What's in the News? 2.0

[Kathadon]

Couldn't the entire thing be solved by slapping a unisex placard on the doors?

[Oniya]

Couldn't the entire thing be solved by slapping a unisex placard on the doors?

I mean, that would indeed be a sign that lets people know.  Simple, clear, and effective.  Put a red border on it to satisfy the people who want 'warnings', and you're done.

I was thinking one for urinals and one for stalls. (The whole urinal thing is mostly so that builders can cram more plumbing fixtures into the same space, which is why there's always more of a line at the 'ladies' room.)  Some people might be more comfortable standing than sitting.  Some people (cismale or trans - shy bladder is a thing) might be more comfortable with a door to close.

Although that might not be clear enough for some people.

[Skynet]

In spite of many more vaccinations, just under half of Republicans still refuse to get vaccinated.

[Kathadon]

The Post Office is running our domestic social media security surveillance. Not the FBI or the DHS.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/facial-recognition-fake-identities-and-digital-surveillance-tools-inside-the-post-offices-covert-internet-operations-program-214234762.html

I am not comforted or impressed by this.

[Tolvo]

I'd probably trust the Post Office with doing it more tbh.

[Fox Lokison]

Yeah, same

[Lexandria]

Not with DeJoy in charge I wouldn't.

[Kathadon]

My favorite part of the article.

Earlier this month, the Inspection Service gave separate closed-door briefings to Democrats and Republicans on the House Oversight Committee. According to sources familiar with both briefings, the Republicans were presented with a dramatic video of a mail truck engulfed in flames near Minneapolis following the killing of Floyd, as an explanation of why iCOP pivoted to monitoring potential violence at protests.

Republicans were told social media surveillance of protests was prompted by the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in response to Floyd’s death. That video was not part of the briefing for Democrats.

It is very much a case of folks who's job is monitoring social engineering are also kinda good at it.

[Oniya]

Joel Greenberg, a close associate of Matt Gaetz (one headline described him as Gaetz's 'wingman') has entered into a plea deal with respect to 6 of the 33 federal charges he's up against.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/17/politics/joel-greenberg-guilty-plea-court-gaetz/index.html

If you don't want to scroll through the entire plea deal PDF, a kind Imgurian has screen-capped the guilty pleas.  The wire-fraud bit (count 14) would be funny if it showed up in a Chevy Chase movie.  Jaw dropping in real life.

[Annaamarth]

I dunno, that stalking charge is pretty wild.

In the sense that a train full of people derailing is wild.  So ... awful.

[Oniya]

The whole thing is a trainwreck in slo-mo, and the screencaps are just the ones he's pleading guilty to. 

some of this is just slapstick, though.

Just linking the images and sharing a couple of quotes. 
https://i.imgur.com/IJRqCzR.jpg 'What is the maximum amount of crypto I can purchase via wire in a single day?'
https://i.imgur.com/gWv627g.jpg  Asked family member for 200K because he was in 'big trouble'.  Spent 200K on crypto.  Attempted to get another 200k from Tax Office that didn't happen. Asked family member for another 200k
https://i.imgur.com/TzyR93m.jpg (My favorite) Moved crypto mining equipment to a different Florida Tax Office where it caused a fire due to being daisy chained together and caused 98K in damages.

I'm remembering the end of Goldeneye where the server room has just been blown up by Bond's pen, and the hacker-guy gets hit with the halon.

[Haibane]

What a slimy, evil, sick person. Lock him up.

[Oniya]

What a slimy, evil, sick person. Lock him up.

They're getting him to rat out his buddies first.  Matt Gaetz is probably chewing Tums like they're potato-chips.

[Avalon29]

AP News managed to get  body camera video from the arrest of Ronald Greene in 2019. It's, I'm not going to lie, pretty horrifying. The fact that the Louisiana officials took so long to even investigate this and then hide the footage for so long is telling. I really don't have the words for it.

https://apnews.com/article/ronald-greene-death-louisiana-eca021d8a54ec73598dd72b269826f7a

[Kathadon]

Why would the Biden administration do this to El Salvador now? First El Salvadorians are a major component of the border crisis. Second their leader is already hop, skipping, and jumping down the path to become the first "millennial dictator." Pushing them into the arms of China on top of that is just dumb.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/under-u-pressure-graft-el-160952913.html

[Haibane]

AP News managed to get  body camera video from the arrest of Ronald Greene in 2019. It's, I'm not going to lie, pretty horrifying. The fact that the Louisiana officials took so long to even investigate this and then hide the footage for so long is telling. I really don't have the words for it.

https://apnews.com/article/ronald-greene-death-louisiana-eca021d8a54ec73598dd72b269826f7a

Bloody hell. That looks far, far worse than how George Floyd was treated... probably because no public were around and it was at night on a rural road. My god, people's heads have to roll for this, especially the cover up which makes it so much worse as that indicates they knew they'd done wrong.

How can you not demand better vetting of police applicants and much better training after watching this.

I came across this article by the BBC recently that gives relative training regimes for different police forces across the world and how much time is focussed on different procedures. As you might guess, it does not reflect well on the USA:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56834733

[Fox Lokison]

Easy, you do what's done for most other human rights violations - blame the victim for being hurt. That's how.

I do hope some change comes of this, though.

[gaggedLouise]

Truce in the Gaza conflict from 2 a.m. local time, according to Reuters - that's in around three hours from now I think. Both Israel and Hamas have accepted. Wonder how long it will last...

[Skynet]

Doctor in charge of organizing responses to COVID in Gaza was killed along with 12 other people in his extended family after Israeli airstrike hit the housing where he lived without warning.

[Haibane]

The Eurovision song contest needs to just stop. Like the Miss World competition it was maybe valid in the 70s but now is just... no longer remotely relevant to anything. Since the 90s it has been a political forum for nations to slap down other nations they disagreed with in areas well outside of popular music. Back then the Greeks giving the Turkish entry nil points and vice-versa was so predictable it was pathetic. Now, again the UK comes last with nil points and clearly this is nothing to do with the entries of talented musicians and songwriters at all, and merely a forum for nations to make a political statement about Brexit.

Its sad. Just stop it, children.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-57198762

[Sara Nilsson]

I don't think brexit has anything to do with it, it was a bad entry simple as that. Is the contest political at times.. yes. but seriously i do not think brexit had anything to do with this. It was a bad song, performed poorly.

[TheGlyphstone]

Australia and Israel both get to participate in Eurovision, despite not even being European countries. Did anyone ever take the contest seriously at all?

[Haibane]

No, the contest is a political farce and it has been well-known as such since the 1990s. Even a poor entry should get some points, not zero.

[TheGlyphstone]

I'm not sure what the issue is then. If it's nothing to care about, why get upset about a meaningless score?

[Kathadon]

While it may suck that the U.K. got zero points, I never knew I need Italian hard rock in my life until I heard Zitti E Buoni.