Afternoon Tea 12.14.2020 - Gray Sunrise

"Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth day, at dawn look to the east."

December 14, 2020

America Super-Mega-Hyper-Omni hacked, Cuomo might be meddling with the Gateway Tunnel, researchers taught fish to drive, and American distribution of the Pfizer vaccine (the one made in Germany by a Turkish Muslim immigrant married couple) has begun. It’s Monday, December 14th 2020, and this is the Tea.

COVID-19 vaccine distribution by state: Tracking the doses (Washington Post) There will be years for the post-mortem and attributing blame to those who fucked up when the time came for them to perform. But for this moment, I just want to note the global “get me the fuck out of my house” urgency that the human race galvanized to get this shit done.

Are people getting it who don’t deserve it? Yup. Are people taking credit for it who actively impeded it from being created? You betcha. Do more than half of American Black, Latino, and Native workers hold jobs that require in-person labor? Boy Howdy. Is the NFL handling this about as well as they handled Kaep? Yes sir! Is the US response still a typhoon of greed, active malice, and a breath-taking lack of fucks? Absolutely, it is one of the things that keeps me up at night. But, through all of that, we cut the time required to produce a vaccine for a global pandemic from 4 years to under 1? Apes-With-Anxiety are capable of such great things when we work together. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

As Trenches Fill, Plans for Hart Island COVID-19 Memorial Look to Past And Future (TheCity) Remember the mass graves they were burying COVID-19 victims in this spring, that the NYPD tried to hush up? It’s going to become a park documenting the history of NYC using it as a public cemetery.

US Agencies Exposed in Attack by Suspected Russian Hackers (Bloomberg) & US treasury and commerce departments targeted in cyber-attack (BBC) Critics of the NSA and construction of weapons-grade “penetration” (hacking keyboard dot gif) tools say that one of the reasons they shouldn’t be built is that they can be used against us if they are stolen. This looks to be why. A company named SolarWinds, that performs PenTests for “the State Department, the CDC, FBI, all five branches of the U.S. military, and 425 corporations out of the Fortune 500” was accessed. Then, using the patch release system used by these agencies, they pushed was a giant virus payload and made off with the store. Resulting in essentially the largest infosec breach in US military, government, and corporate security history. I’m just going to note, Trump fired Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency. Additionally, this Yahoo! article details how our in-country intelligence infrastructure has been obliterated by hostile governments like China and Russia, Even in non-antagonist nations, our tactics have been made obsolete laughably quickly, resulting in our intel services being unable to operate in non-stupid countries with cohesive surveillance and inter-agency trust like Singapore.

Fears emerge over fate of Gateway (Tunnel) following Cuomo-inspired report (Politico) You build the thing. You put everyone to work, borrow at negative interest rates, and make the connection between NYC and the rest of the galaxy slightly less of an absolute nightmare. After watching the GOP tank this for over a decade, if Cuomo cross-checks this critical infrastructure into the glass because he won’t get enough credit, I’ll phonebank for his opponent.

Good News 2020: After separating from Joe Exotic, John Finlay’s story is the coda to to this nightmare of a year we all need. New teeth, new family, six years sober, and he even learned a skilled trade working as a welder. Let’s get this guy in front of Mike Rowe or Guy Fieri and back on TV. (via r/GetMotivated)

Behavioral nudges reduce failure to appear for court (AAAS Science) 30,000 people’s lives made better, because of text messages. These findings are so striking, every single court in the land should deploy their recommendations immediately.

The redesigned summons form and text messages reduced failures to appear on average by 13 and 21%, respectively. In our laboratory experiments, people who saw the new forms identified court information more quickly (and recalled it more accurately). This suggests that a meaningful proportion of defendants who fail to appear are not intentionally skipping court but are effectively unaware of court.

We estimate that these nudges helped avoid at least 30,000 arrest warrants being issued over 3 years, and they resulted in approximately 20,000 people having their cases fully dismissed instead of having an open warrant. We see suggestive evidence that these nudges were more effective for defendants living in poorer neighborhoods. Additionally, the bulk of warrants avoided are for defendants living in poorer neighborhoods and neighborhoods with higher proportions of Black and Hispanic residents—though this reflects, rather than repairs, existing disparities in how summonses are issued.

QAnon-supporting GOP candidate arrested for child pornography (Daily Dot & WGNO) Should I just keep posting the definition of Projection? It feels repetitive.

The masks and the experts (Slow Boring) While I disagree with most of Matthew Yglesias’ general outlook and body of work, this is spot on. Our initial approach, especially on masks was nowhere near consistent, which is still hurting us.

Rats love driving tiny cars, even when they don’t get treats (Ars Technica) This research was published last year but, THEY TAUGHT RATS TO DRIVE.

And the rats loved it so much they kept doing it even when they weren’t getting reward treats for it. Because apparently all beings like to take the car out for a spin after a hard day…at the races. (I’ll show myself out)

Putin Said to Have Two Identical Offices: One in Moscow, the Other at the Beach (New York Times) Speaking of getting out from time to time, apparently there’s an identical office at Putin’s beach house, so he can stream to the people pretending he’s hard at work in Moscow. I’m actually shocked Trump didn’t install a Circle Office (“circles, better than ovals, don’t you think folks?”) at Mar-A-Lago and do this first.

Song of the Tea: Rina Sawayama is a fresh voice that I really hope gets a ton of exposure in the post-’rona times. End of the World’s remix of Bad Friend sounds like being given the tour of Venice Beach in a convertible, shown around by a friend who has disappointed you over and over, trying to start over.

Two weeks. You’re so close. You can do it. Don’t give up now.

Yours,T