Month: August 2020

Holy Sh%$.

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There has been a huge explosion in the port of Beruit, apparently from a stock-pile over 2000 tons of ammonium nitrate left by a decrepit and bankrupt Russian freighter many years ago:

Two huge explosions have rocked Beirut, killing at least 78 people, injuring thousands more, and sending an enormous blast wave across the city that shattered windows, knocked down doors and shook buildings.

Lebanon’s prime minister, Hassan Diab, said the main blast at Beirut’s port was caused when an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate had been ignited. He said the chemical had been left unsecured for six years in a warehouse, and vowed to punish those responsible.

As the death toll climbed on the discovery of more bodies in the wreckage, at least 4,000 were reported injured. Hundreds of homes were left uninhabitable by the blast which also destroyed huge grain silos, a devastating blow to a country where bread was already scarce and which is dependent on imports by sea.

This is an explosion measured in kilotons, and as shown below, you can see a large hemispherical shockwave that looks like something out an old nuclear weapon tests from the 1950s.

It is stunning.

Another angle of the explosion

Headline of the Day

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Great Touring Bike Deals Coming To An Estate Sale Near You, Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Hopes To Welcome 250,000

—Jalopnik

There are going to be thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Covid-19 infections directly from this get-together, and then everyone will drive home, carrying it back to their communities.

If you are looking for a cheap Harley, you may want to wait a few weeks.

H/t DC at the Steller Parthenon BBS.

I Missed an Important Internet Anniversary

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exactly one year ago today twitter changed forever pic.twitter.com/ncx2b2YZrO

— mork (@karlmorx) August 4, 2020

Where you were when this guy’s kids were menaced by a sounder (Yes, that is the word) of feral pigs?

I will note that unlike many f%$# ups on Twitter, this did not destroy this guy’s life.

He’s still on Twitter, and Willie McNabb has actually pinned this tweet, so apart from a lot of mocking, there was no harm done.

It’s nice when there is a Twitter sh%$-storm, and no one loses their job or is subject to death threats.

As Zathras Would Say, “At Least There is Symmetry.”

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There was a court hearing for the Florida teen who allegedly hacked dozens of celerity Twitter accounts today, and someone posted porn clips to the Zoom meeting.

Needless to say, this is now in my list as a perfect moment in the history of hacking:


Clearly, Mr. Clark has no F%$#s left to give

Perhaps fittingly, a Web-streamed court hearing for the 17-year-old alleged mastermind of the July 15 mass hack against Twitter was cut short this morning after mischief makers injected a pornographic video clip into the proceeding.

 The incident occurred at a bond hearing held via the videoconferencing service Zoom by the Hillsborough County, Fla. criminal court in the case of Graham Clark. The 17-year-old from Tampa was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of social engineering his way into Twitter’s internal computer systems and tweeting out a bitcoin scam through the accounts of high-profile Twitter users.

………

Notice of the hearing was available via public records filed with the Florida state attorney’s office. The notice specified the Zoom meeting time and ID number, essentially allowing anyone to participate in the proceeding.


All worth it for Florida DA Andrew Warren’s reaction

Even before the hearing officially began it was clear that the event would likely be “zoom bombed.” That’s because while participants were muted by default, they were free to unmute their microphones and transmit their own video streams to the channel.

………

What transpired a minute later was almost inevitable given the permissive settings of this particular Zoom conference call: Someone streamed a graphic video clip from Pornhub for approximately 15 seconds before Judge Nash abruptly terminated the broadcast.

I am very amused by this.

So say we all.

It’s Primary Night

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Actually primary morning, because I was (and still am) waiting for some results.

Despite a significant amount of Democratic Party money, Kris Kobach lost the Republican Party primary for Senate.

Dems figured that Kobach would be the weaker candidate, because his immigration hysteria based snake oil show has clearly passed its “Sell by date”, as evidenced by his continuous failures both as Kansas Secretary of State and as a part of Trump’s voting commision.

The Justice Democrats racked up another scalp as Cori Bush upset incumbent Lacy Clay.

That seat had been in the Clay family since his dad first won the seat in 1968.

Finally, in the race for the House in MI-14, Rashida Tlaib, one of the 4 members of the, “Squad,” is leading by a roughly 2:1 margin but only about  15% of precincts have reported, so it’s still up in the air.

(Update)

It’s been called, and Tlaib walked away with it.

Gee, You Think?

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There was a massive surge in stock trading just before Kodak announced a massive federal loan to make medical reagents for the pandemic.

Elizabeth Warren has noticed this as well:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate potential insider trading surrounding Eastman Kodak’s recent announcement that it would receive a $765 million government loan to start producing the chemical ingredients needed to make pharmaceuticals.

The day before the loan was announced, more than 1 million shares of Kodak’s stock traded hands compared with a daily average of 236,479 over the past year, Warren (D-Mass.) said in a letter to SEC Chair Jay Clayton. The company’s stock price rose about 20 percent that day, July 27, and increased more than 200 percent the next day, July 28, when the loan was announced.

Warren also noted that shortly before the announcement, James Continenza, Kodak’s executive chairman, purchased about 46,700 shares. The purchase “while the company was involved in secret negotiations with the government over a lucrative contract raises questions about whether these executives potentially made investment decisions based on material, non-public information derived from their positions,” Warren said.

………

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the SEC had opened an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the announcement of Kodak’s loan.

The SEC declined to comment on Warren’s letter and the WSJ report of an investigation.

While there are indications that Kodak insiders were involved, but my money is on Trump administration officials being involved in this as well, because corruption about the only thing that Trump and Evil Minions™ do at all well.

Linkage

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The Karen Meme Channel on Youtube.  Yet another sign that our society is in decline. Cannot watch more than about 15 seconds of any of these:

I Guess That These Gladiators Are Not So Eager to Die

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Derek Jeter founded The Players Tribune in 2014 to give athletes a forum to write about issues important to them. It’s where basketball player Elena Delle Donne disclosed her struggle with Lyme disease; where volleyballer Merete Lutz discussed what it was like to be in South Korea during the pandemic; and where numerous Black athletes have published their reflections on #BlackLivesMatter.

On Sunday, it served as the sports equivalent of Martin Luther’s church door. A group of college football players from the Pac-12 Conference, which includes schools such as Stanford, Washington and Oregon, posted a series of extraordinary demands that they said would have to be met or they would boycott the coming season.

The proximate cause for this potential work stoppage — and yes, that’s what it would be, a work stoppage — is the pandemic. Even though the virus continues to surge in much of the country — and many universities have become fearful about opening their campuses to students in the fall — the power conferences still seem intent on having a football season. There is simply too much money at stake to pull the plug. At all the top football schools, players have been on campus for weeks now, participating in “voluntary” workouts.

………

And the Pac-12 players, empowered by #BlackLivesMatter and handed tremendous leverage thanks to Covid-19, concluded that they would never have a better opportunity to force the system to change.

After a preamble that lays out all the ways they are exploited (“Because immoral rules would punish us for receiving basic necessities and compensation …”), they list a series of ambitious demands, only a few of which have to do with Covid-19 prevention measures. They call for coaches and administrators in the Pac-12 to reduce their “excessive pay” and for schools to restore the nonrevenue sports that have been cut because of the pandemic. They want the conference to set aside 2% of its revenue, which “would be directed by players to support financial aid for low-income Black students, community initiatives, and development programs for college athletes on each campus.”

There have been hundreds of players who have come down with Coronavirus, and the college’s response is to force them to sign liability waivers.

If there is a more corrupt organization in the United States than the NCAA, I haven’t seen it yet.

Stock Options Don’t Exercise Themselves

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Despite profits cratering like a Boeing 737 MAX with an Indonesian pilot, the captains of industry in the United States are continuing their stock buy-backs unabated.

This is not about preserving shareholder value, this is about keeping those executives stock options above water.  It is corrupt, and arguably fraud:

Corporate America is finding it hard to kick the share buyback habit, even after the US slipped into its worst recession in decades.

Total buybacks are expected to drop this year as the downturn caused by coronavirus saps corporate profits, prompting many US blue-chips to suspend or cut back share repurchases. Yet companies in the S&P 500 that have reported second-quarter earnings so far have reduced the number of their outstanding shares by an average of 0.3 per cent from the previous quarter, according to calculations from Credit Suisse.

Updates showed that some of the largest US multinationals continued to buy back their own stock or even accelerated stock repurchases.

………

David Lebovitz, global market strategist for JPMorgan Asset Management, noted that the buybacks were “not happening everywhere”, but were “driven by specific sectors and stocks”. He added that financial and materials companies were potentially more willing to engage in buybacks through the downturn, because their stocks have not advanced as much as companies in other sectors since the lows in March.

Mr. Lebovitz is lying, and he knows it.

This is about executives boosting their own bottom line, not the company’s.

“Rat Faced Andy” Cuomo Doing it Again

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New York state is in the midst of a revenue crisis because of the pandemic, and Andrew Cuomo is the sole roadblock to raising any revenue at all from the hyper-rich:

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York has stood firm against intensifying pressure to avert massive budget cuts by raising taxes on the many billionaires who live in his state.

As that campaign to tax billionaires received a recent boost from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York’s Democratic state legislative leaders, Cuomo has insisted that he fears that the tax initiative will prompt the super-rich to leave the state. On Wednesday, he doubled down, warning that if the state tried to balance its budget through billionaire tax hikes “you’d have no billionaires left”.

But in defending billionaires, Cuomo is protecting a group of his most important financial boosters. More than a third of New York’s billionaires have funneled cash to Cuomo’s political machine, according to a Too Much Information review of campaign finance data and the Forbes billionaire list.

New York disclosure records show that 43 of New York’s 118 billionaire families have donated money to Cuomo’s campaigns and the state Democratic party committee he controls. In all, those billionaires and their family members have delivered more than $8m to Cuomo’s political apparatus since his first gubernatorial campaign. That includes large donations from billionaires in the last few weeks as Cuomo has fought to stop tax hikes on billionaires.

It is remarkable just how completely one politician completely encapsulates what is wrong with both the Democratic Party and US politics in general.

Not a Surprise

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After President Trump ordered federal law enforcement officers into Portland, Ore., earlier this month, the protests largely ended the same way for days: with tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests.

On Thursday, the first protest held since the federal agencies agreed to pull back their officers was a markedly more peaceful affair.

As the Black Lives Matter-inspired vigil wound down early Friday morning, there was virtually no sign of the Oregon State Police officers who had taken over protection of the federal buildings at the center of the protests.

Instead of being forcibly removed from downtown’s Lownsdale Square and the adjacent Chapman Square, which lie opposite the barricaded Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse, the crowd thinned out on its own, with many protesters heading home of their own accord.

This is not a surprise.  The purpose of sending federal thugs to Portland was not to keep the peace, but to create violence and chaos.

History Rhyming

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Considering Germany’s current state of European hegemon, this is particularly concerning:

Güstrow, Germany — The plan sounded frighteningly concrete. The group would round up political enemies and those defending migrants and refugees, put them on trucks and drive them to a secret location.

Then they would kill them.

One member had already bought 30 body bags. More body bags were on an order list, investigators say, along with quicklime, used to decompose organic material.

On the surface, those discussing the plan seemed reputable. One was a lawyer and local politician, but with a special hatred of immigrants. Two were active army reservists. Two others were police officers, including Marko Gross, a police sniper and former parachutist who acted as their unofficial leader.

The group grew out of a nationwide chat network for soldiers and others with far-right sympathies set up by a member of Germany’s elite special forces, the KSK. Over time, under Mr. Gross’s supervision, they formed a parallel group of their own. Members included a doctor, an engineer, a decorator, a gym owner, even a local fisherman.

They called themselves Nordkreuz, or Northern Cross.

………

They denied they had plotted to kill anyone. But investigators and prosecutors, as well an account one member gave to the police — transcripts of which were seen by The New York Times — indicate their planning took a more sinister turn.

Germany has belatedly begun dealing with far-right networks that officials now say are far more extensive than they ever understood. The reach of far-right extremists into its armed forces is particularly alarming in a country that has worked to cleanse itself of its Nazi past and the horrors of the Holocaust. In July the government disbanded an entire company infiltrated by extremists in the nation’s special forces.

………

Far-right extremism penetrated multiple layers of German society in the years when the authorities underestimated the threat or were reluctant to countenance it fully, officials and lawmakers acknowledge. Now they are struggling to uproot it.

………

Neo-Nazi groups and other extremists call it Day X — a mythical moment when Germany’s social order collapses, requiring committed far-right extremists, in their telling, to save themselves and rescue the nation.

………

“I fear we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg,” said Dirk Friedriszik, a lawmaker in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where Nordkreuz was founded. “It isn’t just the KSK. The real worry is: These cells are everywhere. In the army, in the police, in reservist units.”

German imposition of sado-monetarism on the rest of the EU has led to a resurgence of right wing nationalism in both Europe and the EU, and now we know that Germany is not immune to the toxic reaction to its misguided ideology.

The Single Best Point about Cancel Culture

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In all the back and forth about Cancel Culture, a central issue is that as-will employment makes the effects of publish shaming far more dire than they should be.

Being an asshole on Twitter should not be a firing offense, no matter how much it might justify shame and approbrium:

You know what should be canceled? The legal right of most bosses to fire you for a “good cause, bad cause, or no cause.”

That status quo is so widely accepted that some progressives don’t think twice about appealing to the authoritarian power of bosses in the pursuit of social justice: Many high profile social media campaigns have been employed to get people who are caught on video committing racist acts in their everyday lives fired from their jobs. But the desire to hold racists and sexists accountable—or the related struggles against sexism, homophobia and fascism—need not be in conflict with the principles of workplace rights.

So-called “cancel culture” is not well-defined, but its critics frequently use the moniker to refer to an activist program of making individuals who harm their neighbors or coworkers with acts of racism, sexism (and worse) accountable through exposure and de-platforming—including attempts to get them fired. Liberal critics have been more likely to raise free speech concerns than any about workers’ rights, while leftists are likelier to argue that free speech doesn’t mean freedom from the consequences of speech.

………

Three years ago, we published an op-ed in the New York Times explaining how U.S. workers lack a basic right to their jobs that many workers in other countries enjoy as a legal standard. As a solution, we proposed a just cause “right to your job” law as a badly needed labor law reform. Since then, we’ve been encouraged to see the issue turn up on many progressives’ agenda.

In the debate between a right to your job and the need to de-platform bigots, some have raised concerns that without the boss’s right to fire an employee for any reason, racists and sexists would get more of a free pass at work. But this argument misses what “just cause” means. It doesn’t mean that employees cannot be fired, it means they can’t be fired for a reason that’s not related to work. Racism, sexism, harassment and other forms of conduct in and out of the workplace that make other employees feel unsafe and violate policies around respect and equity are grounds for discipline and termination—but are also subject to due process. When you look at how “just cause” plays out in areas where it exists—in the public sector, under many union contracts, or in other countries—it’s clear that racists, sexists and harassers are, in fact, disciplined.

Indeed.