onfocus

"So the bottom line is this: if we want to bring about real change, then the choice isn’t between protest and politics. We have to do both. We have to mobilize to raise awareness, and we have to organize and cast our ballots to make sure that we elect candidates who will act on reform."

President Obama on finding meaningful reform.

"The compromise that was reached was to leave that option open for using tear gas or riot control agents in law enforcement and only in law enforcement."

Why we allow tear gas against our own people in peacetime. See also: TED Talk: Non-lethal weapons, a moral hazard?

"The ongoing protests following the killing of George Floyd were caught up in violence again on Saturday, as police all over the country tear-gassed protesters, drove vehicles through crowds, opened fire with nonlethal rounds on journalists or people on their own property, and in at least one instance, pushed over an elderly man who was walking away with a cane."

The state is asserting its ability to continue to operate outside the law.

"Among 1,001 child contacts of these six cases there were no confirmed cases of COVID-19. In the school setting, among 924 child contacts and 101 adult contacts identified, there were no confirmed cases of COVID-19."

Super small sample size here but I hope this holds up with more investigation.

Powerful collection of American voices.

“When you’re exposed to tear gas, your eyes sting, your vision blurs, and you cry and blink uncontrollably. It gets worse the longer you’re in the gas: After a few seconds, you won’t be able to see, which will disorient and confuse you, potentially to the point of emotional and psychological distress.”

Doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

Matt Haughey on social media trolls:

“Every bad thing at MetaFilter happened with someone who had been testing the rules for a year or two,” he said. “Those are the ones who tend to blossom into super-trolls over time. They’ll see what they can get away with, they’ll figure out what the limits are, and just stay a step inside. It can go on forever. And when you inevitably break and say, this is a bad idea, they freak out, and try to play the victim.”

Good for Twitter for starting to enforce their terms at this late hour. I can imagine a world where they enforced their terms all along and it makes me disappointed and angry.

“Polarizing divisive content is to Facebook as nicotine is to cigarette makers: a component of their product which their own internal research shows is harmful, but which they choose to increase, rather than decrease, because its addictiveness is so profitable.”

Ethics in social media.

“It took us ten years — between 2009 and 2019 — to create 22 million jobs. And we’ve lost 30 million jobs in two months.”

This is a tough read but it sure seems like we can expect a long, rough road ahead.

Cowie said state officials never expected each county to meet every indicator all the time. Public health authorities plan to monitor progress and offer support to counties. But they have no plans to push for new closures based on what they’ve seen so far.

Oregon has detailed criteria that must be met (loosely) for opening counties but only vague criteria for closing them again.

"We ran these surveys and asked people what they want to do. Twenty percent of our existing employees said that they were extremely or very interested in working remotely full time. And another 20 percent on top of that said that they were somewhat interested. So I think what’s basically going to happen is that, because it’s going to take a while to get everyone back into the office, you have like 40 percent of employees already who were fairly willing to work remotely."

I always thought it was strange that these big silicon valley companies who make online tools were against remote work. Circumstances are forcing their adjustment but this could be lasting.