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3 votes
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‘Fairbnb’ wants to be the unproblematic alternative to Airbnb
8 votes -
What creative projects are you working on? (May 2019 edition)
we now return to you a regular schedule since now it's on sync with the months. here you can share/provide updates on some of the projects that you're working on. they can be of any kind--digital,...
we now return to you a regular schedule since now it's on sync with the months. here you can share/provide updates on some of the projects that you're working on. they can be of any kind--digital, physical, work related, passion project, whatever. pretty straightforward, i think.
november thread • february thread • march thread • april thread
27 votes -
This Week in Election Night, 2020 (Week 8)
week eight graces us with a particularly large edition of This Week in Election Night, 2020. a lot of candidates have been in the news, for good reasons and bad, and there's a bunch of stuff to go...
week eight graces us with a particularly large edition of This Week in Election Night, 2020. a lot of candidates have been in the news, for good reasons and bad, and there's a bunch of stuff to go through. no opinion pieces this week, since i didn't end up compiling any particularly good ones and this is going to be pretty long already.
the usual note: common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread. if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.
Week 1 thread • Week 2 thread • Week 3 thread • Week 4 thread • Week 5 thread • Week 6 thread • Week 7 thread
News
General Stuff
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from NBC News: As Biden predicts a shorter race, rivals dig in for long fight. we begin with a prediction by biden, and disputes by everybody else, basically. this could honestly go either way, and it's really contingent on what happens on super tuesday in 2020. so many states vote on that day (13 states, falling on march 3) and they represent such a large share of delegates (almost half of them in total) that if anybody takes super tuesday decisively they're pretty much a lock for being the favorite at the convention--however, if super tuesday isn't decisive, it could very well come down to the wire.
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from the Guardian: California: why the cash cow state will take center stage in the 2020 race. in that vein, the biggest crown jewel of the super tuesday states will by far be california, having something obscene like 500 delegates. any candidate which decisively carries california is setting themselves up well for the convention (and incidentally in this respect harris has an inherent advantage since it's her homestate), so expect candidates to really target this state as we get closer to primary day and try and build a ground game there for the future.
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from Fast Company: Black women are the key to victory in 2020. Stop ignoring them. i said in the last thread that this was unlikely to go away, and unsurprisingly it remains an issue. see also last week's Women of color want 2020 Democrats to work for their vote and week 6's Black female voters to Democrats: 'You won't win the White House without us'.
Joe Biden
- from Reuters: Exclusive: Presidential hopeful Biden looking for ‘middle ground’ climate policy. we begin on a high note, with joe biden deciding... well... this: "Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden is crafting a climate change policy he hopes will appeal to both environmentalists and the blue-collar voters who elected Donald Trump, according to two sources, carving out a middle ground approach that will likely face heavy resistance from green activists." as far as details, this appears to be the most we have so far:
The backbone of the policy will likely include the United States re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement and preserving U.S. regulations on emissions and vehicle fuel efficiency that Trump has sought to undo...
The second source, a former energy department official advising Biden’s campaign who asked not to be named, said the policy could also be supportive of nuclear energy and fossil fuel options like natural gas and carbon capture technology, which limit emissions from coal plants and other industrial facilities.- from VICE: A Biden Presidency Would Be a 'Death Sentence,' Climate Activists Warn. to put it lightly, biden's plan is getting fucking obliterated by climate activists. activists are unsurprisingly worried that biden, by trying to seek a middle ground, is basically just going to bring us into hellworld--a likely prospect, honestly, just going off what we have. VICE also expounds on just how unhelpful and non-specific biden's climate policy is so far with this detail:
Biden’s campaign website contains only three sentences about the greatest crisis ever to face humankind, and these are located midway down a secondary page. “We must turbocharge our efforts to address climate change and ensure that every American has access to clean drinking water, clean air, and an environment free from pollutants,” the site reads.
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from Mother Jones: The Planet Is Heading to Catastrophe and Joe Biden Apparently Wants to Take the “Middle Ground”. Mother Jones also has some other reporting which expounds on the amazing fact that biden somehow was the first person to really introduce climate change into the political arena, and yet his policy on it is borderline regressive nowadays. not the best look, although i doubt it'll change votes
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from POLITICO: Bernie Sanders: Biden’s reported climate plan ‘will doom future generations’. if you thought this criticism stopped at voters though, you'd be wrong, because sanders is just as unimpressed with this plan, and i'd imagine he is not the only candidate like this. this is probably about as strong of a rebuke as you'll ever see this early on: “There is no ‘middle ground’ when it comes to climate policy,” Sanders tweeted Friday. “If we don't commit to fully transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels, we will doom future generations.”
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from POLITICO: Florida takes shape as Joe Biden’s firewall. on a lighter note for biden, he is--for now anyways--the solid frontrunning candidate. florida in particular looks like a key state for him to win, which would be good news for him since it'll give him an advantage in the later half of the primaries (it will, in 2020, be one of the last large states to vote on account of not being a super tuesday state). given its demography, if he's on track to lose in this state, don't count on him realistically winning the primary.
Bernie Sanders
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from Roll Call: Bernie 2020 becomes first unionized presidential campaign in history. bernie sanders made history earlier this year by having his staff unionize (tildes discussion), and this seems to have finally been completely formalized this week. will this be a forebearer of a future presidential standard? i dunno, but it doesn't look like anybody else is going to pick up the idea this cycle, at least as things currently are, so probably not.
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from Pacific Standard: Bernie Sanders Says His Campaign's New Sexual Misconduct Policy Is the 'Gold Standard'. this was an issue in sanders's last presidential campaign (and it's also increasingly a campaign issue in general), so unsurprisingly sanders has rolled out a sexual misconduct policy this time around. this article mostly focuses on dos and don'ts, i should note; the original reporting here was done by the guardian o'er yonder and you can find the actual document for the campaign here.
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[LONGFORM] How Can Dems Win Back Rural America? Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Agree on the Answer. this is both a sanders and a warren piece, focusing mostly on their commonalities in agricultural policy. this has been a theme for the both of them early on; sanders has a very comprehensive set of proposals; of course so does warren. this article also goes into the general background of the issues they're trying to tackle.
Elizabeth Warren
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[LONGFORM] from TIME: 'I Have a Plan for That.' Elizabeth Warren Is Betting That Americans Are Ready for Her Big Ideas. i don't have a whole lot to say here. we have a tildes discussion on this piece, as it was posted earlier this week, so i would encourage you to post there if you have thoughts on this one like i did.
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from POLITICO: Trump backers applaud Warren in heart of MAGA country. warren's been hustling around a bit in the past week and change, even stopping over in rural west virginia on friday to talk about the opioid crisis and other socioeconomic factors which have been massively fucking over the region. pitstops like these presumably aren't going to be swinging things blue in west virginia again anytime soon, but as the article notes: "...Warren was here to try to send a message that she’s serious about tackling the problems of remote communities like this one." also, in case you're curious, you can find her policy on the opioid crisis here.
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from Reuters: Democrat Warren confronts 2020 electability question head-on in Ohio. she was also over in ohio this weekend, where she barnstormed on similar issues of tackling income inequality and the likes of that.
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from Slate: Warren Has Earned Her Wonk Reputation. this article from Slate is mostly an overview of the many, many policies that elizabeth warren has proposed just over the course of the campaign so far. it's a lot! the article does note that currently she seems to lack detailed policies on many of the big issues prioritized by democratic voters, but we're still pretty early in the campaign so i assume she'll roll those out in the future.
Kamala Harris
- from NBC News: Kamala Harris blows past Democratic rivals in fundraising in communities of color. kamala harris has been relatively quiet on the media for the past bit, but she's making headlines this week for her fundraising. she seems to be the significant frontrunner among minority communities as far as that goes. NBC finds that:
Harris pulled in at least $1 million from ZIP codes where most residents are not white, about two-and-a-half times the total of former Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas, who was second to Harris, raising more than $408,000 from the same set of neighborhoods, the analysis showed. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was third, about $1,400 behind O'Rourke, and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., was fourth, with at least $391,000.
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from CNN: Kamala Harris eyes black voters, women in campaign tour to win over Midwest. aside from fundraising, harris spend most of last week swinging through the midwest barnstorming in minority communities; her current angle seems to mostly run through women and minorities, and while she's doing relatively poorly in polling, people do seem to have interest in her campaign. CNN's most recent polling found "...Harris at 5% but leading the field at 23% among those polled when asked which candidate they'd most like to hear more about."
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from Reuters: Kamala Harris stood up to big banks, with mixed results for consumers in crisis. one of harris's signature points on which she's been campaigning is, in Reuters's words, "the $20 billion relief settlement she secured as California attorney general for homeowners hit hard by the foreclosure crisis"; this article proceeds to pour a bit of cold water on how this played out in practice, though, as harris's actions didn't prevent significant damage to many people's livelihoods.
Amy Klobuchar
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from The Guardian: 'Iowa slingshot': Amy Klobuchar plots midwest route to victory in 2020. klobuchar has also been pretty quiet (and been polling quite badly), but she's also gotten some attention this week. as this article talks about, her path to the presidency has always been basically the same: win over midwestern voters which democrats have been collapsing with since obama cleaned house in 2008. she has the electoral history to back this up: despite relatively close races up-ballot being pretty regular in minnesota since 2000, klobuchar has regularly destroyed her republican opponents statewide and won otherwise-republican-voting white people.
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from Politico: Klobuchar says she isn't worried that older white men are leading the 2020 race. she's also pretty optimistic about her chances. she notes that her campaign is still in the early stages and that despite the dominance of white men, there's still harris and warren in the top-eight, which suggests that she too could have capital as her campaign continues.
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from the Huffington Post: Amy Klobuchar On Female Presidential Candidates: ‘Discount Them At Your Own Peril’. and of course, she notes that discounting female candidates is something to be done at your own peril--female candidates have been particularly successful in recent electoral cycles.
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from Reuters: Klobuchar pitches pragmatism as she seeks to carve identity in Democratic presidential field. klobuchar's main ideological approach so far has been to be the "pragmatic" female candidate, advocating for a more incremental tackling of the issues instead of sweeping progressivism as advocated by people like warren. no signs of this changing, although she does openly consider herself to be a progressive in the same vein as people like warren and sanders.
Pete Buttigieg
- from POLITICO: Mayor Pete blindsides Kamala Harris in California. california has been a state targeted by just about every candidate so far, but the one with probably the biggest impact relative to how they poll has been buttigieg, who is putting a lot of people who might otherwise be donating to or endorsing harris in an interesting position with where they're going to place their support. LA mayor eric garcetti, who appeared at an event with buttigieg on thursday, might summarize this best:
“We have a lot of people who are very candidate curious,” Garcetti notes. “Kamala has a ton of love up and down the state, but people might say, ‘That doesn’t mean I’m not going to shop around … Maybe I’ll keep her as my senator and go with somebody else as president.’”
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from CBS News: Could Pete Buttigieg make history in LGBTQ-friendly Nevada?. buttigieg is also, obviously, hoping to make history with his candidacy, and he's been making overtures toward LGBT organizations accordingly. on saturday he was a headliner at the human rights campaign gala in nevada--nevada it should also be noted has a pretty large LGBT population, which is likely to help him significantly in the state.
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from NBC News: Buttigieg is the only top 2020 candidate not offering staffers health care yet. however, buttigieg hasn't had all good headlines this week. NBC news highlighted his campaign's failure to offer healthcare to staffers, an ignominious feat for him and something which stands in contrast to the rhetoric he's espoused on the campaign trail so far. NBC reports:
Buttigieg’s campaign currently has 49 workers, but has been staffing up rapidly, and plans to hit the 50 mark imminently.
“Crossing this threshold will put us in a position to get a good multi-state group plan, which we are currently negotiating,” said Buttigieg press secretary Chris Meagher.
In the meantime, the campaign is giving salaried staffers a $400 monthly stipend to buy health care themselves. That’s just enough for a single adult with no children to cover a “silver plan” through the Obamacare exchanges, according to national cost data analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation.Everybody Else
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from Buzzfeed News: Beto O’Rourke Has Hired The “Unsung Hero” Of Obama’s First Campaign. beto o'rourke scalped jeff berman, one of obama's most important staffers, which seems like pretty good news for him given that his campaign has been a bit of a mess with staffing in the past few weeks. berman was integral to obama's first presidential campaign, and was also on clinton's staff in 2016.
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[LONGFORM] from The Guardian: The astonishing disappearing act of Beto O’Rourke. of course, o'rourke is still in a great deal of trouble, having slid back into middling popularity with the democratic base, and this piece by The Guardian goes into detail both on his past, his current, and what he's hoping will be his future.
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from the Huffington Post: Kirsten Gillibrand Vows To Only Nominate Judges Who Uphold Roe v. Wade. despite only polling at like, 2%, gillibrand is still pushing the resistance angle. in contrast to donald, she is pledging to only nominate pro-choice judges.
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from CBS News: Cory Booker unveils "Justice Academy" to recruit, teach volunteers. cory booker meanwhile is kicking up his campaign organizing, setting up training camps for volunteers and all that fun stuff. the purpose of these: "Volunteers ... will learn community organizing techniques to engage supporters around a wide array of Booker's main campaign issues, including criminal justice reform, gun violence prevention, and health care."
anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there.
11 votes -
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The Tribes of Babel - Motherjane (2010)
4 votes -
Matthew Revert/Vanessa Rossetto - Everyone Needs A Plan
4 votes -
Megagame designer discusses how to design backwards
6 votes -
What happened when I bought a house with solar panels
10 votes -
First nesting behavior of released ʻalalā, almost two years post-release
6 votes -
Broken Bread S1E1 "Transformation" [~27 Minutes]
3 votes -
Austria's Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache has resigned a day after secret video footage mired him in a corruption scandal.
16 votes -
Why physicians are prescribing time in nature
6 votes -
Bok choy and bread fruit: How traditional crops fit a food secure future
7 votes -
Conservatism’s Austrian wunderkind is getting swallowed by the far-right
12 votes -
Steel Pulse: Mass Manipulation review – welcome return of reggae giants
5 votes -
Gunmakers are profiting from toy replicas that can get kids killed
6 votes -
Two kinds of freedom
8 votes -
Viruses to stop cholera infections – the viral enemy of deadly bacteria could be humanity’s friend
5 votes -
DIY 'Coke' cola recipe
6 votes -
Timor-Leste aims to become world's first plastics-neutral country
6 votes -
Tyreke Evans dismissed from league for violating anti-drug program
4 votes -
Citrus farmers facing deadly bacteria turn to antibiotics, alarming health officials
10 votes -
Schools are using software to help pick who gets in. What could go wrong?
7 votes -
Why Plymouth has a population of zero, despite being the de jure capital of Montserrat
6 votes -
The Need for a FreeDesktop Dark Style Preference
7 votes -
Oh He Dead "Lonely Sometimes" - 2019 NPR Tiny Desk Contest Submission
5 votes -
Mills signs bill to make Maine the first state to ban Native American school mascots
8 votes -
What cultural misunderstandings have you experienced?
I work for a school in China and they are going to have an art festival soon. Today they were setting up some of those pictures where you can stick your face in it and take a photo. They did this...
I work for a school in China and they are going to have an art festival soon. Today they were setting up some of those pictures where you can stick your face in it and take a photo. They did this to The Last Supper and it’s a very big picture set up right in front of the main gate for all the children to play with. They cut out Jesus’ face and most of his disciples’. All of the expats that work for my school were outraged and told the administration to take it down right away. At first the administration said they would just glue Jesus’ face back on. But this just made people angrier, so they promised to take it down in the morning when they could get some workers to do it.
So what cultural misunderstandings have you experienced? How did you deal with it?
28 votes -
An interview with Game of Thrones' supervising sound editor about how bird sounds are chosen for the show
5 votes -
Maine Senate endorses bill to elect president by popular vote
20 votes -
How American bread became great again: A MEL Magazine conversation with baking guru Peter Reinhart
4 votes -
Psychiatry, racism, and the birth of ‘Sesame Street’
7 votes -
The University of Maryland waited eighteen days to inform students of a virus on campus. That decision left vulnerable students like Olivia Paregol in the dark
14 votes -
~all?
Could we have a meta-group which is a union of all the available (sub)groups? The purpose of it being having a way to view what the front page looks like without having to log out. IDK what is the...
Could we have a meta-group which is a union of all the available (sub)groups? The purpose of it being having a way to view what the front page looks like without having to log out. IDK what is the general trend but I personally don't follow all groups (e.g. I am not interested in anime, and I try to minimise my intake of politics, so I am not subbed to ~anime and ~news), but sometimes I am curious about what the part I don't usually see is like.
I should admit that viewing the frontpage in a private window is almost there (with the caveat of having to copy links around if I want to comment, which is not much trouble frankly), so this would rather be polishing than some very useful new feature.
17 votes -
Salesforce accidentally gave "modify all" (full permissions) to all users in organizations using the Pardot marketing tool
11 votes -
The subtle economics of private World of Warcraft servers: Anarchy, order and who gets the loot
5 votes -
Britain's equivalent to Tutankhamun found in Southend-on-Sea
7 votes -
The history of the Black radical group MOVE and its infamous bombing by police
9 votes -
Tyler, the Creator - IGOR
7 votes -
Minecraft Earth goes a step beyond Pokémon Go to cover the world in blocks
13 votes -
How one man makes a living making the Sims kill each other
6 votes -
Grumpy Cat, dead at 7
25 votes -
Does the term "climate change" need a makeover? Some think so — here's why.
4 votes -
The world’s oldest vegetarian restaurant
6 votes -
Is there an app for this? Help me fix my terrible security
I thought I've been looking for a good password manager, but I'm not sure that's what I really need. Here's my use case: I currently have a Google Sheet in my Google Drive that contains all my...
I thought I've been looking for a good password manager, but I'm not sure that's what I really need.
Here's my use case:
- I currently have a Google Sheet in my Google Drive that contains all my ID/passwords for everything
- In addition I have personal info in there like SSNs and Credit Cards #s
- I want to be able to have instant access to all of the info from my ancient iPhone and my laptop
Things I've tried:
- I messed around with Last Pass a bit and found it couldn't actually fill in the passwords in the apps I was using so I'd have to manually type them, which is a deal breaker for me.
- I've been using FireFox's LockBox and it's a bit better on that front but doesn't actually remember what the password goes to the app so I have to look it up each time, but it does populate them in the appropriate fields.
- Password-protecting a Google Sheet is apparently impossible but was a solution I was after for some time (Excel and Libre can do this..so +1 for software)
Other info:
- I am currently using an iPhone 5 but I plan to "upgrade" to a Samsung Galaxy S7 sometime in the near future. Perhaps that's why the functionality of these password managers seem so inconvenient for me? Would they work better on a modern phone?
What I'm after is perhaps two solutions:
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A password manager that crosses the bridge from desktop FireFox to the apps on my phone, and fills in the password for me automatically. That would allow me to feel like I could move to more random passwords for things.
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Some encrypted, password-protected site/app that could store plain text notes for sensitive things like SSNs and Credit Card #s that would stay in sync between a laptop and a smartphone.
Go ahead and mock me for my terrible security and ancient phone. I deserve it! But when you're done, I'd appreciate some guidance.
EDIT: Sounds like first priority should be to update my phone. Then there appear to be plenty of options to try. Thanks everyone so much!
18 votes -
Data shows “Game of Thrones” is taking a historic critical nosedive
20 votes -
Why is English spelling so damn weird?
8 votes -
Connecticut Senate gives final approval to $15 minimum wage; Gov. Ned Lamont pledges to sign bill
8 votes -
Asylum seekers are being “disappeared” in private Louisiana jails
11 votes -
Tetris 99 rules
I finally got around to sinking some decent time into it over the last couple of days. I'm addicted. It's fun to go up against so many competitors and watch as people get knocked out of the...
I finally got around to sinking some decent time into it over the last couple of days. I'm addicted. It's fun to go up against so many competitors and watch as people get knocked out of the competition over time. Not to mention, it's frickin' Tetris so of course it's great! I'm really looking forward to the special event that Nintendo's running this weekend. You can earn an old-school Gameboy theme!
4 votes