There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the First Amendment in this country. It does not protect you from being banned from Twitter or moderated on Facebook or even in a Discord. It’s all about the relationship between the individual and the government when it comes to terms of speech. No matter how loud your conspiracy-slinging uncle cries foul, it’s just not the issue he claims it is.
Jon Brodkin over at Ars has a story that much more to the point where the First Amendment lives:
When you hold one of the vax cards, you can see how people would immediately misunderstand it as something that’s meant to be kept on your person. Although too big for a wallet, they’re also too small to easily keep track of outside a wallet. “It’s absolutely the wrong size,” Alison Buttenheim, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing who has studied vaccine documentation, told me. She noted that the cards don’t match the dimensions of any other common vaccine documentation she knows of, including the yellow booklet that the WHO uses for international travelers, which is bigger. As we were talking, Buttenheim briefly misplaced her own folded-over vaccination card; it slid a little too far into one of her wallet’s compartments. (At this point, I should admit that I again lost mine in my apartment for most of a day after getting it out to examine for this article.)
Start a new blog or migrate an existing blog to Micro.blog with your own domain name. Micro.blog is the blog you will actually use. My thanks to Micro.blog for sponsoring 512 Pixels this week!
Every president gets to change the decor of the Oval Office, allowing them to personalize and put their own stamp on the room. I found it fascinating that apparently, President Biden requested the loan of a moon rock from NASA to put on display in the Oval Office.
According to NASA, this moon rock was collected on NASA’s last crewed voyage to the Moon, Apollo 17. This mission launched on December 7, 1972, and was crewed by Gene Cernan, Jack Schmitt, and Ronald Evans (who remained in the command module orbiting the Moon while the other two astronauts touched down on the surface). The sample was collected in the Taurus-Littrow Valley and is 3.9 billion years old.
John Hendrickson, writing at The Atlantic:
Maybe you’ve heard Biden talk about his boyhood stutter. A non-stutterer might not notice when he appears to get caught on words as an adult, because he usually maneuvers out of those moments quickly and expertly. But on other occasions, like that night in Detroit, Biden’s lingering stutter is hard to miss. He stutters— if slightly—on several sounds as we sit across from each other in his office. Before addressing the debate specifically, I mention what I’ve just heard. “I want to ask you, as, you know, a … stutterer to, uh, to a … stutterer. When you were … talking a couple minutes ago, it, it seemed to … my ear, my eye … did you have … trouble on s? Or on … m?”
The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.
His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect – and likely their intent – would be to provoke further violence. Following the certification of the election results by Congress, the priority for the whole country must now be to ensure that the remaining 13 days and the days after inauguration pass peacefully and in accordance with established democratic norms.
James R. Downing, president and CEO of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, writing at The Daily Memphian:
With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year, life across the country and around the world transformed nearly overnight. At St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, we moved quickly to protect the health and safety of our employees, families, and the most vulnerable members of our community – our patients.
During the past four months, we have created one of the safest harbors against COVID-19 in the nation. Protection measures include a first-of-its-kind COVID-19 testing program for employees, patients and families; campus zoning; reduced personnel and visitor access; and heightened infection-control procedures. We need your help to ensure that this haven remains as secure as possible.
Marcia Smith at Space Policy Online:
The Trump Campaign took down an ad today that included footage from the launch of Crew Dragon on Saturday and touting what it claimed was the President’s role in the program. It included video of the two NASA astronauts, both civil servants, as well as their wives and young children waving goodbye. One of the spouses, a former NASA astronaut, strongly objected to use of the video of her and her son for “political propaganda.”
Adi Robertson at The Verge, writing about Trump’s executive order concerning how Twitter, Facebook and others should moderate user content:
The order follows a feud with Twitter after it fact-checked one of Trump’s tweets, but it’s been brewing since at least 2019 when a social media “bias” rule was rumored but never revealed. An unfinished draft of the order leaked on Wednesday, full of nonsensical demands and pointless blustering, with many dismissing the rule as simply illegal.
I am glad that Zac Hall has undertaken this project, and am utterly disappointed in how many states aren’t going to take part of this program — including my home state of Tennessee.
If we lived in a country that actually worked, maybe we could have a federally-built and support app to take advantage of the work that Apple and Google are doing, but … uhhh…
I can’t stop laughing about this.