Rochester, N.Y., Wants To Reimagine Police. What Do People Imagine That Means? NPR

 

New subscriber service for MarkhamsSlowNews

 Dear Readers:

As of July 1, 2021, Google is discontinuing its Feedburner blog subscription service.

In anticipation of the termination of this service, MarkhamsSlowNews is moving it's blog subscription service to Follow.it.

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David G. Markham

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Offshore wind farms becoming an increasingly bigger thing.

From the New York Times on 05/11/21:

Construction on the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm is expected to begin this summer, after the Biden administration gave final approval Tuesday to a project it hopes will herald a new era of wind energy across the United States.

The Vineyard Wind project calls for up to 84 turbines to be installed in the Atlantic Ocean about 12 nautical miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Together, they could generate about 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 400,000 homes. The administration estimates that the work will create about 3,600 jobs.

The project would dwarf the scale of the country’s two existing wind farms, off the coasts of Virginia and Rhode Island. Together, they produce just 42 megawatts of electricity.

In addition to Vineyard Wind, a dozen other offshore wind projects along the East Coast are now under federal review. The Interior Department has estimated that by the end of the decade, some 2,000 turbines could be churning in the wind along the coast from Massachusetts to North Carolina.

For more click here.

Climate change and the environment is one of the topics that MarkhamsSlowNews tracks. To keep up with our articles subscribe to the blog to get daily notices when new articles are posted.

Donald Trump's social media followers decreasing.

From NBC News on May 11, 2021, 8:50 AM EDT / Updated May 11, 2021, 8:56 AM EDT

By Brandy Zadrozny

Four months after former President Donald Trump was banished from most mainstream social media platforms, he returned to the web last Tuesday with “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” essentially a blog for his musings.

A week since the unveiling, social media data suggests things are not going well. 

The ex-president’s blog has drawn a considerably smaller audience than his once-powerful social media accounts, according to engagement data compiled with BuzzSumo, a social media analytics company.

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 A CNBC analysis of Trump’s tweets in January found his most-liked tweets spread disinformation. But the conspiracy theories and name-calling that the former president has spread via his blog don’t seem to move the way they did when Trump benefited from the dual platforms of the White House and traditional social media. 

For more click here.

Editor's note:

I have added the bolding.

Is it a good thing that Americans no longer find lies and bullying entertaining. In bullying prevention programs, researchers find that the biggest antidote to bullying and lying is to deprive the bullier and liar and audience. Without an audience to play to these dysfunctional behaviors no longer are rewarded.

Here on MarkhamsSlowNews we track the use and abuse of the media as it functions in shedding light on the truth.

Spain to experiment with 32 hour work week.

 Under the plans, an estimated 200 to 400 Spanish companies will voluntarily take part in the project by reducing their employees’ working week to 32 hours while keeping their salaries the same. The government will compensate participating businesses for any higher costs incurred by the changes, such as the need to hire additional staff or to reorganize scheduling and shift patterns. That investment will be financed through Spain’s share of the EU Coronavirus Recovery Fund.

For more click here.

All colleges in the SUNY system will require Covid-19 vaccinations to attend in person classes in the fall semester of 2021

 

This appeared in the Daily News out of Batavia, NY on 05/11/21.

For more click here.

MarkhamsSlowNews tracks topics related to public health. Subscribe to get daily notices of updates when new articles are posted to the blog.

Documentary - Hello, Privilege. It's me, Chelsea

Great documentary. Well worth seeing. It is streaming on Netflix.

 

Humor - GOP claims Biden is rigging approval ratings by being competent.

 

For more click here.

I just bought a Guillotine bagel slicer.

 I just bought a Gullotine Bagel Slicer. I buy bagels by the dozen, slice them in half and throw them in the freezer where they will keep frozen for months. When I want a nice toasted bagel, I take one out of the freezer and pop it in the toaster. Smothered in butter or cream cheese or peanut butter and jelly or make a bagel sandwich with just about anything and you will experience a little bit of heaven on earth.

The domains of systemic racism

Editor's note:

I published  a separate blog for 1 1/2 years titled "Recognizing Systemic Racism." That blog is being discontinued and the articles are being republished here. To access all the articles on System Racism scroll down through the labels in the right hand pane and click on "systemic racism."

There is a  distinction between prejudice, discrimination, and racism. Using this triad,  racism refers to systemic, institutional or structural oppression, and subjugation to dominant populations by people of privilege..

Domains of systemic racism:

Education

Health care 

Criminal justice

Housing

Employment

Religion

Social welfare

Political process participation e.g. voting and other forms of representation in various societal decision making groups.

Culture - arts, sports, community groups and recreational activities and organizations

Over the next several months and maybe a few years we will be studying how systemic racism operates in our culture in the US.

The Covid-19 Trumpism Legacy

 In the absence of anything approaching an actual plan, all he has given the country is performative messaging. And that messaging has been a disaster. Trump is the single largest driver of coronavirus misinformation worldwide. He called it a hoax (it wasn't); he said it would magically go away (it didn't); he told people to inject bleach (don't); he mocked people for wearing masks (wear a mask); he said only older people die from the virus and children are immune (none of that is true). Even after he got Covid-19 and recovered—thanks to the socialized medicine taxpayers provided him—he refused to embrace basic science and reason; instead he ripped off his mask, parading about the White House balcony like some orange Übermensch. He ended his failed reelection campaign by barnstorming around the country holding superspreader events that are thought to have caused 30,000 infections and 700 deaths.

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Trump's anti-science sociopathy has been embraced by many other political actors. His messaging, his attitude, his culture-war-mongering have filtered down throughout our country, to our national shame.

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Even after he's removed from the White House (and he will be removed on January 20), Trump will continue to use the media—Twitter, Fox News, Newsmax—to poison the well against public health. There will be a vaccine for the coronavirus eventually, but there is no cure for what Trump has done to our society, no inoculation from the disinformation he spreads, and no way to bring back the lives he's already cost us.

Elie Mystal, "The Real Trump Surge, The Nation, Dec. 14/21, 2020

We will get past the Covid-19 pandemic probably in late 2021 and early 2022 but it will take much longer to get past the egocentric and ethnocentric gravity of the Trumpist level of consciousness. 

The best estimate is that 30% of the American population is stuck at this stage of development and it doesn't seem that many of these folks will further develop.

The 70% will have to learn ways to accommodate these folks or facilitate their development to a higher stage. There are many strategies to accomplish this. The first is to use legal and regulatory tools, but it will take a Charismatic leader to facilitate an interior growth in consciousness as well as the development of social institutions which support the effort..