Category Archives: Community

Farewell dangerousmeta!

The Long Goodbye.. “Friday, April 13, 2018: As of today, dangerousmeta! is no longer being actively updated.”

I’ve been a reader of Garret’s blog since the beginning, back when his blog was called array.editthispage.com. In those first few years the community on EditThisPage.com felt like a neighborhood in a small town, where everyone knows everyone else. Many of those bloggers have stopped blogging years ago, but Garret’s was one of the most prolific and long-lived weblogs.

Garret organized the Behind the Curtain project in September of 2000, in which over a hundred webloggeres documented their day-to-day lives with photos during a time in which affordable digital cameras were still a novelty. I was able to help him a little, and we became friends. About two years later André and I got to meet him and his lovely wife for the first time when we got married (shout-out to all participants of the weblogger wedding!), and we’ve visited them several times since.

Garret, your voice on the web will be missed, especially during these times of political upheaval. Even though I understand your reasons, I’m sad that I won’t find daily dangerousmeta updates in my RSS reader any longer. Thank you for sharing your unique point of view for the past almost 20 years, and keep in touch!

“Gobsmackingly uninformed.”

Washington Post: ‘Mr. Santorum, CPR doesn’t work if all the blood is on the ground.’.

““How about kids, instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations where there is a violent shooter and you can actually respond to that?“ Santorum said. […]
The comments drew ridicule from physicians, among others, who assured Santorum that learning CPR wouldn’t save victims of a mass shooting. […]

Heather Sher, a Florida-based radiologist who examined the gunshot wounds of at least one Parkland, Fla., shooting victim on the day of the shooting, called Santorum’s comments “gobsmackingly uninformed.“

“CPR is not effective with catastrophic bleeding,“ she said on Twitter. “Speechless! Learn CPR! Everyone should for cardiopulmonary arrest. But for gunshot wounds, a) attend stop the bleeding course by trauma surgeons or b) pass #gunreform (helpful hint: option b is the better option.)“ “

Link via MetaFilter.

Datenaffäre von Facebook und die EU

Deutsche Welle: Barley pocht bei Facebook auf umfassende Aufklärung. “Im Skandal um mutmaßlichen Missbrauch von Millionen Facebook-Daten erhöht Bundesjustizministerin Barley den Druck. Sie bestellte die Spitzen von Facebook Europe für kommende Woche in ihr Ministerium ein.”

“Schon zuvor hatte die Ministerin betont, es sei nicht hinnehmbar, dass Nutzer in sozialen Netzwerken “gegen ihren Willen ausgeleuchtet werden, um sie ganz gezielt mit Wahlwerbung oder Hass gegen den politischen Gegner zu bombardieren”. Solche Wahlkampfmethoden seien “eine Gefahr für die Demokratie”. Europa habe beim Datenschutz ein sehr viel strengeres Recht als die USA, betonte die Ministerin.

Auch die EU-Justizkommissarin Vera Jourová warnte angesichts des Datenskandals, die Demokratie sei bedroht. Sie sagte in Washington, in dem Fall gehe es nicht nur um den Schutz persönlicher Daten, er habe “massive Auswirkungen” auf die demokratische Debatte und Wahlen. Es sei in das Privatleben von Menschen eingegriffen worden, fügte sie hinzu. Es handele sich um eine “heftige Manipulation” von Meinungen, die sich in Wahlergebnissen spiegelten.”

Die Zeit: EU-Parlament lädt Mark Zuckerberg vor. “Nach der Datenaffäre will Präsident Antonio Tajani den Firmenchef vor dem EU-Parlament befragen. Erste US-Investoren reichen Klage gegen Facebook ein.”

Die Zeit: Datenaffäre: US-Investoren verklagen Facebook. “Anteilseigner fühlen sich von Facebook in die Irre geführt und haben Klage eingereicht. Das Unternehmen teilte mit, man sei sich “des Ernstes der Lage bewusst”.”

“Congress should focus on Facebook – but equally on Cambridge Analytica, engaging in theft and misuse of personal data, dirty tricks, and services for Russians”

The Washington Post: FTC opens investigation into Facebook after Cambridge Analytica scrapes millions of users’ personal information.

“Recently, though, former FTC officials have said that Facebook’s entanglement with Cambridge Analytica may have violated the company’s legal agreement with the federal watchdog agency. Whistleblowers in recent days contend that Cambridge Analytica collected information about users and their friends under a since-ceased policy governing third-party apps on Facebook – then kept that data even after Facebook asked that it be deleted.

About 270,000 users downloaded Cambridge Analytica’s app. But the firm was able to obtain personal information about their friends, who likely had no knowledge that their data was being collected. Roughly 50 million people may have been affected.

If the FTC ultimately finds that Facebook broke that agreement, it could fine the company $40,000 for each violation.”

More on this at MetaFilter : Six Degrees Of Surveillance.

“We have a right to a safe education.”

The Washington Post: Thousands of students walk out of school in nationwide gun violence protest.

Some quotes from the students – and one senator – that stroke me:

Fatima Younis, a student organizer with Women’s March Youth Empower, one of the lead coordinators of Wednesday’s walkouts:

“We want our Congress to know that some of us will be old enough to vote in the midterm elections, and the rest of us are going to be able to vote in 2020 or 2022, and they’re going to lose their job if they don’t do what we want to keep us safe”.

Dominic Barry, 16, a junior at Minnetonka High School southwest of Minneapolis-St. Paul:

“We’re tired of sitting around and listening to politicians tell us what they are going to do without ever actually doing anything. And we’re also just kind of tired of adults not making it happen — adults saying what they are going to do and then just entirely blowing us off”.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.):

“We need to make sure that every member of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, people of all political stripes, are more afraid of the next school massacre, more afraid of the next death on our streets, more afraid of that, than they are of the NRA. Let’s go get them.”

Gabe Ozaki, a 16-year-old junior:

[He] addressed his schoolmates first, saying, “Every person who has ever died in a school shooting started their day like we did today.” He went on to say that he thinks America is being robbed of its youth, but that he and others are energized by a wave of activism.

Larnee Satchell, 17, a senior at Hartford Magnet:

“We will not allow our elected officials to just tweet their thoughts and condolences without any gun reform. We need Congress to enact a resolution declaring gun violence a public health crisis. We need Congress to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. We need Congress to expand background checks to all gun sales.”

Freshman MaKayla Woodard:

“I’m walking out because they weren’t safe and we aren’t, either” […] The teen, whose father hunts, said she wants to see stricter background checks and mental health screenings for those seeking to buy guns. And she opposes President Trump’s proposal to arm teachers, saying she worries that a police officer will mistake an armed black teacher for an aggressor. “If a cop sees a black teacher with a gun, that teacher will get shot,” she said.

Bonus article:

The Toronto Star: U.S. teacher accidentally fires his gun in the classroom. He was trained in gun use. “The incident comes amid a national debate on how to protect students from mass shootings. A male student was reported to have sustained non-life-threatening injuries.”

Arming teachers to protect children at school instead of changing gun laws sounds like a daft and downright dangerous idea to this foreigner who is not American, but is a teacher at a highschool (grades 5 through 13 here in Germany).