All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

German glassmaker holds key to COVID-19 vaccine supply

As the world waits anxiously for a COVID-19 vaccine, a German company is doing its bit to ensure that the shot reaches you with its potency intact. Ashutosh Pandey reports from its Mainz headquarters.

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As the world waits anxiously for a COVID-19 vaccine, a German company is doing its bit to ensure that the shot reaches you with its potency intact. Ashutosh Pandey reports from its Mainz headquarters.

No, a Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Didn’t Partner With a Pro-Communist Chinese Group – The New York Times

On Thursday, an article from The Daily Signal, the blog of the conservative Heritage Foundation, claimed to show a damning link between an organization started by a Black Lives Matter co-founder, Alicia Garza, and a nonprofit with ties to the Chinese government. The article went viral.

But the article conflated two nonprofits with the same name, and it made incorrect claims about the links between Ms. Garza’s organization and the Chinese government.

Computing Pioneers Endorse Biden, Citing Immigration – The New York Times

Two dozen award-winning computer scientists, in a rebuke of President Trump’s immigration policies, said on Friday that they were endorsing Joseph R. Biden Jr. in November’s presidential election.

The scientists, including John Hennessy, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, are all winners of the Turing Award, which is often called the Nobel Prize of computing.

In a group interview, four of the scientists said the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration rules were a threat to computer research in the United States and could do long-term damage to the tech industry, which for decades has been one of the country’s economic engines.

“The most brilliant people in the world want to come here and be grad students, but now they are being discouraged from coming here, and many are going elsewhere,” said one of the scientists who organized the endorsement, David Patterson, a Google distinguished engineer and former professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Facebook Tried to Limit QAnon. It Failed. – The New York Times

a militia movement on Facebook that called for armed conflict on the streets of U.S. cities has gained thousands of new followers. A QAnon Facebook group has also added hundreds of new followers while questioning common-sense pandemic medical practices, like wearing a mask in public and staying at home while sick. And a campaign that claimed to raise awareness of human trafficking has steered hundreds of thousands of people to conspiracy theory groups and pages on the social network. Perhaps the most jarring part? At times, Facebook’s own recommendation engine — the algorithm that surfaces content for people on the site — has pushed users toward the very groups that were discussing QAnon conspiracies, according to research conducted by The New York Times, despite assurances from the company that that would not happen. None of this was supposed to take place under new Facebook rules targeting QAnon and other extremist movements.  The Silicon Valley company’s inability to quash extremist content, despite frequent flags from concerned users, is now renewing questions about the limits of its policing and whether it will be locked in an endless fight with QAnon and other groups that see it as a key battleground in their online war.

Mike Pence’s Former Senior Aide Wants Everyone to Vote For Joe Biden

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On Wednesday, Olivia Troye, Vice President Mike Pence’s top aide on the White House’s ill-fated and much-maligned coronavirus task force, came out publicly against Donald Trump, and specifically his handling of the covid-19 pandemic. She’s going to be voting for Joe Biden, and she wants other Republicans to join her.

Read more…

School and Campus Workers Say: Not Until It’s Safe

21 adults in masks outside a school. Together they hold "CAUTION" tape. Handmade signs say "100% remote start," "no mas muertes," "ready or not," "we demand safe schools," "no more martyrs for the DOE #Remote until it's safe" and "people got sick in this buidling."

September 18, 2020 / Alexandra Bradbury

The push to reopen schools and campuses is hitting educators with a brutal fact: your employer will place you in deadly danger for the sake of the economy.

You knew this already if you worked in a meatpacking plant, an Amazon warehouse, or a construction site. But until 2020 you didn’t think a school or university job might kill you.