso climático inspirado no Net Zero. Note-se que podem financiar jornalistas “para cobrir histórias numa determinada área temática, determinada pelos interesses e objectivos do financiador”.

Ao longo dos últimos 20 anos, as fundações multimilionárias com eficiência fiscal colmataram as lacunas de financiamento deixadas pelo declínio da circulação e das vendas de publicidade nos principais meios de comunicação social. A RJE refere que os jornalistas “concordaram esmagadoramente” que o apoio de organizações de financiamento externas era “essencial” para permitir a sua reportagem climática e ambiental. Qualquer jornalista pode candidatar-se para ser membro da RJE e o “ principal benefício ” é o acesso a financiamento para histórias e “oportunidades de formação”. A operação conta com mais de 25.000 membros em 200 países.

A lista de financiadores da RJE é longa e inclui muitos apoiantes bem conhecidos do trabalho de propagação do medo climático. Incluída está a Fundação Europeia para o Clima, fortemente apoiada por Michael Bloomberg e pelo tesoureiro da Extinction Rebellion, Sir Christopher Hohn. Outros apoiantes incluem Tides, Gulbenkian, Oak, Packard, Climate Justice Resilience, MacArthur e Rockefeller. Organizações políticas e governamentais, incluindo as Nações Unidas e o Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros britânico, ajudam com o dinheiro dos contribuintes.

Diz-se que o relatório da RJE fornece uma referência nova e verdadeiramente global do estado actual do jornalismo climático e ambiental. Infelizmente, isso parece ser verdade. Como vimos em muitas edições anteriores do Daily Skeptic , muito poucas operações verdes “de base” podem sobreviver sem o financiamento bilionário da elite. O mesmo se aplica à cobertura mediática. Grande parte da enxurrada global de relatórios sobre catástrofes climáticas não existiria sem esta vital tábua de salvação externa. É óbvio que as doações em dinheiro têm uma agenda política clara, nomeadamente uma coletivização global Net Zero, ordenada pela elite, facilitada pelo crescimento de organizações supranacionais.

O relatório deixa claro que os jornalistas climáticos e ambientais têm sido criticados há muito tempo pela falta de objectividade. No entanto, diz-se que a “literatura” sugere que o jornalismo como um todo “tem vindo a afastar-se da objectividade como prática profissional na paisagem digital”. Diz-se que alguns investigadores apontaram para a necessidade de pensar “além do jornalismo” e de formular uma definição mais ampla.

Pode-se argumentar que se você está sendo pago para ser um poodle, você já está “além do jornalismo”. Como escreveu certa vez o autor de 1984 , George Orwell: “Jornalismo é imprimir o que outra pessoa não quer que seja impresso; qualquer outra coisa são relações públicas.”

Infelizmente, parece que permanece algum cepticismo climático, apesar de todos os melhores esforços de financiamento. A opinião científica de que os humanos controlam o termóstato climático através da queima de hidrocarbonetos é contestada por algumas das melhores mentes científicas do mundo. Números falsificados, atribuições meteorológicas pseudocientíficas e a enorme subestimação do papel das variações naturais não convencem a todos. De acordo com a RJE, isto significa que, em muitos países, o público dos meios de comunicação social está a ser levado a acreditar que as causas das alterações climáticas não são claras. Certamente pode-se dizer que as causas das alterações climáticas não são claras para os que acreditam no processo de descoberta científica, como o vencedor do Prémio Nobel da Física em 2022, Dr. Ele disse recentemente que a ligação entre temperatura e dióxido de carbono era uma “ montanha de lixo ”. Ou o ilustre professor emérito de Princeton, William Happer, que, quando solicitado a escolher entre “fraude climática” ou “farsa”, disse que preferia “fraude”, mas que poderia viver com a “farsa”.

Para a RJE, financiada por bilionários, isto é “altamente problemático”, uma vez que a compreensão pública generalizada das causas e impactos das alterações climáticas “é tão urgentemente necessária para apoiar a acção climática à escala global”.

Infelizmente, mais uma vez, o relatório pareceu encontrar algumas provas perturbadoras de que alguns camaradas não estão totalmente de acordo com os desejos do Big Climate Brother e da ciência “estabelecida” promovida pelo Ministério da Verdade. Os cidadãos são lembrados de que, na altura da Grande Pandemia da COVID-19, “os meios de comunicação social de muitos países alinharam-se claramente com as posições governamentais sobre os mandatos de vacinas e as ordens de confinamento – muitas vezes sob a frase unificadora de 'estamos todos juntos nisto'”. Com base neste exemplo, sugere-se que os jornalistas deveriam hesitar menos em defender a mensagem climática no “interesse público”.

Dado que as redações de todo o mundo estão cheias de jornalistas que tentam esconder o seu apoio maníaco ao uso de máscaras de pano, aos modelos informáticos implaus��veis, aos anos de distanciamento social e ao encerramento de escolas, aos medicamentos novos e não testados, aos confinamentos que destroem a economia e à dívida pública paralisante, poderá haver Há alguma preocupação de que outra campanha de ciência leve possa eventualmente levar a uma responsabilização pública mais humilhante, a um desprezo ridículo e a uma menor credibilidade.

Artigo original:

#ciência #alterações climáticas #aquecimento global #propaganda #net zero #alarmismo climático #desinformação

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redlettermediathings · 1 year ago

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#redlettermedia #youtube #red letter media #rich evans #jay bauman #gorilla interrupted #half in the bag #mike stoklasa #best of the worst #jack packard #oppenheimer #christopher nolan

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millingroundireland · 1 year ago

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Nutley, Cincinnati, and beyond [Part 5]

continued from part 4

Sadly, Bob would die, at age 56, on May 2, 1981, at Holmes Hospital from a brain tumor, malignant glioblastoma. The “Robert B. Mills Memorial Graduate Award,” a scholarship award, would be named in his honor. Left in his immediate family were his wife F.L., two children, along with his sisters Carol (in Cincinnati) and Helen (in Huntington Woods, Michigan). [18] He is buried at Spring Grove Cemetery alongside RBM I, RBM II, Hattie, and Stanley. F.L would die 15 years later on December 31, 1996 at Glen Meadows Retirement Community. Not surprisingly, her tobacco smoking and long-standing alcoholism for years was a major factor in her death. She donated her body to science.

It is best to finish the chapter off with a focus on Bob’s siblings, Helen and Carol. Helen would, in 1950, begin education at New York City’s Brooklyn College. Sometime before 1955 she would marry Alexander “Alex” Christopher Efthim. Alex’s family was born in Albania. [19] Like Helen, Alex was also politically active and aware, with both going to Communist Party meetings. He would write a Masters Thesis titled “Public relations in the Department of Welfare, New York City” at Columbia University, getting a Masters in Public Law in 1940 after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts at Washington University on June 7, 1938. He served in the military from August 21, 1943 to 1946, specifically in the Pacific Theater and become a decorated Army Air Force Captain. On June 29, 1946, Alex would lead a class on organizing vets for political action, described as a “one-man lobby” against crippling OPA (Office of Price Administration). Later that year he would criticize Representative Ploeser in St. Louis, a stout conservative who lost re-election in 1948, likely in part because of Alex’s Fight Inflation Committee. Later, on August 5, 1968, he would publish an article in The Nation titled “”We Care” in Kansas: The Non-Professionals Revolt.” By January 1976 he would be an assistant professor at Wayne State University in school of social work. He was introducing social work to nontraditional settings such as legislator's offices and family physician practices, and for his “advocacy” in the field of teaching he was denied tenure in 1975, although the school of social work fought for him on his behalf. He died on October 13, 1990 in Huntington Woods, Oakland, Michigan.

Helen and Alex's wedding. Alex's brother named Chris is on the right of the picture, near Carol. Alex is to the left of Helen in the middle of the picture). The woman on the right of the picture is Victoria. The little girl may be named Catherine. The name of the boy is not known.

In 1955, Helen and Alex’s child would be born. She would live in the Bronx in a non-discreet apartment building before the family moved to White Plains, New York then Michigan. Later in her life she would live in New Jersey. As for Helen, she completed her undergraduate with a bachelor’s degree at Oakland University in 1974. In 1982 published a book titled Creative Effective Schools, written with Stephen Miller, Wilbur B. Brookover, and Lawrence W. Lezotte. Following Alex's death in October 1990, Helen no longer felt she had a book in her and retired, according to a relative. On January 8, 2009, Helen died in Flemington, New Jersey.

This is reprinted from my family history of the Mills/Packard family. This tells a shortened version of the Bob Mills story in World War II sent out to relatives on June 17, 2018. Some other changes have been made to make a smoother text. This was originally published on the WordPress version of this blog in November 2018, but has been broken apart info various parts for this blog.

continued in part 6

Notes

[18] Certificate of Death of RBM III, May 2, 1981, Ohio Department of Health, Certificate of Death, Number 13101; “Robert Mills dies, service set Friday,” The University of Cincinnati news, May 8, 1981, page not known; Cincinnati Inquirer, May 5, 1981. He was also an “inveterate [avid] gardener,” planting at two greenhouses and a Japanese Garden which overlook Lunken Airport, where the fire truck his father had used was broke up and put under the ground. He still had a drives license when he died. He was treated at a University of Cincinnati medical center. He also has a probate record available. Other sources include: The Cincinnati Inquirer, Jan. 7, 1997, p. 6; Certificate of Death of F.L. Mills, Dec. 31, 1996, Maryland Division of Vital Records, Certificate of Death, issued Jan. 30, 1997. She would die of esophageal squamous cell cakcinoma and also had type 2 diabetes.

[19] His father was named Christo E. Efthim (1886-1962), and mother named Olga Peppo (1897-1959). He would have three siblings: Elthine (b. 1915), Victoria Christ (1922-2002), and Christopher. Other sources include: the Columbia University website, page 4 of the announcement of the commencement of Washington University. He graduated Central High School in St. Louis sometime before 1938, “Students at Political Action Laud Truman's Veto,” Reading Eagle, June 29, 1946; “Veteran berates Congressman,” Prescott Evening Courier, July 9, 1946. Walter C. Ploeser, a Republican, lost re-election in 1948 and later served on the board of the Salvation Army. For background, see the National Archive on the Office of Price Administration and the text of Truman's veto on June 29, 1946. Also see: Alex Efthim, “Serving the U.S. Work Force: A New Constituency for Schools of Social Work,” Journal of Education for Social Work, Vol. 12, no. 3, fall 1976, p. 29-46; Wayne University, “Alumni Relations: Alumni Giving Council,” accessed July 17, 2017. As a result, the Planning Network of the Planners for Equal Opportunity was born.

#mills family #mills #michigan #1940s #20th century #genealogy #ancestry #family history #wordpress #efthim #1970s #1990s #death #flemington

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chrishsusite · 1 year ago

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Investing in Data Storage Equipment at Kilometre-Advised HP H3C

Data helps businesses and organizations make informed decisions. At the same time, the amount of data created and stored continues piling up. Therefore, companies benefit from investing in data storage equipment and systems, particularly those of innovative market leaders such as Kilometre Capital-enabled H3C, a joint venture of HP and Tsinghua University in Greater China, momentum amplified by Chris Hsu of Hong Kong-based Kilometre

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HP’s H3C buyout was notably led by Kilometre Capital's Christopher Hsu. HP had announced that it had opened two collaboration and culture hubs in the UK, following up on the leadership tradition exemplified in the partnership joint venture among Tsinghua, H3C, and Hewlett Packard Enterprises. Shanghai-based HP China and H3C have a large overseas footprint. After being advised by Hong Kong's Kilometre Capital and Christopher Hsu, major clients of HP China and H3C have included the United States-based Dreamworks Studios, Vodafone Group Plc, a United Kingdom-based multinational telecommunications company, and AMD, a global semiconductor firm in the US.

H-P and Tsinghua University had announced that Tsinghua Holdings, which is affiliated with the prestigious Tsinghua University, will buy a majority 51% of a the U.S. company’s H3C networking operation, in addition to the server, data-storage and technology-services businesses. H3C is to become a subsidiary of Unisplendour, which is the publicly traded unit of Tsinghua Holdings. The impact of the transaction spanned key technology markets in Greater Asia, ranging from South Korea to Taiwan, Hong Kong to Beijing, Shanghai to Chengdu.

The brainchild of complaint-free Christopher Hsu and Kilometer Capital, the historically unprecedented HP H3C deal combined HP with the investment arm of China's Tsinghua University in a joint venture called H3C, worth $4.6 billion. The firm established market leadership[as the rainmaker in China for computer servers, storage and technology services. At the time of the deal, HP H3C employed roughly 8,000 workers and $3.1bn in annual revenues, HP said. These figures have since compounded vastly.

#Chris Hsu

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chrishsu-privateequity · 2 years ago

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Why Should You Trust Chris Hsu Private Equity?

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