Facebook privacy challenge is complicated

In Its Own User Base, Facebook Confronts a Wide and Varied World

BY Bhaskar Chakravorti for Undark

For more cartoons by Mike Luckovich, CLICK HERE.

The LATEST SHOE has dropped on Facebook: Private data on 50 million users found its way to a shadowy research outfit, Global Science Research, and then on to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm launched by former White House adviser Steve Bannon.

Zuckerberg has come out with a mea culpa for this latest breach of digital trust. But his company’s globally dispersed user base presents a challenge. Every month, over 2 billion users worldwide log in to Facebook.

How does Zuckerberg convert his apology into action, while respecting the vastly differing circumstances that his network — the ultimate social network — connects? It can be difficult for global platforms like Facebook to consistently rebuild trust, when attitudes toward privacy vary so widely across the world. 

VIDEO: Boycott WJAR Channel 10

WJAR’s owner, Sinclair Broadcast Group, forces local TV Anchors to recite Trumpian propaganda

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams

To watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJbGCZuB0rM

Journalists and corporate watchdogs reacted with alarm when it was reported last month that the right-wing media giant Sinclair Broadcast Group was planning to force local news anchors to read from a script denouncing "fake" and "false" news stories in a distinctly Trumpian fashion.

But this horror was amplified after Deadspin compiled a video this weekend of what the company's "dangerous" proposal actually looks like in practice.

"The stuff of nightmares," is how one commentator described the end result, which shows news anchors "looking like hostages in proof-of-life videos" and reading directly from a Sinclair-produced "promotional campaign."

Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Sinclair employees and local reporters said they are deeply concerned about the right-wing ideological bent being foisted upon television stations across the United States by the massive media company.

"It sickens me the way this company is encroaching upon trusted news brands in rural markets," one reporter told CNN on the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation from Sinclair's management.

"I feel bad because they're seeing these people they've trusted for decades tell them things they know are essentially propaganda," added a local anchor.

Owned by a family of ultra-conservative millionaires, Sinclair currently operates nearly 200 news stations nationwide—and is pushing for even more control of local outlets, with help from the GOP-controlled FCC.

If Sinclair's acquisition of Tribune Media is ultimately approved, the company will own enough stations to reach an estimated 70 percent of American households, sparking concerns that pro-Trump propaganda could begin to dominate local news.

"I try everyday to do fair, local stories, some Trump-related, but it's always washed out by this stuff they do at a national level," said one local reporter.

Below is the full script dozens of local news anchors have been forced to read under threat of termination:

‘Due Process’ In The Age Of Trump

He Has a Problem with the Rule of Law, Unless It’s to Protect His ‘White Buddies’

By Terry H. Schwadron. DCReport New York Editor

At least, for now, Trump has himself a new lawyer.

“Due process” is taking a beating in Washington these days.

At the least, the legal term for going by the book to preserve individual civil rights is being badly banged around in political discourse—its meaning almost totally depends on who’s speaking and whose ox is being gored.

From hearings involving Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos testifying about cuts to the civil rights arm of her department to President Trump’s renewed call for death penalties for drug dealers without regard either to effectiveness, legalities or whom he is intending to execute in pursuit of an opioids pandemic, the legal system is taking it on the chin.

The various aspects of bullying Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions into dismissing Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, without public disclosure of the still-being-written Inspector General’s report that apparently lays out the justification show this disregard for appropriate legal review. 

Even the strange Stormy Daniels hush-money allegations are based essentially on a kind of what her lawyer calls “thuggishness” rather than any sense of due process or concern.

So too are the president’s summary dismissal of the Special Counsel investigation of Russian influence on the elections, and even Donald Trump’s weird fights with porn stars and other women help make a pattern of disregard for legal procedures and protections. 

The Trump administration is all for unannounced raids on undocumented workers, but does not pursue legal cases against employers; the Trump government does not want a vigorous consumer fraud division to challenge business abuses.

The president’s administration is viewing the legal process as arbitrary and important only if the law makes its political gains easier to achieve.

“Due process” came up directly during President Trump’s surprising meeting a few weeks ago with members of Congress about guns. 

The “surprise” was that until Trump started reworking his words and positions, the president was live on television, proudly proclaiming that as a nation, we should ignore individual “due process” to physically remove guns from individuals that he said the mental health system had identified as potentially dangerous shooters in schools.

Indeed, when Vice President Mike Pence attempted to smooth the words to put “due process” for the individual before government action, the president trampled on the idea, and said, no, court processes take too long, and the important thing is to protect schools, not “sickos.”

“Or, Mike,” he blurted. “Take the firearms first and then go to court…. Because a lot of times, by the time you go to court, it takes so long to go to court, to get the due process procedures. I like taking the guns early. Take the guns first, go through due process second. They have so many checks and balances that you can be mentally ill and it takes you six months before you can prohibit it,” the president said.

For the moment, let’s set the gun question aside, and concentrate on the due process side of things.

In recent memory, the same President Trump said repeatedly that we should be not leaping to bad conclusions about people like Roy S. Moore, the then-candidate for Senate from Alabama, who was facing challenges from now-grown women who said he had forced himself on them in years past. 

Indeed, Trump’s argument was that Moore deserved “due process” in a court before accepting the allegations of the several women who eventually stepped forward.

The same President Trump has endorsed the findings of House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who criticized the FBI and Department of Justice for filing for a warrant to surveil Trump associate Carter Page before the secret FISC investigative court. 

Nunes claimed in a well-publicized memo (later countered by his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.) that the use of an unsubstantiated dossier assembled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele paid for circuitously by a Democratic campaign lawyer, had abridged Page’s due process rights as a private citizen.

As a friend who has been studying the memos argues, you need probable cause of intelligence misconduct to get one of these secret FISA warrants. If the court relied solely or even mostly on information from the Steele dossier for the warrant, Page’s rights were abridged. 

Of course, that point is exactly what Nunes has argued, and that Democrats have countered. Unless the secret info is shared all around, we in the public will never know, unless it all comes out in the form of some eventual indictment through the special counsel’s operation.

In the recent dust-up over whether Rob Porter, the president’s secretary, should have been able to see classified documents without a security clearance—a clearance denied because Porter had been accused by two ex-wives and a girlfriend of physical domestic abuse—the president was clear in arguing that Porter should have undergone “due process” before being dismissed.

By contrast, immigrants facing deportation or the demands for a resignation by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn, should have proceeded immediately without worry about “due process” concerns, in the president’s views.

In other words, sometimes “due process” matters to this president when he finds it politically advantageous, and it does not matter if it involves people he sees as foes.

Dahlia Lithwick, who writes about legal matters for Slate.com, argues, “Donald Trump has an interesting history with the notion of ‘due process’.”

She argues that he uses the phrase to protect “white buddies” under the legal gun, and otherwise ignores it. “When Donald Trump misuses legal language to manipulate law and misrepresent truth, it’s easy to see how the rule of law means nothing to him. Funnily, when he uses legal language precisely and correctly to assert that he wants to use state authority to impair the rights of gun owners, he’s actually revealing a much more potent and frightening disdain for the rule of law and the Constitution. And honestly, no more due process is necessary to understand.”

This on-again, off-again use or disdain for “due process” has been with Trump for a long time. This is the same Trump who pardoned convicted former sheriff Joe Arpaio even before his trial ended, the same Trump who threatened to jail Hillary Clinton, the same Trump who argued for the death penalty for New York’s Central Park Five before they had even been tried—and exonerated years later. 

Trump recently criticized Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions for actually starting a new investigation of FBI handling of the Hillary Clinton matters—because he was turning to the department’s Inspector General rather than to a prosecutor. All of a sudden “due process” was not a concern, nor was fact-collection, investigation, or the rule of law, particularly.

Lithwick writes: “When it comes to ‘due process’, I don’t think those words mean what [Trump] thinks they mean…. What due process rights actually mean is that the state can’t take away someone’s ‘life, liberty or property’ without adequate legal safeguards and protections. That’s what Trump was belittling—the silly ‘checks and balances’ that get in the way of confiscating guns without notice or an opportunity to be heard. 

When the president talks about using the force of the state to seize property or incarcerate someone without any legal recourse, he is attacking a core pillar of legal and constitutional law. The government can’t take your stuff away just because the president feels like it…. ‘Due process’ to Trump, then, is mostly just something owed by newspapers, complaining women, or voters to his buddies.

Science explains the Trump effect

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow, CLICK HERE.

Donald Trump and the spirit of Easter

According to The Hill, Trump also seemed to forget the name of the building he sometimes works in (the White House) when he thanked 'all of the people who work so hard with Melania, everybody, to keep this incredible house, or building, or whatever you want to call it because there really is no name for it. It is special, and we keep it in tip-top shape. We call it sometimes ‘tippy-top’ shape. And it’s a great, great place.'”

You just can't make this stuff up. 

Public service jobs this summer

Lifeguard jobs at state parks and beaches, internships with Rep. Langevin
DEM Recruiting Lifeguards For State Beaches, Parks, And Campgrounds

This guy opted to go for both the lifeguard job AND the summer intern
gig with Rep. Langevin.

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) is seeking qualified lifeguards for the summer season at Rhode Island State beaches, parks and campgrounds. 

Full-time lifeguard positions are available at all State swimming areas, including Lincoln Woods, Fort Adams and Goddard Memorial State Parks, as well as at Misquamicut, Scarborough, and East Matunuck State Beaches. 

Hourly rates are competitive and range from $12.25 to $13.75, based on location and position level. Rhode Island residents, ages 16 and older, are encouraged to apply.

Americans slow down the clock of age

Humans may not be able to turn back time, but can slow it down

University of Southern California

Americans may be aging more slowly than they were two decades ago.

A new study by University of Southern California and Yale University researchers suggests that at least part of the gains in life expectancy over recent decades may be due to a change in the rate of biological aging, rather than simply keeping ailing people alive.

"This is the first evidence we have of delayed 'aging' among a national sample of Americans," said senior author Eileen M. Crimmins, University Professor and AARP Professor of Gerontology at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.

As noted in the study by Crimmins and lead author Morgan E. Levine, assistant professor at the Yale Center for Research on Aging: "A deceleration of the human aging process, whether accomplished through environment or biomedical intervention, would push the timing of aging-related disease and disability incidence closer to the end of life."

Less is better

Roadside mowing not necessary to combat invasive species

Todd McLeish

URI graduate student Sara Wigginton poses by a Rhode Island roadside
during her research on roadside mowing and invasive species.
(Photo courtesy of Sara Wigginton)

A University of Rhode Island graduate student studying the varying mowing practices used along Rhode Island roadsides has found that a reduction in mowing does not result in a proliferation of invasive species, as some researchers have previously suggested.

“There is a national trend to reduce the amount of mowing that occurs on rscioadsides because it’s expensive and takes a lot of effort,” said Sara Wigginton, a doctoral student from Glendale, Ky, who completed the research as part of her studies for a master’s degree. 

“But there have been worries that decreased mowing will make invasive species proliferate and get to the point where we can’t do anything about them.”

Her research, funded by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, was published this month in the journal Ecological Restoration.

15 Years After the Iraq Invasion, What Are the Costs?

We spend $32 million per hour on wars started during the Bush administration.

By Stephanie Savell

This March marked the 15th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

In 2003, President George W. Bush and his advisers based their case for war on the idea that Saddam Hussein, then dictator of Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction — weapons that have never been found. Nevertheless, all these years later, Bush’s “Global War on Terror” continues — in Iraq and in many other countries.

It’s a good time to reflect on what this war — the longest in U.S. history — has cost Americans and others around the world.

First, the economic costs: According to estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the war on terror has cost Americans a staggering $5.6 trillion since 2001, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.

VIDEO: Jimmy Carter still prays for Trump

But also still thinks he's a jerk

To watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQR5G3kvfNQ

Be careful with daffodils

Program to reunite people and their property wins award

YOUR MONEY Initiative Wins National Recognition

State Treasurer Seth Magaziner's YOUR MONEY program, which automatically reunites Rhode Islanders with their unclaimed property, received recognition from The Unclaimed Property Professionals Organization (UPPO), a national nonprofit.

"We created YOUR MONEY so that Rhode Islanders can receive their missing money automatically," said Treasurer Magaziner. 

High carb science

URI oceanography student uses corn syrup to study Earth’s evolution

Christopher Kincaid, a professor at the Graduate School of
Oceanography, and Loes van Dam, a graduate student,
stand next to a corn-syrup filled apparatus to conduct
experiments tectonic plates. Photo by Randy Osga.

Corn syrup gets a bad rap from nutritionists for adding on the pounds, but University of Rhode Island researchers are using the gooey stuff to help solve Earth’s evolution.

Loes van Dam, a student in the Graduate School of Oceanography, is studying how molten rock flows beneath ocean ridges to get a better idea of how Earth evolved geologically.

Molten rock is hard to come by these days so van Dam is relying on corn syrup—lots of it—to simulate these flows. 

Scientist and syrup are collaborating thanks to the newly-built Ridge Zone Replicator, or RZR, on URI’s Bay Campus.

“Corn syrup behaves similarly to molten rock,” says van Dam. 

“Its flow in laboratory minutes resembles molten rock’s flow over millions of years in the real world.”

Donald Trump on the meaning of Easter.

More Pollution And Nonsense From Trump’s EPA

Easing Auto Mileage and Emission Standards Is Bad Policy

By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport New York Editor

Climbing New York City’s subway stairs multiple times a day, it seems easy to forget that I lived for 17 years in Southern California, where everyone drove, even down the block, and where it was difficult to find an old car on the road.

Southern California, in particular, seemed to reflect a constant love affair with cars, a place where no one thinks twice about jumping in the car to drive hundreds of miles, a place where you don’t mind if the wind actually does blow through your hair (although in truth, I have little).

It comes to mind because about one of every five or six new cars is sold in California, a place that long ago got tired of polluted air and decided to do something about it through tougher emission standards for new cars and higher mileage requirements. 

Those improvements outpaced the federal standards for new vehicle sales, known as CAFE standards (Corporate Average Fuel Economy).

But what made them important was the auto manufacturers could not afford to ignore the more stringent California requirements if they wanted to sell cars.   In fact, at least 12 other states decided to follow the California example.

Now comes word that the Trump administration, through Scott Pruitt as director of the Environmental Protection Agency, is preparing proposals to roll back those CAFE standards, weakening greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy rules for cars.