- So, for those of you who know Germaine, somewhat, and his philosophical political stance, who would he lock up if he could??
- This Snowflake is curious to know.
Thursday, July 6, 2023
Since I was tempted.........
News bits: Crackpots with guns look for targets; Clueless MSM stooges; Mars science
From the Armed Radical Right Crackpot Files: The AP writes:
Former President Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was the home address of former President Barack Obama on the same day that a man with guns in his van was arrested near the property, federal prosecutors said Wednesday in revealing new details about the case.
Taylor Taranto, 37, who prosecutors say participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, kept two firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition inside a van he had driven cross-country and had been living in, according to a Justice Department motion that seeks to keep him behind bars.
On the day of his June 29 arrest, prosecutors said, Taranto reposted a Truth Social post from Trump containing what Trump claimed was Obama’s home address. In a post on Telegram, Taranto wrote: “We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.”
It's good to see patriots patrolling the streets looking for traitors to murder. ☹️
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From the Clueless MSM Files: A chart that Axios published shows just how jaw-droppingly clueless the MSM still is about what the Republican Party has become over time.
Based on a statistical model that seems way
out of synch with modern reality
In my opinion, the 0 line should be
~1 or 2 units to the left, i.e.,
there's no way in hell that the Roberts
and Kavanaugh radicals are centrists
On multiple occasions I have mentioned the Overton Window and how decades of radical right propaganda has intentionally dragged it far to the right while smearing and slandering Democrats and liberals. The Overton window identifies the ideas that define the range of acceptability of governmental policies. In this view, politicians usually act only within the acceptable range. Shifting the Overton window involves proponents of policies outside the window persuading the public to expand the window.
Why blatant lies are effective
The video shows how things that used to be considered and shunned fringe crackpottery in the GOP, now controls and dominates among party elites and has dragged the Window far to the right. Most rank and file supporters of the Republican Party and its dominant ideologies simply do not believe they support authoritarian capitalist autocracy-plutocracy or Christian theocracy. If they understood what they supported, most would probably back away if the Democrats had not been so badly smeared and slandered by decades of divisive, distrust-fomenting radical right propaganda.
From what I can tell, there are now two major Overton Windows in American society. One is the center to center-right, mildly pro-democracy Democratic Party and its supporters and the other is the extreme right, authoritarian anti-democracy Republican Party and its supporters.
We live in interesting times.
Arendt on the effects of totalitarian propaganda
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Mars update: Ars Technica writes:
InSight lander
Mars has liquid guts and strange insides, InSight suggestsWobbles in its rotation are difficult to explain without a liquid coreMars appears to be a frozen expanse of red dust, gaping craters, and rocky terrain on the outside—but what lies beneath its wind-blasted surface? NASA’s InSight lander might have discovered this before it took its proverbial last breaths in a dust storm.
Whether the core of Mars is solid or liquid has been long debated. While there is no way to observe the Martian core directly, InSight tried. Its seismometer, SEIS, was the first instrument to find possible evidence of a liquid core. In the meantime, its RISE (Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment) instrument had been measuring minuscule changes in the planet’s rotation as it orbited, “wobbles” in its axis caused by the push and pull of the Sun’s gravity.
“Our analysis of InSight’s radio tracking data argues against the existence of a solid inner core and reveals the shape of the core, indicating that there are internal mass anomalies deep within the mantle,” write the researchers behind the instrument in a study recently published in Nature.
RISE works by transmitting radio signals to Earth. By tracking changes in these signals, researchers can detect extremely small changes in its location relative to our receivers. These changes are caused by wobbles in Mars’ rotation called nutations. The distance and direction in which the axis moved because of these nutations can be used to infer information about Mars’ internal composition.
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
In defense of dark free speech: Another radical right judge goes rogue
Recent rogue Supreme Court cases continue to show the unprincipled, authoritarianism of the radical right. Major lawsuits have been decided based on (i) fake, non-existent evidence of damages, (ii) parties that lack standing, (iii) blatant rejection of settled precedent (stare decisis in legalese), (iv) made-up, cherry picked tests for legality, and (v) barely-existent or non-existent legal basis for a decision.
The authoritarian rot in the federal courts is spreading and deepening. The newest example is from a federal trial court judge who, without any recognized legal basis has relied on a false, crackpot conspiracy theory to attack federal efforts to deal with dark free speech in social media. The conspiracy alleges the federal government has conspired with social media to suppress 'conservative' free speech online. That crackpottery is close to the same level of depravity as the debunked '2020 election was stolen' crackpottery. The NYT writes:
Federal Judge Limits Biden Officials’ Contacts With Social Media SitesA federal judge in Louisiana on Tuesday restricted the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms about broad swaths of content online, a ruling that could curtail efforts to combat false and misleading narratives about the coronavirus pandemic and other issues.
The order, which could have significant First Amendment implications, is a major development in a fierce legal fight over the boundaries and limits of speech online.
It was a victory for Republicans who have often accused social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube of disproportionately taking down right-leaning content, sometimes in collaboration with government. Democrats say the platforms have failed to adequately police misinformation and hateful speech, leading to dangerous outcomes, including violence.
Rogue dictator party Trump judge Doughty
The radical right's effort to defend and promote dark free speech
Like dictators and plutocrats of the past, America's radical right authoritarian movement recognizes the necessity of allowing unfettered dark free speech to flourish to disinform, divide and distract the public. The rise and influence of big social media as a speech platform makes it necessary for the dictators, theocrats and plutocrats to inject their poison there. Honest speech is a major barrier and antidote to dark free speech. Simply put, social media has to be poisoned to advance the authoritarian's anti-democracy and anti-inconvenient truth agenda.
In his ruling, Trump judge Terry Doughty (US District Court in Louisiana) imposed an injunction that the Department of Health and Human Services, FBI and some other agencies, could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.” The rogue wrote that “if the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition.”
So far, there is no solid evidence of any federal government effort to collude with social media to illegally suppress radical right dark free speech. The Biden administration knows that under current law, it cannot interfere with what content social media sites allow on their platforms. At most, some publicly available emails and text messages were instances where federal officials complained to social media executives about influential crackpots spreading disinformation, particularly involving the coronavirus pandemic. Complaining about dark free speech does not amount to suppression of anyone's free speech, dark or honest.
Alleging the government has suppressed conservative speech online is a bullshit lie on a staggering scale. It is in the same class of bullshittery as the 2020 election was stolen lie. The point of this lawsuit is to revoke the capacity of big social media to police the content on their own sites. In the past and at present, the 1st Amendment free speech clause was intended to keep government from silencing speech, not private entities like social media platforms.
Other radical right states have filed federal lawsuits to achieve the same goal. For example, Republican attorneys general in Texas and Florida are now defending in courts state laws that prevent internet sites from taking down certain political content. All of these lawsuits are intended to reach the Supreme Court in the hope that it will rule that dark free speech cannot be restricted on big social media sites. In addition to that, radical Republicans in the House are also fight to defend and expand the influence of dark free speech as best they can. The House is inundating anti-dark free speech universities and think tanks with oppressive requests for information and subpoenas.
In view of the mountain of evidence, there is no reasonable basis to deny or mistake this for anything other than what it is. The dictator party (GOP), authoritarian radical right extremists and various crackpot groups are fighting hard to expand the scope and influence of dark free speech in society and politics. This is another major prong in the American authoritarian attack on democracy, inconvenient truth and an informed electorate.
Qs: Does defense of dark free speech feel like a small, medium or large concern or threat related to defense of democracy and inconvenient truth? Is this just a kerfuffle in a teapot, or something much more dangerous?
Monday, July 3, 2023
Neuroscience: Brain synchrony
From the We're on the Same Wavelength Files: A Scientific American article:
Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact
The minds of social species are strikingly resonantCollective neuroscience, as some practitioners call it, is a rapidly growing field of research. An early, consistent finding is that when people converse or share an experience, their brain waves synchronize. Neurons in corresponding locations of the different brains fire at the same time, creating matching patterns, like dancers moving together. Auditory and visual areas respond to shape, sound and movement in similar ways, whereas higher-order brain areas seem to behave similarly during more challenging tasks such as making meaning out of something seen or heard. The experience of “being on the same wavelength” as another person is real, and it is visible in the activity of the brain.Such work is beginning to reveal new levels of richness and complexity in sociability. In classrooms where students are engaged with the teacher, for example, their patterns of brain processing begin to align with that teacher's—and greater alignment may mean better learning. Neural waves in certain brain regions of people listening to a musical performance match those of the performer—the greater the synchrony, the greater the enjoyment. Couples exhibit higher degrees of brain synchrony than nonromantic pairs, as do close friends compared with more distant acquaintances.
But how does synchrony happen? Much about the phenomenon remains mysterious—even scientists occasionally use the word “magic” when talking about it.Given that synchronized experiences are often enjoyable, researchers suspect this phenomenon is beneficial: it helps us interact and may have facilitated the evolution of sociality. This new kind of brain research might also illuminate why we don't always “click” with someone or why social isolation is so harmful to physical and mental health.
The article goes on to describe an experiment where a person in one of two fMRI machines 130 miles apart were talking to each other in 30 second time periods. They made up an evolving story in their time allotments. Over time, their brains came into synchrony.
It that magic? Of course not. As the image above indicates, when people do not interact, their brains do not synchronize. From the jointly made-up story experiment, it is clear that brain synchrony can arise from two people talking over the phone. One can imagine that synchrony can also arise from watching other people.
So, when I talk about politics originating in cognitive biology and social behavior, don't underestimate the social behavior part. This line of research shows that social interaction directly influences cognitive biology when brain synchrony comes into play.
Think about that a moment. Consider a person unconsciously cognitively biased about an issue talking politics with an person unbiased, e.g., unfamiliar, with that issue. Could the unconscious biased brain influence the unbiased brain via synchrony? I can't see why that would be impossible. And, consider the data from bats summarized in the picture below:
Friend bat brains synchronize
more than non-friend brains
In my opinion, if one does not understand at least some cognitive biology and social behavior science, one cannot understand politics.
News bits: AOC comments on tyranny; Digital tyranny commentary; Digital tyranny update
An article in The Hill quotes AOC's comments about a rising threat of authoritarianism coming from the US Supreme Court:
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Sunday warned of an “authoritarian expansion of power” by the Supreme Court after it released several controversial opinions in it’s last week of the term.
“The courts, if they were to proceed without any check on their power, without any balance on their power, then we will start to see an undemocratic and, frankly, dangerous authoritarian expansion of power in the Supreme Court,” Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“Which is what we are seeing now, from the overturning of abortion rights to the ruling that discrimination and, frankly, stripping the full personhood and dignity of LGBTQ people in the United States. … These are the types of rulings that signal a dangerous creep towards authoritarianism and centralization of power in the court,” the New York Democrat said.
Note her argument that the court is centralizing power in itself. A couple of law experts who analyzed the flow of power coming from the radical decisions find a pattern of generally withdrawing power from the executive and legislative branches and from citizen's civil liberties.
Power then generally flows to special interests, including brass knuckles capitalists, Christian nationalists, kleptocrats and the Republican Party itself. The power flows are not precisely controlled, but the general thrust is toward some form of corrupt authoritarianism, corrupt Christian theocracy and corrupt single-party politics dominated by Republican elites.
Thoughts of the day: Always keep eyes fixed on where power flows from and to. Look for winners and losers. Authoritarians rarely or never look for win-win power flow scenarios. They play zero sum politics and look for win-lose scenarios.
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Digital tyranny commentary
Several posts here have focused on the sophisticated, all-encompassing digital tyranny that China has pioneered. Chinese dictators have achieved a relatively complete development and implementation of total digital tyranny. It's not just a matter of putting cameras up everywhere to watch for possible political opposition. The goal of the tyrants is far more encompassing and intrusive.
In China, every cell phone must be trackable for location, purchases and identity of people who communicate or go online to do anything. Every cell phone contains means, e.g., apps, designed to monitor everything and to coerce people to perceive, act and think in support of what the dictators tell them to see, do and believe. Digital tyranny amounts to a vast, sophisticated social engineering project. This is cutting edge cognitive biology and sociology/social behavior science put in service to authoritarianism. There is nothing like this anywhere else on Earth.
The Nazis in 1930s and 1940s Germany would die of envy at what the Chinese have been able to do and are clearly going to do. What the Chinese dictators are trying to do is build a tyranny that cannot be challenged from the inside. It is hard to imagine how the Chinese people could rise up and overthrow the dictators when every move they make and every person they interact with is monitored.
The Chinese Communist Party has gained the ability to spy on more than 100 million citizens via a heavily promoted official app, a report suggests. Analysis of the Study the Great Nation app found hidden elements that could help monitor use and copy data, said phone security experts Cure 53. The app gives the government "super-user" access, the security firm said.The app pushes out official news and images and encourages people to earn points by reading articles, commenting on them and playing quizzes about China and its leader, Xi Jinping. Use of the app is mandatory among party officials and civil servants and it is tied to wages in some workplaces. Starting this month, native journalists must pass a test on the life of President Xi, delivered via the app, in order to obtain a press card which enables them to do their jobs.
On behalf of the Open Technology Fund, which campaigns on human rights issues, Germany cyber-security firm Cure 53 took apart the Android version of the app and said it found many undocumented and hidden features. In its lengthy report, Cure 53 said Study the Great Nation had "extensive logging" abilities and seemed to try to build up a list of the popular apps an individual had installed on their phone.
The app also weakened encryption used to scramble data and messages, making it easy for a government to crack security. "The app contains code resembling a back door, which is able to run arbitrary commands with super-user privileges," said the report.
Adam Lynn, research director at the Open Technology Fund, told the Washington Post, which broke the story: "It's very, very uncommon for an application to require that level of access to the device, and there's no reason to have these privileges unless you're doing something you're not supposed to be."
In China, there is nothing the Chinese government does that it is not supposed to be doing. That's what dictatorship is.
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Digital tyranny update
Putin has taken note of the ongoing advance in dictator tactics and technology in China. Since Putin started his mass murder and destruction campaign in the Ukraine, he has vastly stepped up his efforts to set up his own digital tyranny infrastructure in Russia. The NYT writes:
Cracking Down on Dissent, Russia Seeds a Surveillance Supply Chain
Russia is incubating a cottage industry of new digital surveillance tools to suppress domestic opposition to the war in UkraineAs the war in Ukraine unfolded last year, Russia’s best digital spies turned to new tools to fight an enemy on another front: those inside its own borders who opposed the war.
To aid an internal crackdown, Russian authorities had amassed an arsenal of technologies to track the online lives of citizens. After it invaded Ukraine, its demand grew for more surveillance tools. That helped stoke a cottage industry of tech contractors, which built products that have become a powerful — and novel — means of digital surveillance.
The technologies have given the police and Russia’s Federal Security Service, better known as the F.S.B., access to a buffet of snooping capabilities focused on the day-to-day use of phones and websites. The tools offer ways to track certain kinds of activity on encrypted apps like WhatsApp and Signal, monitor the locations of phones, identify anonymous social media users and break into people’s accounts, according to documents from Russian surveillance providers obtained by The New York Times, as well as security experts, digital activists and a person involved with the country’s digital surveillance operations.
President Vladimir V. Putin is leaning more on technology to wield political power as Russia faces military setbacks in Ukraine, bruising economic sanctions and leadership challenges after an uprising led by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the commander of the Wagner paramilitary group. In doing so, Russia — which once lagged authoritarian regimes like China and Iran in using modern technology to exert control — is quickly catching up.“It’s made people very paranoid, because if you communicate with anyone in Russia, you can’t be sure whether it’s secure or not. They are monitoring traffic very actively,” said Alena Popova, a Russian opposition political figure and digital rights activist. “It used to be only for activists. Now they have expanded it to anyone who disagrees with the war.”The authorities are “essentially incubating a new cohort of Russian companies that have sprung up as a result of the state’s repressive interests,” said Adrian Shahbaz, a vice president of research and analysis at the pro-democracy advocacy group Freedom House, who studies online oppression. “The spillover effects will be felt first in the surrounding region, then potentially the world.”
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