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Sympthsical

Sympthsical's Journal
Sympthsical's Journal
July 27, 2023

Florida dog attack leaves 6-year-old boy dead

So . . . since it's apparently common understanding that animals are psychic and know the good humans from the bad . . .

Does someone want to explain what the six year-old did to deserve it? Or nah?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-dog-attack-leaves-6-year-old-boy-dead/

May 23, 2023

Man set free after setting Asian students on fire.

I know people don't care about anti-AAPI stuff unless it can be pinned on Trump, but as someone with a lot of AAPI nieces and nephews, the anti-Asian environment in the Bay Area bothers me. And it bothers me more when my own side seems studiously and concretely set on ignoring it.

A man who was found guilty of lighting UC Berkeley students on fire at a boba shop near the Cal campus in 2020 has been released from custody without prison time or probation after agreeing to participate in a diversion program for veterans, court records show.

In late April, according to records reviewed by The Berkeley Scanner, Brandon McGlone was convicted of multiple felonies in connection with the boba shop attack as well as felony assault and gun charges from a separate domestic violence case.


https://www.berkeleyscanner.com/2023/05/20/uc-berkeley-crime/berkeley-boba-shop-attack-man-released-diversion-program/
April 20, 2023

Cheering on technological failure seems like a right-wing thing

Musk is a fuckstick - I don't think that's too arguable.

But space flight is something to be encouraged and cheered.

Human advancement is a good thing.

Let's not cheer failure in advancement because the man I don't like on Twitter is poopy.

Hatred like that is dumb and eats reason from the inside out.

April 5, 2023

Major tech figure killed in San Francisco

This is huge news here. All my timelines are blown up and local media are all over it (lots of friends in tech).

Bob Lee, the chief product officer at MobileCoin, was killed in a fatal stabbing in San Francisco. On Tuesday morning, at 2:35 a.m., the San Francisco Police Department responded to a report of a stabbing near the 300 block of Main Street in SoMa. He was taken to a hospital but succumbed to his injuries.

Shortly after, NBC Bay Area reported that the victim of the stabbing was Bob Lee, 43. MobileCoin confirmed the information in a statement sent to Bloomberg and ABC7 News.

Before joining MobileCoin, Bob Lee worked at Google for the first few years of Android, focusing on core library development. He then joined Square, the payment company that later became Block, to develop its Android app. He became the company’s first CTO and also created Cash App.

Bob Lee, also known as ‘Crazy Bob,’ was an investor in tech startups as well. According to his LinkedIn profile, he invested in SpaceX, Clubhouse, Tile, Figma, Faire, Orchid, Addressable, Nana, Ticket Fairy, Gowalla, Asha, SiPhox, Netswitch, Found and others
.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/05/bob-lee-creator-of-cash-app-and-former-cto-of-square-stabbed-to-death/

With the debate about crime in SF, and the influence of tech in the region, this is going to be a thing.
April 3, 2023

Cable news complaints be like

“They’re showing pornography? That’s terrible! Where?!”

Feels like.

March 24, 2023

How America has changed in 183 years

Have been rummaging through various books and essays about American economic evolution in the 1800s and came across this bit written in 1840.

"We are not ignorant of the fact, that the merchant, who is literally the
common carrier and exchange dealer, performs a useful service, and is therefore
entitled to a portion of the proceeds of labor. But make all necessary deductions
on his account, and then ask what portion of the remainder is retained, either in
kind or in its equivalent, in the hands of the original producer, the workingman?
All over the world this fact stares us in the face, the workingman is poor and
depressed, while a large portion of the non-workingmen, in the sense we now
use the term, are wealthy. It may be laid down as a general rule, with but few
exceptions, that men are rewarded in an inverse ratio to the amount of actual
service they perform"


Glad America eventually sorted that right out.
March 21, 2023

My white professor used a racial term against a black man in lecture

This is kind of interesting, and I'd be curious what people here thought.

I'm taking a pre-law class on constitutional rights and minorities this semester. Mainly for fun and because I find the topic interesting. Plus, sometimes you just need something different from dissecting sheep eyes.

Over the weekend, I needed to finish up a midterm paper. It mainly concerned itself with selective incorporation - the practice of the Supreme Court to only gradually apply the Bill of Rights to the states over the 100 or so years after the 14th Amendment passed. Also, a lot of commentary on Hugo Black. If you do not know what Justice Hugo Black's whole deal is, I highly recommend reading up on the man. He's fascinating.

Anyway, my professor has opinions. A lot of them. I'm an AOC type progressive, and a lot of the time even I'm thinking, "Ok, slow down." Spams our inboxes often with a lot of articles with the most partisan ideological positions - if you were ever thinking you were going to write a paper supporting originalism or textualism or talking about how Scalia wasn't such a bad guy - don't. The man might actually stroke out.

Suffice to say, Clarence Thomas is not his favorite person. At all. He's had a running commentary about the Justice all semester long. While I share the professor's legal outlook (loose constructionist, living Constitution), it's been bothering me just how over the top partisan he is and how he pushes relentlessly for only his own political views. I would never write a paper disagreeing with him and feel comfortable about how that grade would turn out.

So his lectures are video taped. I was going through a few of them while writing my paper to ensure I had covered all the bases before turning it in. And there it was: "We all know Justice Thomas is just a big double-stuffed oreo . . ."

Again, this professor is a white man. And a professor. Who is ostensibly teaching critical thinking skills about the law (he's not - he's just straight up advocating his ideology - but let's pretend).

I'm not really ok with this. I kind of want to say something to the administration. It's on video online, so it's not even my word against his he said it. He even laughingly says a few moments later, "Don't get me fired," so he at least knows on some level it's not great. But he also felt ok enough with it to leave it in his video lecture anyone can access online. He says all kinds of things that are fine on Twitter, but maybe not if you're teaching students (his comments about Christians are epic and ongoing. I think my favorite was, "They don't really believe in Jesus anyway" ).

So I'm mulling this over. After a pretty heavy stream of partisanship, the oreo comment is where I literally stopped, got my partner, and showed it to him. I'd been mentioning this professor to him for months, and that was my, "You have to see this shit" moment. I was . . . not shocked. Just didn't see it going that far or blatantly.

I don't want him fired - I don't care that much, and I'm not a pre-law student. But I don't think this is even kind of ok, and it feels like a straw for me about how he's been teaching the entire class all semester and his relentless spam and commentary promoting his own political views.

I'm curious to know how people here would go about this. I have a 4.0 GPA and am not inclined to risk it, so confronting him isn't something that's going to happen.

Would you say something to administration?

January 10, 2023

Chicago public schools have some sexual assault issues

The CPS Inspector General released a report this month and it is . . . some reading.

https://cpsoig.org/uploads/3/5/5/6/35562484/cps_oig_fy_2022_annual_report.pdf

Note: The pdf is to the IG report and is hosted on their official government website.

From page 43, this was awesome of them:

The student reported the incident to two other staff members within days of the
occurrence, but both of them failed to notify the school’s administration as they were
required to do as mandated reporters. Instead, the staff members made excuses for
the teacher. One of them said that the conduct was probably unintentional and that
he did not believe the teacher would sexually harass a student because he had a
daughter of his own. The other staff member blamed the student for wearing
provocative clothing, implying that she brought the problem on herself.


Read through and wonder why a major city school system reads like the Catholic Church.
December 1, 2022

While everyone watches Twitter, Apple helped China fight dissidents

Our silly media obsession with Twitter while other tech monopolists actually aid authoritarian regimes remains unabated.

Protests in China have attracted international attention as the greatest challenge of President Xi Jinping’s premiership and a major knock to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) longstanding authority.

But their spread within China was partially hobbled by a key change in Apple’s AirDrop feature, launched just weeks before the unrest.

AirDrop, which allows users to share content between Apple devices, has become an important tool in protestors’ efforts to circumvent authoritarian censorship regimes over recent years.

That is because it relies on wireless connections between phones, rather than internet connectivity, placing it beyond the scope of internet content moderators. It uses Bluetooth to form a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi network between two devices.

The tool was used widely during Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests, when demonstrators would share messages and protest literature with passers by and visitors from mainland China through AirDrop’s open network.


https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/30/apple-limited-a-crucial-airdrop-function-in-china-just-weeks-before-protests.html

Now. What did Musk have for lunch today? I hope at least five media outlets cover this vital and breaking news.
November 28, 2022

Will China anti-lockdown protests become a new Tiananmen?

Early days, but it's certainly interesting that protestors are not merely calling for reform, but the removal of the current government - that does not happen in China.

Kinda odd how little discussion this seems to be generating. Should we send Musk to China so attention will be paid to it?

"For the first time in decades, thousands of people have defied Chinese authorities to protest at universities and on the streets of major cities, demanding to be freed not only from incessant Covid tests and lockdowns, but strict censorship and the Communist Party’s tightening grip over all aspects of life.

Across the country, “want freedom” has become a rallying cry for a groundswell of protests mainly led by the younger generation, some too young to have taken part in previous acts of open dissent against the government.

“Give me liberty or give me death!” crowds by the hundreds shouted in several cities, according to videos circulating online, as vigils to mark the deaths of at least 10 people in a fire in Xinjiang spiraled into political rallies.
Protests against Covid measures in Urumqi city, Xinjiang, China, can be seen in a screen grab obtained from a video released November 25.

Videos circulating online seem to suggest China’s strict zero-Covid policy initially prevented emergency workers from accessing the scene, angering residents across the country who have endured three years of varying Covid controls.


https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/28/china/china-protests-covid-political-freedom-intl-hnk-mic/index.html

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