Sound Off! 6/19/21

 Posted by at 4:55 pm  Politics
Jun 192021
 

Violence between Israel and the increasingly squeezed Palestinians has been going on for decades, but recently it suddenly exploded. Israel’s brutal persecution of the Palestinians has gone up several notches. And, of course, Israel’s tail continues to wag the U.S. dog.

Listen – I’m sorry about the way Jews have been demonized and persecuted over the last 2500 years. And I abhor Hitler and the Nazi scum as much as any gentile could. But that doesn’t mean I will knee-jerk take Israel’s side every time. Israel has a right to exist, but only if it acknowledges Palestine’s right to exist, and the human rights of the Palestinians whose ancestors were rudely robbed of their land more than seven decades ago. Israel has a right to defend itself, but it cannot use this as an excuse to commit genocide. The UN recognizes Israel as an apartheid state. Why won’t the United States do the same?

It is a sad irony Israel is inflicting on Palestinians the same kind of atrocities that have been directed at Jews for so long. One would think that Jews, having suffered from the worst instance of ethnic cleansing in history, would not do unto others as has been done unto them. Yet even while the ultimate evil of the Holocaust is still in living memory, Israel continues to exterminate Palestinians – whose numbers include Christians as well as Muslims.

Recently I learned that some US states have a shocking law: If you want government aid, such as to rebuild after a disaster, you have to promise not to boycott Israel. Don’t believe me? Here is a video:

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

Voltaire wrote, “To learn who rules over you, simply find out whom you are not allowed to criticize.” If criticizing Israel gets your government funding cut off, what does that say?

More and more people around the world – including lots of Jews – are getting fed up with Israel’s status as a sacred cow. People from every walk of life here in the US are getting more and more vociferous about our support of Israel’s ethnic cleansing. I have signed numerous petitions calling for an end to aid for Israel until they accept a two-state solution and leave the Palestinians alone. I have marched on behalf of the Palestinians and for peace in the Middle East. I dare to wear a shirt that proclaims my support for Palestinian rights.

As I write this, Benjamin Netanyahu has been unseated as Israel’s Prime Minister. If his own government has had enough of his brutality towards Palestine, so much that disparate parties with a wide range of political standings were willing to unite in order to effect his ouster, that may indicate Israel is finally ready to face its own dark side.

Naturally, Zionist bugnuts attack anybody who refuses to bow and scrape before their favorite golden calf. They accuse pro-Palestine activists of being Nazis, or at least of being anti-Semitic. Excrementum tauri! Opposing Israel’s vicious persecution of Palestinians does not make you anti-Israel, let alone anti-Jewish. You can hate the sin but love the sinner.

Some claim that Jews are entitled to Israel just because Jews had a nation there over 2000 years ago. Bonjour! Paging all First Nations/Native Americans, whose lands were stolen within the last two to three centuries. If Jews are entitled to Israel, then American Indians and Hispanics are entitled to all of the Americas. If we can shove Palestinians out of the Levantine, we can send all the white people here back to Europe, all the Black people back to Africa, et cetera.

Zionists point out that Hamas’ one goal is the destruction of Israel. No love is lost between me and Hamas – indeed, no love is lost between me and any terrorist organization. However, we need to take a walk in Palestine’s shoes. Imagine that you are part of an ethnic minority whose ancestors were robbed of their rightful homes and lands. Imagine your oppressors have the support of a powerful nation that squelches any and all criticism of how your people are treated. Imagine that, whenever somebody so much as throws a rock at one of your oppressors’ goons, they react with bullets and missiles, killing not just the rock thrower but also anybody who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – including children and pregnant women. Imagine that your cries for justice, which have gone on not just for decades but for generations, have fallen on deaf ears. Do you really think that you would not become a terrorist? By drowning out the voices of Palestinians, Israel has sown the wind, and Hamas is the whirlwind it is reaping.

The only solution is a two-state solution, with Israel allowing the Palestinians to flourish. The time is long overdue for the lion to lie down with the lamb.

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Video Thread 6/19/21

 Posted by at 1:00 pm  Open Thread, Politics
Jun 192021
 

Glenn Kirschner – Breaking News: FBI/DOJ Investigating Possible Complicity of Members of Congress in the Insurrection

Don Winslow – This is 3 days old, and there has been some mitigating news since then. But it’s still a good point.

Armageddon Update – Snark lives!

Now This News – Scare off scammers (ad at end)

Ring of Fire – Mostly opinion here – and I don’t always agree with Farron – but today I applaud him unconditionally. (Ad at end)

Decoding cat emotions

Beau – Let’s talk about the weather and record breaking heat…

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Everyday Erinyes #271

 Posted by at 10:00 am  Politics
Jun 192021
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I’m afraid I’ve been sitting on this one for a while … and it’s not a new topic, but one the Furies and I have looked at in the past, more than once. And I’m sure we will again. The misuse of technology – any technology – is a situation in which those determined to subvert it for their own ends are in a constant race with those equally determined to to keep it useful and beneficial. So here’s the current state of the art.
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Study shows AI-generated fake reports fool experts

It doesn’t take a human mind to produce misinformation convincing enough to fool experts in such critical fields as cybersecurity.
iLexx/iStock via Getty Images

Priyanka Ranade, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Anupam Joshi, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Tim Finin, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Takeaways

· AIs can generate fake reports that are convincing enough to trick cybersecurity experts.

· If widely used, these AIs could hinder efforts to defend against cyberattacks.

· These systems could set off an AI arms race between misinformation generators and detectors.

If you use such social media websites as Facebook and Twitter, you may have come across posts flagged with warnings about misinformation. So far, most misinformation – flagged and unflagged – has been aimed at the general public. Imagine the possibility of misinformation – information that is false or misleading – in scientific and technical fields like cybersecurity, public safety and medicine.

There is growing concern about misinformation spreading in these critical fields as a result of common biases and practices in publishing scientific literature, even in peer-reviewed research papers. As a graduate student and as faculty members doing research in cybersecurity, we studied a new avenue of misinformation in the scientific community. We found that it’s possible for artificial intelligence systems to generate false information in critical fields like medicine and defense that is convincing enough to fool experts.

General misinformation often aims to tarnish the reputation of companies or public figures. Misinformation within communities of expertise has the potential for scary outcomes such as delivering incorrect medical advice to doctors and patients. This could put lives at risk.

To test this threat, we studied the impacts of spreading misinformation in the cybersecurity and medical communities. We used artificial intelligence models dubbed transformers to generate false cybersecurity news and COVID-19 medical studies and presented the cybersecurity misinformation to cybersecurity experts for testing. We found that transformer-generated misinformation was able to fool cybersecurity experts.

Transformers

Much of the technology used to identify and manage misinformation is powered by artificial intelligence. AI allows computer scientists to fact-check large amounts of misinformation quickly, given that there’s too much for people to detect without the help of technology. Although AI helps people detect misinformation, it has ironically also been used to produce misinformation in recent years.

A block of text on a smartphone screen
AI can help detect misinformation like these false claims about COVID-19 in India – but what happens when AI is used to generate the misinformation?
AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia

Transformers, like BERT from Google and GPT from OpenAI, use natural language processing to understand text and produce translations, summaries and interpretations. They have been used in such tasks as storytelling and answering questions, pushing the boundaries of machines displaying humanlike capabilities in generating text.

Transformers have aided Google and other technology companies by improving their search engines and have helped the general public in combating such common problems as battling writer’s block.

Transformers can also be used for malevolent purposes. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have already faced the challenges of AI-generated fake news across platforms.

Critical misinformation

Our research shows that transformers also pose a misinformation threat in medicine and cybersecurity. To illustrate how serious this is, we fine-tuned the GPT-2 transformer model on open online sources discussing cybersecurity vulnerabilities and attack information. A cybersecurity vulnerability is the weakness of a computer system, and a cybersecurity attack is an act that exploits a vulnerability. For example, if a vulnerability is a weak Facebook password, an attack exploiting it would be a hacker figuring out your password and breaking into your account.

We then seeded the model with the sentence or phrase of an actual cyberthreat intelligence sample and had it generate the rest of the threat description. We presented this generated description to cyberthreat hunters, who sift through lots of information about cybersecurity threats. These professionals read the threat descriptions to identify potential attacks and adjust the defenses of their systems.

We were surprised by the results. The cybersecurity misinformation examples we generated were able to fool cyberthreat hunters, who are knowledgeable about all kinds of cybersecurity attacks and vulnerabilities. Imagine this scenario with a crucial piece of cyberthreat intelligence that involves the airline industry, which we generated in our study.

A block of text with false information about a cybersecurity attack on airlines
An example of AI-generated cybersecurity misinformation.
The Conversation, CC BY-ND

This misleading piece of information contains incorrect information concerning cyberattacks on airlines with sensitive real-time flight data. This false information could keep cyber analysts from addressing legitimate vulnerabilities in their systems by shifting their attention to fake software bugs. If a cyber analyst acts on the fake information in a real-world scenario, the airline in question could have faced a serious attack that exploits a real, unaddressed vulnerability.

A similar transformer-based model can generate information in the medical domain and potentially fool medical experts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, preprints of research papers that have not yet undergone a rigorous review are constantly being uploaded to such sites as medrXiv. They are not only being described in the press but are being used to make public health decisions. Consider the following, which is not real but generated by our model after minimal fine-tuning of the default GPT-2 on some COVID-19-related papers.

A block of text showing health care misinformation.
An example of AI-generated health care misinformation.
The Conversation, CC BY-ND

The model was able to generate complete sentences and form an abstract allegedly describing the side effects of COVID-19 vaccinations and the experiments that were conducted. This is troubling both for medical researchers, who consistently rely on accurate information to make informed decisions, and for members of the general public, who often rely on public news to learn about critical health information. If accepted as accurate, this kind of misinformation could put lives at risk by misdirecting the efforts of scientists conducting biomedical research.

[The Conversation’s most important coronavirus headlines, weekly in a science newsletter]

An AI misinformation arms race?

Although examples like these from our study can be fact-checked, transformer-generated misinformation hinders such industries as health care and cybersecurity in adopting AI to help with information overload. For example, automated systems are being developed to extract data from cyberthreat intelligence that is then used to inform and train automated systems to recognize possible attacks. If these automated systems process such false cybersecurity text, they will be less effective at detecting true threats.

We believe the result could be an arms race as people spreading misinformation develop better ways to create false information in response to effective ways to recognize it.

Cybersecurity researchers continuously study ways to detect misinformation in different domains. Understanding how to automatically generate misinformation helps in understanding how to recognize it. For example, automatically generated information often has subtle grammatical mistakes that systems can be trained to detect. Systems can also cross-correlate information from multiple sources and identify claims lacking substantial support from other sources.

Ultimately, everyone should be more vigilant about what information is trustworthy and be aware that hackers exploit people’s credulity, especially if the information is not from reputable news sources or published scientific work.The Conversation

Priyanka Ranade, PhD Student in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Anupam Joshi, Professor of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Tim Finin, Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, I can certainly see how these examples could fool even professionals … and particularly the medical exacmple on side effects, simply because side effects are so unpredictable. But misstatements which in theory should have been more obvious have also fooled experts. And fooling experts can certainly have disastrous results. If there is any way we can all be on our guard any more than we already are, then dear Furies, please help us to do so.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Open Thread for June 19, 2021

 Posted by at 7:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 192021
 

I thik I have today covered … always extra posts on weekends. If you don’t get my emails (or if you do but don’t want to wait for it) be sure to see WWWendy’s “Hello Again” post. There is now something we can do. Happy Juneteenth (actual.) I shall be making do with Fruit Punch Gatorade (not my choice, it was an unauthorized substitution in a delivery) and strawberry soda (at least that was my choice.)

Cartoon

Short Takes

The Bitter Southerner – Juneteenth Jubilee. One tradition for celebrating Juneteenth is eating red food and drinking red beverages. This mixologist has a special recipe (doesn’t have to be “adult”).
Quote: According to culinary historian Adrian Miller, red drinks — which rule the bar at Juneteenth parties — have their roots in West African and Caribbean beverages that came to the United States through the transatlantic slave trade. Enslaved people stewed hibiscus flowers to make a reddish-purple tea called bissap, Miller points out, and they mixed powdered kola nut (one of the ingredients in Coca-Cola) with water to make a refreshing, naturally stimulating drink. This practice of adding reddish substances to make sweet, palatable drinks was common and naturally made its way to the Juneteenth celebration table. Soon, red-colored drinks — like the Texas-made soda Big Red, introduced in 1937 — had become part of the Juneteenth culinary tradition.
Click through for the actual recipe (at the very end) but also for more facts about the holiday.

Crooks and Liars – Florida Republican Threatens To Send Russian-Ukrainian ‘Hit Squad’ After Rival. Yes, you read that right.
Quote – “I really don’t want to have to end anybody’s life for the good of the people of the United States of America,” Braddock said at one point in the conversation last week, according to the recording exclusively obtained by POLITICO. “That will break my heart. But if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Luna is a f—ing speed bump in the road. She’s a dead squirrel you run over every day when you leave the neighborhood.”
Click through for more details – not that you will be surprised – he is a Republica.

Wonkette – Yay! House Votes To Repeal Bad Iraq War Authorization. In case this got lost in other news, I wanted to highlight it in Wonkette’s distinctive style.
Quote – [McConell] is correct. To borrow a turn of phrase, it should not be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force. But we should thank Mitch for his opposition to this. The only people who have been held to account for their bad Iraq War votes have been Democrats. As soon as things turned bad, the Right went from worshiping Dubya to “We don’t know her” and pretending that Hillary Clinton was personally responsible for the whole thing happening in the first place. This way, Republicans voting against this can be held to account for their votes against a thing that absolutely no one wants anymore. More of this, please.
Click throughfor the rest of the well-earned disrespect of (some) Congresscritters.(The Wnkette Newsletter is talikg a two-week vacation so I may not see their stories for that length of time.)

Food for Thought

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Friday: You Might Want to Keep a Tissue Handy …

 Posted by at 2:50 pm  Politics
Jun 182021
 

Giant Hat Tip (H/T) to Mitch

Mitch was kind enough to email a heartwarming story of the type I’m sure we’ve all received.  It seemed to hit every note just right and I thought it was worth sharing.  But it also made me wonder if it was too good to be true.  I didn’t want to post an apocryphal story disguised as an actual event.

So I did some sleuthing.  And it turns out not only is it true – but it was written by a Franciscan nun who was a schoolteacher!

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/all-the-good-things/

This is a photo of Sister Helen Mrosla who taught at Saint Mary’s school in Morris, MN with Mark Eklund’s class.

She first submitted her true story (which is a little more detailed than the email) to Proteus magazine, which had requested inspirational stories from educators.  And it was later published in Reader’s Digest.  Sister Mrosla has kindly given permission to reprint her story, so without further ado here is Sister Mrosla …

”He was in the first third grade class I taught at Saint Mary’s School in Morris, Minn. All 34 of my students were dear to me, but Mark Eklund was one in a million. Very neat in appearance, but had that happy-to-be-alive attitude that made even his occasional mischievousness delightful.

Mark talked incessantly. I had to remind him again and again that talking without permission was not acceptable. What impressed me so much, though, was his sincere response every time I had to correct him for misbehaving – “Thank you for correcting me, Sister!” I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but before long I became accustomed to hearing it many times a day.

One morning my patience was growing thin when Mark talked once too often, and then I made a novice teacher’s mistake. I looked at Mark and said, “If you say one more word, I am going to tape your mouth shut!” It wasn’t ten seconds later when Chuck blurted out, “Mark is talking again.”

I hadn’t asked any of the students to help me watch Mark, but since I had stated the punishment in front of the class, I had to act on it.

I remember the scene as if it had occurred this morning. I walked to my desk, very deliberately opened my drawer and took out a roll of masking tape. Without saying a word, I proceeded to Mark’s desk, tore off two pieces of tape and made a big X with them over his mouth.

I then returned to the front of the room. As I glanced at Mark to see how he was doing, he winked at me.  That did it! I started laughing. The class cheered as I walked back to Mark’s desk, removed the tape, and shrugged my shoulders. His first words were, “Thank you for correcting me, Sister.”

At the end of the year, I was asked to teach junior-high math. The years flew by, and before I knew it Mark was in my classroom again. He was more handsome than ever and just as polite. Since he had to listen carefully to my instruction in the “new math,” he did not talk as much in ninth grade as he had in third.

One Friday, things just didn’t feel right. We had worked hard on a new concept all week, and I sensed that the students were frowning, frustrated with themselves and edgy with one another. I had to stop this crankiness before it got out of hand. So I asked them to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name.

Then I told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down. It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed me the papers. Charlie smiled. Mark said, “Thank you for teaching me, Sister. Have a good weekend.”

That Saturday, I wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and I listed what everyone else had said about that individual.

On Monday I gave each student his or her list.  Before long, entire class was smiling. Really?” I heard whispered. “I never knew that meant anything to anyone!” I didn’t know others liked me so much.” No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. I never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn’t matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another again.

That group of students moved on. Several years later, after I returned from vacation, my parents met me at the airport. As we were driving home, Mother asked me the usual questions about the trip, the weather, my experiences in general.

There was a lull in the conversation. Mother gave Dad a sideways glance and simply says, “Dad?” My father cleared his throat as he usually did before something important. “The Eklunds called last night,” he began “Really?” I said. “I haven’t heard from them in years. I wonder how Mark is.” Dad responded quietly. “Mark was killed in Vietnam,” he said. “The funeral is tomorrow, and his parents would like it if you could attend.”

To this day I can still point to the exact spot on I-494 where Dad told me about Mark.

I had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. Mark looked so handsome, so mature. All I could think at that moment was, “Mark, I would give all the masking tape in the world if only you would talk to me.”

The church was packed with Mark’s friends Chuck’s sister sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Why did it have to rain on the day of the funeral? It was difficult enough at the graveside. The pastor said the usual prayers, and the bugler played taps.

One by one those who loved Mark took a last walk by the coffin and sprinkled it with holy water. I was the last one to bless the coffin. As I stood there, one of the soldiers who acted as pallbearer came up to me. Were you Mark’s math teacher?” he asked. I nodded as I continued to stare at the coffin. “Mark talked about you a lot,” he said.

After the funeral, most of Mark’s former classmates headed to Chuck’s farmhouse for lunch. Mark’s mother and father were there, obviously waiting for me. “We want to show you something, his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. “They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it.”

Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times.  I knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which I had listed all the good things each of Mark’s classmates had said about him.

“Thank you so much for doing that,” Mark’s mother said. “As you can see, Mark treasured it.”

Mark’s classmates started to gather around us.  Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, “I still have my list. I keep it in the top drawer of my desk at home.” Chuck’s wife said, “Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album.” I have mine too,” Marilyn said. “It’s in my diary.”

Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. I carry this with me at all times,” Vicki said without batting an eyelash. “I think we all saved our lists.”

That’s when I finally sat down and cried. I cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again.

The density of people in society is so thick that we forget that life will end one day. And we don’t know when that one day will be. So please, tell the people you love and care for, that they are special and important. Tell them, before it is too late.

I would like to thank Mitch for emailing this heartwarming story, and Sister Mrosla for writing it and allowing it to be shared.

 

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Video Thread 6/18/21

 Posted by at 1:00 pm  Open Thread, Politics
Jun 182021
 

Glenn Kirschner – Positive Legal Stories: Obamacare; Flynn; Sanctioning Attorneys; DOJ Hits Discriminatory State Laws

Dave Muhlbauer for Iowa – He is running against Chuck Grassley. Direct link to campaign website (H/T Nameless) https://www.muhlbauerforiowa.com

Now This News – Biden Admin Plans to Invest in Jobs of the Future

Titus – Parody Infomercial

Liberal Rednack – Local News Reporter Drops “Bombshell” Live on Air – Reaction. The podcast cited was Yuesday, but it’ll be up on Trae’s channel for replay. They run about an hour so I don’t use them here.

Rocky Mountain Mike – Louie Gohmert’s Dark Side Of The Moon

Beau – Let’s talk about how Trump’s talking points are made….

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Hello again

 Posted by at 10:49 am  Politics
Jun 182021
 

Hi everyone,

I hope this finds everyone doing well.  The paperwork has been done and Tom has been cremated.  I will be picking up his remains next week.  It was Tom’s wishes that I do a video memorial so that we all had a chance to say good-bye – I was waiting on the whole cremation thing before I made any plans.  ( I wanted him to be present)

That being said – I am not quite sure how to go about this whole thing.  I am assuming I would have to do something on zoom so that people could join in.  Also with everyone in different time zones I am not sure what the best way to go about this would be. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.  Obviously I don’t know if I can get his remains and accomplish the memorial before I leave on vacation.  So I was thinking maybe plan something for when I return which would be after July 8th.  Any thoughts?

If I plan something, I have written a short eulogy in his honor that I would share and then people would have a chance to share if they wanted too.  Short, sweet and to the point – but I would like to honor his life and passing somehow.

I will check back later for suggestions on all this.  Thank you all.

take care, Wendy

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