Category Archives: Technology and Society

The Steele Dossier

The “verified” document that wasn’t.

Someone’s (more than one someone) got a lot of ‘splaining to do.

[Update Monday morning]

How the FBI broke its own rules:

In the fall of 1975, FBI agent John Connolly met with Bulger in the agent’s car on an abandoned Boston street corner. What would follow was the FBI’s greatest scandal involving a confidential informant subverting the vast powers of the government in order to target his enemies. This stain on the history of the Department of Justice should have led to effective reforms but instead it only foreshadowed more of the same.

Well, to be fair, it was politically convenient to do the same thing with Steele.

[Update a while later]

Spy versus spy versus spy: How Comey, Clapper, and Brennan are turning on each other.

I hope they all rot in jail.

[Late-morning update]

Trey Gowdy says that there is a potential game changer if certain transcripts are released.

And thoughts on a tale of two coups:

The fact that the losers in this election appear to have attempted to undermine the winners is an extremely bad precedent because it leads to the winners deciding to take it out on the losers next time around and that in turn leads to people not relinquishing power short of being turfed out with violence – see Venezuela and any number of Latin American, Central Asian and African dictatorships. In fact allowing the losers to come up with one way after another to try and delegitimise an election they lost is bad on its own because the ability to “throw the bums out” is a key feature of democracy. If voters can’t trust that their votes will be respected they are likely to resort to other methods of expressing their displeasure with the current set of rulers and that is something that these rulers may come to regret. The good news is that the New AG seems to be doing his job and turning over any number of stones that various parties would have preferred remained unexamined.

Let’s hope.

Light Blogging

My desktop computer is FUBAR. I can’t boot it. Getting it fixed is my highest current priority.

[Friday-afternoon update]

It seems to be a hardware problem. I built a clean install of Fedora 30, and the machine froze in the middle of the first software update. I’m running a memory test on it now, but I suspect it’s a motherboard issue. Which of course means CPU and memory replacement as well, unless I can find a used motherboard, because they don’t make AMD FM3 boards any more.

Any recommendations?

[Saturday-morning update]

Sorry, hadn’t realized that site wasn’t taking comments. It should work now.

[Saturday-afternoon update]

OK, it was WP-Spamfree plugin. Try it now.

WordPress Issue

The latest upgrade has resulted in an editing function that displays post titles in all caps, regardless of the case I typed (the do appear upper/lower on the blog itself). It’s extremely annoying, because I don’t know if I typed it correctly, and can’t tell until I preview or publish. I have no idea why they did this. I may look into the code to see if I can fix it, but I shouldn’t have to.

[Update Tuesday morning]

Doesn’t seem to be a browser issue. Seeing the same behavior in Chrome and Vivaldi.

[Wednesday update]

Great, now blockquotes aren’t displaying properly.

Blog Issue

Sorry about that. I’d activated a plugin that apparently didn’t play nice, then had to run out for meetings. Things should be back to normal now.

[Late-Evening update]

I understand that some people are having trouble posting comments. I can’t deal with that until tomorrow morning (Pacific time).

How to get Back To The Moon By 2024

Make it a one-way trip.

So, how much does that change requirements? It means no need for ascent on the lander, or entry from TEI. It’s probably a Falcon Heavy mission. We eliminate the initial need for a suit, too. Hardest part would be how to resupply without EVA capability.

Could NASA do it? Probably not, politically, but a private expedition could.

The Clinton Server Coverup

You’ll be as shocked as me to learn that it was orchestrated by the Obama White House.

[Update a few minutes later]

The guy Barr just assigned to look into the Trump surveillance has experience prosecuting dirty cops in the FBI. Barr looks serious.

[Update a few minutes later]

More from Liz Sheld. As she notes, the issue isn’t whether or not the campaign was spied on, but whether it had a legitimate basis.

[Noon update]

The CIA (Gina Haspel’s) is joining Barr into looking into what happened in the Obama administration. Brennan had better lawyer up.

[Late-afternoon update]

Oh, well isn’t this interesting? Apparently Durham has been on the case for months.