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Monday, October 23, 2017

 ‘Everybody-*****-knew: Built it and it will Burn


Il Diablo in Wine Country London Review of Books


Malware hidden in vid app is so nasty, victims should wipe their Macs


Armageddon by Accident Foreign Policy


Bonus fact: During a sound check prior to giving a radio address in 1984, then-President Ronald Reagan jokingly said into the microphone, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” Contrary to popular belief, that audio was not actually broadcast over the airways. It did, however, get recorded and later leaked to the press. One can listen to the quip on Wikipedia, here



If what people know you for is bringing light to an issue about bad behaviour, about bad stuff going on and laws not being followed and people being treated inappropriately, why wouldn't I want that? That's a badge of honour
How an ancient philosophy helped Susan Fowler light the bonfire on creepy sexual behaviour
Maureen Dowd




Winner Takes All: An Exclusive Interview With Donald Trump

Pretending to be Batman helps kids stay on task 

Behavioural Insight Brief: The Role of Narrative in Public Policy




At first I didn’t understand what made me so uncomfortable about #MeToo – after all, the more women sharing their stories and raising their voices, the better. And though we all know the statistics around sexual violence, it can be easy to think of these things in terms of numbers rather than people. So why not humanize the issue?
Then I realized: we’ve done this so many times before. Told our stories, raised our hands. Do we really need to bleed ourselves dry once again? How many times will we need to lay our traumas bare in the hope that this will finally be the time people care enough to do something about it?
It’s true that telling our stories can help – it can help victims not feel quite so alone and make others understand the breadth and depth of the problem. But the truth is that nothing will really change in a lasting way until the social consequences for men are too great for them to risk hurting us.
Why have a list of victims when a list of perpetrators could be so much more useful?

Take a shower local government; you stink.
Both the Queensland Premier and CCC chair used the 'bad smell' metaphor to describe the persistence of perceptions of corruption in the local government sector. Action finally has the consent of all the key players.




Working as a production assistant, Wachowiak said she mostly had to cash checks at a bank, but was once asked by an auditor working on the project to take a bunch of checks in a manila folder to Weinstein’s hotel room to get them signed.
When she got to the hotel room, Weinstein was holding a hand towel around his waist and she could tell that he was naked underneath, she told the Buffalo News.
When he took her folder, Weinstein dropped the towel and was naked, she said.
Wachowiak thought, “Relax, these are movie people, they think nothing of walking around naked,” she said. “Just keep your eyes on his face and don’t look down. And for God sake don’t let on that you want to run out of the room screaming.”
He sat on the bed with the folder over his groin and went through the checks, asking why they were paying for certain things, she recalled. He then complained about a pain in his shoulder and asked her for a massage, Wachowiak explained. Telling the newspaper that she’d experienced unwanted advances before, Wachowiak shot back, “That’s not in my job description.”
“He tried to encourage me by telling me what a fantastic opportunity it was for me to be part of this project,” Wachowiak related. “I told him that I was happy to be part of the project but I would not touch him. He finally gave up and signed all the checks.”
RELATED: ‘Everybody-fucking-knew.’




Link between Govpass and Medicare numbers stirs identity fraud anxiety.
Yesterday's video explaining the Govpass system will use Medicare cards as one element in a multi-factor verification process raised a few eyebrows online….

GovPass process unveiled.
The Commonwealth's new 'optional' digital identity platform Govpass is nearing rollout. The first video demonstrating how it would work has been released.

Bean counter or being counted? CFOs in the public sector.
What does it take to be an effective CFO in the public sector? And what can finance professionals do to have more strategic impact? Mandarin associate publisher James Judge talks to CFOs (on and off the record) to get the answers.

Home Affairs sec Michael Pezzullo has no time for ‘inter-agency jealousies’.
Australia's newest department will need to work with agencies belonging to other portfolios sometimes, such as Health in a pandemic, and Pezzullo hopes bureaucratic rivalries or risk aversion don't get in the way of his mission.

Ethics by numbers: how to build machine learning that cares.
Government needs ethics engineers, argues Data61's Lachlan McCalman. Algorithms don’t do the right thing unless they are designed to, but creating ethical machine learning is no easy task.

US Homeland Security orders agencies to encrypt.
DMARC and STARTTLS must be implemented to ensure citizens can "trust their online engagements with all levels of the federal government."


Justice Department reveals charges against Chinese fentanyl distributors

Criminals offer 'money-back' guarantees on stolen credit cards



How and why do we treat tax evasion & welfare fraud differently?
"Statistical analysis showed that across all the different demographic groups, there were only two groups of people who viewed tax evasion more favourably than welfare fraud."