Civics Not Cynics

25/04/2024

: The passed it and signed it, making it official.

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The US House of Representatives passed RISAA last week in a 273–147 vote. An amendment aimed at requiring the Federal Bureau of Investigation to obtain search warrants before accessing wiretaps on US citizens was rejected after a vote on the amendment ended in a tie.

Members of the House Intelligence Community allied with the Biden White House and its spy agencies to defeat the amendment in what multiple House sources referred to as a "campaign of fear." An hour before the vote on Friday, Himes openly threatened US lawmakers supporting the warrant requirement, claiming that if it passed, he'd ensure those lawmakers face the brunt of the blame in the wake of any future terrorist attacks.

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A controversial bill reauthorizing the Section 702 spy program may force whole new categories of businesses to eavesdrop on the US government’s behalf, including on fellow Americans.

25/04/2024

Meet Thermonator. It blasts fire up to 30 feet and has Bluetooth.

25/04/2024

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

One week after it was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate has passed what Senator Ron Wyden has called, “one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.” President Biden then rushed to sign it into law.

25/04/2024

The panel on this last Sunday's episode of This Week in Tech pour cold water all over the 's justifications for banning . (Episode was recorded before the measure was passed)

Their consensus seems to be that the can be attributed to anti-China and annoyance with "always staring at their phones".

(Video should skip to the correct location)

• Cops can force suspect to unlock phone with thumbprint, US court rules• TikTok ‘ban’ passes in the House again• Senate reauthorizes FISA spy program, but n...

25/04/2024

Cops can force suspect to unlock phone with thumbprint, US court rules

Ask The Tech Guys podcast clip:

In this thought-provoking clip from Ask The Tech Guys, hosts Leo Laporte and Mikah Sargent explore two critical issues at the intersection of technology and ...

24/04/2024

No paywall for 30 days

Instead of focusing on banning or forcing a divestiture of TikTok, could have (and should have) passed a strong that would the and severely limit what ALL websites are allowed to collect from us, instead of just zeroing in on TikTok

But, of course, that will never happen because our here in the States uses data brokers to gather evidence for future so they can circumvent the . You see the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement to obtain a before they can on you but there is no rule preventing them from simply buying the information they seek from data brokers.

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Our were fixated on what data TikTok collects on so they neutralized that percieved but left all the data brokers intact (who are more than happy to make a quick buck by selling our data to the ) and they gave and / a to do all the and they want.

While Congress says the social app is a security threat, critics of the law targeting it say it shows how out of step lawmakers are with young people.

24/04/2024

As much as it would be nice, you can’t selectively “break” or put a “backdoor” into communications that can only be used to on and . It is not technologically possible.

A backdoor for one is a backdoor for all.

I'm no defender of , but if we allow to force to include backdoors into their encryption, those same (or , for that matter) could then all of our communications.

















Link to the referenced Europol from the below :

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/european-police-chiefs-call-for-industry-and-governments-to-take-action-against-end-to-end-encryption-roll-out

24/04/2024

Do not let him you with this : Benjamin Netanyahu has lied his whole career and he is lying now.

Characterizing the people protesting the on US college campuses as people who want to "kill Jews wherever they are" is completely detached from reality.

You can be a Jew who doesn't support Israel just as you can support Israel without being a Jew.

All across the US and the world, there are people and people standing side by side, in , calling for a and demanding that it happen NOW.

Bibi Netanyahu is attempting to sidestep at the being committed in by trying to paint anyone calling for an end to the as who want to see the destruction of

It is not or anti-Israel to demand an end to the bloodshed, especially when it is largely who are dying.

The does not condone and nor do we welcome such into our ranks.

Anybody who DOES espouse antisemitism or who celebrates acts of , such as the ones perpetrated by on October the 7th: We condemn you. You are not welcome among our ranks. This is a movement.

https://x.com/netanyahu/status/1783191454308864300?s=46

24/04/2024

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Students in 1968 were demanding an end to Columbia's affiliation with a think tank involved in Pentagon weapons research. Additionally, they wanted to stop the construction of a segregated gym in nearby Morningside Park that was thought to have separate entrances for Columbia students and Harlem residents, The Post reported. The arrangement of the gymnasium struck many as a reminder of Jim Crow laws. Students were also demanding amnesty.

Many were recovering from the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. weeks earlier. Black students "were growing increasingly upset with persistent racism in American society broadly and in Morningside Heights in particular," according to Barnard Magazine. Meanwhile, frustration with the war in Vietnam and Columbia's participation in military programs had been growing for months.

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The student uprising began with a rally protesting the university’s effort to build a gym on public land in Morningside Park and its ties to Vietnam-era military research.

24/04/2024

President Joe Biden soon after the announcement said, "The FTC is cracking down on 'non-compete agreements,' contracts that employers use to prevent their workers from changing jobs even if that job will pay a few dollars more, or provide better working conditions. Workers ought to have the right to choose who they want to work for."

"Noncompete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism, including from the more than 8,500 new startups that would be created a year once noncompetes are banned," said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. "The FTC's final rule to ban noncompetes will ensure Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market."







Lina Khan was a

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday voted to ban for-profit US employers from making employees sign agreements with noncompete clauses. Such a ban could affect tens of millions of workers.

23/04/2024

Jonathan Haidt’s new book, “The Anxious Generation,” has become a NY Times bestseller, and he’s making media appearances basically everywhere you look, telling people that social media has “rewired…

23/04/2024

An indigenous man couldn't understand the court proceedings when he was charged with a crime in Texas. He was sentenced anyway.

An Indigenous man couldn’t understand the court proceedings when he was charged with a crime in Texas. He was sentenced anyway.

23/04/2024

and the have just announced a new rule banning noncompete clauses nationwide!

"Noncompete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism, including from the more than 8,500 new startups that would be created a year once noncompetes are banned," said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. "The FTC's final rule to ban noncompetes will ensure Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market."




Lina Khan was a

23/04/2024

Latest news and live updates as pro-Palestinian protests continue on campus at Yale, NYU, Columbia and other colleges across the U.S.

23/04/2024

Criticism of Israel's does NOT = .

Furthermore, antisemites are not welcome in the . If there has been antisemitism, I'm sure I can speak for us all in saying that we unequivocally condemn it. Antisemitism is unacceptable.

Robert Kraft, however, went beyond calling for an end to antisemitism. He is calling for the suppression of . Calling for an end to is making a choice to support Israel's war, at the expense of innocent lives.

Reference: https://x.com/standup2jewhate/status/1782388392438686076?s=46

23/04/2024

No paywall for 30 days

Monopolized markets are brittle markets. Ultimately, they are *easily disrupted* markets

The drug market is an oligopoly. This is what happens when governments neglect to use their antitrust powers to prevent an such as from forming.

Among the hundreds of medicines now in short supply are popular drugs used for weight loss such as Ozempic

22/04/2024

John Oliver discusses why millions of people have been kicked off of Medicaid, why Medicaid access was difficult even before the current "unwinding", and what would happen if fruits and vegetables could talk. 🍑












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John Oliver discusses why millions of people have been kicked off of Medicaid, why Medicaid access was difficult even before the current “unwinding”, and wha...

21/04/2024

"We killed the American dream ourselves"

This should be required viewing for all

This episode is sponsored by Surfshark.When we talk about racism in America, we tend to focus on the harm inflicted upon people of color, while rarely focusi...

21/04/2024

Another example of why is so great! and , come use Bluesky!

I can be found there as:
bsky.social

is under its new ownership.

Twitter can burn

21/04/2024

Adding this to my for sure!

From the book description (with my own emphasis added):

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"An incisive and sympathetic examination of the case for ending the practice of imprisonment Despite its omnipresence and long history, imprisonment is a deeply troubling practice. In the United States and elsewhere, prison conditions are inhumane, prisoners are treated without dignity, and sentences are extremely harsh. Mass incarceration and its devastating impact on black communities have been widely condemned as neoslavery or "the new Jim Crow." Can the practice of imprisonment be reformed, or does justice require it to be ended altogether? In The Idea of Prison Abolition, Tommie Shelby examines the abolitionist case against prisons and its formidable challenge to would-be prison reformers. Philosophers have long theorized punishment and its justifications, but they haven't paid enough attention to incarceration or its related problems in societies structured by racial and economic injustice.

TAKING UP THIS URGENT TOPIC, SHELBY ARGUES THAT PRISONS, ONCE REFORMED AND UNDER THE RIGHT CIRCUMSTANCES, CAN BE LEGITIMATE AND EFFECTIVE TOOLS OF CRIME CONTROL.

Yet he draws on insights from black radicals and leading prison abolitionists, especially Angela Davis, to argue that we should dramatically decrease imprisonment and think beyond bars when responding to the problem of crime. While a world without prisons might be utopian, The Idea of Prison Abolition makes the case that we can make meaningful progress toward this ideal by abolishing the structural injustices that too often lead to crime and its harmful consequences."

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No, as emphasized above, the author is not advocating for the complete abolition of prisons. I want to make that clear before any self-proclaimed people come out of the woodwork to write off the book as extremist garbage before they even read it.

An incisive and sympathetic examination of the case for ending the practice of imprisonment Despite its omnipresence and long history, imprisonment is a deeply troubling practice. In the United States and elsewhere, prison conditions are inhumane, prisoners are treated without dignity, and sentences...

21/04/2024

No paywall for 14 days

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"The straw man is a terrible argument nobody really holds, which was only invented so your side had something easy to defeat. The weak man is a terrible argument that only a few unrepresentative people hold, which was only brought to prominence so your side had something easy to defeat."

Tucker Carlson is a master of the weak man––as was Jon Stewart.

And America would benefit if our culture of argument elevated the opposite approach, steel-manning, "the art of addressing the best form of the other person's argument, even if it's not the one they presented."

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😍 I love it! I learned a new word today! I'm definitely storing "steelman" in my memory.

























The Atlantic

The best way to argue is to take on your opponents’ strongest arguments, not their weakest ones.

20/04/2024

No paywall for 14 days

Oh good, have we decided we want to again?

It wasn’t just Putin who lost in the House vote on Ukraine aid.

20/04/2024

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"You drop your child off at kindergarten where they learn how to hide from an active shooter. You spot a rifle-strapped shopper in the cereal aisle at the supermarket. You stuff your belongings in a clear bag to go to a concert. Your nephew's high school football game is evacuated when gunshots erupt outside the stadium - again.

These aren't scenes from a dystopian future. This is America, two-and-a-half decades after a mass shooting at Columbine High School left 13 people dead and a nation reeling.

The April 20, 1999, massacre in Littleton, Colorado, launched us into a new era of school shooting drills and anxiety at large public events. And since then, even though a majority of Americans continue to favor stricter gun laws, barriers to gun access have rapidly eroded in the majority of states."

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Only in America is so that a whole-ass news publication dedicated to reporting on just that one topic is capable of succeeding.

I wish we didn't need you, but thank you for the work you do The Trace!

You drop your child off at kindergarten where they learn how to hide from an active shooter. You spot a rifle-strapped shopper in the cereal aisle at the supermarket. You stuff your belongings in a clear bag to go to a concert. Your nephew’s high school football game is evacuated when gunshots eru...

20/04/2024

Nobody should ever be shot because they mistakenly knocked on the wrong door.

Shot in the head after ringing the wrong doorbell nearly a year ago, Yarl is coping with the lingering effects on his mental health while fighting to chart a path forward.

20/04/2024

This is rich: Israel is blaming the chronically underfunded for in

The only party causing in Gaza is Israel, through its actions.

UNICEF says a third of Gaza's infants and toddlers are acutely malnourished, but Israel blames the U.N. itself.

19/04/2024

“We are committed to doing everything we can to protect reproductive freedom, to save lives and to repeal this abhorrent 1864 law that was written at a time when the age of consent was 10.”

- Arizona Democrat Representative Oscar de los Santos (pictured) on the state's 1864

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Republican politicians have consistently demonstrated that they don't

If you care about the women in your life,

19/04/2024

Republican politicians have consistently demonstrated that they don't stand with women.

If you care about the women in your life, vote Democrat.

Arizona state House Republicans rejected an attempt to repeal a near-total ban on abortion from 1864 that was upheld by the battleground state’s Supreme Court. “It is time to repeal this abhorrent 1864 abortion ban,” said Rep. Oscar De Los Santos.

18/04/2024

Acclaimed author Salman Rushdie on the 2022 knife attack that took his right eye and nearly took his life (13 minute video):

Anderson Cooper: "You're not a believer in miracles. But the fact that you survived, you write in the book, is a miracle."

Salman Rushdie: "This is a contradiction. How does somebody who doesn't believe in the supernatural account for the fact that something has happened which feels like a miracle? And I certainly don't feel that some hand reached down from the skies and guarded me. But I do think something happened which wasn't supposed to happen. And I have no explanation for it."

Salman Rushdie has come to terms with the attempt on his life the only way he knows: by writing about it in his new book. He details the experience in his fi...