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Is Donald Trump the electoral behemoth his congressional allies think he is? – politicalbetting.com

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  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    If that is true - and CNN aren't above sexing these things up - it's breathtaking. We really are in the Fuhrerbunker after the likes of Speer have f***ed off.
    Don't forget that Wednesday wasn't about a protest. It was intended to keep Trump IN POWER. After a couple of day of listening to the legal people trying to persuade him to do things to reduce his legal jeopardy, he is now back to thinking how he can still be President (probably been talking to Flynn/Powell/Trump jnr etc again) I wouldn't be surprised if he has been convinced that there is still a route - but this time it involves removing any pretence of being 'peaceful'.

    We can only hope that the wilder speculation about the leadership of the DoD definitely isn't true. And i wouldn't be wanting to be involved in security in the State Capitals over the next few days.
    I don't see how a public inauguration can safely go ahead.

    I tend to agree. It's far more important that it happens, for constitutional reasons, than how it happens. Once it's done, it puts 3 Democrats at the front of the line of Presidential Succession.
    I'm wondering if the Presidential Succession should be looked at?

    The way America is polarising, if the GOP win the House in the midterms I could picture some extreme Q/GOPers wanting to 'take out' the POTUS and VEEP to 'win back' the Presidency that way.

    I would suggest perhaps the Presidential succession should go through the Presidents own Cabinet before it reverts back to the House.
    Cabinet isn’t elected
    Presidential succession USED to go via Cabinet, but that was changed. Something that Alexander Hague, that great constitutional scholar did NOT realize when he made his infamous "I am in charge" statement to the press just after Ronald Reagan was shot.

    THAT was the scariest moment of the whole business; I remember seeing him spout this nonsense on TV. General reaction was, who IS this guy? Some even thought he was part of a coup.
    Haig was wrong on a huge number of levels there. Although the Secretary of State is the senior cabinet minister under the Constitution, in that particular situation where the President is incapacitated and the Vice President is absent the person in charge should be whoever holds the relevant ministerial brief - in this case, James Watt as Secretary of the Interior, or, if a military threat was perceived, Caspar Weinberger as Secretary of Defense. Haig, however, claimed that he was in charge and because those two thought a row at that moment would be counterproductive they let him think he was, which included giving the infamous ‘I am in command here’ press briefing. During this briefing, against Haig’s wishes, Weinberger raised the military threat level just as Haig was announcing it would not be raised, probably for no better reason than to show he could. Haig apparently shouted at him a lot for that, only to be told to fuck off.

    It was always more about Haig’s ego than about the reality of the situationL but equally, it should be noted the cabinet did work pretty well prior to H’s return in what could have been a very serious crisis.
    You are wrong about a number of things:

    > the top member of the Cabinet is NOT in charge in absence of Pres or VP, that may be UK practice but NOT in US.

    > in USA, the Secretary of the Interior is NOT the equivalent of Home Secretary or European Interior ministers. Over here, the Department of the Interior is responsible for US public lands, for example national parks & monuments.

    Haig had ZERO authority to do and say what he did. Which is why he got canned ASAP after Ronald Reagan's recovery.

    You are right about the Secretary of the interior but I had already realised my mistake and changed it. (Now of course it would be the Secretary of Homeland Security, but bizarrely until 2001 that was split between about five different departments.)

    I’m interested in your other assertion. Who do you think is in charge in those circumstances, and why do you think that? The top member of the cabinet is of course technically the Secretary of State, and as they are not in charge except of course in matters pertaining to foreign affairs it may be that we are actually agreeing.
    Think the basic error you are making, is thinking that the US cabinet is THE top executive authority, as is the UK cabinet in your country. Which is NOT the case. Here, the cabinet are simply heads of individual executive departments, with VERY limited powers otherwise, indeed virtually none as a body EXCEPT for role in invoking the 25th amendment.

    So the Secretary of Homeland security does NOT have any powers OTHER than those granted directly by law (limited) AND what the President (or in case of 25th Acting President) directly authorizes.

    Note that in 1799 during presidency of John Adams a cabinet cabal TRIED to exercise the kind of authority you describe (if I'm understanding you correctly) BUT were shot down. And that was IT.

    Further note that after Woodrow Wilson's stroke(s) in 1919, his cabinet did NOT behave that way, and never even tried. Instead, for all intents and purpose Mrs Wilson became a quasi-acting President, though she certainly tried to adhere VERY closely to her husband's wishes as she understood them.

    Which is relevant to 1982, when it turned out that Nancy Reagan had a LOT more say-so than Al Haig. Something that he perhaps came to understand when she helped drive a stake through his political heart and permanently ended his career as a mover and shaker.
    Which is the point I was actually making. Because cabinet ministers in the US have no powers outside their departments, it would be the heads of the relevant departments that would lead the response and therefore in effect be in charge. Sorry if that was not clear to you.

    (Incidentally Haig, although grossly exceeding his authority and ending up looking like a complete twat, wasn’t sacked. He stayed in office long enough to bugger up the US response to the Falklands war as well.)
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625

    Tres said:

    HYUFD said:

    Alistair said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Dershowitz knows better than that (or at least he used to before he became a political hack).
    Sure, he can make the case that this wasn’t incitement that directly resulted in an attack on Congress, but there is a stronger case that that is exactly what it was, and if so, there is absolutely no 1st Amendment defence.
    Here’s a question.

    If/when Trump is put on trial for any of his manifold recent crimes, would he stick with Giuliani as his attorney or hire someone vaguely competent?

    Assuming, of course, anyone vaguely competent would be willing to appear for him.
    I find one of the many disappointments from the Trump Presidency is how comprehensively Giuliano trashed his reputation.
    He was trashing it LONG before he latched onto Trumpsky for fun AND profit (that being predominate motive).

    Note Rudi's ridiculous presidential "campaign" back in 2008. AND the fact that lacked the intestinal fortitude (balls in plain English) to run against Hillary Clinton for US Senator in 2000.

    His success as mayor AND his role at 9/11 were WAY over-blown & overrated. A fact that more and more and more people came to realize over the past two decades.

    Interesting, recently saw an old re-run of "Murder She Wrote" staring Jessica Lansbury as a character modeled after Agatha Christie & Miss Marple on hit US TV show of 1980s & 90s.

    Anyway, this episode (from 80s I think) featured a character who portrayed a New York district attorney type who was Italian (or at least Italian-looking), obssesed with his public image (always looking in the mirror) AND more help than hindrance to the investigation at hand - but was there to take the credit for solving the case at the end.

    Am convinced this character was a direct parody of Rudolph Guiliani.
    Giuliani slashed crime in New York city and made it a livable city again and was a key rallying point on 9/11 whatever his over loyalty to Trump now
    Crime was falling before he became mayor.
    Not as fast as under his Mayoralty.

    His reorganisation of the New York Police Department was key and his broken windows strategy was crucial in cutting crime from the most minor up and he increased the size of NYPD by 12,000 officers during his term.
    Yet amazingly crime fell in all major US cities over the same period. Implying the identity of the Major wasn't the decisive factor.
    This looks on the face of it, like you just can't accept giving Giuliani the credit for anything, because he supports Trump. See also, Trump isn't a successful businessman, Trump isn't good at getting votes etc. See also, people getting slated for expressing the opinion that Hitler was good at making speeches, building autobahns etc. It seems quite a simple-minded position to me to have to obliterate any area where the focus of your ire might have been successful or shown merit. Obviously you're not the only one, there's a lot of it about.
    Guiliani did go after the Mob in NY, in a big way - he definitely did lead that charge, which was personally dangerous.

    It is one of the ironies of what he has become, that a part of that was rooting out corruption in the NYPD. Who were, in part, working for/with the Mob.

    He also, as Mayor, pushed through and kept the corruption down, in a lot of projects that renewed much of the public spaces in NY.

    I think it fair to say that Guiliani is an example of someone who has ended dragged down in the whirlpool of the madness centred on Donald Trump. And he *chose* to head for the centre of it. Others did not - see the Lincoln Project etc.

  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Like Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing . . .
    More pertinently he said that “you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows “.

    Which a study in 2007 found had been quoted by more lawyers and judges than any other line of poetry ever.
    They probably delivered it more in key than the man himself too.
    Ouch. The song is so good a certain John Lennon expressed reservations about whether he could ever match it.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    Actually if the aim (and result) is to prevent the children reading it in school then yes it is. You are dancing on the head of a pin and it is pretty shameful.

    I look forward to seeing you try - and fail - to defend the other fuckwits in the article who think Shakespeare and Hawthorn should be banned from schools as well.
    I doubt the curriculum includes the Ice Twins either, did they ban SeanT?
    Never heard of this Hawthorn chap. Nathaniel Hawthorne on the other hand ... And as for Herman Melville, he wrote a whole chapter about a whale's foreskin. Not sure if that triggers the woke these days.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited January 2021
    Meanwhile, UK’s own coup seems to have fizzled out and achieved nothing.

    Seems Gove/Cummings barely had a plan beyond moving fast and breaking things.

    https://twitter.com/ciaranmartinoxf/status/1348350024867057665?s=21

    https://twitter.com/ciaranmartinoxf/status/1348350050112516098?s=21
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758
    DavidL said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    My son was given an A in his Higher English last year (admittedly without the inconvenience of actually taking an exam) without ever having studied a Shakespeare play. I mean, why bother? What the hell is the point of the subject?
    There isn’t any. FFS, it’s such a pointless subject even Richard Burgon has a Cambridge degree in it.
  • kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Dershowitz knows better than that (or at least he used to before he became a political hack).
    Sure, he can make the case that this wasn’t incitement that directly resulted in an attack on Congress, but there is a stronger case that that is exactly what it was, and if so, there is absolutely no 1st Amendment defence.
    Here’s a question.

    If/when Trump is put on trial for any of his manifold recent crimes, would he stick with Giuliani as his attorney or hire someone vaguely competent?

    Assuming, of course, anyone vaguely competent would be willing to appear for him.
    I find one of the many disappointments from the Trump Presidency is how comprehensively Giuliano trashed his reputation.
    He was trashing it LONG before he latched onto Trumpsky for fun AND profit (that being predominate motive).

    Note Rudi's ridiculous presidential "campaign" back in 2008. AND the fact that lacked the intestinal fortitude (balls in plain English) to run against Hillary Clinton for US Senator in 2000.

    His success as mayor AND his role at 9/11 were WAY over-blown & overrated. A fact that more and more and more people came to realize over the past two decades.

    Interesting, recently saw an old re-run of "Murder She Wrote" staring Jessica Lansbury as a character modeled after Agatha Christie & Miss Marple on hit US TV show of 1980s & 90s.

    Anyway, this episode (from 80s I think) featured a character who portrayed a New York district attorney type who was Italian (or at least Italian-looking), obssesed with his public image (always looking in the mirror) AND more help than hindrance to the investigation at hand - but was there to take the credit for solving the case at the end.

    Am convinced this character was a direct parody of Rudolph Guiliani.
    Giuliani slashed crime in New York city and made it a livable city again and was a key rallying point on 9/11 whatever his over loyalty to Trump now
    Yes, 9/11 WAS Rudi's shining moment. But his success as anti-crime fighter had more to do with demographics than policy. Note that he put the police department in hands of a toady whose subsequent career was distinguished by a felony conviction.

    Any acclaim Rudi got from being mayor is long past. He himself has ensured that it will be scarcely remembered in a decade or two. Whereas his "Four Season" press conference and etc. will live forever in infamy in American history.
    while Rudy may have spoken at the rally on Wednesday he did not take any personal part in the attack on the Capitol and condemned it strongly.
    Given what he reportedly said at the rally, the second half of the sentence seems completely meaningless. If I helped to whip people up into a rage and direct them at a target, I'm not sure covering my arse with a condemnation really matters. At the least for his professional legal standards.
    Defending Rudi is a GOOD thing for Trumpsky-supporters & apologists to do.

    BECAUSE it highlights fact that they are trying to defend the indefensible. Keep it up!

    I mean, saying that Giuliani "condemned" the riot that he himself helped incite, is NOT what you'd call persuasive.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited January 2021

    Scott_xP said:
    I think that would be a massive mistake. They should act on this soon, before people get used to it as being one of those things that sometimes happen.
    I don't have much time for Clyburn. There's also the interesting coincidence if him having taken millions from the pharmaceutical industry and being the key person to derail Sanders' health plan-based candidacy.
  • TresTres Posts: 2,163
    DavidL said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    My son was given an A in his Higher English last year (admittedly without the inconvenience of actually taking an exam) without ever having studied a Shakespeare play. I mean, why bother? What the hell is the point of the subject?
    Would be have been expelled if he was caught with a copy of Romeo & Juliet is his locker?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    HYUFD said:

    Alistair said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Dershowitz knows better than that (or at least he used to before he became a political hack).
    Sure, he can make the case that this wasn’t incitement that directly resulted in an attack on Congress, but there is a stronger case that that is exactly what it was, and if so, there is absolutely no 1st Amendment defence.
    Here’s a question.

    If/when Trump is put on trial for any of his manifold recent crimes, would he stick with Giuliani as his attorney or hire someone vaguely competent?

    Assuming, of course, anyone vaguely competent would be willing to appear for him.
    I find one of the many disappointments from the Trump Presidency is how comprehensively Giuliano trashed his reputation.
    He was trashing it LONG before he latched onto Trumpsky for fun AND profit (that being predominate motive).

    Note Rudi's ridiculous presidential "campaign" back in 2008. AND the fact that lacked the intestinal fortitude (balls in plain English) to run against Hillary Clinton for US Senator in 2000.

    His success as mayor AND his role at 9/11 were WAY over-blown & overrated. A fact that more and more and more people came to realize over the past two decades.

    Interesting, recently saw an old re-run of "Murder She Wrote" staring Jessica Lansbury as a character modeled after Agatha Christie & Miss Marple on hit US TV show of 1980s & 90s.

    Anyway, this episode (from 80s I think) featured a character who portrayed a New York district attorney type who was Italian (or at least Italian-looking), obssesed with his public image (always looking in the mirror) AND more help than hindrance to the investigation at hand - but was there to take the credit for solving the case at the end.

    Am convinced this character was a direct parody of Rudolph Guiliani.
    Giuliani slashed crime in New York city and made it a livable city again and was a key rallying point on 9/11 whatever his over loyalty to Trump now
    Crime was falling before he became mayor.
    Not as fast as under his Mayoralty.

    His reorganisation of the New York Police Department was key and his broken windows strategy was crucial in cutting crime from the most minor up and he increased the size of NYPD by 12,000 officers during his term.
    Yet amazingly crime fell in all major US cities over the same period. Implying the identity of the Major wasn't the decisive factor.
    This looks on the face of it, like you just can't accept giving Giuliani the credit for anything, because he supports Trump. See also, Trump isn't a successful businessman, Trump isn't good at getting votes etc. See also, people getting slated for expressing the opinion that Hitler was good at making speeches, building autobahns etc. It seems quite a simple-minded position to me to have to obliterate any area where the focus of your ire might have been successful or shown merit. Obviously you're not the only one, there's a lot of it about.
    Guess you didn't read HYFOOLs link either then, specifically the section that says 'Six Factors that Played Little or No Role in the Crime Decline'
    The section that says 'Four Factors that Explain the Decline in Crime' you seem to have curiously omitted.

    That included increases in police numbers, Giuliani hired more police and more people being put in prison, as evidenced by Giuliani's broken windows strategy.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Dershowitz knows better than that (or at least he used to before he became a political hack).
    Sure, he can make the case that this wasn’t incitement that directly resulted in an attack on Congress, but there is a stronger case that that is exactly what it was, and if so, there is absolutely no 1st Amendment defence.
    Here’s a question.

    If/when Trump is put on trial for any of his manifold recent crimes, would he stick with Giuliani as his attorney or hire someone vaguely competent?

    Assuming, of course, anyone vaguely competent would be willing to appear for him.
    I find one of the many disappointments from the Trump Presidency is how comprehensively Giuliano trashed his reputation.
    He was trashing it LONG before he latched onto Trumpsky for fun AND profit (that being predominate motive).

    Note Rudi's ridiculous presidential "campaign" back in 2008. AND the fact that lacked the intestinal fortitude (balls in plain English) to run against Hillary Clinton for US Senator in 2000.

    His success as mayor AND his role at 9/11 were WAY over-blown & overrated. A fact that more and more and more people came to realize over the past two decades.

    Interesting, recently saw an old re-run of "Murder She Wrote" staring Jessica Lansbury as a character modeled after Agatha Christie & Miss Marple on hit US TV show of 1980s & 90s.

    Anyway, this episode (from 80s I think) featured a character who portrayed a New York district attorney type who was Italian (or at least Italian-looking), obssesed with his public image (always looking in the mirror) AND more help than hindrance to the investigation at hand - but was there to take the credit for solving the case at the end.

    Am convinced this character was a direct parody of Rudolph Guiliani.
    Giuliani slashed crime in New York city and made it a livable city again and was a key rallying point on 9/11 whatever his over loyalty to Trump now
    Yes, 9/11 WAS Rudi's shining moment. But his success as anti-crime fighter had more to do with demographics than policy. Note that he put the police department in hands of a toady whose subsequent career was distinguished by a felony conviction.

    Any acclaim Rudi got from being mayor is long past. He himself has ensured that it will be scarcely remembered in a decade or two. Whereas his "Four Season" press conference and etc. will live forever in infamy in American history.
    Violent crime fell 56% under Giuliani's Mayoralty in New York city, murder by 2/3 and robbery fell by 67%.
    Correlation is not causation. Crime fell sharply across the US in that period.
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712

    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Dershowitz knows better than that (or at least he used to before he became a political hack).
    Sure, he can make the case that this wasn’t incitement that directly resulted in an attack on Congress, but there is a stronger case that that is exactly what it was, and if so, there is absolutely no 1st Amendment defence.
    Here’s a question.

    If/when Trump is put on trial for any of his manifold recent crimes, would he stick with Giuliani as his attorney or hire someone vaguely competent?

    Assuming, of course, anyone vaguely competent would be willing to appear for him.
    I find one of the many disappointments from the Trump Presidency is how comprehensively Giuliano trashed his reputation.
    He was trashing it LONG before he latched onto Trumpsky for fun AND profit (that being predominate motive).

    Note Rudi's ridiculous presidential "campaign" back in 2008. AND the fact that lacked the intestinal fortitude (balls in plain English) to run against Hillary Clinton for US Senator in 2000.

    His success as mayor AND his role at 9/11 were WAY over-blown & overrated. A fact that more and more and more people came to realize over the past two decades.

    Interesting, recently saw an old re-run of "Murder She Wrote" staring Jessica Lansbury as a character modeled after Agatha Christie & Miss Marple on hit US TV show of 1980s & 90s.

    Anyway, this episode (from 80s I think) featured a character who portrayed a New York district attorney type who was Italian (or at least Italian-looking), obssesed with his public image (always looking in the mirror) AND more help than hindrance to the investigation at hand - but was there to take the credit for solving the case at the end.

    Am convinced this character was a direct parody of Rudolph Guiliani.
    Giuliani slashed crime in New York city and made it a livable city again and was a key rallying point on 9/11 whatever his over loyalty to Trump now
    Yes, 9/11 WAS Rudi's shining moment. But his success as anti-crime fighter had more to do with demographics than policy. Note that he put the police department in hands of a toady whose subsequent career was distinguished by a felony conviction.

    Any acclaim Rudi got from being mayor is long past. He himself has ensured that it will be scarcely remembered in a decade or two. Whereas his "Four Season" press conference and etc. will live forever in infamy in American history.
    while Rudy may have spoken at the rally on Wednesday he did not take any personal part in the attack on the Capitol and condemned it strongly.
    Given what he reportedly said at the rally, the second half of the sentence seems completely meaningless. If I helped to whip people up into a rage and direct them at a target, I'm not sure covering my arse with a condemnation really matters. At the least for his professional legal standards.
    Defending Rudi is a GOOD thing for Trumpsky-supporters & apologists to do.

    BECAUSE it highlights fact that they are trying to defend the indefensible. Keep it up!

    I mean, saying that Giuliani "condemned" the riot that he himself helped incite, is NOT what you'd call persuasive.
    You are a diehard Democrat, you will never be convinced
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Carnyx said:

    DavidL said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    My son was given an A in his Higher English last year (admittedly without the inconvenience of actually taking an exam) without ever having studied a Shakespeare play. I mean, why bother? What the hell is the point of the subject?
    Other playwrights are available.
    And so, apparently are several Scottish poets whose work is only in print and not forgotten because they are on the curriculum. One of them is a good friend of Nicola’s, happily enough.

    I can think of very few plays that match Shakespeare. A man for all seasons, certainly. No doubt that there are a few others.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    edited January 2021
    Foxy said:

    Off topic technical question. Some of my friends and colleagues want to delete WhatsApp because of their new terms and conditions (seemingly exporting loads of phone data to Facebook*). Is Signal the best alternative, or any others we should look at?

    *What does each of the following messengers apps collect.

    Signal
    ———
    None. (The only personal data Signal stores is your phone number)

    Telegram
    —————
    Contact Info
    Contacts
    User ID

    WhatsApp
    —————-
    Device ID
    User ID
    Advertising Data
    Purchase History
    Coarse Location
    Phone Number
    Email Address
    Contacts
    Product Interaction
    Crash Data
    Performance Data
    Other Diagnostic Data
    Payment Info
    Customer Support
    Product Interaction
    Other User Content

    Facebook Messenger
    ———————————
    Purchase History
    Other Financial Info
    Precise Location
    Coarse Location
    Physical Address
    Email Address
    Name
    Phone Number
    Other User Contact Info
    Contacts
    Photos or Videos
    Gameplay Content
    Other User Content
    Search History
    Browsing History
    User ID
    Device ID
    Product Interaction
    Advertising Data
    Other Usage Data
    Crash Data
    Performance Data
    Other Diagnostic Data
    Other Data Types
    Browsing History
    Health
    Fitness
    Payment Info
    Photos or Videos
    Audio Data
    Gameplay Content
    Customer Support
    Other User Content
    Search History
    Sensitive Info
    iMessage
    Email address
    Phone number Search history
    Device ID

    Signal has the virtue of being owned and run by a not-for-profit*. It was setup by ex-WhatApp employees out of their buy out money. It was designed, in legal terms to avoid the money pit problem of social media. So it can't be bought or taken over.

    *Essentially a charity, but in the US context, they break out from charities proper, organisations that don't have directly charitable aims.

    While others have the same feature, it is the best and largest (in terms of take up) of that group, I believe.

    See - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    edited January 2021
    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Dershowitz knows better than that (or at least he used to before he became a political hack).
    Sure, he can make the case that this wasn’t incitement that directly resulted in an attack on Congress, but there is a stronger case that that is exactly what it was, and if so, there is absolutely no 1st Amendment defence.
    Here’s a question.

    If/when Trump is put on trial for any of his manifold recent crimes, would he stick with Giuliani as his attorney or hire someone vaguely competent?

    Assuming, of course, anyone vaguely competent would be willing to appear for him.
    I find one of the many disappointments from the Trump Presidency is how comprehensively Giuliano trashed his reputation.
    He was trashing it LONG before he latched onto Trumpsky for fun AND profit (that being predominate motive).

    Note Rudi's ridiculous presidential "campaign" back in 2008. AND the fact that lacked the intestinal fortitude (balls in plain English) to run against Hillary Clinton for US Senator in 2000.

    His success as mayor AND his role at 9/11 were WAY over-blown & overrated. A fact that more and more and more people came to realize over the past two decades.

    Interesting, recently saw an old re-run of "Murder She Wrote" staring Jessica Lansbury as a character modeled after Agatha Christie & Miss Marple on hit US TV show of 1980s & 90s.

    Anyway, this episode (from 80s I think) featured a character who portrayed a New York district attorney type who was Italian (or at least Italian-looking), obssesed with his public image (always looking in the mirror) AND more help than hindrance to the investigation at hand - but was there to take the credit for solving the case at the end.

    Am convinced this character was a direct parody of Rudolph Guiliani.
    Giuliani slashed crime in New York city and made it a livable city again and was a key rallying point on 9/11 whatever his over loyalty to Trump now
    Yes, 9/11 WAS Rudi's shining moment. But his success as anti-crime fighter had more to do with demographics than policy. Note that he put the police department in hands of a toady whose subsequent career was distinguished by a felony conviction.

    Any acclaim Rudi got from being mayor is long past. He himself has ensured that it will be scarcely remembered in a decade or two. Whereas his "Four Season" press conference and etc. will live forever in infamy in American history.
    while Rudy may have spoken at the rally on Wednesday he did not take any personal part in the attack on the Capitol and condemned it strongly.
    Given what he reportedly said at the rally, the second half of the sentence seems completely meaningless. If I helped to whip people up into a rage and direct them at a target, I'm not sure covering my arse with a condemnation really matters. At the least for his professional legal standards.
    Defending Rudi is a GOOD thing for Trumpsky-supporters & apologists to do.

    BECAUSE it highlights fact that they are trying to defend the indefensible. Keep it up!

    I mean, saying that Giuliani "condemned" the riot that he himself helped incite, is NOT what you'd call persuasive.
    You are a diehard Democrat, you will never be convinced
    He'll be calling you a ScotNat and traitor next, SeaShanty.

    Edit: well, you are on the wrong side of the American Rebellion.
  • Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    Actually if the aim (and result) is to prevent the children reading it in school then yes it is. You are dancing on the head of a pin and it is pretty shameful.

    I look forward to seeing you try - and fail - to defend the other fuckwits in the article who think Shakespeare and Hawthorn should be banned from schools as well.
    I doubt the curriculum includes the Ice Twins either, did they ban SeanT?
    It is not a case of not having something on the curriculum. It is a case of specifically removing it. And, with all due respect to Sean, he is not Homer.

    If that article doesn't make your blood boil then there is something seriously wrong with you.

    "The concept that children shouldn’t be exposed to works of literature “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” is espoused by young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman. She wrote in the periodical School Library Journal that no author must be spared in this attempt to scrub literary history.

    "Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.

    Racism in classics can’t be negated merely by alerting young readers to its presence,” she warned. “Unless we have the time, energy, attention, expertise, and ability to foster nuanced conversations in which even the shyest readers feel empowered to engage if they choose, we may hurt, not help. Pressuring readers of color to speak up also removes free choice and can be harmful."”
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Dershowitz knows better than that (or at least he used to before he became a political hack).
    Sure, he can make the case that this wasn’t incitement that directly resulted in an attack on Congress, but there is a stronger case that that is exactly what it was, and if so, there is absolutely no 1st Amendment defence.
    Here’s a question.

    If/when Trump is put on trial for any of his manifold recent crimes, would he stick with Giuliani as his attorney or hire someone vaguely competent?

    Assuming, of course, anyone vaguely competent would be willing to appear for him.
    I find one of the many disappointments from the Trump Presidency is how comprehensively Giuliano trashed his reputation.
    He was trashing it LONG before he latched onto Trumpsky for fun AND profit (that being predominate motive).

    Note Rudi's ridiculous presidential "campaign" back in 2008. AND the fact that lacked the intestinal fortitude (balls in plain English) to run against Hillary Clinton for US Senator in 2000.

    His success as mayor AND his role at 9/11 were WAY over-blown & overrated. A fact that more and more and more people came to realize over the past two decades.

    Interesting, recently saw an old re-run of "Murder She Wrote" staring Jessica Lansbury as a character modeled after Agatha Christie & Miss Marple on hit US TV show of 1980s & 90s.

    Anyway, this episode (from 80s I think) featured a character who portrayed a New York district attorney type who was Italian (or at least Italian-looking), obssesed with his public image (always looking in the mirror) AND more help than hindrance to the investigation at hand - but was there to take the credit for solving the case at the end.

    Am convinced this character was a direct parody of Rudolph Guiliani.
    Giuliani slashed crime in New York city and made it a livable city again and was a key rallying point on 9/11 whatever his over loyalty to Trump now
    Yes, 9/11 WAS Rudi's shining moment. But his success as anti-crime fighter had more to do with demographics than policy. Note that he put the police department in hands of a toady whose subsequent career was distinguished by a felony conviction.

    Any acclaim Rudi got from being mayor is long past. He himself has ensured that it will be scarcely remembered in a decade or two. Whereas his "Four Season" press conference and etc. will live forever in infamy in American history.
    Violent crime fell 56% under Giuliani's Mayoralty in New York city, murder by 2/3 and robbery fell by 67%.
    Correlation is not causation. Crime fell sharply across the US in that period.
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/
    As I also pointed out homicide fell more in New York city in the 1990s than any other major US city
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758

    kle4 said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    I've not even read this story and most such stories are not as dramatic as advertised, but that does seem like semantics - removing something from a curriculum, for reasons of controversy, would often be described as banning it from schools.
    Can’t think of any school apart from Eton perhaps where the Odyssey would be on the curriculum.
    It’s part of Classical Civilisation A-Level, which is still fairly widespread among sixth form colleges and larger state schools.

    https://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/315133-specification-accredited-a-level-classical-civilisation-h408.pdf

    I assume it’s on the A-level Greek spec as well, but I’ve never taught that so I’m not sure.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Alistair said:
    Hmm. Slightly disingenuous given that that only works if one ignores the Arab assailants who died in the Benghazi attacks. Perhaps being Arabs they don't count...
    If you are counting American Citizens killed then it scans.
  • Gaussian said:

    RobD said:
    Not necessarily. If the new strain achieves the spread we've seen despite 20% immunity, that puts its unrestrained R up accordingly. Which then also pushes up the immunity level required for herd immunity.
    True, but at least that's 20% of people who are unlikely to end up back in hospital, and the extra number of infections needed for a higher immunity threshold is less than that.

    I'd be a bit cautious about relying on the figures, though. They are inferring cases from deaths, which relies on an accurate (age-specific) IFR. But computing an accurate IFR relies on knowing the number of cases. For sure we get a better estimate of it now, because we are confirming more cases, but it's a difficult number to pin down.

    I haven't seen an antibody survey for a while. Has there been one to estimate total infections, or does it start to fail as an estimate because antibodies (as opposed to T/memory B cell immunity) drop off after a few months?

    --AS
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,461
    RobD said:
    Bad news for the dead and long-term sick, though.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    edited January 2021
    DavidL said:

    Carnyx said:

    DavidL said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    My son was given an A in his Higher English last year (admittedly without the inconvenience of actually taking an exam) without ever having studied a Shakespeare play. I mean, why bother? What the hell is the point of the subject?
    Other playwrights are available.
    And so, apparently are several Scottish poets whose work is only in print and not forgotten because they are on the curriculum. One of them is a good friend of Nicola’s, happily enough.

    I can think of very few plays that match Shakespeare. A man for all seasons, certainly. No doubt that there are a few others.
    https://www.edinburghexpert.com/blog/whaurs-yer-wullie-shakespeare-noo

    And Ms Sturgeon does love her books. Not a bad thing at all.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    HYUFD said:

    Alistair said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Dershowitz knows better than that (or at least he used to before he became a political hack).
    Sure, he can make the case that this wasn’t incitement that directly resulted in an attack on Congress, but there is a stronger case that that is exactly what it was, and if so, there is absolutely no 1st Amendment defence.
    Here’s a question.

    If/when Trump is put on trial for any of his manifold recent crimes, would he stick with Giuliani as his attorney or hire someone vaguely competent?

    Assuming, of course, anyone vaguely competent would be willing to appear for him.
    I find one of the many disappointments from the Trump Presidency is how comprehensively Giuliano trashed his reputation.
    He was trashing it LONG before he latched onto Trumpsky for fun AND profit (that being predominate motive).

    Note Rudi's ridiculous presidential "campaign" back in 2008. AND the fact that lacked the intestinal fortitude (balls in plain English) to run against Hillary Clinton for US Senator in 2000.

    His success as mayor AND his role at 9/11 were WAY over-blown & overrated. A fact that more and more and more people came to realize over the past two decades.

    Interesting, recently saw an old re-run of "Murder She Wrote" staring Jessica Lansbury as a character modeled after Agatha Christie & Miss Marple on hit US TV show of 1980s & 90s.

    Anyway, this episode (from 80s I think) featured a character who portrayed a New York district attorney type who was Italian (or at least Italian-looking), obssesed with his public image (always looking in the mirror) AND more help than hindrance to the investigation at hand - but was there to take the credit for solving the case at the end.

    Am convinced this character was a direct parody of Rudolph Guiliani.
    Giuliani slashed crime in New York city and made it a livable city again and was a key rallying point on 9/11 whatever his over loyalty to Trump now
    Crime was falling before he became mayor.
    Not as fast as under his Mayoralty.

    His reorganisation of the New York Police Department was key and his broken windows strategy was crucial in cutting crime from the most minor up and he increased the size of NYPD by 12,000 officers during his term.
    Yet amazingly crime fell in all major US cities over the same period. Implying the identity of the Major wasn't the decisive factor.
    This looks on the face of it, like you just can't accept giving Giuliani the credit for anything, because he supports Trump. See also, Trump isn't a successful businessman, Trump isn't good at getting votes etc. See also, people getting slated for expressing the opinion that Hitler was good at making speeches, building autobahns etc. It seems quite a simple-minded position to me to have to obliterate any area where the focus of your ire might have been successful or shown merit. Obviously you're not the only one, there's a lot of it about.
    Guess you didn't read HYFOOLs link either then, specifically the section that says 'Six Factors that Played Little or No Role in the Crime Decline'
    I'm not passing a comment on his effectiveness or otherwise in fighting crime - that's beside the point, because even if he had gone around personally rounding up the miscreants, I still feel you would have tried to minimise his role for the reasons stated above.
    No, its because we read the evidence.

    It's the old fact based reality thing again I'm afraid.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    edited January 2021

    Thanks for sharing the link. I've been wanting to know this for a while. 30% had it round our way.
    Is it not worth antibody testing pre vaccination and if you have antibodies you move down the queue? If its 20% surely it becomes significant and worthwhile to test to get the queue priority more accurate?
    Quite expensive and slow way of proceeding though. There may be a high rate in NHS staff, but probably not the other at risk groups.

    31.9% for Leicester sounds about right to me, going by friends and colleagues.

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    HYUFD said:

    Tres said:

    HYUFD said:

    Alistair said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Dershowitz knows better than that (or at least he used to before he became a political hack).
    Sure, he can make the case that this wasn’t incitement that directly resulted in an attack on Congress, but there is a stronger case that that is exactly what it was, and if so, there is absolutely no 1st Amendment defence.
    Here’s a question.

    If/when Trump is put on trial for any of his manifold recent crimes, would he stick with Giuliani as his attorney or hire someone vaguely competent?

    Assuming, of course, anyone vaguely competent would be willing to appear for him.
    I find one of the many disappointments from the Trump Presidency is how comprehensively Giuliano trashed his reputation.
    He was trashing it LONG before he latched onto Trumpsky for fun AND profit (that being predominate motive).

    Note Rudi's ridiculous presidential "campaign" back in 2008. AND the fact that lacked the intestinal fortitude (balls in plain English) to run against Hillary Clinton for US Senator in 2000.

    His success as mayor AND his role at 9/11 were WAY over-blown & overrated. A fact that more and more and more people came to realize over the past two decades.

    Interesting, recently saw an old re-run of "Murder She Wrote" staring Jessica Lansbury as a character modeled after Agatha Christie & Miss Marple on hit US TV show of 1980s & 90s.

    Anyway, this episode (from 80s I think) featured a character who portrayed a New York district attorney type who was Italian (or at least Italian-looking), obssesed with his public image (always looking in the mirror) AND more help than hindrance to the investigation at hand - but was there to take the credit for solving the case at the end.

    Am convinced this character was a direct parody of Rudolph Guiliani.
    Giuliani slashed crime in New York city and made it a livable city again and was a key rallying point on 9/11 whatever his over loyalty to Trump now
    Crime was falling before he became mayor.
    Not as fast as under his Mayoralty.

    His reorganisation of the New York Police Department was key and his broken windows strategy was crucial in cutting crime from the most minor up and he increased the size of NYPD by 12,000 officers during his term.
    Yet amazingly crime fell in all major US cities over the same period. Implying the identity of the Major wasn't the decisive factor.
    As I have just posted below, homicide fell by more in NYC than any other city in the US in the 1990s
    So what ?
    You have failed to demonstrate that was down to blowhard Rudi.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    kle4 said:

    Alistair said:
    Hmm. Slightly disingenuous given that that only works if one ignores the Arab assailants who died in the Benghazi attacks. Perhaps being Arabs they don't count...
    Granted I've not looked over the detail of those hearings, but I'd have thought they were focused more on the tragic deaths of americans than the deaths of assailants? I'd actually be impressed if they were interested in the detail of the deaths of the assailants beyond a 'could there have been more?' approach, but then I cannot imagine what questions occupied that number of hearings.
    There were also, IIRC, a non-zero number of non-American defenders.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Tres said:

    DavidL said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    My son was given an A in his Higher English last year (admittedly without the inconvenience of actually taking an exam) without ever having studied a Shakespeare play. I mean, why bother? What the hell is the point of the subject?
    Would be have been expelled if he was caught with a copy of Romeo & Juliet is his locker?
    Hard to say, underage sex etc. Probably labelled a pervert.
  • kle4 said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    I've not even read this story and most such stories are not as dramatic as advertised, but that does seem like semantics - removing something from a curriculum, for reasons of controversy, would often be described as banning it from schools.
    Can’t think of any school apart from Eton perhaps where the Odyssey would be on the curriculum.
    It was on at my school. Just a normal comprehensive but admittedly it was the early 1980s and the teachers had a lot more say over what they taught us back then. We also had this Science Fiction Omnibus, Shakespeare and Graham Green. And a stonkingly good teacher (Taffy Evans) who made it all really interesting even if he did scare the hell out of me.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    Tres said:

    HYUFD said:

    Alistair said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Dershowitz knows better than that (or at least he used to before he became a political hack).
    Sure, he can make the case that this wasn’t incitement that directly resulted in an attack on Congress, but there is a stronger case that that is exactly what it was, and if so, there is absolutely no 1st Amendment defence.
    Here’s a question.

    If/when Trump is put on trial for any of his manifold recent crimes, would he stick with Giuliani as his attorney or hire someone vaguely competent?

    Assuming, of course, anyone vaguely competent would be willing to appear for him.
    I find one of the many disappointments from the Trump Presidency is how comprehensively Giuliano trashed his reputation.
    He was trashing it LONG before he latched onto Trumpsky for fun AND profit (that being predominate motive).

    Note Rudi's ridiculous presidential "campaign" back in 2008. AND the fact that lacked the intestinal fortitude (balls in plain English) to run against Hillary Clinton for US Senator in 2000.

    His success as mayor AND his role at 9/11 were WAY over-blown & overrated. A fact that more and more and more people came to realize over the past two decades.

    Interesting, recently saw an old re-run of "Murder She Wrote" staring Jessica Lansbury as a character modeled after Agatha Christie & Miss Marple on hit US TV show of 1980s & 90s.

    Anyway, this episode (from 80s I think) featured a character who portrayed a New York district attorney type who was Italian (or at least Italian-looking), obssesed with his public image (always looking in the mirror) AND more help than hindrance to the investigation at hand - but was there to take the credit for solving the case at the end.

    Am convinced this character was a direct parody of Rudolph Guiliani.
    Giuliani slashed crime in New York city and made it a livable city again and was a key rallying point on 9/11 whatever his over loyalty to Trump now
    Crime was falling before he became mayor.
    Not as fast as under his Mayoralty.

    His reorganisation of the New York Police Department was key and his broken windows strategy was crucial in cutting crime from the most minor up and he increased the size of NYPD by 12,000 officers during his term.
    Yet amazingly crime fell in all major US cities over the same period. Implying the identity of the Major wasn't the decisive factor.
    As I have just posted below, homicide fell by more in NYC than any other city in the US in the 1990s
    So what ?
    You have failed to demonstrate that was down to blowhard Rudi.
    I have, amongst the 4 major factors the paper linked to cited were increasing police numbers and putting more criminals in prison, Rudy did both
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited January 2021

    Foxy said:

    Off topic technical question. Some of my friends and colleagues want to delete WhatsApp because of their new terms and conditions (seemingly exporting loads of phone data to Facebook*). Is Signal the best alternative, or any others we should look at?

    *What does each of the following messengers apps collect.

    Signal
    ———
    None. (The only personal data Signal stores is your phone number)

    Telegram
    —————
    Contact Info
    Contacts
    User ID

    WhatsApp
    —————-
    Device ID
    User ID
    Advertising Data
    Purchase History
    Coarse Location
    Phone Number
    Email Address
    Contacts
    Product Interaction
    Crash Data
    Performance Data
    Other Diagnostic Data
    Payment Info
    Customer Support
    Product Interaction
    Other User Content

    Facebook Messenger
    ———————————
    Purchase History
    Other Financial Info
    Precise Location
    Coarse Location
    Physical Address
    Email Address
    Name
    Phone Number
    Other User Contact Info
    Contacts
    Photos or Videos
    Gameplay Content
    Other User Content
    Search History
    Browsing History
    User ID
    Device ID
    Product Interaction
    Advertising Data
    Other Usage Data
    Crash Data
    Performance Data
    Other Diagnostic Data
    Other Data Types
    Browsing History
    Health
    Fitness
    Payment Info
    Photos or Videos
    Audio Data
    Gameplay Content
    Customer Support
    Other User Content
    Search History
    Sensitive Info
    iMessage
    Email address
    Phone number Search history
    Device ID

    Signal has the virtue of being owned and run by a not-for-profit*. It was setup by ex-WhatApp employees out of their buy out money. It was designed, in legal terms to avoid the money pit problem of social media. So it can't be bought or taken over.

    *Essentially a charity, but in the US context, they break out from charities proper, organisations that don't have directly charitable aims.

    While others have the same feature, it is the best and largest (in terms of take up) of that group, I believe.

    See - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation
    someone I trust posted this today
    https://meganvwalker.com/telegram-vs-signal-with-whatsapp-comparison-table/
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195
    This doctor explaining the SA variant (and talking about Cockney Covid) - is a little bit unusual - but in a good way

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCc13qWoQYQ

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Like Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing . . .
    More pertinently he said that “you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows “.

    Which a study in 2007 found had been quoted by more lawyers and judges than any other line of poetry ever.
    They probably delivered it more in key than the man himself too.
    He wasn’t given his Nobel for perfect pitch.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    Actually if the aim (and result) is to prevent the children reading it in school then yes it is. You are dancing on the head of a pin and it is pretty shameful.

    I look forward to seeing you try - and fail - to defend the other fuckwits in the article who think Shakespeare and Hawthorn should be banned from schools as well.
    I doubt the curriculum includes the Ice Twins either, did they ban SeanT?
    It is not a case of not having something on the curriculum. It is a case of specifically removing it. And, with all due respect to Sean, he is not Homer.

    If that article doesn't make your blood boil then there is something seriously wrong with you.

    "The concept that children shouldn’t be exposed to works of literature “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” is espoused by young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman. She wrote in the periodical School Library Journal that no author must be spared in this attempt to scrub literary history.

    "Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.

    Racism in classics can’t be negated merely by alerting young readers to its presence,” she warned. “Unless we have the time, energy, attention, expertise, and ability to foster nuanced conversations in which even the shyest readers feel empowered to engage if they choose, we may hurt, not help. Pressuring readers of color to speak up also removes free choice and can be harmful."”
    It doesn't say much for the robustness of the brave new world these ghouls are trying to create that they're worried it will collapse at the first whiff of Homer.
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195
  • Foxy said:

    Thanks for sharing the link. I've been wanting to know this for a while. 30% had it round our way.
    Is it not worth antibody testing pre vaccination and if you have antibodies you move down the queue? If its 20% surely it becomes significant and worthwhile to test to get the queue priority more accurate?
    Quite expensive and slow way of proceeding though. There may be a high rate in NHS staff, but probably not the other at risk groups.

    31.9% for Leicester sounds about right to me, going by friends and colleagues.

    Money does not come into it given what the lockdown is costing.

    As for being slow, there is a simple way around that. Do Januarys as we are. In January start testing those due for vaccination in February, and then test groups a month before their scheduled vaccination. No time would be lost this way.

    Time would effectively be gained as the immune group would be growing 25% quicker.
  • kle4 said:

    Alistair said:
    Hmm. Slightly disingenuous given that that only works if one ignores the Arab assailants who died in the Benghazi attacks. Perhaps being Arabs they don't count...
    Granted I've not looked over the detail of those hearings, but I'd have thought they were focused more on the tragic deaths of americans than the deaths of assailants? I'd actually be impressed if they were interested in the detail of the deaths of the assailants beyond a 'could there have been more?' approach, but then I cannot imagine what questions occupied that number of hearings.
    I was admittedly being a bit snide. Alistair is of course right that there should be investigations and proceedings coming out of their ears in Congress over this and, for all that Benghazi was a bit shit, this is magnitudes worse.

    I just think the original tweet could have been a little more measured given that at least some of those deaths he is talking about were of people who were actually committing the assault.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    My son was given an A in his Higher English last year (admittedly without the inconvenience of actually taking an exam) without ever having studied a Shakespeare play. I mean, why bother? What the hell is the point of the subject?
    There isn’t any. FFS, it’s such a pointless subject even Richard Burgon has a Cambridge degree in it.
    I wish it still taught useful things like précis. Everything my kids produced was over the word limit, everything. The hours I wasted trying to get the same points over more succinctly. And do you have any idea what that’s like for a lawyer? Jeez.

    Grammar would also be helpful, as would different styles of writing for different things.
  • kle4 said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    I've not even read this story and most such stories are not as dramatic as advertised, but that does seem like semantics - removing something from a curriculum, for reasons of controversy, would often be described as banning it from schools.
    Can’t think of any school apart from Eton perhaps where the Odyssey would be on the curriculum.
    Chapter 21 was the set text for GCSE Ancient Greek when I did it...

    I used to write Homeric hexameter epithets for my crushes. What a nerd!

    --AS
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    Actually if the aim (and result) is to prevent the children reading it in school then yes it is. You are dancing on the head of a pin and it is pretty shameful.

    I look forward to seeing you try - and fail - to defend the other fuckwits in the article who think Shakespeare and Hawthorn should be banned from schools as well.
    I doubt the curriculum includes the Ice Twins either, did they ban SeanT?
    It is not a case of not having something on the curriculum. It is a case of specifically removing it. And, with all due respect to Sean, he is not Homer.

    If that article doesn't make your blood boil then there is something seriously wrong with you.

    "The concept that children shouldn’t be exposed to works of literature “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” is espoused by young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman. She wrote in the periodical School Library Journal that no author must be spared in this attempt to scrub literary history.

    "Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.

    Racism in classics can’t be negated merely by alerting young readers to its presence,” she warned. “Unless we have the time, energy, attention, expertise, and ability to foster nuanced conversations in which even the shyest readers feel empowered to engage if they choose, we may hurt, not help. Pressuring readers of color to speak up also removes free choice and can be harmful."”
    It doesn't say much for the robustness of the brave new world these ghouls are trying to create that they're worried it will collapse at the first whiff of Homer.
    In fairness I recall that even Homer nodded.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,461
    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Like Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing . . .
    More pertinently he said that “you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows “.

    Which a study in 2007 found had been quoted by more lawyers and judges than any other line of poetry ever.
    I've often thought of another bit of Dylan when thinking about Trump - it seems to fit (and yes, I've amended it very slightly):

    Idiot wind
    Blowing every time you move your mouth
    Blowing down the back roads headin' south
    Idiot wind
    Blowing every time you move your teeth
    You're an idiot, Donald
    It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758
    DavidL said:

    ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    My son was given an A in his Higher English last year (admittedly without the inconvenience of actually taking an exam) without ever having studied a Shakespeare play. I mean, why bother? What the hell is the point of the subject?
    There isn’t any. FFS, it’s such a pointless subject even Richard Burgon has a Cambridge degree in it.
    I wish it still taught useful things like précis. Everything my kids produced was over the word limit, everything. The hours I wasted trying to get the same points over more succinctly. And do you have any idea what that’s like for a lawyer? Jeez.

    Grammar would also be helpful, as would different styles of writing for different things.
    Nothing annoys me more than seeing these youngsters get there spelling and grammar wrong.

    Their almost always just to lazy to check they’re spellings.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    Is there an official national total for recovered from COVID?

    If not, why not?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758

    kle4 said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    I've not even read this story and most such stories are not as dramatic as advertised, but that does seem like semantics - removing something from a curriculum, for reasons of controversy, would often be described as banning it from schools.
    Can’t think of any school apart from Eton perhaps where the Odyssey would be on the curriculum.
    Chapter 21 was the set text for GCSE Ancient Greek when I did it...

    I used to write Homeric hexameter epithets for my crushes. What a nerd!

    --AS
    Did they understand them?

    Because if it was all Greek to them, it sounds like it was a wasted effort.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    edited January 2021

    kle4 said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    I've not even read this story and most such stories are not as dramatic as advertised, but that does seem like semantics - removing something from a curriculum, for reasons of controversy, would often be described as banning it from schools.
    Can’t think of any school apart from Eton perhaps where the Odyssey would be on the curriculum.
    Chapter 21 was the set text for GCSE Ancient Greek when I did it...

    I used to write Homeric hexameter epithets for my crushes. What a nerd!

    --AS
    I'm impressed. I just about managed Grade 5 in my O level. But I can write 'Didn't you just break wind?' in Attic Greek which Aeschylus might understand. And it was very useful in getting an ear for the assonance of biological nomenclature. Though it means I grit my teeth at the crimes perpetrated by coaythors who wouldn't believe me ...
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    Foxy said:

    Off topic technical question. Some of my friends and colleagues want to delete WhatsApp because of their new terms and conditions (seemingly exporting loads of phone data to Facebook*). Is Signal the best alternative, or any others we should look at?

    The change that is causing the fuss doesn't apply to the European Region (EU, EEA, Switzerland, and UK) as they all have GDPR like laws. If you want maximum security and privacy use Signal, but for most people in Europe sticking with WhatsApp is fine, don't bother with Telegram as they have quite a poor record.

    WhatsApp gets a lot of stick due to being owned by Facebook, but it's still probably the best option for normal users.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047
    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Like Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing . . .
    More pertinently he said that “you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows “.

    Which a study in 2007 found had been quoted by more lawyers and judges than any other line of poetry ever.
    They probably delivered it more in key than the man himself too.
    He wasn’t given his Nobel for perfect pitch.
    Indeed. Competent songwriter, not a good singer. Nasal affected drawl pretty much kills most songs he peformed for me. Somehow puts one in mind of Ian Duncan Smith's vocals at the dispatch box.
  • ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    If that is true - and CNN aren't above sexing these things up - it's breathtaking. We really are in the Fuhrerbunker after the likes of Speer have f***ed off.
    Don't forget that Wednesday wasn't about a protest. It was intended to keep Trump IN POWER. After a couple of day of listening to the legal people trying to persuade him to do things to reduce his legal jeopardy, he is now back to thinking how he can still be President (probably been talking to Flynn/Powell/Trump jnr etc again) I wouldn't be surprised if he has been convinced that there is still a route - but this time it involves removing any pretence of being 'peaceful'.

    We can only hope that the wilder speculation about the leadership of the DoD definitely isn't true. And i wouldn't be wanting to be involved in security in the State Capitals over the next few days.
    I don't see how a public inauguration can safely go ahead.

    I tend to agree. It's far more important that it happens, for constitutional reasons, than how it happens. Once it's done, it puts 3 Democrats at the front of the line of Presidential Succession.
    I'm wondering if the Presidential Succession should be looked at?

    The way America is polarising, if the GOP win the House in the midterms I could picture some extreme Q/GOPers wanting to 'take out' the POTUS and VEEP to 'win back' the Presidency that way.

    I would suggest perhaps the Presidential succession should go through the Presidents own Cabinet before it reverts back to the House.
    Cabinet isn’t elected
    Presidential succession USED to go via Cabinet, but that was changed. Something that Alexander Hague, that great constitutional scholar did NOT realize when he made his infamous "I am in charge" statement to the press just after Ronald Reagan was shot.

    THAT was the scariest moment of the whole business; I remember seeing him spout this nonsense on TV. General reaction was, who IS this guy? Some even thought he was part of a coup.
    Haig was wrong on a huge number of levels there. Although the Secretary of State is the senior cabinet minister under the Constitution, in that particular situation where the President is incapacitated and the Vice President is absent the person in charge should be whoever holds the relevant ministerial brief - in this case, James Watt as Secretary of the Interior, or, if a military threat was perceived, Caspar Weinberger as Secretary of Defense. Haig, however, claimed that he was in charge and because those two thought a row at that moment would be counterproductive they let him think he was, which included giving the infamous ‘I am in command here’ press briefing. During this briefing, against Haig’s wishes, Weinberger raised the military threat level just as Haig was announcing it would not be raised, probably for no better reason than to show he could. Haig apparently shouted at him a lot for that, only to be told to fuck off.

    It was always more about Haig’s ego than about the reality of the situationL but equally, it should be noted the cabinet did work pretty well prior to H’s return in what could have been a very serious crisis.
    You are wrong about a number of things:

    > the top member of the Cabinet is NOT in charge in absence of Pres or VP, that may be UK practice but NOT in US.

    > in USA, the Secretary of the Interior is NOT the equivalent of Home Secretary or European Interior ministers. Over here, the Department of the Interior is responsible for US public lands, for example national parks & monuments.

    Haig had ZERO authority to do and say what he did. Which is why he got canned ASAP after Ronald Reagan's recovery.

    You are right about the Secretary of the interior but I had already realised my mistake and changed it. (Now of course it would be the Secretary of Homeland Security, but bizarrely until 2001 that was split between about five different departments.)

    I’m interested in your other assertion. Who do you think is in charge in those circumstances, and why do you think that? The top member of the cabinet is of course technically the Secretary of State, and as they are not in charge except of course in matters pertaining to foreign affairs it may be that we are actually agreeing.
    Think the basic error you are making, is thinking that the US cabinet is THE top executive authority, as is the UK cabinet in your country. Which is NOT the case. Here, the cabinet are simply heads of individual executive departments, with VERY limited powers otherwise, indeed virtually none as a body EXCEPT for role in invoking the 25th amendment.

    So the Secretary of Homeland security does NOT have any powers OTHER than those granted directly by law (limited) AND what the President (or in case of 25th Acting President) directly authorizes.

    Note that in 1799 during presidency of John Adams a cabinet cabal TRIED to exercise the kind of authority you describe (if I'm understanding you correctly) BUT were shot down. And that was IT.

    Further note that after Woodrow Wilson's stroke(s) in 1919, his cabinet did NOT behave that way, and never even tried. Instead, for all intents and purpose Mrs Wilson became a quasi-acting President, though she certainly tried to adhere VERY closely to her husband's wishes as she understood them.

    Which is relevant to 1982, when it turned out that Nancy Reagan had a LOT more say-so than Al Haig. Something that he perhaps came to understand when she helped drive a stake through his political heart and permanently ended his career as a mover and shaker.
    Which is the point I was actually making. Because cabinet ministers in the US have no powers outside their departments, it would be the heads of the relevant departments that would lead the response and therefore in effect be in charge. Sorry if that was not clear to you.

    (Incidentally Haig, although grossly exceeding his authority and ending up looking like a complete twat, wasn’t sacked. He stayed in office long enough to bugger up the US response to the Falklands war as well.)
    Forgot to mention Al's (allegedly) pro-Argentine stance, should have added that to make PBers detest him as much as yours truly.

    The canned him as soon as they could without making too much of a spectacle about it.

    Real reason I think Al Haig was a total slimebag, was one incident during the Chosen Reservoir battle during the Korean War. When US Marines and US Army were fighting for their lives, thanks to the astounding incompetence of MacArthur and his entourage, including young suck-up Al Haig.

    Who was dispatched by Mac to the "Frozen Chosen" not to provide any actual assistance, but on a PR exercise to hand out a fistful of medals to the US Army contingent.

    Haig swooped down in his helicopter, fresh as a daisy from his cushy Tokyo billet, down to the mud and snow and misery on the ground. It was December 1950 and the bottom had dropped out of the thermometer. The troops fighting the battle were short of just about everything at that point; their clothing was woefully inadequate, in particular their boots. (My father was there, and froze his feet pretty bad, but kept on marching and fighting; for the rest of his life he had problems with his feet.)

    Anyway, here comes Al Haig, with a nice clean uniform (including nice warm coat and good boots) and proceeds to hand out medals along with pats on the back. Then after a photo-op, gets back in his chopper and flies back to Tokyo, no doubt for a nice hot bath and a change of cloths. Something the guys he left behind hadn't had not enjoyed for weeks or months - and some never would ever again.

    Eyewitnesses say that, after Al Haig went bye bye up in the sky, the Army commander on the ground took the medal that he'd been given - and hurled it into the snow.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758

    Is there an official national total for recovered from COVID?

    If not, why not?

    If you deduct the number of dead and the number currently in hospital from the total who tested positive, that should give you some idea.

    But remember the last figure doesn’t cover everyone who’s had it. It wouldn’t included Gideon Wise, of this parish, or any of my friends who had it but didn’t go to hospital.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    Is there an official national total for recovered from COVID?

    If not, why not?

    It'd be the number that have been tested positive minus the deaths, roughly.
  • Scott_xP said:
    The guy just tried to instigate a coup against his own country. Why is anyone surprised he has scorn for anyone who died? Honestly nothing he could do up to and including shooting himself in the Oval Office as some kind of last warped gesture of defiance would surprise me now.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    DavidL said:

    ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    My son was given an A in his Higher English last year (admittedly without the inconvenience of actually taking an exam) without ever having studied a Shakespeare play. I mean, why bother? What the hell is the point of the subject?
    There isn’t any. FFS, it’s such a pointless subject even Richard Burgon has a Cambridge degree in it.
    I wish it still taught useful things like précis. Everything my kids produced was over the word limit, everything. The hours I wasted trying to get the same points over more succinctly. And do you have any idea what that’s like for a lawyer? Jeez.

    Grammar would also be helpful, as would different styles of writing for different things.
    The argument *for* Homer is that his works were a major part of the literary foundations and quite often, the moral arguments of the Ancient Greek world. Which was subsumed into the Roman world. Which in turn was the foundation, in many ways, of our society.

    The story of that, and how we came to both listen to those arguments and overturn many of them, is the story of how our society evolved to what it is today and *why*.
  • ydoethur said:

    Is there an official national total for recovered from COVID?

    If not, why not?

    If you deduct the number of dead and the number currently in hospital from the total who tested positive, that should give you some idea.

    But remember the last figure doesn’t cover everyone who’s had it. It wouldn’t included Gideon Wise, of this parish, or any of my friends who had it but didn’t go to hospital.
    Did anyone hear from Gideon after he got it and then went silent? I worried whether he was okay.

    --AS
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069

    Gaussian said:

    RobD said:
    Not necessarily. If the new strain achieves the spread we've seen despite 20% immunity, that puts its unrestrained R up accordingly. Which then also pushes up the immunity level required for herd immunity.
    True, but at least that's 20% of people who are unlikely to end up back in hospital, and the extra number of infections needed for a higher immunity threshold is less than that.

    I'd be a bit cautious about relying on the figures, though. They are inferring cases from deaths, which relies on an accurate (age-specific) IFR. But computing an accurate IFR relies on knowing the number of cases. For sure we get a better estimate of it now, because we are confirming more cases, but it's a difficult number to pin down.

    I haven't seen an antibody survey for a while. Has there been one to estimate total infections, or does it start to fail as an estimate because antibodies (as opposed to T/memory B cell immunity) drop off after a few months?

    --AS
    In my Trust, antibody testing had about 10% positive in June on antibodies. There were a number who had never had symptoms, and also some who had symptoms and tested positive, but no antibodies.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    Tres said:

    HYUFD said:

    Alistair said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Dershowitz knows better than that (or at least he used to before he became a political hack).
    Sure, he can make the case that this wasn’t incitement that directly resulted in an attack on Congress, but there is a stronger case that that is exactly what it was, and if so, there is absolutely no 1st Amendment defence.
    Here’s a question.

    If/when Trump is put on trial for any of his manifold recent crimes, would he stick with Giuliani as his attorney or hire someone vaguely competent?

    Assuming, of course, anyone vaguely competent would be willing to appear for him.
    I find one of the many disappointments from the Trump Presidency is how comprehensively Giuliano trashed his reputation.
    He was trashing it LONG before he latched onto Trumpsky for fun AND profit (that being predominate motive).

    Note Rudi's ridiculous presidential "campaign" back in 2008. AND the fact that lacked the intestinal fortitude (balls in plain English) to run against Hillary Clinton for US Senator in 2000.

    His success as mayor AND his role at 9/11 were WAY over-blown & overrated. A fact that more and more and more people came to realize over the past two decades.

    Interesting, recently saw an old re-run of "Murder She Wrote" staring Jessica Lansbury as a character modeled after Agatha Christie & Miss Marple on hit US TV show of 1980s & 90s.

    Anyway, this episode (from 80s I think) featured a character who portrayed a New York district attorney type who was Italian (or at least Italian-looking), obssesed with his public image (always looking in the mirror) AND more help than hindrance to the investigation at hand - but was there to take the credit for solving the case at the end.

    Am convinced this character was a direct parody of Rudolph Guiliani.
    Giuliani slashed crime in New York city and made it a livable city again and was a key rallying point on 9/11 whatever his over loyalty to Trump now
    Crime was falling before he became mayor.
    Not as fast as under his Mayoralty.

    His reorganisation of the New York Police Department was key and his broken windows strategy was crucial in cutting crime from the most minor up and he increased the size of NYPD by 12,000 officers during his term.
    Yet amazingly crime fell in all major US cities over the same period. Implying the identity of the Major wasn't the decisive factor.
    As I have just posted below, homicide fell by more in NYC than any other city in the US in the 1990s
    So what ?
    You have failed to demonstrate that was down to blowhard Rudi.
    I have, amongst the 4 major factors the paper linked to cited were increasing police numbers and putting more criminals in prison, Rudy did both
    To say that his record is contested would be to state the obvious.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani#Law_enforcement

    As would noting that it is entirely irrelevant when judging his current status of disgraced laughingstock.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758
    edited January 2021

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    If that is true - and CNN aren't above sexing these things up - it's breathtaking. We really are in the Fuhrerbunker after the likes of Speer have f***ed off.
    Don't forget that Wednesday wasn't about a protest. It was intended to keep Trump IN POWER. After a couple of day of listening to the legal people trying to persuade him to do things to reduce his legal jeopardy, he is now back to thinking how he can still be President (probably been talking to Flynn/Powell/Trump jnr etc again) I wouldn't be surprised if he has been convinced that there is still a route - but this time it involves removing any pretence of being 'peaceful'.

    We can only hope that the wilder speculation about the leadership of the DoD definitely isn't true. And i wouldn't be wanting to be involved in security in the State Capitals over the next few days.
    I don't see how a public inauguration can safely go ahead.

    I tend to agree. It's far more important that it happens, for constitutional reasons, than how it happens. Once it's done, it puts 3 Democrats at the front of the line of Presidential Succession.
    I'm wondering if the Presidential Succession should be looked at?

    The way America is polarising, if the GOP win the House in the midterms I could picture some extreme Q/GOPers wanting to 'take out' the POTUS and VEEP to 'win back' the Presidency that way.

    I would suggest perhaps the Presidential succession should go through the Presidents own Cabinet before it reverts back to the House.
    Cabinet isn’t elected
    Presidential succession USED to go via Cabinet, but that was changed. Something that Alexander Hague, that great constitutional scholar did NOT realize when he made his infamous "I am in charge" statement to the press just after Ronald Reagan was shot.

    THAT was the scariest moment of the whole business; I remember seeing him spout this nonsense on TV. General reaction was, who IS this guy? Some even thought he was part of a coup.
    Haig was wrong on a huge number of levels there. Although the Secretary of State is the senior cabinet minister under the Constitution, in that particular situation where the President is incapacitated and the Vice President is absent the person in charge should be whoever holds the relevant ministerial brief - in this case, James Watt as Secretary of the Interior, or, if a military threat was perceived, Caspar Weinberger as Secretary of Defense. Haig, however, claimed that he was in charge and because those two thought a row at that moment would be counterproductive they let him think he was, which included giving the infamous ‘I am in command here’ press briefing. During this briefing, against Haig’s wishes, Weinberger raised the military threat level just as Haig was announcing it would not be raised, probably for no better reason than to show he could. Haig apparently shouted at him a lot for that, only to be told to fuck off.

    It was always more about Haig’s ego than about the reality of the situationL but equally, it should be noted the cabinet did work pretty well prior to H’s return in what could have been a very serious crisis.
    You are wrong about a number of things:

    > the top member of the Cabinet is NOT in charge in absence of Pres or VP, that may be UK practice but NOT in US.

    > in USA, the Secretary of the Interior is NOT the equivalent of Home Secretary or European Interior ministers. Over here, the Department of the Interior is responsible for US public lands, for example national parks & monuments.

    Haig had ZERO authority to do and say what he did. Which is why he got canned ASAP after Ronald Reagan's recovery.

    You are right about the Secretary of the interior but I had already realised my mistake and changed it. (Now of course it would be the Secretary of Homeland Security, but bizarrely until 2001 that was split between about five different departments.)

    I’m interested in your other assertion. Who do you think is in charge in those circumstances, and why do you think that? The top member of the cabinet is of course technically the Secretary of State, and as they are not in charge except of course in matters pertaining to foreign affairs it may be that we are actually agreeing.
    Think the basic error you are making, is thinking that the US cabinet is THE top executive authority, as is the UK cabinet in your country. Which is NOT the case. Here, the cabinet are simply heads of individual executive departments, with VERY limited powers otherwise, indeed virtually none as a body EXCEPT for role in invoking the 25th amendment.

    So the Secretary of Homeland security does NOT have any powers OTHER than those granted directly by law (limited) AND what the President (or in case of 25th Acting President) directly authorizes.

    Note that in 1799 during presidency of John Adams a cabinet cabal TRIED to exercise the kind of authority you describe (if I'm understanding you correctly) BUT were shot down. And that was IT.

    Further note that after Woodrow Wilson's stroke(s) in 1919, his cabinet did NOT behave that way, and never even tried. Instead, for all intents and purpose Mrs Wilson became a quasi-acting President, though she certainly tried to adhere VERY closely to her husband's wishes as she understood them.

    Which is relevant to 1982, when it turned out that Nancy Reagan had a LOT more say-so than Al Haig. Something that he perhaps came to understand when she helped drive a stake through his political heart and permanently ended his career as a mover and shaker.
    Which is the point I was actually making. Because cabinet ministers in the US have no powers outside their departments, it would be the heads of the relevant departments that would lead the response and therefore in effect be in charge. Sorry if that was not clear to you.

    (Incidentally Haig, although grossly exceeding his authority and ending up looking like a complete twat, wasn’t sacked. He stayed in office long enough to bugger up the US response to the Falklands war as well.)
    Forgot to mention Al's (allegedly) pro-Argentine stance, should have added that to make PBers detest him as much as yours truly.

    The canned him as soon as they could without making too much of a spectacle about it.

    Real reason I think Al Haig was a total slimebag, was one incident during the Chosen Reservoir battle during the Korean War. When US Marines and US Army were fighting for their lives, thanks to the astounding incompetence of MacArthur and his entourage, including young suck-up Al Haig.

    Who was dispatched by Mac to the "Frozen Chosen" not to provide any actual assistance, but on a PR exercise to hand out a fistful of medals to the US Army contingent.

    Haig swooped down in his helicopter, fresh as a daisy from his cushy Tokyo billet, down to the mud and snow and misery on the ground. It was December 1950 and the bottom had dropped out of the thermometer. The troops fighting the battle were short of just about everything at that point; their clothing was woefully inadequate, in particular their boots. (My father was there, and froze his feet pretty bad, but kept on marching and fighting; for the rest of his life he had problems with his feet.)

    Anyway, here comes Al Haig, with a nice clean uniform (including nice warm coat and good boots) and proceeds to hand out medals along with pats on the back. Then after a photo-op, gets back in his chopper and flies back to Tokyo, no doubt for a nice hot bath and a change of cloths. Something the guys he left behind hadn't had not enjoyed for weeks or months - and some never would ever again.

    Eyewitnesses say that, after Al Haig went bye bye up in the sky, the Army commander on the ground took the medal that he'd been given - and hurled it into the snow.
    Wow. That’s an impressively shitty story.

    I just assume on general principles that anyone who was Chief of Staff to Nixon and not publicly implicated in the events following Watergate including Nixon’s bungled attempt at a coverup was probably both a scumbag *and* a rat.

    More pertinently, you wonder how somebody as rubbish as that kept getting promoted.
  • ydoethur said:

    kle4 said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    I've not even read this story and most such stories are not as dramatic as advertised, but that does seem like semantics - removing something from a curriculum, for reasons of controversy, would often be described as banning it from schools.
    Can’t think of any school apart from Eton perhaps where the Odyssey would be on the curriculum.
    Chapter 21 was the set text for GCSE Ancient Greek when I did it...

    I used to write Homeric hexameter epithets for my crushes. What a nerd!

    --AS
    Did they understand them?

    Because if it was all Greek to them, it sounds like it was a wasted effort.
    Do you want that coat yet?...
  • Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Like Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing . . .
    More pertinently he said that “you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows “.

    Which a study in 2007 found had been quoted by more lawyers and judges than any other line of poetry ever.
    They probably delivered it more in key than the man himself too.
    He wasn’t given his Nobel for perfect pitch.
    Indeed. Competent songwriter, not a good singer. Nasal affected drawl pretty much kills most songs he peformed for me. Somehow puts one in mind of Ian Duncan Smith's vocals at the dispatch box.
    Calling Bob Dylan a "competent songwriter" is about the funniest thing I've ever seen on PB. Like calling Shakespeare a competent playwright.
  • solarflaresolarflare Posts: 3,623
    edited January 2021
    I did the Odyssey in Standard Grade Classical Studies in 1998 (I think it was). Think we did the Lysistrata in Higher Grade.

    On a separate note, not sure anyone in the UK ought to be calling other parts of the world "covid hotspots" in that way, it's not exactly gone cold here...
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625

    Foxy said:

    Thanks for sharing the link. I've been wanting to know this for a while. 30% had it round our way.
    Is it not worth antibody testing pre vaccination and if you have antibodies you move down the queue? If its 20% surely it becomes significant and worthwhile to test to get the queue priority more accurate?
    Quite expensive and slow way of proceeding though. There may be a high rate in NHS staff, but probably not the other at risk groups.

    31.9% for Leicester sounds about right to me, going by friends and colleagues.

    Money does not come into it given what the lockdown is costing.

    As for being slow, there is a simple way around that. Do Januarys as we are. In January start testing those due for vaccination in February, and then test groups a month before their scheduled vaccination. No time would be lost this way.

    Time would effectively be gained as the immune group would be growing 25% quicker.
    The other issue to be considered is that, I understand, that the vaccine(s) produce a stronger immune response than the disease itself.

    So it might well be beneficial to those who have had the disease to be vaccinated.

    Foxy?
  • ydoethur said:

    kle4 said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    I've not even read this story and most such stories are not as dramatic as advertised, but that does seem like semantics - removing something from a curriculum, for reasons of controversy, would often be described as banning it from schools.
    Can’t think of any school apart from Eton perhaps where the Odyssey would be on the curriculum.
    Chapter 21 was the set text for GCSE Ancient Greek when I did it...

    I used to write Homeric hexameter epithets for my crushes. What a nerd!

    --AS
    Did they understand them?

    Because if it was all Greek to them, it sounds like it was a wasted effort.
    That was just about my style. Confess my admiration in a language that they couldn't understand, then back away shyly.

    --AS
  • Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Like Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing . . .
    More pertinently he said that “you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows “.

    Which a study in 2007 found had been quoted by more lawyers and judges than any other line of poetry ever.
    They probably delivered it more in key than the man himself too.
    He wasn’t given his Nobel for perfect pitch.
    Well deserved though.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047
    edited January 2021

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Like Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing . . .
    More pertinently he said that “you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows “.

    Which a study in 2007 found had been quoted by more lawyers and judges than any other line of poetry ever.
    They probably delivered it more in key than the man himself too.
    He wasn’t given his Nobel for perfect pitch.
    Indeed. Competent songwriter, not a good singer. Nasal affected drawl pretty much kills most songs he peformed for me. Somehow puts one in mind of Ian Duncan Smith's vocals at the dispatch box.
    Calling Bob Dylan a "competent songwriter" is about the funniest thing I've ever seen on PB. Like calling Shakespeare a competent playwright.
    Do you not think Shakespeare was a competent playwright?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Carnyx said:

    DavidL said:

    Carnyx said:

    DavidL said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    My son was given an A in his Higher English last year (admittedly without the inconvenience of actually taking an exam) without ever having studied a Shakespeare play. I mean, why bother? What the hell is the point of the subject?
    Other playwrights are available.
    And so, apparently are several Scottish poets whose work is only in print and not forgotten because they are on the curriculum. One of them is a good friend of Nicola’s, happily enough.

    I can think of very few plays that match Shakespeare. A man for all seasons, certainly. No doubt that there are a few others.
    https://www.edinburghexpert.com/blog/whaurs-yer-wullie-shakespeare-noo

    And Ms Sturgeon does love her books. Not a bad thing at all.
    But she seems to have a very narrow parochial view of what constitutes a good one. Maybe it’s her nationalism.

    In fairness, amongst the doggerel and incoherent rubbish there was one jewel, Assisi by Norman MacCaig. Just superb.
  • Foxy said:

    Thanks for sharing the link. I've been wanting to know this for a while. 30% had it round our way.
    Is it not worth antibody testing pre vaccination and if you have antibodies you move down the queue? If its 20% surely it becomes significant and worthwhile to test to get the queue priority more accurate?
    Quite expensive and slow way of proceeding though. There may be a high rate in NHS staff, but probably not the other at risk groups.

    31.9% for Leicester sounds about right to me, going by friends and colleagues.

    Money does not come into it given what the lockdown is costing.

    As for being slow, there is a simple way around that. Do Januarys as we are. In January start testing those due for vaccination in February, and then test groups a month before their scheduled vaccination. No time would be lost this way.

    Time would effectively be gained as the immune group would be growing 25% quicker.
    The other issue to be considered is that, I understand, that the vaccine(s) produce a stronger immune response than the disease itself.

    So it might well be beneficial to those who have had the disease to be vaccinated.

    Foxy?
    That is what I have heard as well. Everyone should still eventually be vaccinated but the priority order could be changed by existing antibodies.
  • Quoting a wee Galloway acolyte with an Israeli flag in his profile is it? Let’s hope George’s Palestinian pals don’t find out from where his new support is drawn.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    edited January 2021
    Scott_xP said:
    I'm sure a service can find a way. Might as well have officially sanctioned echo chambers for Democrats and Republicans.
  • ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    If that is true - and CNN aren't above sexing these things up - it's breathtaking. We really are in the Fuhrerbunker after the likes of Speer have f***ed off.
    Don't forget that Wednesday wasn't about a protest. It was intended to keep Trump IN POWER. After a couple of day of listening to the legal people trying to persuade him to do things to reduce his legal jeopardy, he is now back to thinking how he can still be President (probably been talking to Flynn/Powell/Trump jnr etc again) I wouldn't be surprised if he has been convinced that there is still a route - but this time it involves removing any pretence of being 'peaceful'.

    We can only hope that the wilder speculation about the leadership of the DoD definitely isn't true. And i wouldn't be wanting to be involved in security in the State Capitals over the next few days.
    I don't see how a public inauguration can safely go ahead.

    I tend to agree. It's far more important that it happens, for constitutional reasons, than how it happens. Once it's done, it puts 3 Democrats at the front of the line of Presidential Succession.
    I'm wondering if the Presidential Succession should be looked at?

    The way America is polarising, if the GOP win the House in the midterms I could picture some extreme Q/GOPers wanting to 'take out' the POTUS and VEEP to 'win back' the Presidency that way.

    I would suggest perhaps the Presidential succession should go through the Presidents own Cabinet before it reverts back to the House.
    Cabinet isn’t elected
    Presidential succession USED to go via Cabinet, but that was changed. Something that Alexander Hague, that great constitutional scholar did NOT realize when he made his infamous "I am in charge" statement to the press just after Ronald Reagan was shot.

    THAT was the scariest moment of the whole business; I remember seeing him spout this nonsense on TV. General reaction was, who IS this guy? Some even thought he was part of a coup.
    Haig was wrong on a huge number of levels there. Although the Secretary of State is the senior cabinet minister under the Constitution, in that particular situation where the President is incapacitated and the Vice President is absent the person in charge should be whoever holds the relevant ministerial brief - in this case, James Watt as Secretary of the Interior, or, if a military threat was perceived, Caspar Weinberger as Secretary of Defense. Haig, however, claimed that he was in charge and because those two thought a row at that moment would be counterproductive they let him think he was, which included giving the infamous ‘I am in command here’ press briefing. During this briefing, against Haig’s wishes, Weinberger raised the military threat level just as Haig was announcing it would not be raised, probably for no better reason than to show he could. Haig apparently shouted at him a lot for that, only to be told to fuck off.

    It was always more about Haig’s ego than about the reality of the situationL but equally, it should be noted the cabinet did work pretty well prior to H’s return in what could have been a very serious crisis.
    You are wrong about a number of things:

    > the top member of the Cabinet is NOT in charge in absence of Pres or VP, that may be UK practice but NOT in US.

    > in USA, the Secretary of the Interior is NOT the equivalent of Home Secretary or European Interior ministers. Over here, the Department of the Interior is responsible for US public lands, for example national parks & monuments.

    Haig had ZERO authority to do and say what he did. Which is why he got canned ASAP after Ronald Reagan's recovery.

    You are right about the Secretary of the interior but I had already realised my mistake and changed it. (Now of course it would be the Secretary of Homeland Security, but bizarrely until 2001 that was split between about five different departments.)

    I’m interested in your other assertion. Who do you think is in charge in those circumstances, and why do you think that? The top member of the cabinet is of course technically the Secretary of State, and as they are not in charge except of course in matters pertaining to foreign affairs it may be that we are actually agreeing.
    Think the basic error you are making, is thinking that the US cabinet is THE top executive authority, as is the UK cabinet in your country. Which is NOT the case. Here, the cabinet are simply heads of individual executive departments, with VERY limited powers otherwise, indeed virtually none as a body EXCEPT for role in invoking the 25th amendment.

    So the Secretary of Homeland security does NOT have any powers OTHER than those granted directly by law (limited) AND what the President (or in case of 25th Acting President) directly authorizes.

    Note that in 1799 during presidency of John Adams a cabinet cabal TRIED to exercise the kind of authority you describe (if I'm understanding you correctly) BUT were shot down. And that was IT.

    Further note that after Woodrow Wilson's stroke(s) in 1919, his cabinet did NOT behave that way, and never even tried. Instead, for all intents and purpose Mrs Wilson became a quasi-acting President, though she certainly tried to adhere VERY closely to her husband's wishes as she understood them.

    Which is relevant to 1982, when it turned out that Nancy Reagan had a LOT more say-so than Al Haig. Something that he perhaps came to understand when she helped drive a stake through his political heart and permanently ended his career as a mover and shaker.
    Which is the point I was actually making. Because cabinet ministers in the US have no powers outside their departments, it would be the heads of the relevant departments that would lead the response and therefore in effect be in charge. Sorry if that was not clear to you.

    (Incidentally Haig, although grossly exceeding his authority and ending up looking like a complete twat, wasn’t sacked. He stayed in office long enough to bugger up the US response to the Falklands war as well.)
    Forgot to mention Al's (allegedly) pro-Argentine stance, should have added that to make PBers detest him as much as yours truly.

    The canned him as soon as they could without making too much of a spectacle about it.

    Real reason I think Al Haig was a total slimebag, was one incident during the Chosen Reservoir battle during the Korean War. When US Marines and US Army were fighting for their lives, thanks to the astounding incompetence of MacArthur and his entourage, including young suck-up Al Haig.

    Who was dispatched by Mac to the "Frozen Chosen" not to provide any actual assistance, but on a PR exercise to hand out a fistful of medals to the US Army contingent.

    Haig swooped down in his helicopter, fresh as a daisy from his cushy Tokyo billet, down to the mud and snow and misery on the ground. It was December 1950 and the bottom had dropped out of the thermometer. The troops fighting the battle were short of just about everything at that point; their clothing was woefully inadequate, in particular their boots. (My father was there, and froze his feet pretty bad, but kept on marching and fighting; for the rest of his life he had problems with his feet.)

    Anyway, here comes Al Haig, with a nice clean uniform (including nice warm coat and good boots) and proceeds to hand out medals along with pats on the back. Then after a photo-op, gets back in his chopper and flies back to Tokyo, no doubt for a nice hot bath and a change of cloths. Something the guys he left behind hadn't had not enjoyed for weeks or months - and some never would ever again.

    Eyewitnesses say that, after Al Haig went bye bye up in the sky, the Army commander on the ground took the medal that he'd been given - and hurled it into the snow.
    Wow. That’s an impressively shitty story.

    I just assume on general principles that anyone who was Chief of Staff to Nixon and not implicated in Watergate was probably both a scumbag and a rat.

    More pertinently, you wonder how somebody as rubbish as that kept getting promoted.
    Yes. But similar to asking Chief Justice John Roberts why he hired Josh Hawley to be his law clerk and protege. Or asking John Danforth why he supported Bloody Hands Hawley's rise to power, which he now says was "the worst decision of my life".

    Answer is both Haig and Hawley combined intelligence, cunning and amazing ability to bullshit their way to glory, by being superlative lickspittals. And in the process fooling people who you'd have thought were smart enough to see though their BS. But sadly were not.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    Off topic technical question. Some of my friends and colleagues want to delete WhatsApp because of their new terms and conditions (seemingly exporting loads of phone data to Facebook*). Is Signal the best alternative, or any others we should look at?

    *What does each of the following messengers apps collect.

    Signal
    ———
    None. (The only personal data Signal stores is your phone number)

    Telegram
    —————
    Contact Info
    Contacts
    User ID

    WhatsApp
    —————-
    Device ID
    User ID
    Advertising Data
    Purchase History
    Coarse Location
    Phone Number
    Email Address
    Contacts
    Product Interaction
    Crash Data
    Performance Data
    Other Diagnostic Data
    Payment Info
    Customer Support
    Product Interaction
    Other User Content

    Facebook Messenger
    ———————————
    Purchase History
    Other Financial Info
    Precise Location
    Coarse Location
    Physical Address
    Email Address
    Name
    Phone Number
    Other User Contact Info
    Contacts
    Photos or Videos
    Gameplay Content
    Other User Content
    Search History
    Browsing History
    User ID
    Device ID
    Product Interaction
    Advertising Data
    Other Usage Data
    Crash Data
    Performance Data
    Other Diagnostic Data
    Other Data Types
    Browsing History
    Health
    Fitness
    Payment Info
    Photos or Videos
    Audio Data
    Gameplay Content
    Customer Support
    Other User Content
    Search History
    Sensitive Info
    iMessage
    Email address
    Phone number Search history
    Device ID

    Signal has the virtue of being owned and run by a not-for-profit*. It was setup by ex-WhatApp employees out of their buy out money. It was designed, in legal terms to avoid the money pit problem of social media. So it can't be bought or taken over.

    *Essentially a charity, but in the US context, they break out from charities proper, organisations that don't have directly charitable aims.

    While others have the same feature, it is the best and largest (in terms of take up) of that group, I believe.

    See - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation
    someone I trust posted this today
    https://meganvwalker.com/telegram-vs-signal-with-whatsapp-comparison-table/
    Thanks. Secret messaging in Telegram sounds a useful feature.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047

    Foxy said:

    Thanks for sharing the link. I've been wanting to know this for a while. 30% had it round our way.
    Is it not worth antibody testing pre vaccination and if you have antibodies you move down the queue? If its 20% surely it becomes significant and worthwhile to test to get the queue priority more accurate?
    Quite expensive and slow way of proceeding though. There may be a high rate in NHS staff, but probably not the other at risk groups.

    31.9% for Leicester sounds about right to me, going by friends and colleagues.

    Money does not come into it given what the lockdown is costing.

    As for being slow, there is a simple way around that. Do Januarys as we are. In January start testing those due for vaccination in February, and then test groups a month before their scheduled vaccination. No time would be lost this way.

    Time would effectively be gained as the immune group would be growing 25% quicker.
    The other issue to be considered is that, I understand, that the vaccine(s) produce a stronger immune response than the disease itself.

    So it might well be beneficial to those who have had the disease to be vaccinated.

    Foxy?
    At the moment for a (hopefully very) short time, we're facing less vaccine shots than people. We will soon be facing more vaccine shots than people turning up, so I don't see the need for adding this extra step. Unless it's actively harmful to give it to recoverees, just get the jabs into arms.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    We need a national COVID recovery figure, that includes all cases.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    Off topic technical question. Some of my friends and colleagues want to delete WhatsApp because of their new terms and conditions (seemingly exporting loads of phone data to Facebook*). Is Signal the best alternative, or any others we should look at?

    *What does each of the following messengers apps collect.

    Signal
    ———
    None. (The only personal data Signal stores is your phone number)

    Telegram
    —————
    Contact Info
    Contacts
    User ID

    WhatsApp
    —————-
    Device ID
    User ID
    Advertising Data
    Purchase History
    Coarse Location
    Phone Number
    Email Address
    Contacts
    Product Interaction
    Crash Data
    Performance Data
    Other Diagnostic Data
    Payment Info
    Customer Support
    Product Interaction
    Other User Content

    Facebook Messenger
    ———————————
    Purchase History
    Other Financial Info
    Precise Location
    Coarse Location
    Physical Address
    Email Address
    Name
    Phone Number
    Other User Contact Info
    Contacts
    Photos or Videos
    Gameplay Content
    Other User Content
    Search History
    Browsing History
    User ID
    Device ID
    Product Interaction
    Advertising Data
    Other Usage Data
    Crash Data
    Performance Data
    Other Diagnostic Data
    Other Data Types
    Browsing History
    Health
    Fitness
    Payment Info
    Photos or Videos
    Audio Data
    Gameplay Content
    Customer Support
    Other User Content
    Search History
    Sensitive Info
    iMessage
    Email address
    Phone number Search history
    Device ID

    Signal has the virtue of being owned and run by a not-for-profit*. It was setup by ex-WhatApp employees out of their buy out money. It was designed, in legal terms to avoid the money pit problem of social media. So it can't be bought or taken over.

    *Essentially a charity, but in the US context, they break out from charities proper, organisations that don't have directly charitable aims.

    While others have the same feature, it is the best and largest (in terms of take up) of that group, I believe.

    See - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation
    someone I trust posted this today
    https://meganvwalker.com/telegram-vs-signal-with-whatsapp-comparison-table/
    True - though I think it fair too say, that at the rate new features are coming out for all the apps concerned, they will converge in capabilities quite rapidly.

    The biggest issue, to me, is what happens if/when an app succeeds and is subject to the overtures of Silicon Valley with endless billions to finance an acquisition. Hence the fate of WhatsApp....
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    DavidL said:

    Carnyx said:

    DavidL said:

    Carnyx said:

    DavidL said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    My son was given an A in his Higher English last year (admittedly without the inconvenience of actually taking an exam) without ever having studied a Shakespeare play. I mean, why bother? What the hell is the point of the subject?
    Other playwrights are available.
    And so, apparently are several Scottish poets whose work is only in print and not forgotten because they are on the curriculum. One of them is a good friend of Nicola’s, happily enough.

    I can think of very few plays that match Shakespeare. A man for all seasons, certainly. No doubt that there are a few others.
    https://www.edinburghexpert.com/blog/whaurs-yer-wullie-shakespeare-noo

    And Ms Sturgeon does love her books. Not a bad thing at all.
    But she seems to have a very narrow parochial view of what constitutes a good one. Maybe it’s her nationalism.

    In fairness, amongst the doggerel and incoherent rubbish there was one jewel, Assisi by Norman MacCaig. Just superb.
    Sunset Song incoherent rubbish?! It's one of her faves.

    And even if you think there is a bias to Scots lit it's badly needed after the last century or so of teaching at all levels, mercifully much better in the last 2-3 decades.



  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069

    Foxy said:

    Thanks for sharing the link. I've been wanting to know this for a while. 30% had it round our way.
    Is it not worth antibody testing pre vaccination and if you have antibodies you move down the queue? If its 20% surely it becomes significant and worthwhile to test to get the queue priority more accurate?
    Quite expensive and slow way of proceeding though. There may be a high rate in NHS staff, but probably not the other at risk groups.

    31.9% for Leicester sounds about right to me, going by friends and colleagues.

    Money does not come into it given what the lockdown is costing.

    As for being slow, there is a simple way around that. Do Januarys as we are. In January start testing those due for vaccination in February, and then test groups a month before their scheduled vaccination. No time would be lost this way.

    Time would effectively be gained as the immune group would be growing 25% quicker.
    The other issue to be considered is that, I understand, that the vaccine(s) produce a stronger immune response than the disease itself.

    So it might well be beneficial to those who have had the disease to be vaccinated.

    Foxy?
    Yes, that is why Mrs Foxy went ahead with the vaccine.
  • Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Like Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing . . .
    More pertinently he said that “you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows “.

    Which a study in 2007 found had been quoted by more lawyers and judges than any other line of poetry ever.
    They probably delivered it more in key than the man himself too.
    He wasn’t given his Nobel for perfect pitch.
    Indeed. Competent songwriter, not a good singer. Nasal affected drawl pretty much kills most songs he peformed for me. Somehow puts one in mind of Ian Duncan Smith's vocals at the dispatch box.
    Calling Bob Dylan a "competent songwriter" is about the funniest thing I've ever seen on PB. Like calling Shakespeare a competent playwright.
    Do you not think Shakespeare was a competent playwright?
    I do. I also think YOU are incompetent, at least as a songwriting critic!

    Though suspect (or rather hope) you were being saucily tongue-in-cheek?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Like Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing . . .
    More pertinently he said that “you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows “.

    Which a study in 2007 found had been quoted by more lawyers and judges than any other line of poetry ever.
    They probably delivered it more in key than the man himself too.
    He wasn’t given his Nobel for perfect pitch.
    Indeed. Competent songwriter, not a good singer. Nasal affected drawl pretty much kills most songs he peformed for me. Somehow puts one in mind of Ian Duncan Smith's vocals at the dispatch box.
    Calling Bob Dylan a "competent songwriter" is about the funniest thing I've ever seen on PB. Like calling Shakespeare a competent playwright.
    Do you not think Shakespeare was a competent playwright?
    Not always.

    *thinks dark thoughts about Twelfth Night, The Comedy of Errors and Love’s Labour’s Lost*
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    Carnyx said:

    kle4 said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    I've not even read this story and most such stories are not as dramatic as advertised, but that does seem like semantics - removing something from a curriculum, for reasons of controversy, would often be described as banning it from schools.
    Can’t think of any school apart from Eton perhaps where the Odyssey would be on the curriculum.
    Chapter 21 was the set text for GCSE Ancient Greek when I did it...

    I used to write Homeric hexameter epithets for my crushes. What a nerd!

    --AS
    I'm impressed. I just about managed Grade 5 in my O level. But I can write 'Didn't you just break wind?' in Attic Greek which Aeschylus might understand. And it was very useful in getting an ear for the assonance of biological nomenclature. Though it means I grit my teeth at the crimes perpetrated by coaythors who wouldn't believe me ...
    ἆρ’ οὐ πέπορδας;

    (perfect chosen to express the lingering (!) present effect of past action...)
  • TomsToms Posts: 2,478
    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Like Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing . . .
    More pertinently he said that “you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows “.

    Which a study in 2007 found had been quoted by more lawyers and judges than any other line of poetry ever.
    Dylan also sang something like
    "the answer my friend is blowing in the wind---the answer is blowing in the wind"

    Very evocative and spine chilling even. I think that means whatever one wants it to mean.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,047

    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Like Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing . . .
    More pertinently he said that “you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows “.

    Which a study in 2007 found had been quoted by more lawyers and judges than any other line of poetry ever.
    They probably delivered it more in key than the man himself too.
    He wasn’t given his Nobel for perfect pitch.
    Indeed. Competent songwriter, not a good singer. Nasal affected drawl pretty much kills most songs he peformed for me. Somehow puts one in mind of Ian Duncan Smith's vocals at the dispatch box.
    Calling Bob Dylan a "competent songwriter" is about the funniest thing I've ever seen on PB. Like calling Shakespeare a competent playwright.
    Do you not think Shakespeare was a competent playwright?
    I do. I also think YOU are incompetent, at least as a songwriting critic!

    Though suspect (or rather hope) you were being saucily tongue-in-cheek?
    Competent was a compliment.
  • ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    My son was given an A in his Higher English last year (admittedly without the inconvenience of actually taking an exam) without ever having studied a Shakespeare play. I mean, why bother? What the hell is the point of the subject?
    There isn’t any. FFS, it’s such a pointless subject even Richard Burgon has a Cambridge degree in it.
    English degrees were the Media Studies of their day when first introduced. Critics said it was ludicrous to give degrees for leisure activities like reading plays and novels.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772

    DavidL said:

    ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    My son was given an A in his Higher English last year (admittedly without the inconvenience of actually taking an exam) without ever having studied a Shakespeare play. I mean, why bother? What the hell is the point of the subject?
    There isn’t any. FFS, it’s such a pointless subject even Richard Burgon has a Cambridge degree in it.
    I wish it still taught useful things like précis. Everything my kids produced was over the word limit, everything. The hours I wasted trying to get the same points over more succinctly. And do you have any idea what that’s like for a lawyer? Jeez.

    Grammar would also be helpful, as would different styles of writing for different things.
    The argument *for* Homer is that his works were a major part of the literary foundations and quite often, the moral arguments of the Ancient Greek world. Which was subsumed into the Roman world. Which in turn was the foundation, in many ways, of our society.

    The story of that, and how we came to both listen to those arguments and overturn many of them, is the story of how our society evolved to what it is today and *why*.
    Yep. I think that they used to call it an education. Hey ho.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    edited January 2021

    Carnyx said:

    kle4 said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    I've not even read this story and most such stories are not as dramatic as advertised, but that does seem like semantics - removing something from a curriculum, for reasons of controversy, would often be described as banning it from schools.
    Can’t think of any school apart from Eton perhaps where the Odyssey would be on the curriculum.
    Chapter 21 was the set text for GCSE Ancient Greek when I did it...

    I used to write Homeric hexameter epithets for my crushes. What a nerd!

    --AS
    I'm impressed. I just about managed Grade 5 in my O level. But I can write 'Didn't you just break wind?' in Attic Greek which Aeschylus might understand. And it was very useful in getting an ear for the assonance of biological nomenclature. Though it means I grit my teeth at the crimes perpetrated by coaythors who wouldn't believe me ...
    ἆρ’ οὐ πέπορδας;

    (perfect chosen to express the lingering (!) present effect of past action...)
    What I remember is ara mee bebdeekas; (the double ee being the eta). That not right? (Singular, of course. (Can'r work out how to write it in Attic orthography on this thing.)
  • TresTres Posts: 2,163

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    Actually if the aim (and result) is to prevent the children reading it in school then yes it is. You are dancing on the head of a pin and it is pretty shameful.

    I look forward to seeing you try - and fail - to defend the other fuckwits in the article who think Shakespeare and Hawthorn should be banned from schools as well.
    I doubt the curriculum includes the Ice Twins either, did they ban SeanT?
    It is not a case of not having something on the curriculum. It is a case of specifically removing it. And, with all due respect to Sean, he is not Homer.

    If that article doesn't make your blood boil then there is something seriously wrong with you.

    "The concept that children shouldn’t be exposed to works of literature “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” is espoused by young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman. She wrote in the periodical School Library Journal that no author must be spared in this attempt to scrub literary history.

    "Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.

    Racism in classics can’t be negated merely by alerting young readers to its presence,” she warned. “Unless we have the time, energy, attention, expertise, and ability to foster nuanced conversations in which even the shyest readers feel empowered to engage if they choose, we may hurt, not help. Pressuring readers of color to speak up also removes free choice and can be harmful."”
    No, it doesn't make me angry because if you actually read Venkataraman's article, you will have seen that she explicitly states 'I’m not advocating we ban classics. Or erase the past.' Instead you have just been duped into anger by clickbait shock journalists looking to kick up 'culture war' nonsense.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    Foxy said:

    Off topic technical question. Some of my friends and colleagues want to delete WhatsApp because of their new terms and conditions (seemingly exporting loads of phone data to Facebook*). Is Signal the best alternative, or any others we should look at?

    *What does each of the following messengers apps collect.

    Signal
    ———
    None. (The only personal data Signal stores is your phone number)

    Telegram
    —————
    Contact Info
    Contacts
    User ID

    WhatsApp
    —————-
    Device ID
    User ID
    Advertising Data
    Purchase History
    Coarse Location
    Phone Number
    Email Address
    Contacts
    Product Interaction
    Crash Data
    Performance Data
    Other Diagnostic Data
    Payment Info
    Customer Support
    Product Interaction
    Other User Content

    Facebook Messenger
    ———————————
    Purchase History
    Other Financial Info
    Precise Location
    Coarse Location
    Physical Address
    Email Address
    Name
    Phone Number
    Other User Contact Info
    Contacts
    Photos or Videos
    Gameplay Content
    Other User Content
    Search History
    Browsing History
    User ID
    Device ID
    Product Interaction
    Advertising Data
    Other Usage Data
    Crash Data
    Performance Data
    Other Diagnostic Data
    Other Data Types
    Browsing History
    Health
    Fitness
    Payment Info
    Photos or Videos
    Audio Data
    Gameplay Content
    Customer Support
    Other User Content
    Search History
    Sensitive Info
    iMessage
    Email address
    Phone number Search history
    Device ID

    Head to signal if you're plotting the overthrow of the US gov't I think
  • ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Charles said:

    alex_ said:

    alex_ said:

    If that is true - and CNN aren't above sexing these things up - it's breathtaking. We really are in the Fuhrerbunker after the likes of Speer have f***ed off.
    Don't forget that Wednesday wasn't about a protest. It was intended to keep Trump IN POWER. After a couple of day of listening to the legal people trying to persuade him to do things to reduce his legal jeopardy, he is now back to thinking how he can still be President (probably been talking to Flynn/Powell/Trump jnr etc again) I wouldn't be surprised if he has been convinced that there is still a route - but this time it involves removing any pretence of being 'peaceful'.

    We can only hope that the wilder speculation about the leadership of the DoD definitely isn't true. And i wouldn't be wanting to be involved in security in the State Capitals over the next few days.
    I don't see how a public inauguration can safely go ahead.

    I tend to agree. It's far more important that it happens, for constitutional reasons, than how it happens. Once it's done, it puts 3 Democrats at the front of the line of Presidential Succession.
    I'm wondering if the Presidential Succession should be looked at?

    The way America is polarising, if the GOP win the House in the midterms I could picture some extreme Q/GOPers wanting to 'take out' the POTUS and VEEP to 'win back' the Presidency that way.

    I would suggest perhaps the Presidential succession should go through the Presidents own Cabinet before it reverts back to the House.
    Cabinet isn’t elected
    Presidential succession USED to go via Cabinet, but that was changed. Something that Alexander Hague, that great constitutional scholar did NOT realize when he made his infamous "I am in charge" statement to the press just after Ronald Reagan was shot.

    THAT was the scariest moment of the whole business; I remember seeing him spout this nonsense on TV. General reaction was, who IS this guy? Some even thought he was part of a coup.
    Haig was wrong on a huge number of levels there. Although the Secretary of State is the senior cabinet minister under the Constitution, in that particular situation where the President is incapacitated and the Vice President is absent the person in charge should be whoever holds the relevant ministerial brief - in this case, James Watt as Secretary of the Interior, or, if a military threat was perceived, Caspar Weinberger as Secretary of Defense. Haig, however, claimed that he was in charge and because those two thought a row at that moment would be counterproductive they let him think he was, which included giving the infamous ‘I am in command here’ press briefing. During this briefing, against Haig’s wishes, Weinberger raised the military threat level just as Haig was announcing it would not be raised, probably for no better reason than to show he could. Haig apparently shouted at him a lot for that, only to be told to fuck off.

    It was always more about Haig’s ego than about the reality of the situationL but equally, it should be noted the cabinet did work pretty well prior to H’s return in what could have been a very serious crisis.
    You are wrong about a number of things:

    > the top member of the Cabinet is NOT in charge in absence of Pres or VP, that may be UK practice but NOT in US.

    > in USA, the Secretary of the Interior is NOT the equivalent of Home Secretary or European Interior ministers. Over here, the Department of the Interior is responsible for US public lands, for example national parks & monuments.

    Haig had ZERO authority to do and say what he did. Which is why he got canned ASAP after Ronald Reagan's recovery.

    You are right about the Secretary of the interior but I had already realised my mistake and changed it. (Now of course it would be the Secretary of Homeland Security, but bizarrely until 2001 that was split between about five different departments.)

    I’m interested in your other assertion. Who do you think is in charge in those circumstances, and why do you think that? The top member of the cabinet is of course technically the Secretary of State, and as they are not in charge except of course in matters pertaining to foreign affairs it may be that we are actually agreeing.
    Think the basic error you are making, is thinking that the US cabinet is THE top executive authority, as is the UK cabinet in your country. Which is NOT the case. Here, the cabinet are simply heads of individual executive departments, with VERY limited powers otherwise, indeed virtually none as a body EXCEPT for role in invoking the 25th amendment.

    So the Secretary of Homeland security does NOT have any powers OTHER than those granted directly by law (limited) AND what the President (or in case of 25th Acting President) directly authorizes.

    Note that in 1799 during presidency of John Adams a cabinet cabal TRIED to exercise the kind of authority you describe (if I'm understanding you correctly) BUT were shot down. And that was IT.

    Further note that after Woodrow Wilson's stroke(s) in 1919, his cabinet did NOT behave that way, and never even tried. Instead, for all intents and purpose Mrs Wilson became a quasi-acting President, though she certainly tried to adhere VERY closely to her husband's wishes as she understood them.

    Which is relevant to 1982, when it turned out that Nancy Reagan had a LOT more say-so than Al Haig. Something that he perhaps came to understand when she helped drive a stake through his political heart and permanently ended his career as a mover and shaker.
    Which is the point I was actually making. Because cabinet ministers in the US have no powers outside their departments, it would be the heads of the relevant departments that would lead the response and therefore in effect be in charge. Sorry if that was not clear to you.

    (Incidentally Haig, although grossly exceeding his authority and ending up looking like a complete twat, wasn’t sacked. He stayed in office long enough to bugger up the US response to the Falklands war as well.)
    Forgot to mention Al's (allegedly) pro-Argentine stance, should have added that to make PBers detest him as much as yours truly.

    The canned him as soon as they could without making too much of a spectacle about it.

    Real reason I think Al Haig was a total slimebag, was one incident during the Chosen Reservoir battle during the Korean War. When US Marines and US Army were fighting for their lives, thanks to the astounding incompetence of MacArthur and his entourage, including young suck-up Al Haig.

    Who was dispatched by Mac to the "Frozen Chosen" not to provide any actual assistance, but on a PR exercise to hand out a fistful of medals to the US Army contingent.

    Haig swooped down in his helicopter, fresh as a daisy from his cushy Tokyo billet, down to the mud and snow and misery on the ground. It was December 1950 and the bottom had dropped out of the thermometer. The troops fighting the battle were short of just about everything at that point; their clothing was woefully inadequate, in particular their boots. (My father was there, and froze his feet pretty bad, but kept on marching and fighting; for the rest of his life he had problems with his feet.)

    Anyway, here comes Al Haig, with a nice clean uniform (including nice warm coat and good boots) and proceeds to hand out medals along with pats on the back. Then after a photo-op, gets back in his chopper and flies back to Tokyo, no doubt for a nice hot bath and a change of cloths. Something the guys he left behind hadn't had not enjoyed for weeks or months - and some never would ever again.

    Eyewitnesses say that, after Al Haig went bye bye up in the sky, the Army commander on the ground took the medal that he'd been given - and hurled it into the snow.
    Wow. That’s an impressively shitty story.

    I just assume on general principles that anyone who was Chief of Staff to Nixon and not implicated in Watergate was probably both a scumbag and a rat.

    More pertinently, you wonder how somebody as rubbish as that kept getting promoted.
    Yes. But similar to asking Chief Justice John Roberts why he hired Josh Hawley to be his law clerk and protege. Or asking John Danforth why he supported Bloody Hands Hawley's rise to power, which he now says was "the worst decision of my life".

    Answer is both Haig and Hawley combined intelligence, cunning and amazing ability to bullshit their way to glory, by being superlative lickspittals. And in the process fooling people who you'd have thought were smart enough to see though their BS. But sadly were not.
    Contrast with Gen Jim Mattis

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/21/why-jim-mattis-once-pulled-christmas-duty-for-a-young-marine.html
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,545
    DavidL said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    My son was given an A in his Higher English last year (admittedly without the inconvenience of actually taking an exam) without ever having studied a Shakespeare play. I mean, why bother? What the hell is the point of the subject?
    Because authors with a (in some cases tenuous) connection with Scotland are the only essential writers in the English language. In the opinion of the Scottish Government and SQA. AIUI.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    kle4 said:

    I'm sure a service can find a way. Might as well have officially sanctioned echo chambers for Democrats and Republicans.

    There is nothing stopping them hosting it themselves, assuming they can find an ISP
  • Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,793

    Gaussian said:

    RobD said:
    Not necessarily. If the new strain achieves the spread we've seen despite 20% immunity, that puts its unrestrained R up accordingly. Which then also pushes up the immunity level required for herd immunity.
    True, but at least that's 20% of people who are unlikely to end up back in hospital, and the extra number of infections needed for a higher immunity threshold is less than that.

    I'd be a bit cautious about relying on the figures, though. They are inferring cases from deaths, which relies on an accurate (age-specific) IFR. But computing an accurate IFR relies on knowing the number of cases. For sure we get a better estimate of it now, because we are confirming more cases, but it's a difficult number to pin down.

    I haven't seen an antibody survey for a while. Has there been one to estimate total infections, or does it start to fail as an estimate because antibodies (as opposed to T/memory B cell immunity) drop off after a few months?

    --AS
    Originally, antibody prevalence reached about 6% by July and then decayed to 4.4% 12 weeks later.
    They now have reached about 6.9%, I think.

    That 20% figure (and over 50% in some areas) looks surprisingly high. As it should depress R by a factor of 2 in the areas at that sort of level, it does point to extremely high R0. If true.

    There’s a lot of “may...” in that article, and I’d suggest an 18 day lag between infection and death is a bit rapid. That’s an average of 13 days from symptoms to death, which is quicker than I’d be comfortable having in a model.

    It’s rather different from the UCL model referred to - considerably different in magnitude, from what I can see. (Barking and Dagenham, for example, appears to have had less than half the infections in the UCL model than this one).

  • Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Like Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changing . . .
    More pertinently he said that “you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows “.

    Which a study in 2007 found had been quoted by more lawyers and judges than any other line of poetry ever.
    They probably delivered it more in key than the man himself too.
    He wasn’t given his Nobel for perfect pitch.
    Indeed. Competent songwriter, not a good singer. Nasal affected drawl pretty much kills most songs he peformed for me. Somehow puts one in mind of Ian Duncan Smith's vocals at the dispatch box.
    Calling Bob Dylan a "competent songwriter" is about the funniest thing I've ever seen on PB. Like calling Shakespeare a competent playwright.
    Do you not think Shakespeare was a competent playwright?
    I do. I also think YOU are incompetent, at least as a songwriting critic!

    Though suspect (or rather hope) you were being saucily tongue-in-cheek?
    Competent was a compliment.
    ‘Oi Wolfgang, my mum says you’re a competent composer, not sure myself.’
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    Foxy said:

    eek said:

    Foxy said:

    Off topic technical question. Some of my friends and colleagues want to delete WhatsApp because of their new terms and conditions (seemingly exporting loads of phone data to Facebook*). Is Signal the best alternative, or any others we should look at?

    *What does each of the following messengers apps collect.

    Signal
    ———
    None. (The only personal data Signal stores is your phone number)

    Telegram
    —————
    Contact Info
    Contacts
    User ID

    WhatsApp
    —————-
    Device ID
    User ID
    Advertising Data
    Purchase History
    Coarse Location
    Phone Number
    Email Address
    Contacts
    Product Interaction
    Crash Data
    Performance Data
    Other Diagnostic Data
    Payment Info
    Customer Support
    Product Interaction
    Other User Content

    Facebook Messenger
    ———————————
    Purchase History
    Other Financial Info
    Precise Location
    Coarse Location
    Physical Address
    Email Address
    Name
    Phone Number
    Other User Contact Info
    Contacts
    Photos or Videos
    Gameplay Content
    Other User Content
    Search History
    Browsing History
    User ID
    Device ID
    Product Interaction
    Advertising Data
    Other Usage Data
    Crash Data
    Performance Data
    Other Diagnostic Data
    Other Data Types
    Browsing History
    Health
    Fitness
    Payment Info
    Photos or Videos
    Audio Data
    Gameplay Content
    Customer Support
    Other User Content
    Search History
    Sensitive Info
    iMessage
    Email address
    Phone number Search history
    Device ID

    Signal has the virtue of being owned and run by a not-for-profit*. It was setup by ex-WhatApp employees out of their buy out money. It was designed, in legal terms to avoid the money pit problem of social media. So it can't be bought or taken over.

    *Essentially a charity, but in the US context, they break out from charities proper, organisations that don't have directly charitable aims.

    While others have the same feature, it is the best and largest (in terms of take up) of that group, I believe.

    See - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation
    someone I trust posted this today
    https://meganvwalker.com/telegram-vs-signal-with-whatsapp-comparison-table/
    Thanks. Secret messaging in Telegram sounds a useful feature.
    It's worth a look at who owns Telegram. The problem will come down the line, when it goes up for sale, though.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    Foxy said:

    Thanks. Secret messaging in Telegram sounds a useful feature.

    That's why you should NOT use Telegram. There is no such thing as an unforwardable message or a self-destructing message. Anything someone can view is copyable via the "analog hole". i.e. They can take a picture or video of the screen, or recording of audio.

    At best such features are a minor convenience, at worst they encourage users to engage in risky behaviour where the safeguards are easily defeated.

    As a rule of thumb any service or app that touts such features is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of its users, because they know full well that such claims are snake oil.

  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    Tres said:

    Yay, another Brexit benefit. Thank you Mr Johnson.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55609315

    Well I suppose you could interpret “sickness and self-isolation” as referring to Brexit.

    My guess is it’s Covid that’s causing the issues at food processors.
    For around ten months I have been eagerly anticipating the first post on PB that shrouds Brexit chaos with the cloak of Covid, and bingo, there it was.
    This is what the BBC article says:

    "It told customers in an email that there may be "an increase of missing items and substitutions over the next few weeks".

    Staff sickness and self-isolation means some food producers are cutting the number of product lines they offer.

    While customers might not get their exact product choice, plenty of food should be available, Ocado said.

    "Staff absences across the supply chain may lead to an increase in product substitutions for a small number of customers as some suppliers consolidate their offering to maintain output," a spokesperson said."

    I don't see much shrouding there.
    My post was a gentle jibe @TrèsDifficile for assigning blame to Brexit when the article was clearly about Covid
  • Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Tres said:

    Completely OT but a sad indictment of where we are heading if we don't reinsert some common sense into debates

    https://usa.greekreporter.com/2020/12/30/odyssey-banned-for-violence-sexism-is-this-the-end-of-world-classics

    Apparently the Odyssey and Shakespeare are the literary equivalent of statues of slavers (their words not mine)

    Fake news. Odyssey was not banned anywhere.
    Actually no. Read the article and it is clear that the Odyssey was removed from the school curriculum. If you have issue with the story then you can also take it up with the Wall Street Journal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872
    Removing from a curriculum is not the same as banning.
    Actually if the aim (and result) is to prevent the children reading it in school then yes it is. You are dancing on the head of a pin and it is pretty shameful.

    I look forward to seeing you try - and fail - to defend the other fuckwits in the article who think Shakespeare and Hawthorn should be banned from schools as well.
    I doubt the curriculum includes the Ice Twins either, did they ban SeanT?
    It is not a case of not having something on the curriculum. It is a case of specifically removing it. And, with all due respect to Sean, he is not Homer.

    If that article doesn't make your blood boil then there is something seriously wrong with you.

    "The concept that children shouldn’t be exposed to works of literature “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” is espoused by young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman. She wrote in the periodical School Library Journal that no author must be spared in this attempt to scrub literary history.

    "Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.

    Racism in classics can’t be negated merely by alerting young readers to its presence,” she warned. “Unless we have the time, energy, attention, expertise, and ability to foster nuanced conversations in which even the shyest readers feel empowered to engage if they choose, we may hurt, not help. Pressuring readers of color to speak up also removes free choice and can be harmful."”
    No, it doesn't make me angry because if you actually read Venkataraman's article, you will have seen that she explicitly states 'I’m not advocating we ban classics. Or erase the past.' Instead you have just been duped into anger by clickbait shock journalists looking to kick up 'culture war' nonsense.
    I have read her article and a lot of the other stuff written by her and around it. 'Not banning' is bullshit. She advocates not teaching it which is just as bad. She says children 'should not be exposed to it' even with explanation.

    Your defence is.. well indefensible and based on hoping no one else has bothered to actually research this. You are pretty bloody shameful.
This discussion has been closed.