Cop Car's Beat

Week in Review - 9/25/2020

Monday, 9/21/2020: Having decided to get down to the task of making more/better face coverings for Hunky Husband and me, I was disgusted with myself for having forgotten my lack of elastic for the ear pieces. Gah! I bought three yards of silk for the double inner layer of fabric, but failed to order the elastic. In case there is someone who missed the announcement: Walmart is trying to compete with Amazon as a "go to" online merchandise ordering website. However, there are items for which they have taken time to establish ordering capability. Such was the case with the elastic. It has, since, become available and I have ordered several yards of white and several of black. It is to be delivered during the first week of October. [Added note: The wild bird seed that was ordered at the same time was delivered on the 22nd.]

       

I still seek a source of two types of light bulbs - and - sanitizing hand wipes.

Tuesday, 9/22/2020: The Wild Turkeys and I are having a contest. They try to see how much of the mulch around our new trees in back they can remove, and how quickly, while I attempt to rake the mulch back into place during my daily outdoor chores. The photo, below, was taken in July; but, it shows some of the turkeys and points out the mulch that they love to scatter.

Wednesday, 9/23/2020: As I stepped outside to gather in this morning's newspaper, there were a couple of bat-like flyers tumbling over our front yard. I could not imagine that we had bats as large as these two appeared to be and, by the time I had taken another step, I realized that there were a number of these tumbling flyers. Aha! It is September. The Common Nighthawks are migrating south with their more-or-less wheeling movement. As happened, it was early enough that it was nearly dark outside, and it was foggy; thus, the birds were flying a bit lower than normally they would have been observed to do. Their tumbling flight was to catch insects around the street light that is near our yard, fueling their long flight to South America. I did not/could not have captured their aerobatic flight; but, YouTube came to my rescue. I recommend full screen for viewing this video (under 2 minutes).

 

 

Several times since moving into this house, I've observed migrations of nighthawks - following the same track each year as far as I can tell. Otherwise, seeing nighthawks in our little town is so rare that I cannot, reliably, recall any instances. I do recall (1940s and early 1950s) watching nighthawks dart about in the even smaller town in which my great-grandparents lived. They lived on a relatively busy street, across from a small hotel. As I recall, some of the nighthawks nested atop that hotel - on its flat roof. Their in-flight squawks are unmistakable.

 

 

Did I mention it was foggy? Thirty minutes later, as I left for my walk, I found that the "perfectly dry" outdoor surfaces were then "perfectly wet". During my walk, within 0.4 mile of the house, I experienced a "Seattle rain". The rest of my walk was dry.

 

I continued my fall cleanup in the yard by yanking out another tomato vine (this is the 5th one, so far, this year.) You can see how huge the plant was in the photo, below. It was late producing ripe tomatoes and sparse in production. It's fruit were tasty, however.

 

The fall yard cleanup continued with my raking cottonwood tree leaves and sticks - for the ninth day in a row. It has been only a couple of hours since I raked and, in the next photo, it is obvious that tomorrow will be another raking day. Unfortunately, I failed to snap a photo "before". The splice of two photos to provide a wide-angle look isn't perfect; but, close enough for government work!

 

 

Thursday, 9/24/2020:

On this, my late mother's 106th birthday, News for Nerds led me to a report at The Guardian, concerning the effectivity of impermeable face shields in protecting against aerosol distribution of the novel coronavirus.

 

Face shields ineffective at trapping aerosols, says Japanese supercomputer

Simulation using world’s fastest supercomputer casts doubt on effectiveness in preventing spread of coronavirus

Obviously, my dentist is ahead of the curve since she insists that all staff working on patients wear a surgical mask under the transparent face shield. I would also point out that dentists have used the transparent face shields "forever". I had always understood it to guard them against droplets of spray.

A large garden spider is having her last fling of summer. It's to be in the low 90s (as high temperature of the day) over the weekend, then into the 60s during next week. It was in the mid 60s when I spotted this beauty, below. I never had the opportunity to show her back in a photo - only her front and side.

 

 

 

Friday, 9/25/2020: One of the items at News for Nerds, this morning, concerns helping people become addicted to Facebook. I understand that, just because one uses FB does not imply that they are addicted; but, there are frequently reports in the traditional media that might lead one to conclude that a non-trivial number of users are, indeed, addicted.

Former Facebook Manager: 'We Took a Page From Big Tobacco's Playbook' (arstechnica.com) 86

Posted by BeauHD on Thursday September 24, 2020 @11:30PM from the engaging-analogies dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Speaking to Congress today, the former Facebook manager first tasked with making the company make money did not mince words about his role. He told lawmakers that the company "took a page from Big Tobacco's playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset" and arguing that his former employer has been hugely detrimental to society. His analogy continued: "Tobacco companies initially just sought to make nicotine more potent. But eventually that wasn't enough to grow the business as fast as they wanted. And so they added sugar and menthol to cigarettes so you could hold the smoke in your lungs for longer periods. At Facebook, we added status updates, photo tagging, and likes, which made status and reputation primary and laid the groundwork for a teenage mental health crisis. Allowing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news to flourish were like Big Tobacco's bronchodilators, which allowed the cigarette smoke to cover more surface area of the lungs. But that incendiary content alone wasn't enough. To continue to grow the user base and in particular, the amount of time and attention users would surrender to Facebook, they needed more."

Tim Kendall, who served as director of monetization for Facebook from 2006 through 2010, spoke to Congress today as part of a House Commerce subcommittee hearing examining how social media platforms contribute to the mainstreaming of extremist and radicalizing content. "The social media services that I and others have built over the past 15 years have served to tear people apart with alarming speed and intensity," Kendall said in his opening testimony (PDF). "At the very least, we have eroded our collective understanding -- at worst, I fear we are pushing ourselves to the brink of a civil war." As director of monetization, he added, "We sought to mine as much attention as humanly possible... We took a page form Big Tobacco's playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset."

More from News for Nerds - Who is being heedless?

This item is no longer as timely as usually are my postings from News for Nerds . It got postponed/lost when overcome by other happenings; but, I still think that spying activities in Germany and the US are of interest.

How a Chinese Agent Used LinkedIn to 'Lure' American Targets (bbc.com) 53

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday July 26, 2020 @10:01PM from the network-effects dept.

Today the BBC told the story of Jun Wei Yeo, "an ambitious and freshly enrolled Singaporean PhD student" who was gradually recruited by Chinese intelligence.

Yeo "would end up using the professional networking website LinkedIn, a fake consulting company and cover as a curious academic to lure in American targets." Some of the targets that Yeo found by trawling through LinkedIn were commissioned to write reports for his "consultancy", which had the same name as an already prominent firm. These were then sent to his Chinese contacts. One of the individuals he contacted worked on the U.S. Air Force's F-35 fighter jet programme and admitted he had money problems. Another was a U.S. army officer assigned to the Pentagon, who was paid at least $2,000 (£1,500) to write a report on how the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan would impact China... According to the court documents, his handlers advised him to ask targets if they "were dissatisfied with work" or "were having financial troubles"...

In 2018, Yeo also posted fake online job ads for his consulting company. He told investigators he received more than 400 CVs with 90% of them coming from "US military and government personnel with security clearances". Some were passed to his Chinese handlers... Dickson Yeo does not appear to have got as far with his contacts as his handlers would have liked. But in November 2019, he travelled to the U.S. with instructions to turn the army officer into a "permanent conduit of information", his signed statement says.

He was arrested before he could ask.
The 39-year-old now faces up to 10 years in prison for being an "illegal agent of a foreign power" — but the article notes he was "aided by an invisible ally — the LinkedIn algorithm.

"Each time Yeo looked at someone's profile it would suggest a new slate of contacts with similar experience that he might be interested in..."

More from Slashdot.org - Resistance is futile

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Ailing Scientist Hopes to Become the World's First Cyborg (ottawacitizen.com) 31

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday August 22, 2020 @10:34AM from the we-can-rebuild-him dept.

The Telegraph reports: Peter Scott-Morgan stands, wide-eyed and tearful. "Good. Grief." he says quietly. "I was unprepared for the emotion... It's quite extraordinary. It really is." Using an exoskeleton, Scott-Morgan is experiencing what it is like to stand for the first time in months after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2017, the same incurable condition that killed scientist Stephen Hawking.

The remarkable step, however, is just the first in the 62-year-old's bold journey to control his disease by becoming the world's first, full-fledged cyborg. "Think of it as a science experiment," he laughs. "This is cyborg territory, and I intend to be a human guinea pig to see just how far we can turn science fiction into reality." Eventually, Scott-Morgan wants the exoskeleton to encase his upper body, giving him superhuman strength and the ability to tower above "flesh and blood" humans. A mind-reading computer will be plugged directly into his brain, expressing his thoughts almost instantly. Meanwhile, his paralyzed face will be replaced by a hyper-realistic avatar that will move in time with a speech synthesizer...

Scott-Morgan says he isn't deteriorating but becoming a new version of himself — one that will eventually pave the way for a breed of humans that can augment their capabilities using technology... Instead of answering a question by laboriously typing out individual letters using a gaze tracker, in a similar way to Hawking, he will rely on the AI to provide a full and instant response. Eventually, the machine will speak for itself using phrases it has learned from Scott-Morgan — crossing a controversial line in what it means to be human....

Someday, the scientist hopes he can exist completely outside his physical body, with his personality, traits and knowledge downloaded on to a machine.

 

 

No horsepower there

 

A commenter at Julie Zickefoose's blog sent her readers to FaceBook to see how a few hundred Amish men moved a barn. Not being on FB, I went to YouTube where I found the above video.

There is an Amish community about an hour's drive north of Wichita (which puts them 1.5 hours' drive from us) where we occasionally (read that as "every several years") dine at their Carriage Crossing Restaurant & Bakery (with gift shop) and/or go to Yoder Furniture Company. Amish are known for their workmanship and the wares at the gift and furniture shops never fail to measure up.

More from Slashdot.org - How ignorant can we get?

'Murder Hornet' Meme Inspires Stupid Americans To Kill Pollinators En Masse (latimes.com) 159

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday May 10, 2020 @12:34PM from the bug-hunt dept.

An anonymous reader writes: You really can't make this stuff up, but Americans across the country, out of fear of "murder hornets," have begun killing all kinds of bees en masse. According to Doug Yanega, senior museum scientist for the Department of Entomology at UC Riverside, a national panic has led to the needless slaughter of native wasps and bees, beneficial insects whose populations are already threatened...

"Folks in China, Korea and Japan have lived side by side with these hornets for hundreds of years, and it has not caused the collapse of human society there. My colleagues in Japan, China and Korea are just rolling their eyes in disbelief at what kind of snowflakes we are..."

"I don't want to downplay this — they are logistically dangerous insects. But having people in Tennessee worry about this is just ridiculous. The only people who should be bothering experts with concerns about wasp IDs are living in the northwest quadrant of Washington (state). And really, right now, nobody else in the country should even be thinking about this stuff," he continued.
"The facts are, experts said, two dead hornets were found in Washington last December, a lone Canadian live nest was found and wiped out last September and no live hornets have yet been seen this year," reports the Associated Press.

And when they spoke to the Washington Agriculture Department entomologist working on the state's response, he issued an additional correction for all the journalists covering this story. "They are not 'murder hornets.' "They are just hornets."

"Heroism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder." CC

One answer is proferred.

It is a given, to me, that I am not the only one to wonder how beneficial is the decrease in air pollution brought on by restrictions due to CORVID-19. Slashdot.org has one person's preliminary evaluation. I don't know François Gemenne, but I find the reported thoughts interesting, to say the least.

Will Coronavirus Lockdowns Bring a Drop in Air-Pollution Related Deaths? (forbes.com) 16

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday March 15, 2020 @04:19PM from the sparing-the-air dept.

 

The World Health Organization believes air pollution kills seven million people each year.

But will this year be different? Forbes reports: The global lockdown inspired by the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has shuttered factories and reduced travel, slashing lethal pollution including the greenhouse gases that are heating the climate. The lockdown may save more lives from pollution reduction than are threatened by the virus itself, said François Gemenne, director of The Hugo Observatory, which studies the interactions between environmental changes, human migration, and politics.

"Strangely enough, I think the death toll of the coronavirus at the end of the day might be positive, if you consider the deaths from atmospheric pollution," said Gemenne, citing, for example, the 48,000 people who die annually in France because of atmospheric pollution and the more than one million in China... "More than likely the number of lives that would be spared because of these confinement measures would be higher than the number of lives that would be lost because of the pandemic," Gemenne said in an appearance on France 24's The Debate.

The discrepancy in how we react to these divergent threats should give us pause, Gemenne said, to consider why it is that we respond so strongly to one with less lethality and so weakly to one with more.

Gemenne has a chance of being correct IFF (if, and only if) production and travel do not, as I expect to happen, go into overdrive when the COVID-19 outbreak is over.

International Days

It's Liz's fault. She inspired me to do it. She was brazen enough to wish us a happy International Women's Day ...and she even mentioned other days that are celebrated. How dare she! (That's the pointy finger being wagged, below.)

At any rate, Liz inspired me to check into other "International Days". It turns out that there are a bunch. This file (Download International Days) is from a UN website.

The International Days that occur in March are listed as being the following:

1 March

Zero Discrimination Day  [UNAIDS]

3 March

World Wildlife Day  (A/RES/68/205)

8 March

International Women's Day

20 March

International Day of Happiness  (A/RES/66/281)

French Language Day (French)

21 March

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination  (A/RES/2142 (XXI))

World Poetry Day (UNESCO 30 C/Resolution 29)

International Day of Nowruz  (A/RES/64/253)

World Down Syndrome Day  (A/RES/66/149) 

International Day of Forests  (A/RES/67/200)

22 March

World Water Day  (A/RES/47/193)

23 March

World Meteorological Day  [WMO] (WMO/EC-XII/Res.6)

24 March

World Tuberculosis Day  [WHO]  

International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims  (A/RES/65/196)

25 March

International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade  (A/RES/62/122)

International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members

 

A tale of the season

This afternoon, I went to the grocery store to pick up a few items - mostly fresh fruits and vegetables. Not only was there a great deal of traffic on the streets, but the grocery store was crowded and bustling. As I placed the last of my items onto the conveyor belt to the cashier, I suddenly realized that my purse was still at home. This is an annoying, but not unusual, occurrence with me. During my years of graduate school, working for a living, and volunteering, I didn't need to carry a  purse: everything fit into my brief case or office bag. Admittedly, on the rare occasion when I toted a purse, I was apt to leave it in a store or restaurant; but, usually, if I forgot about my purse, it was at home.

I would not have minded running home to get the money; but, it would have involved my placing all of the items back into the shopping cart, replacing items on the shelves, going home and returning, doing the gathering again, and unloading the basket again - which, I was sure, the people behind me in line would appreciate ever-so-much. While I was asking the checker if he had a counter check with which I might pay, the woman in front of me turned back to the checker and said, "Put it on my bill." I asked the woman to please write her name and address on my grocery list, thanked her profusely, and promised to get a check into the mail pronto. She had just saved me and several other people an inconvenience - without really knowing that she would ever be repaid.

When I arrived home, it occurred to me that it would be silly to make my benefactor await delivery of a check. I put together two sets of cash - one set for the amount that I owed the nice woman (Pennie) and an equal amount for her to have on hand the next time she sees me (or someone like me) forlorn in a grocery checkout line. I stuck them into a greeting card and delivered it to her house, leaving before she had a chance to open the card - but - not before we had the chance to exchange a warm hug!

They say that no good turn goes unpunished. Pennie has picked herself up a "Secret Sister" for 2020!

 

 

Bogie knows more about this than do I because...

she has experience from within a corporate "returns" structure.

Following is an item from my old favorite, Slashdot.org.

Returned Online Purchases Often Sent To Landfill (www.cbc.ca) 90

Posted by msmash on Monday December 16, 2019 @11:10AM from the closer-look dept.

 

How is the boom in online shopping influencing how much good product just goes to waste? Adria Vasil, an environmental journalist and managing editor of Corporate Knights magazine, answers: It's pretty staggering. The increase of the volume of returns has exploded by 95 per cent over the last five years. And in Canada alone, we are returning $46 billion worth of goods every year. And you think, OK, what's the big deal? Well, the problem is that -- especially when we're returning online -- a lot of these products end up going in landfills.
Why? You're returning something that's new and fine?
It actually costs a lot of companies more money to put somebody on the product, to visually eyeball it and say, is this up to standard, is it up to code? Is this going to get us sued? Did somebody tamper with this box in some way? And is this returnable? And if it's clothing, it has to be re-pressed and put back in a nice packaging. And for a lot of companies, it's just not worth it. So they will literally just incinerate it, or send it to the dumpster.
Do you have an example of something that we might all be doing that could lead to this kind of a waste?
Have you ever bought any clothes online? Further reading: The Painful, Costly Journey of Returned Goods -- and How You End Up Purchasing Some of Them Again.

 

I could not have formulated my reasoning as succinctly as was done in the above posting, but I've acted as though I could by nearly never returning anything that I purchased online. Most of my clothing (other than shoes which are exceedingly difficult to find to fit my feet) are purchased new, online, or used from a charity thrift shop (usually Goodwill or Disabled American Veterans shops). About one-third of the time, my purchases don't fit - either because I ordered the wrong size (through idiocy or lack of attention) or the size didn't run true (I use the guidance provided by the merchant in determining sizes.) Just now, I have two shirts that, despite my going through the exercise of following the merchant's delving into my figure's configuration and providing a recommended size, did not come close to fitting. A third shirt, the same item number but different color/pattern, fit snuggly in the bust; but, since I wear those shirts over a knit tank top (as a "great shirt") and do not actually button them, came close enough to a proper fit that I will wear it.

 

from Lands' End

 (Please note that the model doesn't look nearly as good in the shirt as would I!)

 

What will I do with those shirts? I'm not quite sure, yet; but, the answer will most probably NOT be to return them. In the past 30 years, I've used several options: 1) while working, I might offer item(s) to a co-working friend OR leave the item in a sack in a women's restroom in the factory clearly marked, "FREE - Cop Car"; 2) in retirement, I might use those two methods at the agency with which I volunteered or at the local senior center that I frequent; 3) I might give the clothing to a charity that provides working clothes to financially struggling women - especially for them to have/wear when interviewing for a job; or 4) I might donate the clothing to the previously mentioned thrift stores.

 

Why do I do that, rather than return clothing items? The biggest reason is that I am too lazy to go to the bother of making the return; but, I also know from conversation with Bogie that the process followed by the merchant when receiving a return is expensive to them.

 

How about non-clothing items? In general, they are either low-value, in which case I use the same methodologies, or higher-value, in which case I might return item(s) to the merchant. Right off hand, the only high-value item I can recall returning was a chair that was purchased in Wichita and proved defective (as did the replacement chair!) I gave up on that particular model chair and eventually purchased a similar (but different brand) chair from a different merchant in Wichita.

 

In other words, my methods of disposing of new merchandise is nearly the same as my methods for disposing of clutter. I always believe that someone can make good use of things that I do not want! BTW: Family would get first offer on clothing if anyone was the appropriate size. Half of the women in our family are much smaller than my current size; half of the women are larger. Once, I was able to pass along a couple of pairs of pants; but, only because inexplicably I had ordered size extra small - which might not have fit me even in the days when I weighed 110 pounds!