Watch With Glittering Eyes
... all my life I've been terrible at remembering people's names. I once introduced a friend of mine as Martini. Her name was actually Olive.
-- Tallulah Bankhead
Your Postcoode - ZIP code may be a factor in how long you’ll stay active.
EXPOSED: Transcript of CalPERS Closed Session on Ben Meng Departure Shows Clear and Extensive Violations of Transparency Laws, Builds Case for Contempt Ruling by Judge Markman (Presiding)
Oops! CalPERS released nearly all of a transcript of a board meeting after Ben Meng’s resignation that it was fighting to keep secret.
It’s Time to lobby for season 2 as ‘Party Tricks’ would go well during COVID bingeing nights …
The romance between Sartre and Beauvoir was haunted by the friend whom she wrote about again and again
Eric Rohmer’s films tend to be all talk and no sex. But embracing restraint, he recovered eroticism
I'm foggy, tired, frustrated and full of this weird guilt and worry that I'm just not doing good enough.
I asked a bunch of experts how to reset when you're feeling 'gross'. Here's what they said.
PCMag - Protect Yourself From Abuse: How to Find and Remove Stalkerware on Your Phone and PC: “What if your phone calls, texts, FaceTime sessions, and GPS locations were being logged without your consent? What if they were all being sent to a tech-savvy stalker—often a former romantic partner or an abusively controlling current partner—who had gotten malware onto your phones, tablets, and pcs, effectively bugging them? That’s the unsettling job of stalkerware, a type of commercially available software designed to spy on victims without being detected. Stalkerware can operate stealthily, so you probably wouldn’t know if your devices had it installed. According to a 2020 report from cybersecurity company Kaspersky, a majority of people with stalkerware on their devices don’t even know that the type of software exists, meaning they can’t protect themselves from it. We’ll help you understand what stalkerware is, how to remove it from your devices, and how to make sure stalkers can’t install it on your devices again, once they are clean…”
Tech Republic: “Earlier this month, Gartner published a report outlining a number of “gaps” in perception among company leaders and employees regarding the “future employee experience.” The findings detail a number of areas where employee sentiment about work operations and communication are not aligned with executive perceptions. Overall, 66% of employees felt they had the required technology to “effectively work remotely,” compared to the vast majority of executives (80%). Similarly, 76% of executives felt as though the company has “invested in providing them with resources that allow them to work the way they would onsite in a virtual environment,” yet only 59% of employees agreed with this. Additionally, 50% agreed that company leadership has “expressed a preference for work conditions to return to their pre-pandemic model,” compared to 71% of respondent executives …
These figures illustrate rather marked divides between these two groups. So, what are some of the reasons to explain this? “The simplest answer is that workers have different needs from executives – and I might go as far as saying that they have greater needs than executives, as [it] relates specifically to the resources that enable them to work from home productively – and these needs might not be fully understood by employers yet,” said Alexia Cambon, research director in the Gartner HR practice…At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and the shift to remote work, the initial focus for many companies was ensuring business continuity. Entering year two of remote work, organizations are starting to establish rules for home office setups. While company rules regarding the appearance and functionality of spaces inside their own homes may seem intrusive, there are legalities and insurance concerns to bear in mind…”
The New York Times - Those Anti-Covid Plastic Barriers Probably Don’t Help and May Make Things Worse: “Covid precautions have turned many parts of our world into a giant salad bar, with plastic barriers separating sales clerks from shoppers, dividing customers at nail salons and shielding students from their classmates. Intuition tells us a plastic shield would be protective against germs. But scientists who study aerosols, air flow and ventilation say that much of the time, the barriers don’t help and probably give people a false sense of security. And sometimes the barriers can make things worse. Research suggests that in some instances, a barrier protecting a clerk behind a checkout counter may redirect the germs to another worker or customer. Rows of clear plastic shields, like those you might find in a nail salon or classroom, can also impede normal air flow and ventilation. Under normal conditions in stores, classrooms and offices, exhaled breath particles disperse, carried by air currents and, depending on the ventilation system, are replaced by fresh air roughly every 15 to 30 minutes. But erecting plastic barriers can change air flow in a room, disrupt normal ventilation and create “dead zones,” where viral aerosol particles can build up and become highly concentrated…”
A study published in June and led by researchers from Johns Hopkins, for example, showed that desk screens in classrooms were associated with an increased risk of coronavirus infection. In a Massachusetts school district, researchers found that plexiglass dividers with side walls in the main office were impeding air flow. A study looking at schools in Georgia found that desk barriers had little effect on the spread of the coronavirus compared with ventilation improvements and masking.
Walls within walls within walls
Julius Caesar won the Siege of Alesia with a military tactic known as investment: build walls around the besieged settlement’s own walls, and and then build another layer of walls around those ones.
The World Is All That Is the Case The Millions
Washington City Paper - Tweeters Behind Feeds Like DC REALTIME NEWS Make Every Shooting Known: “…While some social media spot news reporters such as Alan Henney have been around for more than a decade, several new ones, including DC REALTIME NEWS, MoCo PG News, CordellTraffic, and Killmoenews, have risen to prominence in recent years. Together they have more than 47,000 followers on Twitter. Some show their support with dollars—DC REALTIME NEWS and Killmoenews solicit Cash App contributions on their profiles. Derrick, who asked to be identified by his first name for safety reasons, is behind Killmoenews and is Calhoun’s childhood friend. He says fans send him $300 or more on normal days and up to $1,000 on the Fourth of July. Local elected officials are taking notice. “It’s a transparency tool,” says Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George. She says she uses information from these accounts to track public safety patterns and direct resources. What she reads lets her know when to visit incident sites. “It’s allowed me to respond quickly to scenes of crimes and get information. Sometimes when I get there, MPD is calling me saying, ‘We want to update you, there’s been a shooting.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. I’m right here. I saw it on Killmoe or Alan Henney.” …
“Why is violence so prevalent in kitchens, and how has it become a behavioral norm?”
I really don’t view MR or links as a chance to dunk on people, but this is so, so wrong, and so indicative of the problems with public health “experts.” More here. That is an example, and in my view an instructive one, but really not interested in making this about any particular person. It was in turn taught by someone else, and it is believed by many in the field. The actual reality is that even very poorly educated Americans, on the whole, hold more sensible views than that.
Michael Mina from November 2020.
Dishonest dishonesty study study.
