What Happened When I Posted About a Police Beating Near My Home on #Instagram

Yesterday, on my Instagram (which is usually just a lifestream), I posted the above screenshot of an article reporting on a police beating not far from my apartment in northern Manhattan, New York City. Sometimes I post screenshots of news articles like this because it's an easy way to quickly comment about a news story and have it crosspost easily to my blog. The vast majority of the time, this tactic inspires no one to comment on the original Instagram post. If someone does comment, it is always an agreeable response. However, this was not the case with this post about the police beating.

And this brings me to the question that is on my mind.

#BigBrother is in the house!! Well, your house and mine, via our webcams. #notcool (via DemocracyNow.org)

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I guess we've known for a while that your webcam could be hacked by those who know how (safe to assume NSA has a few people who do) but I this is the first time I've heard of this "Operation Optic Nerve" which the NSA and the UK's GCHQ used to grab image and video streams en masse and save them for later perusal. Here's the most alarming bit from the Democracy Now piece:

The program was reportedly used for experiments in "automated facial recognition" as well as to monitor terrorism suspects. A more accurate name for the "Optic Nerve" program may have been "Peeping Tom," because it ended up collecting a large number of sexually explicit images. According to the documents, between 3 and 11 percent of the Yahoo webcam images contained what the GCHQ called "undesirable nudity."

In other words, they're just grabbing everything and watching enough of it to know that they've gone too far. Surely, we, as Americans--no--as human beings have the right to not have our clotheless bodies seen by people without our permission.

Read/watch all of Democracy Now's coverage of this--it's a real window into how our government has gone over the line and doesn't seem to have a problem with it.

And people say Google Glass is invasive?

AMERICA: where we spy on ourselves and lock up 83 year-old anti-war activist nuns for sabotage. A land of the free.

[caption id="attachment_13117201831" align="aligncenter" width="768"] 83 year-old nuns: the real threat to America![/caption]

This is kind of insane. I mean, I know she broke the law, but is it fair to really call her a "saboteur"? I mean, she's an 83 year-old nun! I really don't think she's going to be a threat to America. And the fact that she is being treated like one really tells you something about our country. Something really bad and deeply hypocritical.

Read the original AP article.

Yipes! NPR reports on Oxfam finding that the rich/poor divide is growing so fast there could be unrest (deservedly so, I'd say).

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From the article:

In the U.S., where the gap between rich and poor has grown at a faster rate than any other developed country, the top 1 percent captured 95 percent of post-recession growth (since 2009), while 90 percent of Americans became poorer.

"Oxfam is concerned that, left unchecked, the effects are potentially immutable, and will lead to 'opportunity capture' — in which the lowest tax rates, the best education, and the best healthcare are claimed by the children of the rich," the relief agency writes. "This creates dynamic and mutually reinforcing cycles of advantage that are transmitted across generations."

In other words, Oxfam says that if trends continue, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

"[People] are increasingly separated by economic and political power, inevitably heightening social tensions and increasing the risk of societal breakdown," the report says.

That's right, Oxfam is worried about societal breakdown. What the hell is wrong with big money people? Why do they seem to see no need to temper their greed? Or is it that being a non-rich person I just son't understand what it's like to have more money than I could possibly spend in my lifetime?

Yeah, I'm sure it would all make sense if I had more money than I could spend in my lifetime. Can someone hook me up so I can better understand this?

Thanks.

My Week with the Fitbit Force

[caption id="attachment_13117201768" align="aligncenter" width="560"] My wife's Fitbit Force (she didn't return hers as I did). It's displaying the number of calories she's burned today. The Force comes in two colors, black and "slate" (which is like a teal). Buy it on Amazon for $130. Photo courtesy of my wife.[/caption]

When I first read about the Fitbit line of fitness trackers, I was vaguely interested in them. I felt like they were cool enough but nothing I was particularly interested in. Then I read that they could monitor sleep patterns. That piqued my interest, since I'm just not very good at sleeping. If competitive sleeping was an Olympic sport, I would be so bad, I'd be the last kid picked in gym class.

So, I've been interested for a while in better understanding how I sleep. So, when my wife decided to get the Fitbit Flex, I thought to myself how much better the Flex would be if it actually functioned like a watch, as well. So, I took another look at the Fitbit line and found the Force. I decided to get one and my wife decided to exchange her Flex for one, as well, since I did the work of tracking two down at a Best Buy here in the city.

Solar plants are cheaper than fossil fuel plants--will conservative coal huggers please shut up now?? (via @io9.com)

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From the io9 post, a Minnesota judge sums up his findings in why a solar-based plan for energy generation in Minnesota should move forward:

"[T]hese proposals offer competitively-priced energy generation; at firm prices; the fewest new environmental impacts; and significant protections against the imposition of project cancellation costs....[I]t bears mentioning that this procurement represents an important turning point in Minnesota's energy resource planning process. Since 1991, Minnesota has had a statutory preference in favor of renewable energy sources. Yet, that preference is overridden when the nonrenewable source has a lower total cost. Notwithstanding the statutory preference, it seemed that nonrenewable energy sources always won the head-to-head cost comparisons. Not anymore. Geronimo entered this bidding process as the sole renewable technology and beat competing offerors on total life-cycle costs."

The fact that the sun is a giant ball of never ending energy that is hurling insane amounts of said energy at us all day long yet all rich energy companies can do is keep digging in the ground (presumably where they hide their heads) tells us that these rich companies have entirely too much power and our politically leaders are entirely corrupt. The fact that we still need to have this conversation in the 21st century is absurd. The sun is a source of essentially limitless energy. Why the fuck do we still let these asshole oil companies tell us where we'll get our energy from? Wars are fought in the Middle East for oil. Terrorism is used to fight corrupt governments in Africa because of oil. So much death and pain, all for oil. All the sun has ever done is cause some skin cancer. Meanwhile, it's thes ource of all life. But no, lets keep digging for oil.

But why do we keep digging for oil? Simple. Our political leaders let it happen. They take money from corporations to keep the old ways going. Well here is proof that the old ways are the wrong ways. At least, when it comes to energy production.

Read the whole io9 post: http://io9.com/why-solar-power-is-more-cost-effective-than-natural-gas-1497305827

AP reports: NSA phone record collection ruled unconstitutional. I love how we need a judge to tell us this.

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Yeah, this is just sad. You know who is supposed to enforce the law first? Nooo, not the police--the individual. You and me and our leaders, we all have to enforce the law. The law isn't there for people to ignore it until they get caught--it's there as the last level of protection against the criminal act being committed. In our every day lives, we (hopefully) ask ourselves if what we are doing is wrong in anyway. Our leaders, when deciding to collect our phone call info in bulk, CLEARLY did not ask this question of themselves.

And if they did, you seriously have to wonder how they could have answered "Yes, I believe that collecting the phone records of MILLIONS OF AMERICANS is perfectly moral and legal."

Now, more than ever, it's painfully obvious how corrupt our leaders are. I mean, if we live in a free country, that means that we can generally do what we want and that our government CANNOT.

Anyway, check out the original AP article for the details.

Amazingly, Congress held a hearing back on 12/4/13 on alien life. Yep, they actually spoke with scientists and everything. via io9

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the original post on io9

Honestly, the fact that this happened at all should have been headline news on every news website in the world. In our "Christian" nation, it's a shock when any of our leaders actually give a scientist the time of day, let alone ask them questions. Of course, if you read the original io9 post, you can tell that the politicians really don't have any reasonable knowledge of what the search for alien looks like outside of a science fiction film. But hey, I give them points for trying. Let's hope this wasn't just a flash in the pan and that they ask about aliens again some time.

io9 blogs on Evan Booth, who devised weapons built from items found inside an airport, after you go through security.

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From the original post on io9:

Shotguns are not allowed through airport security. But what does that matter if you can build one from items purchased in an airport gift shop? The break-action shotgun pictured above was made from Red Bull cans, a hair dryer, batteries and a can of Axe body spray – and it can blast a handful of pocket change through a sheet of drywall.

My dad always says that if someone wants to hurt you bad enough, they'll find a way to do it. However, it looks like they don't even have to try that hard. All they have to do is get a little clever. To me, knowing that this is possible is NOT scary. This has been possible for years and will go one being possible. Why am I not afraid? Simple: the overwhelming majority of people on Earth are not killers, terrorists or psychopaths. The overwhelming majority of people in airports are just trying to travel, just like you. And if you happen to have the bad luck of ending up on a plane or in a terminal at the same time as a killer, terrorist or a psychopath, take stock in knowing that it was just random bad luck.

Or, if you swung by Evan Booth's website, you may have already learned how to arm yourself against the insanely unlikely event of being on a plane or in a terminal at the same time as a mean person. That's ultimately my point. All these security measures at airports (taking off our shoes, x-raying our bags/coats/laptops etc, backscatter x-raying our bodies and sometimes getting felt up by a TSA agent) are not going to stop someone who really wants to hurt people.

The likelihood of getting hit by a car, even killed by one, is infinitely higher than of getting killed, or even harmed, in an air-travel-related act of violence. But do we ban cars, stop ourselves from crossing the street, or avoid leaving our homes? Of course not. Yet we act like we can stop someone if they really want to be horrible at the airport.

But the odds are in our favor. So, why bother living in fear? Why bother making air travel such a huge pain in the ass? Sure, keep x-raying bags and making me empty my pockets, but can I please keep my shoes on and my water bottle filled?

Read the original post on io9: http://goo.gl/4CHNg0

From last month: Engadget reports on USG/UKG tapping Google and Yahoo & spying on a ton of users. Serious #BigBrother stuff.

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From the Engadget post:

It's a top secret plan with a fittingly supervillain-esque codename: MUSCULAR. That tool, part of a partnership between the NSA and the UK's GCHQ, has been used to infiltrate Google and Yahoo data centers across the world, according to documents revealed by Edward Snowden and confirmed by sources at The Washington Post. It's a breach of privacy that could affect hundreds of millions of users, one that neither company was apparently privy to, in spite of the NSA's history of court-ordered data access with both.

The original post: http://goo.gl/oQmfLX

So, while our planet is being stripped of its resources, our government is stripping us of much of our privacy and, as a result, our freedom of speech. I feel like they know something we don't. Like maybe the world is only going to get worse and they need to clamp down on us to keep us in line, so they can stay in power. When governments feel threatened, this is what they do.

From October: Newstatesman.com posts about a geophysicist who sees capitalism destabilizing the Earth's human-support systems.

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From the article:

But the bottom line was clear enough: global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier-free that “earth-human systems” are becoming dangerously unstable in response. When pressed by a journalist for a clear answer on the “are we f**ked” question, Werner set the jargon aside and replied, “More or less.”

"There was one dynamic in the model, however, that offered some hope. Werner termed it “resistance” – movements of “people or groups of people” who “adopt a certain set of dynamics that does not fit within the capitalist culture”. According to the abstract for his presentation, this includes “environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups”.

Original article: http://goo.gl/yADZPJ

This is some scary stuff and it's essentially my worst nightmare. Back int he early 1990s there was a comic book the predicted the worst possible endgame for capitalism. The comic was called "The Legionaires" and while it was a superhero comic, it took place in the distant future after the Earth had been strip-mined literally beyond the capacity of the Earth's ability to support it. The planet literally collapses and breaks up. Luckily Earth's biggest cities had developed domed cities as defenses against nuclear war and alien invasions, so the comic didn't end in one issue. The point is, it doesn't take a geophysicist to recognize what happens when you let capitalism run amok. The whole idea of "free market capitalism," in the end, denies the laws of physics and, as a result, is ultimately unsustainable.

It's a really shame our corporate and governmental leaders don't read comic books.

@NYTimes reports on how USG and UKG spies infiltrated #WorldOfWarcraft and #SecondLife. #ThisIsGettingRidiculous

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From the original article:

Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.

This is the most ridiculous rationalization for spying ever. What about Xbox and Playstation's networked games? What about the ALL the various chat/instant messaging networks out there, like Line, Kik and Snapchat? What about all the social networks that could be used by bad people? There are damn near infinite ways to communicate in the world today. Does the USG want to tap them all?

Our tax dollars at work.

And don't forget--the vaaaast majority of WoW players and Second Life users are NOT terrorists (not to mention those of us who have had our online and phone data swept up, as well). However, now, we are all now potential suspects.

So sad: "The Ocean is Broken" theherald.com.au reports on dwindling signs of life in the oceans.

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From the article:

What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.

The birds were missing because the fish were missing.

Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he'd had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.

"There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn't catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice," Macfadyen recalled.

But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.

No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.

"In years gone by I'd gotten used to all the birds and their noises," he said.

"They'd be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards."

But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean.

Read the rest of "The Ocean is Broken" here: http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1848433/the-ocean-is-broken/.

This is a very sad read. It actually should be more sad, since they pin the debris in the Pacific to the Japanese tsunami when the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (which was made worse by the Tsunami) has existed in the Pacific since the 90s while evidence of it goes back as far as far as 1988. We've been doing this to our planet for a long time. We're just now catching on, as a people, that it's causing serious damage to sea life.

The saddest part of this article is when they mention the part about how cleaning up the mess would cause more damage to the environment than just leaving all the garbage in the water. This fact alone should be enough to spur the boat industry to develop clean energy powered boats. Instead everyone just sulks about how bad things are. I think we've forgotten how to be inspired.

I think there is still hope, however. We just have to realize that we caused all this change in the world and that means we can change it back--but we have to choose to change it back.

Special thanks to my old friend Zoe for posting about his on Google Plus.

"With fifty men we could subjugate them all..." said the "brave explorer."

It's that time of the year again! Yep, the day we "celebrate" a man who would eventually come to meet the definition of "genocidal maniac" having "discovered" America. This holiday really needs to go away. We're such self-liars here in America. I'll get to how, as I type this, America is a country whose government is controlled by the whim of a solitary Republican in a post later today, but first, I wanted to post (as I have in the past) my favorite quote of Christopher Columbus. Are you ready for it? Here we go:

They... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features... They do not bear arms, and do not known them, for I showed them a sword and they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... They would make fine servants... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make then do whatever we want.

Taken from page 1 of "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. Buy it, read it and understand we've been lying to ourselves for decades and decades. Really, centuries.

And don't adopt the redemptionist attitudes of some that would claim we can't judge people of previous cultures. We can and should. Otherwise, we will deify these people and fail to notice how their behaviors hurt us.

For instance, if we trust that our Found Fathers knew what they were doing when they created out government, we shouldn't have to pay attention, right? They were brilliant visionaries who saw a better world and brought it to us, right? Well, if we had done that, we'd never have abolished slavery or given women the right to vote or amended our government in so many other ways--in both good ways and bad. So, let's judge the past and it's "heroes" because if we don't, we absolve ourselves of responsibility for our present. We can't just point at some document written hundreds (or even thousands of years ago) and say "SEE? THEY SAID IT WAS FINE, SO..."

You know that thing about Twinkies having a shelf life of 7 years?

Yeah, well, I call bullshit. They don't last one. I just tried to eat a Twinkie I bought before Hostess went bankrupt late last year and it was nasty! I also tried a Ding-Dong that I bought around the same time and it felt like I was biting into a Nestle Crunch Bar. That is NOT how it is supposed to be! Damn you, foul urban myths! Damn you for lying to me all those years as a child, Pop Culture!

Oh and damn you, Obama! Just cuz. I mean, everyone's blaming him for all kindsa stuff he didn't do, so why not blame him for Twinkies not lasting on a shelf for 7 years, too?

My Problems with the Affordable Care Act aka #Obamacare

So, I had an email exchange with my mom discussing the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare. Personally, I don't like the official name for the act as it functions like the name of the Patriot Act did. "What do you mean, you don't want to vote for the 'Affordable Care Act'?? Don't you want people to be able to afford health care?? You horrible monster!"

Regardless, my mom had some good points but ultimately I think there are a lot of things we simply aren't discussing about the entire issue of health care. I addressed these things in my email reply. I also addressed her understandable confusion regarding the government shutdown. Here is what I sent her:

Thanks for your thoughts, Mom. I agree with most of them and you're right, Obamacare does help a lot of people get healthcare.

However, I feel that a few things are being overlooked:

1) it's not that I don't want to pay anything for health care. It's that all I want to pay for is health care. Not pharmaceutical company profits, not for treatments instead of cures, and definitely not for health insurance company executives' yachts and multiple homes. I believe that there is something deeply immoral about making lots of money of off sick people.

2) you assume that health insurance companies want to pay for your health care. They don't. They are all "for profit" companies and thus MUST put profits first (that's the law, I believe). So, the medicine and procedures you need them to pay for will be scrutinized by insurance company employees. If insurance companies paid for what ever the doctor or you wanted done, I'd feel much better about the health insurance industry.

3) our country could do a national health system, like the UK's. We tax American citizens for loads of things--why not tax just a bit more for health care the way we already tax for social security or any number of other things? Imagine how much money small businesses would save by not having to pay for their employee's health care anymore.

Ultimately, my biggest problem with Obamacare is the mandate. I haven't seen one compelling argument for why every American should be *forced* to have health *insurance*. The best argument I've heard is that it's because if I get into a car accident, get medical care and don't pay for it, the hospital has to spread the cost of my care across everyone else's bill in order to stay profitable. To that, I say: "So, if a hospital can't stay profitable, but is clearly providing an important service, then shouldn't we all be taxed so it can stay open and continue providing those important services?"

Not every problem in the world can be solved by a corporation. We seem to not know this as a country.

As for this stupid government shut down thing? It seems to me like the Republicans throwing a hissy fit. Remember when the government shut down during the Clinton years? It was for a couple of days and we barely noticed. In the great scheme of things, it's no big deal. It's not like Al Qaeda is waiting to attack.

To me, America is about freedom and, to me, freedom is about choice. Not giving Americans a choice regarding how we treat our own bodies is positively unAmerican, to me. This mandate is a tax on life, itself.

Al Qaeda thinks they can weaken our economy by making us overspend on security. War is bad for the economy since when?

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Read the original Reuters article here: http://is.gd/IPbP9n

Read my commentary here:

Riiight, good plan, Al Qaeda! Have you even been paying attention?!? The USG has spent trillion$ on TWO WARS (three if you count Obama's Drone Wars) and billion$ more on "homeland security" and according to "experts" our economy is coming back. Oh yeah and if you bothered to do any research, you'd know that we invent our money out of thin air. How else does our economy crash in 2008 and some how have nearly a trillion dollars injected into it before 2009??? Do you think the Fed just had $700 billion laying around?

The only thing dumber than thinking you can kill our economy by making us go to war is thinking terrorism will change anything for the better.

Idiots.

TechDirt.com reports on how Lavabit founder may end up arrested for shutting down his service.

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OK, this is really starting to get creepy now. The USG may arrest a guy for closing down his business? A business he shut down because he didn't want to comply with a request by the USG he felt was wrong?

America: Land of the (not) free!

If you haven't already seen it, check out the interview That the founder of Lavabit did on Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/13/exclusive_owner_of_snowdens_email_service

My favorite bit was when he is asked if he recieved a National Security Letter from the USG and he explained that he wasn't allowed to say.

AMERICA

Monopolies hate competition: NYTimes reports (poorly) on USG investigation virtual currencies. Article reads like gov propaganda.

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From the article:

State and federal officials are starting broad investigations into shortcomings in the oversight of upstart virtual currencies like bitcoin.

Ah yes, because state and federal governments do such a good job of overseeing their own currency!

NYTimes interviews the founder of LavaBit.com and explains why he committed business suicide.

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From the article:

“I’ve always sort of believed it’s important for Americans to have private conversations with other Americans,” Mr. Levison said in a telephone interview Monday, “and not fear that their conversations were being monitored by the government.”

More:

Lavabit’s mysterious legal drama began six weeks ago. One of its more than 400,000 users was Edward J. Snowden, the leaker who had worked as a National Security Agency contractor. Mr. Levison has not said whether or what kind of government order he was served with, or how it might have been served.

His lawyer, Jesse Binnall, made it clear that Lavabit had complied with “narrowly tailored” court orders for user information on at least two dozen occasions in the past.

Mr. Levison, now 32 and living in Dallas, added: “What I’m opposed to are blanket court orders granting government access to everything.

Read the whole interview: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/lavabit-founder-says-he-had-obligation-to-shut-service/

More scary stuff from the surveillance state. Or should I say the police state? This is what a police state looks like. We're still a Police State Lite, but the fact that the USG feels the need to collect data on all of us means that we're all potential criminals, which is, by definition I believe, a police state.

Luckily, no one is getting arrested for what they say or write, that we know of. In a country where the government lies and obfuscates to it's people and the country's news media largely plays along, how can we know for sure that it won't come to that, or isn't there already?