Official BBO Hijacked Thread Thread

[Winstonm]

Emphasis added:

 

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said on Sunday she would not support a replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy who opposes the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortions rights nationwide.

 

“I would not support a nominee who demonstrated a hostility to Roe v. Wade,” Collins said during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

 

She reiterated that view during on ABC’s “This Week,” describing Roe v. Wade as “settled law.”

 

Senator Collins is from Maine, so it is no wonder she does not understand that for the southern base, the Civil War is not "settled law", so Roe v. Wade is surely "unsettled".

[y66]

From Oakland in Their Bones, and in Their Films by Brooks Barnes at NYT

 

Oakland’s current gentrification and the resulting clash — often with racist overtones, as with the recent #BBQBecky incident, in which a white woman called the police on black picnickers — have stoked creativity anew. Oakland is almost a character in Tommy Orange’s best-selling new novel, “There There,” which examines what the city means as an urban hub for Native Americans. Mr. Orange, who grew up in Oakland, is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.

 

Film seems to be finally coming into its own because of greater opportunity. Academics and activists have castigated Hollywood for excluding people of color. As a result, distributors are pushing ahead films by black directors and writers, including Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”), Jordan Peele (“Get Out”), Dee Rees (“Mudbound”), Ava DuVernay (“A Wrinkle in Time”), Justin Simien (“Dear White People”) and Steve McQueen (who is following up “12 Years a Slave” with the fall drama “Widows”).

 

“Why has Oakland not been more known for film? Because there has never been the necessary market support,” said David Roach, director of the Oakland International Film Festival.

 

Mr. Casal and Mr. Diggs echoed that point.

 

“Making a movie did not seem like something that was particularly available to us in the past,” Mr. Casal said. “We’re not from L.A. We’re not from a lineage of filmmakers.”

 

Growing up, Mr. Diggs said, “I never thought about films as a way to express myself. Just a totally foreign concept.” (YouTube was another matter.)

 

“Blindspotting,” which Lionsgate acquired for distribution at the most recent Sundance Film Festival, got its start nine years ago, when a young Los Angeles producer, Jess Calder, sent Mr. Casal an out-of-the-blue message through his YouTube page. She had seen him perform on HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam” and said in her note, “This will sound crazy, but I feel like you might have a really great film idea in you, and I’d love to be part of the process.”

 

Mr. Casal, whose pursuits include rapping and playwriting, introduced his new friend to Mr. Diggs. “She had only flipped half the coin,” Mr. Casal said.

 

The two men had known each other since high school, when they were active in Youth Speaks, a Bay Area nonprofit that encourages teenagers to “make art, be creative, change the world,” in the words of Mr. Joseph, a co-founder. After high school, Mr. Diggs, a track star and budding hip-hop artist, left for Brown University, while Mr. Casal, a two-time National Poetry Slam champion, toured as a spoken-word performer before joining a theater company.

 

Mr. Casal and Mr. Diggs reunited one night in 2004, when Mr. Diggs was back in Oakland and stopped by a modest recording studio that Mr. Casal had built. “We worked on music until the sun came up,” Mr. Casal said. “And I don’t really remember much after that that didn’t involve Daveed.”

 

“Blindspotting” started to form when, encouraged by Ms. Calder, they began writing a story about two friends. One is a parolee (played by Mr. Diggs) trying to adhere to the conditions of his release and restart his life. The other is a mischief maker (Mr. Casal) whose unpredictability threatens to send his pal back to prison. Police brutality simmers beneath nearly every scene, as does Oakland’s changing identity — as when a greasy burger joint, Kwik Way, shuts down and reopens with the same jagged neon sign ... and a foodie menu.

 

The real-life Kwik Way, located on Lake Park Avenue, underwent a similar transformation. The new owner might as well have started selling 49ers jackets. (This is Raiders territory. At least until they decamp for Las Vegas.)

 

Directed by Carlos López Estrada, “Blindspotting,” is an angry movie. But the film, perhaps surprisingly, also looks at the pros and cons of change and lays blame on both locals and newcomers for tension. “It’s about trying to get people to see things from another perspective,” Mr. Casal said. “And acknowledge that your perspective may not be the only one in play. And just because it’s yours doesn’t mean that it’s right.”

 

He continued: “Most people, when presented with the whole story, are empathetic. But getting people to the whole story without hesitation or resistance or defensiveness is very, very, very difficult. People need really safe spaces to change their minds. And maybe that’s in the dark in a movie theater.”

 

Mr. Diggs and Mr. Casal in some ways embodied the tension of “Blindspotting” as they returned to Oakland last month to promote their film. (They now live in Los Angeles, where Mr. Diggs has a role on “black-ish.”) They lamented the changes they saw. Yet they had changed: The Claremont Club & Spa, a luxury hotel, served as a base, and they toured the town in a chauffeured studio S.U.V.

 

“It was a little awkward, sure,” Mr. Diggs said. “We just tried to be as respectful as possible. I took selfies with some fans. We tried to apologize to everyone for the disruption.”

 

Around noon, they stopped at the Filbert Street apartment where they had been roommates in 2009, and knocked on the door. No answer. They lingered in the driveway, and a suspicious resident eventually came outside. What the hell did they want?

 

“We met exactly who we assumed would live there now,” Mr. Casal said afterward. “White hipster kid. Sunglasses on inside. Dyed blond hair.” Mr. Casal said he understood the man’s attitude — they were intruding on his space — but “we were also trying to engage and have a very loving and peaceful conversation about being from this neighborhood. The reality is that it meant nothing to him because he’s not from there.”

 

Mr. Diggs played devil’s advocate.

 

“To be fair, he also seemed pretty hung over,” Mr. Diggs said, with a laugh. “He seemed to be living a similar life to the one we did.”

[Winstonm]

This could not have happened to a more deserving rube:

 

Devin Nunes, the U.S. Representative for California’s 22nd district, roughly three hours outside Los Angeles, used re-election campaign donations to pay for nearly $15,000 worth of Boston Celtics tickets in 2017, according to a McClatchy analysis of Federal Election Commission filings and a report issued Thursday by nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog groups Issue One and Campaign Legal Center.

 

Devin Nunes: I've got this....what....ailment? My doctor, a Russian shrink I used to go to, tells me that in 50-60% of the cases, Celtics tickets really help. Well, when you came over and said...well, you were there, you know what you said. Anyway, the very next day, I used campaign contributions to buy Celtic tickets.

 

Vladimir Putin: I don't see how that's a compliment about me.

 

Devin Nunes: You make me want to be a better Congressman.

 

And unfortunately, that is As Good As It Gets.

[Aberlour10]

Video of first ever full ski descent from K2 - 8611m .by Andrzej Bargiel

 

[Winstonm]

I agree that there is no crime of "collusion". But just to be clear, there is also no crime of "Sticking a pistol into the face of a bank teller and demanding all the money in small, unmarked bills".

 

There is, though, armed robbery.

[ldrews]

I agree that there is no crime of "collusion". But just to be clear, there is also no crime of "Sticking a pistol into the face of a bank teller and demanding all the money in small, unmarked bills".

 

There is, though, armed robbery.

 

So, what specific crime is Trump alleged to have committed? Is there any evidence publicly available to support that allegation?

[hrothgar]

So, what specific crime is Trump alleged to have committed?

 

That's not how Special Counsel investigations work.

 

Mueller was granted broad latitude to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.

His eventual actions depend on what he discovers during the course of the investigation.

To date, Trump has not been charged with any crimes.

Several Trump associates have.

 

Is there any evidence publicly available to support that allegation?

 

The Special Counsel is not required to share evidence with the public and indeed, is encouraged not to.

 

With this said and done, I expect that Trump will be indicted for a combination of

 

1. Conspiracy

2. Obstruction of justice

3. Money laundering

[Winstonm]

Collusion is a straw man.

 

Here is what an attorney says: (emphasis added)

 

With any conspiracy charge, the crime is the agreement itself. Prosecutors do not have to prove that the conspiracy succeeded or that any victim was actually harmed. They would not have to show the Russian efforts were successful or that the outcome of the election was changed. You can also conspire to help someone else commit a crime that you could not commit yourself; for example, Americans could conspire to help Russians violate the law against foreign campaign contributions even though, as American citizens, they are not covered by that law.

 

Working with Russians to influence our election through the use of stolen emails or other methods would be prosecutable under any number of theories. The argument that “collusion is not a crime” is nothing but a meaningless distraction. It’s time to bury it once and for all.

[PassedOut]

And now some good news for the US: America just won the world’s hardest math contest. Again.

 

Last month, the United States made an extraordinary achievement: For the third time in four years, it won the International Mathematical Olympiad.

 

This is staggeringly impressive. The Math Olympiad is the hardest and most prestigious math competition for high school students in the world. University professors often cannot solve more than one or two of the six problems on the exam. Since 1978, Math Olympiad gold medalists have made up more than a third of the winners of the Fields Medal, the Nobel Prize equivalent for mathematics.

 

Yet from the U.S. team, James Lin from Phillips Exeter Academy received one of two perfect scores at the competition. (The other went to Britain’s Agnijo Banerjee.) Also from the U.S. team, Andrew Gu, Vincent Huang, Michael Ren and Mihir Anand Singhal all won gold medals, and Adam Ardeishar received a silver medal.

 

The team, led by mathematics professor Po-Shen Loh of Carnegie Mellon University, is about as American as you can get.

Good job!

[kenberg]

And now some good news for the US: America just won the world's hardest math contest. Again.

 

 

Good job!

 

I saw that last night and printed out the problems. Printing them out and solving them are two very different things. The contest is for high school students, so in many cases a normal person (i.e a non-mathematician) can understand the question. See https://www.imo-offi...g/problems.aspx

 

For example:

Problem 3. An anti-Pascal triangle is an equilateral triangular array of numbers such that, except

for the numbers in the bottom row, each number is the absolute value of the difference of the two

numbers immediately below it. For example, the following array is an anti-Pascal triangle with four

rows which contains every integer from 1 to 10.

 

...................4

................2..... 6

............5.....7.......1

.......8.......3....10 .....9

Does there exist an anti-Pascal triangle with 2018 rows which contains every integer from 1 to 1 + 2 + + 2018?

 

You could entertain yourself with a (very) scaled down problem:

 

Observe: The triangle

 

......2

1..........3

 

is a two row anti-pascal triangle using the numbers 1,2,3

 

And: The example that they give is a four row anti-pascal triangle using the numbers 1,2,3,...10

 

Scaled down problem: Is there a 3 row anti-pascal triangle using the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6?

And then on to 2018.

 

If your reaction s "Why would anyone care?", that might be tougher to answer. But then explaining what people enjoy, and why, is always difficult.

 

Congrats to these youngsters. It is a pleasure to read about them.

 

PS If you just flip a coin and answer "yes there is" or no "there isn't", you will not be getting credit!

[Winstonm]

In a Quinnipiac University National Poll conducted after the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, 51 percent of voters said the NRA supports policies that are bad for the U.S.

 

Zeitgeist?

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has said it’s suffering from substantial financial issues that could cause the organisation to "be unable to exist".

[johnu]

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has said it’s suffering from substantial financial issues that could cause the organisation to "be unable to exist".

 

I find this hard to believe. Why wouldn't Russia bail them out in payment for services rendered?

[Winstonm]

Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou meets Dennison:

 

The president has admitted in front of at least one crowd that Hannity may influence his policy decisions....

 

"What's that mean, Everett?"

 

"It means he's the power behind the throne, so to speak."

 

"But he's not bonafide!"

 

"He will be as soon as he gets hit by that train!"

[Al_U_Card]

The hole story ... yesterday morning

 

6th hole, par 3, 205 yds with a 4 wood.

 

:)

[y66]

The hole story ... yesterday morning

 

6th hole, par 3, 205 yds with a 4 wood.

 

:)

Hole in one? Congrats! Does that mean you're buying for the water cooler?

[Al_U_Card]

Hole in one? Congrats! Does that mean you're buying for the water cooler?

Fixed income, sorry. One less item on my bucket list, tho. ;)

[Winstonm]

After this latest round of Denssion racisism and mysogeny, it is apparent that Hillary Clinton erred by calling 50% of his supporters deplorable - it is 100%.

[y66]

Can Ultimate Frisbee Save the World?

[Winstonm]

Back in the day when America was great, we had this kind of bipartisanship:

 

 

Summary of Party Affiliation on Medicare Vote (1965)

 

Senate - Yea

 

Democrats 57

Republicans 13

 

House - Yea

 

Democrats 237

Republicans 70

[Winstonm]

Hard to imagine we are still at the point where this kind of disguised racism is tolerated and even praised by some. Ron DeSantis, who is running against an African American candidate for governor of Florida said this:

 

“The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state,” said DeSantis to Smith.

[y66]

My favorite pig farmer reported that he is selling his farm after 16 years and moving to Oxford, Maryland to be a waterman. That nearly killed me. The double-cut pork chops, tenderloins, slab bacon, ground pork and sage sausage from his Tamworth pigs were sublime.

[johnu]

Lots of talk about AI and bridge playing bots on this forum, but not much about dogs.

 

Sony's robot dog Aibo vs. a real puppy

[y66]

The Tiger Woods story has been a fascinating story from the beginning.

 

Here's Tom Fordyce's take on the latest chapter:

 

https://www.bbc.com/sport/golf/45625712

 

"This is less about a tournament victory than what Tiger Woods won in trying to get back: a sense of who he is."

 

Perhaps this will be the year in which this happens for a lot of people, whole countries even.

[Winstonm]

It appears the U.S. is re-fighting its Civil War:

 

At this point there’s overwhelming evidence against the “economic anxiety” hypothesis — the notion that people voted for Donald Trump David Dennison because they had been hurt by globalization. In fact, people who were doing well financially were just as likely to support Trump Dennison as people who were doing badly.

 

What distinguished Trump Dennison voters was, instead, racial resentment.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/opinion/kavanaugh-white-male-privilege.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

 

In an editorial by Paul Krugman, Ta Nahisi Coates is once again shown to have a deeper understanding of white privalege than most.

[PassedOut]

A Tough Negotiator Proves Employers Can Bargain Down Health Care Prices

 

Marilyn Bartlett took a deep breath, drew herself up to her full 5 feet and a smidge, and told the assembled handful of Montana officials that she had a radical strategy to bail out the state's foundering benefit plan for its 30,000 employees and their families.

 

The officials were listening. Their health plan was going broke, with losses that could top $50 million in just a few years. It needed a savior, but none of the applicants to be its new administrator had wowed them.

 

Now here was a self-described pushy 64-year-old grandmother interviewing for the job.

 

Bartlett came with some unique qualifications. She had just spent 13 years on the insurance industry side, first as a controller for a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan, then as the chief financial officer for a company that administered benefits. She was a potent combination of irreverent and nerdy, a certified public accountant whose smart car's license plate reads "DR CR," the Latin abbreviations for "debit" and "credit."

 

Most importantly, Bartlett understood something the state officials didn't: the side deals, kickbacks and lucrative clauses that industry players secretly build into medical costs. Everyone, she had observed, was profiting except the employers and workers paying the tab.

 

Now, in the twilight of her career, Bartlett wanted to switch teams. In her view, employers should be pushing back against the industry and demanding that it justify its costs. They should ask for itemized bills to determine how prices are set. And they should read the fine print in their contracts to weed out secret deals that work against them.

 

This article describes the steps she took to get medical costs under control and the strong opposition she faced. She wasn't universally popular:

 

Under Bartlett's proposed new strategy, the plan would use the prices set by Medicare as a reference point. Medicare, the federal government's insurance for the disabled and patients over 65, is a good benchmark because it makes its prices public and adjusts them for hospitals based on geography and other factors. Montana's plan would pay hospitals a set percentage above the Medicare amount, a method known as "reference-based pricing," making it impossible for the hospitals to arbitrarily raise their prices.

 

Fed up, Bartlett ended the plan's relationship with Cigna. Her battle to upend the status quo riled some employees of her own office, who complained that she was demanding too many changes. Some quit. Bartlett didn't let up.

 

That Christmas, the Cigna representative sent each employee in Bartlett's office a small gift, a snow globe. Bartlett didn't get one.

She probably did not expect one.

:)