Linky Friday: Truth and Lies
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Linky Friday: Truth and Lies
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izmJepISIeg&w=560&h=315]
Truth
[Tr1] Telling the truth in reviews? This company wants to use blockchain tech to reward accurate reviews with tokens.
[Tr2] He probably got off easy, considering: Chinese Professor fired for telling the truth about the communist party in that country.
[Tr3] “Truth Isn’t Truth”: Giuliani’s dubious play on words was far from the first time the phrase has been used as a defense.
[Tr4] The true story of Paul Manafort’s now-infamous $15k ostrich jacket.
[Tr5] Can rap lyrics really be a “punishable true threat?” According to a new ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, yes.
[Tr6] I’m still in the skeptical category, but if blockchain is going to become more than just “too good to be true,” it will probably start small like this article suggests.
[Tr7] The true cost of the Afghan war, or at least this piece’s version of it.
[Tr8] “A materials scientist’s dream come true,” manipulating individual dislocations directly on the atomic scale.
[Tr9] Ukraine wasn’t just invaded, it’s also been the testbed for cyber warfare by the Russians, and we should pay attention to what they are practicing. The true story of Notpetya: a Russian cyberweapon that escaped and did $10B in worldwide damage
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-3qOkEtml8&w=560&h=315] Lies
[Li1] Want to find some lies? Trying dating sites, especially dating apps, and you will find plenty.
[Li2] This might come up again in the next few weeks: ““The president has disgraced his office.… He has lied to his aides. He has lied to the American people,” Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a 1998 memo to his colleagues. “I’m strongly opposed to giving [him] any ‘break’…unless he either resigns or…issues a public apology.”
[Li3] About sums it up: “Venezuela’s latest economic wheeze: a currency backed by a cryptocurrency backed by petroleum. To put it bluntly: it’s a scam on top of another scam”
[Li4] Turns out those little lies in advertising actually hurt customer loyalty in the long run.
[Li5] The figure at the center of one the biggest frauds in modern science is still a mystery, even after his death.
[Li6] How the lying on CV’s breaks down differently between men and women.
[Li7] Fascinating interview with author Paul Willetts who wrote a book on the biggest fraud of the jazz age.
[Li8] At some point you would think people would learn not to lie about their credentials; Florida legislative candidate drops out after lying about college degree.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwN9dSW4280&w=560&h=315]
Gray Areas
[Gr1] The gray areas of workplace discrimination
[Gr2] Using the terminology of “Autism spectrum” inherently means there is area’s we don’t fully understand, and as a parent those gaps can be terrifying.
[Gr3] The old crime of “peeping tom” has gone hi-tech with phones making voyeur and “upskirt” pictures and video far too easy. It happened to this woman, and she’s doing something about this gray area of the law.
[Gr4] This was new terminology; “Gray-sexual” as a type of asexual identification.
[Gr5] Speaking of sexuality and gray areas, how should seniors with dementia approach-and be treated-when it comes to them wanting physical intimacy?
[Gr6] This is from our Aussie friends but the question is universal in business: the grey area of employee or contractor?
[Gr7] Dockless electric scooters are everywhere in LA, and until now have worked in a gray area of the law, but very black and white “cease and desist” letters from the city might bring that to a halt.
[Gr8] The answer is no, but people will keep asking the question: “Can Facebook, or Anybody, Solve the Internet’s Misinformation Problem?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO48epRwvr0&w=560&h=315]
Consequences
[Co1] Reality Winner sentenced to 63 months as part of plea deal.
[Co2] President Trump and Stormy Daniels got the headlines from the Michael Cohen guilty plea, but it was this tidbit that brought the IRS’s and prosecutors attention: “Mr. Cohen’s troubles increased in May, when Evgeny “Gene” Freidman, a New York City taxi mogul who managed taxi medallions owned by Mr. Cohen and his relatives, pleaded guilty to state criminal tax fraud and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in their probe of Mr. Cohen.”
[Co3] “”I wanted Paul Manafort to be innocent, but he wasn’t,” said Juror Paula Duncan, who kept her MAGA hat in her car, doesn’t like the Mueller investigation, found Manafort guilty anyway, and notably was not the holdout that caused the 10 counts to be declared a mistrial. “”It was so frustrating,” Duncan said. “She just couldn’t explain to us why she had reasonable doubt. We could provide her with the information but she wouldn’t change her votes.”
[Co4] Rep. Duncan Hunter and his wife plead not guilty after being indicted, and were released on bail with this interesting note: “Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip Halpern told the judge that while the government considers the allegations “to be extremely serious,” the pair have shown no signs of being a flight risk during the investigation. He said the couple also didn’t have any substantial assets and were “living paycheck to paycheck.”
[Co5] The Mollie Tibbetts murder has turned into a political fight, but the details of suspect –
Cristhian Bahena Rivera- approaching her, admitting to her being in his trunk, and leading investigators to her body are pretty damning. The largest question remains unanswered: why?
Por una Cabeza – Carlos Gardel (Tango, as seen in True Lies and Scent of a Women)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ydRwCf9Qyw&w=560&h=315]
Co2: I’m surprised the collapse of taxi medallion prices hasn’t shook out more bad actors and dirty dealing.
Gr1: If the only solution to exclusionary after-work fraternization is to ban it, my guess is that it will just go underground. People spend most of their waking hours with co-workers, So friendship and common interests are inevitable. If anything, policing golf outings and happy hours will cut off the opportunity for “outsider” workers to get involved in these too-white-male activities at all.Report
Gr1: Tech companies seem to encourage more socialization than other companies and it seems to occur at the office more. At least this is my anecdotal observation. They also often seem better(ish) at avoiding the old traps of having all the guys go to a Strip Club ala I-banking.
Here is another Truthhammer, NIMBY is a bipartisan cry. No one likes building even though it is probably the only thing that reduces housing costs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/upshot/home-ownership-nimby-bipartisan.htmlReport
@saul-degraw
Indeed, NIMBY polices would be much less robust if they did not enjoy bipartisan support. The housing market has a strong insider-outsider dynamic, and is often the case with such markets, the relevant political split is insiders vs outsiders.Report
Tr8: Ooooooh, that’s nifty!Report
Maybe you can explain it because I got an bit lost reading it, to be honest. Report
You have to start by understanding what a material dislocation is within the crystalline structure. The exist every, and the more able they are to slide along the layers, the more ductile a material is (likewise, the harder it is for a dislocation to slide, the harder a material is).
The big deal is that until now, you could only manipulate a dislocation by manipulating the whole test piece (bending it). Now they can manipulate a single identified dislocation and watch it, which improves our understanding of how these nano-scale structures interact when under load and when deforming.
This probably won’t directly result in any new technology, but it could result in new alloys and other materials (composites and ceramics, for instance), or reduce the time and cost of developing new materials, since researchers will be able to see more directly what is happening and tweak things until they get it just right.Report
Really coolReport
Tr7-
The War in Afghanistan began with the invasion of the country by U.S. forces on October 7th, 2001. It followed the shock of 9/11 and the decision by President George W. Bush to destroy the terrorist network al-Qaeda, headed by Osama bin Laden, which was blamed for the horrendous attack on American soil. Bin Laden was reportedly hiding in Afghanistan, protected by the Taliban, which then ruled the country.
This is a really weird way to start an article, as if these facts are substantially disputed or unknown.Report
This is another odd one. It literally isn’t true that the Taliban controls more territory now than it did in Summer 2001 (when it ran the county and Kabul, though didn’t have firm control of the north). It’s possible that they have more land area now than in, say December 2001, when they had largely melted away and decamped to Pakistan. & ‘land area’ is a little misleading, because as everyone is fond of saying in politics, people matter, not dirt. Also, the population of Afghanistan has gone from about 21 million in 2001 to 35 million today, witg almost all the growth in urban areas controled by the government (not like they’re oasises of paradise though)
The gd cojones of someone from the Charles Koch Foundation writing this sentence!Report
Em Carpenter alert!
If you haven’t followed, the West Virginia GOP has conducted a coup against their state’s judiciary. Impeached their entire state Supreme Court at once, then the very pols who led impeachment were appointed to the Court, flipping partisan control
GOP governor names GOP House speaker and GOP congressman temporary justices for W. Va. Supreme Court (replacing 2 Dems who resigned). Three remaining justices under impeachment.
Unbelievable. What the hell has happened to conservatives in this country? They’re f***ing insane.Report
The blurb is kind of misleading. Leaving out the federal indictments for example, and making it sound as though the basis for impeachment was without merit. Here are the four articles she’s written on it, for anyone looking to get caught up. Report
Will,
I’ve read em. Two parts stand out: that they impeached sitting justices who weren’t directly implicated in the finance scandal and that the temp appointments are folks who led the charge to impeach. Given the timing here, as Em outlined in her posts, the GOP governor can appoint justices until the next election cycle. 2 years from now. That’s the entire court.
Maybe I don’t understand your comment, tho. Are you suggesting that all is well in the camp? That this is just SOP? Seems to me it’s exactly what the person I quoted said it is: a coup on the judiciary. I’m more than happy to get talked out of that tree, tho. I just need to hear a reason to climb down.Report
No, doesn’t look kosher to me. Looks like at best they’re using corruption as an opportunity to clean house in their favor. At worst it is some sort of coup where the three remaining justices did absolutely nothing wrong and with no basis. It looks to me more like a pretty messy situation somewhere in between the two, where they are definitely (inappropriately) fiddling with the timing but did not wake up one day and decide to clean house (including the Republican) for partisan benefit. Which would be my impression from the blurb.Report
I gotta admit that if this incident occurred in isolation I wouldn’t reflexively think the worst, but on the heels of the Penssylvania gerry-mander case (where the R legislature threatened to impeach the state SC because of their ruling) and the voter-id/voter-fraud/voter-booth shenanigans occurring all over, I’m sorta primed to think the worst of the state-level GOP right now. 🙁Report
Em will have a piece on all this soon.
It’s far more to it than that. To say it’s a “coup against the judiciary” is coming at it way to high. The corruption in the court is very real. Gov. Justice’s appointment of Armstead and Jenkins is at best idiotic and at worst politically motivated, but is only good till the election, which both are standing for. Lot of moving parts to this.Report
{{not climbing down but temporarily refraining from throwing heavy objects from a great height}}
And thanks for the update about the impending update.Report