As discussed previously, this is my weekly Twitter roundup. Note that tweets of articles generally include header images from the articles, which are not included here unless they happen to be available under a free license. Most are not. But I now add most of my commentary here, where I’m not restricted by the message length.

diagrams showing the division of the day and of the week

I also don’t generally attach pictures to posts with quotations.

9:04 – Mon 02 November 2020

Men with physical jobs have 55% higher dementia risk from Futurity

But our study suggests that it must be a ‘good’ form of physical activity, which hard physical work is not.

This is not encouraging, but it should make us feel a lot more comfortable automating those jobs away if we can find another way to keep the laborers housed and fed.

12:05 – Mon 02 November 2020

We have men among us who pretend to know the right path, but will not consent to show it without pay. I have no faith in their paths, but believe that every man must make his own path.

Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak

9:01 – Tue 03 November 2020

Hong Kong teachers self-censor as authorities target classrooms from Global Voices

…the city’s security secretary John Lee Ka-chiu said that the authorities would tighten school management…

As much as the Trump administration claims that Biden would be some sort of giveaway to China, he supported the removal of Hong Kong’s independence. I’d just as soon skip conflicts with other countries, but if we’re going to claim to care about democracy and human rights…maybe supporting their destruction is a bad thing that the incoming administration (fingers crossed) should work on.

12:03 – Tue 03 November 2020

We want to take good tidings home to our people, that they may sleep in peace.

Moke-tav-a-to

9:05 – Wed 04 November 2020

Facebook’s Election-Week War on Accountability is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong from The Electronic Frontier Foundation

…Facebook has sent a legal threat to the university, demanding that the project shut down…

See also Facebook Has Always Been Right-Wing Media from VICE

…the right has been creating a media ecosystem that emphasizes distrust in institutions, rewards conspiracy theories, and places an emphasis on authenticity and emotional expression.

As I wrote about in one of this blog’s first posts, if you’re funding an operation with ads, you need your users addicted to feeling angry and frightened. And the best source of those emotions, these days, is unaccountable right-wing gibberish.

12:02 – Wed 04 November 2020

You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Will Rogers

9:02 – Thu 05 November 2020

ICE Wants New Jails in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania from Documented

…could house up to 900 detainees within a 60-mile radius of its New York City and Newark field office in New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania…

This is definitely not something the area—or the country, for that matter—needs. If detention facilities are overflowing, then our policies are putting us in a position to detain too many people and those policies need to change.

12:04 – Thu 05 November 2020

Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself—and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.

Hinmaton-Yalaktit

9:03 – Fri 06 November 2020

Soylent Founder’s Unhinged Politics Rant Shows Tech Execs Don’t Understand the World from VICE

He says Nancy Pelosi is “the only Democrat I’ve ever heard of” and seems to doubt the very existence of Joe Biden…

I had a brief interaction with Rhinehart in blog comments, just as he was developing Soylent. It convinced me to stay away from purchasing anything along those lines—I considered it potentially useful for emergencies—because he was clear that his vision was just that eating was a drain on worker productivity. He didn’t have any interest in supply chains or even studies on intermittent fasting that would have been a useful pitch, because his goal was (if I may interpret it) trimming lunch hours to the time it takes to run a blender.

12:01 – Fri 06 November 2020

Friendship is held to be the severest test of character. It is easy, we think, to be loyal to a family and clan, whose blood is in your own veins.

Charles Eastman

Bonus

Because it accidentally became a tradition early on in the life of the blog, here’s a sixth article that didn’t fit into the week, but too weird to not mention.

Expert: Trump speaks in coded language to his base from Futurity

Rather than state outright support of the historically deadly notion of “race science,” Trump whipped a nearly all-white crowd into triumph by saying, “You have good genes in Minnesota.” Instead of explicitly authorizing violence against Black Lives Matter protesters, he says, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” He didn’t tell white supremacist militias to take action if his re-election seems to be in jeopardy; he told them to “stand back and stand by.”

To be fair, the code isn’t particularly difficult to crack.


Credits: Header image is Circular diagrams showing the division of the day and of the week from a manuscript drafted during the Carolingian Dynasty.