Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Facebook pulled 48 Trump ads saying ‘your vote has not been counted’ – Business Insider

  • Facebook removed 48 ads from the Trump campaign for violating their voter interference policy, a spokesperson told Business Insider.
  • They included the phrase “Your vote has not been counted.”
  • The ads were aimed at people who had not yet voted, but would likely have also been seen by people who had voted. Some 399,000 people saw them.

Source: Facebook pulled 48 Trump ads saying ‘your vote has not been counted’ – Business Insider

92-Year-Old Songwriter Tom Lehrer Releases All His Lyrics Into the Public Domain – Slashdot

Songwriter Tom Lehrer became a star in the 1950s and ’60s writing and performing satirical songs that skewered just about everything… Lehrer, 92, announced Tuesday via his website that he’s effectively putting everything he ever wrote into the public domain. That means his lyrics and sheet music are available for anyone to use or perform, without having to pay royalties or deal with lawyers… [Most of Lehrer’s music “will be added gradually later with further disclaimers,” according to Lehrer’s web site.]

Lehrer’s giving up those royalties. But in exchange, he’s trying to give his work a new lease on life, said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia. “Lehrer, in this case, is basically saying, ‘Hey everybody, come revisit my material, come do with it what you want,'” he said… That could mean we’ll be hearing more of Tom Lehrer’s work, said Jennifer Jenkins, who runs the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. “There is empirical research showing that when material enters the public domain, it actually gets used more,” she said. Source: 92-Year-Old Songwriter Tom Lehrer Releases All His Lyrics Into the Public Domain – Slashdot

Coronavirus: Merkel in fresh plea to stay at home amid record infection tally | News | DW | 24.10.2020

Merkel wearing a mask as she sits down for a Cabinet meeting (Markus Schreiber/dpa/picture-alliance) German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned citizens to stay at home and reduce all unnecessary contact and travel after the number of infections hit a new record high. The country’s death toll also passed 10,000 on Saturday. Source: Coronavirus: Merkel in fresh plea to stay at home amid record infection tally | News | DW | 24.10.2020

Long Covid: ‘I thought I’d get over this no problem’ – BBC News (UK)

Logan family

The 39-year-old mother of two felt dizzy and lost her sense of taste and smell.

“When I got the positive test, I thought: ‘Okay, this is maybe how it’s going to be for the next few days and then I’ll pick up.’

“What happened to me was that, by day 14, whenever you usually expect to feel better, I actually was a lot worse.”

Five weeks later, however, and Rebecca was still not feeling better.

Now, more than six months later, she still suffers from breathlessness, “brain fog” and has to take daily naps.

Rebecca believes she has so-called long Covid – a term being used to describe a range of symptoms identified in people months after they have had the virus.

 

Source: Long Covid: ‘I thought I’d get over this no problem’ – BBC News

Voter Suppression Efforts Could Be Backfiring on Republicans – Ari Berman Oct 24, 2020 ‹ Just Sayin’ ‹ Reader — WordPress.com

The numbers in Harris County have been astonishing. A record 128,000 people voted on the first day of early voting, up from 68,000 in 2016 and a higher turnout than the entire state of Georgia on the same day. Turnout has barely dropped since then. On Friday, Harris County surpassed 1 million early votes, exceeding its total from 2016 with a week of early voting still left, and nearly equaling the 1.3 million people who voted overall in 2016.

Hollins, the first Black clerk in Harris County history and the youngest at 34, credits a backlash against voter suppression for the unexpectedly high turnout. “Efforts to suppress votes in Texas and across the South have very often been done in secret, in smoke-filled rooms, in ways the public can’t fully digest,” he says. “But a voter—a senior or a person with a disability—can feel when the governor says they have to drive 100 miles round-trip to drop off their mail ballot in person. When it’s thrown in your face like it has been this election season, voters are responding by saying, ‘I’ll show you,’ and coming out in record numbers to have their voices heard.”

Source: Voter Suppression Efforts Could Be Backfiring on Republicans – Ari Berman Oct 24, 2020 ‹ Just Sayin’ ‹ Reader — WordPress.com

How the Racism Baked Into Technology Hurts Teens | Just Sayin’

Last month, Twitter users uncovered a disturbing example of bias on the platform: An image-detection algorithm designed to optimize photo previews was cropping out Black faces in favor of white ones. Twitter apologized for this botched algorithm, but the bug remains.

Acts of technological racism might not always be so blatant, but they are largely unavoidable. Black defendants are more likely to be unfairly sentencedor labeled as future re-offenders, not just by judges, but also by a sentencing algorithm advertised in part as a remedy to human biases. Predictive models methodically deny ailing Black and Hispanic patients’ access to treatments that are regularly distributed to less sick white patients. Examples like these abound.

These sorts of systematic, inequality-perpetuating errors in predictive technologies are commonly known as “algorithmic bias.” They are, in short, the technological manifestations of America’s anti-Black zeitgeist. They are also the focus of my doctoral research exploring the influence of machine learning and AI on identity development. Sustained, frequent exposure to biases in automated technologies undoubtedly shape the way we see ourselves and our understanding of how the world values us. And they don’t affect people of all ages equally.

Source: How the Racism Baked Into Technology Hurts Teens | Just Sayin’

CENSORED NEWS: Unanswered Questions: Johns Hopkins fails to respond to vital questions — 40 years of vaccine experiments on Navajos and Apaches

Censored News is a service to grassroots Indigenous Peoples engaged in resistance and upholding human rights.

Source: CENSORED NEWS: Unanswered Questions: Johns Hopkins fails to respond to vital questions — 40 years of vaccine experiments on Navajos and Apaches