And you thought Facebook was in the bag for Trump! Mark Zuckerberg and his wife have privately made hiring recommendations for Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign, and the recommendations were hired by it.
Earlier this year, Zuckerberg sent multiple emails to Mike Schmuhl, Buttigieg’s campaign manager, with names of individuals that he might consider hiring, campaign spokesman Chris Meagher confirmed. Priscilla Chan, Zuckerberg’s wife, also sent multiple emails to Schmuhl with staff recommendations. Ultimately, two of the people recommended were hired.
Buttigieg's centrist presidential campaign floundered until recently, but has enjoyed a surprise surge as Joe Biden's risen star sputtered. Buttigieg recently became conspiciously defensive of billionaires and big corporations, and maybe now you know why. Read the rest
Either it's windy in the warehouse today, or there's an extremely muscular poltergeist in occupation.
Reagan Steiner: "A table that seems to be controlled by a ghost totally attacks this random guy" Read the rest
The under-construction New Orleans Hard Rock Hotel partially collapsed last week, killing three people and injuring thirty more, and efforts to dislodge cranes attached to the building didn't go entirely to plan on Sunday. CNN reports that the still-stuck second crane is at least now safe to work around, so rescue workers can now explore the debris and recover two bodies known to be within.
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The Economist reports that a tech startup sells a surveillance and control badge for the workforce. The device monitors workers' conversations and tracks their movements. You can even use it to make them sit straight.
The company that makes the creepy "sociometric" combadge has a creepy name — Humanyze — and its marketing is a cold wall of data jargon. The CEO and co-founder, Ben Waber, is an MIT Media Lab alumnus who boasts that he "literally wrote the book on People Analytics" and who published research on having workers take coffee breaks together to improve their productivity.
If it weren't reality, it would be too crudely dystopian to pass muster as fiction.
"I literally wrote the book on People Analytics. You're spending WAY too long on the toilet" Read the rest
There are many articles about nice monospace typefaces, but Programming Fonts lets you see all the good ones live on-screen—and how your work looks in it. I'm a big fan of APL385, with a truly ancient pedigree, whose eccentricities land perfectly at the needs of the moment: high-dpi fixed-width legibility that's fun without drowning in nostalgia for old displays and their stupid pixels. Read the rest
In an important reminder that Republicans are entirely capable of stopping Trump when they actually disagree with him, next year's G7 summit of world leaders will no longer be held at one of his own hotels.
President Trump says the White House has abandoned plans to host next year’s G7 summit at his Doral Miami Resort because of “crazed and irrational hostility” by Democrats and the media. “I thought I was doing something very good for our Country by using Trump National Doral, in Miami, for hosting the G-7 Leaders,” the president tweeted late Saturday.
Why? The New York Times puts it succinctly: "He knew Democrats would criticize him. When Republicans started doing so, he changed his mind."
The House of Representatives had been expected to vote next week on a resolution condemning the decision. Democrats also planned to require the White House to present information to justify why the administration decided on Doral.
Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, was among those who suggested the decision violated the constitution. Last month, the US Air Force (USAF) ordered a review of its accommodation after it emerged some personnel had been staying at one of President Trump's Scottish golf resorts.
The Consumer Entertainment Show used to be held alongside the Adult Entertainment Show in Vegas, an amusing juxtaposition of the world's stiffest business nerds and its most relaxed performers. Likewise, having G7 overlap Miss World 2020 or Golf Boobs Florida or whatever else Trump hosts at Doral would have made for great coverage. Read the rest
Sunday brought us McKay Coppins' detailed interview with Mitt Romney, the last Republican grandee to hold out against Trump's domination of the party. In it, Romney mentioned in passing that uses a secret Twitter account to keep tabs on stuff. Ashley Feinberg tracked it down with ruthless cunning and fast results: This Sure Looks Like Mitt Romney’s Secret Twitter Account (Update: It Is).
Meet “Pierre Delecto.”
...
Pierre has only ever tweeted 10 times total, and all of them have been replies to other tweets—certainly the sort of behavior one might expect to see from a self-described “lurker.” The account’s first tweet, coming a whole four years after its initial registration, was a show of frustration at Fox News for not yet having a New Hampshire presidential poll up. ... More recently, there was a tweet expressing unhappiness at Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria (which Romney has publicly condemned) while also insisting on the Senate’s powerlessness (as Romney a move as there ever was).
Remember Little Face Mitt? Get ready for Big Derriere Pierre. Read the rest
Pittsburgh is now a hotbed of robotics and machine intelligence, and very likely the place the AIs will eventually sigh and commence the annihilation of humankind. 40 years ago it was just getting started. CMU Robotics:
"From the Robotics Institute Archives in Honor of our 40th Anniversary, we've uploaded Ivan Sutherland talking about his 6 Legged Walking Machine. A wonderful piece of our early history."
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Police in New York City are hunting a pumpkin smasher who seems bent on ruining halloween for locals.
Does anyone recognize this tough guy pumpkin smasher. This happened on 81st Street between 3rd and 4th Avenue #Brooklyn. If so please call 718-439-4220.
The hat alone calls for a custodial sentence.
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Only two children showed up to the birthday party of Remi, 5, a young girl with autism. So strangers filled the seats to make it a date to remember.
"It all looked like it was going to go pear-shaped," said [dad] PJ, 40.
"When she asked her mum where all her friends were, it was heartbreaking. "Remi's autism means you need to prepare her for things. So when her party didn't match what she had in her mind, she was so forlorn. We were sat there on the verge of tears but we thought, no, this is wrong. So out of desperation we sent out that message."
28 kids and parents soon showed up, reports the BBC. The family was contacted by the parents of other children with autism—parents familiar with the challenges of organizing play-dates and group activities.
Facebook is good for something, now and again! Read the rest
Since the whistle was blown on Trump denying aid to Ukraine unless it "investigated" his political opponents in the U.S., his position has been that there was no quid pro quo. Yesterday, his White House chief of staff Mike Mulvaney admitted there was, and added a sneering "get over it" for good measure. This was, apparently, not in the script, and he was soon made to walk back the remarks. But everyone saw them...
It was the first time the White House acknowledged a link between the withheld aid and probes that Trump sought. Some Republicans were deeply concerned by Mulvaney's comments.
"You don't hold up foreign aid that we had previously appropriated for a political initiative," said GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. "Period."
Republican Rep. Francis Rooney of Florida called Mulvaney's acknowledgment about withholding Ukraine aid "troubling," saying it is "not a good thing" to do that in connection "with threatening foreign leaders."
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The Doral is a Miami resort one would expect to be sparsely occupied in June, an hour's drive from the beaches in the sticky Florida summer. Moreover, it's failing to meet its financial expectations. Fortunately, it's just been picked by U.S. President Donald Trump to host next year's G7 summit of the world's most powerful leaders, guaranteeing a full house. Its owner, U.S. President Donald Trump, must be delighted!
Trump leans into corruption, writes Bess Levin:
Pressed about the obvious conflicts of interest inherent in hosting a massive government event that attracts worldwide attention at one of Trump’s for-profit clubs, Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney initially tried to claim that the administration had looked at other locations and none of them worked because some places have higher altitudes and because June is apparently a notoriously difficult month to plan an event. “There’s plenty of other good places in this country to hold a large event, there’s no question about it,” Mulvaney told reporters, pretending like the White House wasn’t always going to pick the president’s own resort.
Read the rest
The nine-camera security system included with Tesla cars is the gift that keeps on giving, if not for automobile owners and their insurers. Here's another vandal caught on tape keying an electrical vehicle for reasons known only to him. This gentleman offers the camera a smirk on the way out of the Davies Park and Ride in Edmonton, Alberta.
Andrew Batiuk:
This occurred October 12th, 2019 to a friend of mine, while his car was parked for an Eskimos football game. It is super upsetting that folks think it is acceptable to damage other people's property, regardless of the reason. Unfortunately, Alberta doesn't require front license plates. If anyone happens to recognize this individual, please contact the Edmonton Police, file # 19149663.
Local news loves this sort of thing. Read the rest
NASA is streaming the first all-woman spacewalk from 8 a.m. eastern time. Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir are fixing a failed power controller on the International Space Station.
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A black security guard at Madison West High School in Madison, Wisconsin, asked a student—also black—to stop calling him the n-word. The school fired the security guard, citing its zero-tolerance policy on racial slurs.
Marlon Anderson's Facebook post in which he describes his termination from the Madison School District after working there for 11 years generated hundreds of comments supporting the former school worker. Many derided the district's zero-tolerance policy toward use of the slur by staff in any context. ...
"Regardless of context or circumstance, racial slurs are not acceptable in our schools," West High School Principal Karen Boran said in an email to families Wednesday.
In a statement, Madison School Board President Gloria Reyes said the district has "taken a tough stance on racial slurs" in an attempt to improve the school climate for students and staff.
The school became notorious for all the racist slurs, the zero-tolerance policy was introduced to get rid of the racist slurs, but it has been used to get rid of a black member of staff complaining about the racist slurs. Read the rest
President Donald Trump thinks this photo, of House Leader Nancy Pelosi berating him over his abandonment of America's Kurdish allies, will make her look bad. The BBC quotes Republican "leaders" as saying Pelosi—apparently one of two women at the table and five in the room—was behaving in an "unbecoming" manner. Pelosi set the photograph as her social media backdrop.
A Democratic source told the Associated Press news agency that the meeting began with Mr Trump bragging about a "nasty" letter he had sent to Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan. ... Speaking to reporters following the meeting, Ms Pelosi described it as "most unsatisfactory".
"Two-to-one, the Republicans voted to oppose what he was doing in Syria. He just couldn't handle it so he just kind of engaged in a meltdown," she said.
Mr Schumer said the president had been "insulting, particularly to the speaker".
After Pelosi said he had a "meltdown" during the meeting, Trump used the same term to describe Pelosi: one of the President's distinctive rhetorical habits. Read the rest
After greenlighting Turkey's invasion of Kurdish-held Syria by evacuating U.S. troops, Trump realized Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was making a fool of him and sent a bizarre letter his way. The letter promised to destroy the Turkish economy, saying "Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool!" and "Lets work out a great deal!", and containing various other vulgar Scorsese-esque threats. Erdoğan, reports the BBC, "threw it in the bin" and proceeded with his invasion of Kurdish lands.
In a rare bipartisan rebuke, 129 members of the president's Republican Party in the House of Representatives joined Democrats to formally denounce the move in a vote on Wednesday.
The joint resolution, which also called on President Erdogan to immediately cease military operations against Kurdish-led forces, was voted in by 354-60.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also held an apparently explosive meeting with President Trump on the issue, which led to her and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer walking out of the room.
Republican leaders said Ms Pelosi's behaviour was "unbecoming"
What a perfect word for a woman standing at a table full of men:
Here's the letter again, in all its deranged black comedy.
Read the rest
