“Every tap, button push and keyboard entry is recorded — effectively screenshotted — and sent back to the app developers,” TechCrunch reports.
These iPhone apps secretly record your screen without permission
hmmmm
Category: Money, Class, and Poverty,
6 Activist Women You Need to Know About for Black History Month
“I know my limitations, and I surround myself with people who I can designate to be sure it’s carried out. If you can’t do that, you’re not an organizer.” -Velma Hopkins
6 Activist Women You Need to Know About for Black History Month | AFL-CIO
If Rosa Parks rode a bus in Boston today, she’d see nearly the same segregation she fought
If Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Boston today, she wouldn’t see black and white sections; she’d see a dysfunctional system that is disproportionately failing the low-income people — largely people of color and immigrants — whose livelihoods depend on it.
…Even though white and minority riders use the bus system in roughly equal numbers, differences in reliability and frequency of service on routes that serve mostly black and mostly white riders effectively steal more than a week and a half of work [from riders who are not white]— 3 percent of a person’s annual productivity, skimmed right off the top.
…“These studies are replicated around the nation. It’s one of the greatest transportation injustices,” said Julian Agyeman, a professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University.
…Only 19 of the T’s 176 bus routes offer frequent, all-day service. And 63 percent of area residents are not served by any of those 19 routes, which mostly run along major corridors and feed big job centers like Longwood or Kendall Square.
sigh…
2019 Media layoffs: over 2,100 jobs cut at BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and Vice
The media industry seemed to be in freefall on Friday following the announcement that Vice Media would cut 10% of its staff and that McClatchy Company offered buyouts to 450 employees, bringing the total number of media jobs cut in 2019 to over 2,100.
The massive cuts so far this year represent a recent trend of cuts at digital-media companies that sprung up as newspapers around the country were shrinking and disappearing.
2019 Media layoffs: over 2,100 jobs cut at BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and Vice – Business Insider
hmmmm
Oklahoma bill would revoke teachers’ certification if they walk out and protest
Oklahoma bill would revoke teachers’ certification if they walk out and protest – CNN
Jeezus… Please try and remember that these are TEACHERS, people!
Eating breakfast is not a good weight loss strategy, scientists confirm – Vox
“Many — if not most — studies demonstrating that breakfast eaters are healthier and manage weight better than non-breakfast eaters were sponsored by Kellogg or other breakfast cereal companies whose businesses depend on people believing that breakfast means ready-to-eat cereal.”
…These observational studies generally took people who were already eating breakfast and then compared them with people who weren’t. They weren’t experiments that randomly assigned people to eat breakfast or not and compared the difference.
That means breakfast itself may not account for differences in bodyweight or disease between the two groups. People who eat breakfast might differ in other ways from those who don’t. Maybe people who exercise are more likely to eat breakfast, and that explains the difference. Or maybe it’s a function of income. It’s hard to tell.
…The BMJ published a systematic review of 13 randomized controlled trials, including the big 2014 study. They concluded that there’s “no evidence to support the notion that breakfast consumption promotes weight loss or that skipping breakfast leads to weight gain.”
Instead, the people who ate breakfast consumed 260 more calories per day and weighed a pound more than the breakfast skippers, so “caution is needed when recommending breakfast for weight loss in adults, as it may have the opposite effect.
…The breakfast studies also don’t pay enough attention to the quality of food people are eating, obesity doctor Yoni Freedhoff has pointed out. “What a person eats for breakfast will matter a great deal, and just studying whether or not a person ate breakfast, will lump together bowls of Froot Loops with almond topped steel cut oats, and Pop Tarts with summer vegetable omelettes.”
…There was some compelling evidence to suggest undernourished kids perform better at cognitive tests when enrolled in a breakfast program. But it wasn’t clear that the breakfast itself was doing the trick — it might have been the fact that the program led to increased school attendance.
Eating breakfast is not a good weight loss strategy, scientists confirm – Vox
hmmm
Regulators should study the Facebook Research incident
Facebook’s move to intentionally skirt Apple’s rules in order to spy on consumers’ mobile phone activities was “a particularly egregious abuse of power on Facebook’s behalf.”
…Facebook’s brouhaha with Apple seems to have begun with an app owned by the social-networking company called Onavo. That app offers a virtual private network, a way of cordoning off data from the general internet to protect users’ activities from being monitored. And that’s the way Facebook marketed it.
But Onavo was designed to allow Facebook itself to monitor everything users of the app were doing on their phones. And the data it provided reportedly gave the company crucial intelligence about emerging competitors, including WhatsApp, which Facebook later purchased, and Snapchat, whose features it copied.
…Like Onavo, Facebook Research offered a VPN that kept tabs on users’ phone activities. The social-networking company paid consumers as young as 13 to install the app so it could monitor what they were doing on their smartphones.
But instead of offering Facebook Research through the public App Store, Facebook got it out to users surreptitiously, having third-party companies offer it through a process Apple created to allow enterprises to distribute internal apps to their employees. The move was a clear violation of both the letter and spirit of Apple’s rules.
Regulators should study the Facebook Research indicident – Business Insider
hmmmm
Deutsche Bank refused Trump a loan in 2016, worried he was too divisive
Deutsche Bank refused Donald Trump a loan during the 2016 campaign partly out of concern that he was too divisive a candidate.
…The request was examined by the bank’s top brass, including Christian Sewing, the former head of the wealth management unit who is now CEO. They concluded that Trump’s campaign rhetoric made him a risky borrower, and public knowledge of the loan arrangement could hurt the bank’s reputation. They also weighed the risks of the possibility that the bank would have to seize a president’s assets in the event of a loan default, the Times reported.
Deutsche Bank refused Trump a loan in 2016, worried he was too divisive – Business Insider
hmmmm
Miriam Adelson was awarded Medal of Freedom after donating $500k to Trump aides’ legal expenses
Selling the Medal of Freedom… Trump’s such a classless whore.
Facebook, Google Draw Scrutiny Over Apps That Collected Data From Teens
In the latest revelation to raise privacy concerns about Silicon Valley’s tech titans, reports have surfaced that Facebook and Google offered adults and teens gift cards for installing apps that would let the companies collect data on their smartphones.
TechCrunch reported Tuesday that, since 2016, Facebook has been paying users — some as young as 13 years old — up to $20 a month to install an app called Facebook Research. The app could give Facebook access to private messages, photos, videos, emails, web searches and browsing activity, the tech news site reported.
…Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote on Twitter: “Wait a minute. Facebook PAID teenagers to install a surveillance device on their phones without telling them it gave Facebook power to spy on them? Some kids as young as 13. Are you serious? “
…This is not the first time Facebook has been accused of going to extreme lengths to get user data. In 2013, it bought a company called Onavo and allegedly used the Onavo app to get more information about WhatsApp, a competing messaging platform that Facebook ultimately bought for $19 billion.
Facebook, Google Draw Scrutiny Over Apps That Collected Data From Teens : NPR
hmmm
Smitherman: Administrators have been working on strategies for several students
Smitherman on Wednesday apologized for misusing her insurance to pay for the 15-year-old’s medical care, and the Elwood Community School Corp. board of trustees pledged its continued support for her.
…The matter already has been resolved through an Agreement for Withheld Prosecution, also signed on Wednesday with the Madison County Prosecutor’s Office, dismissing the charges as long as Smitherman is not arrested in the coming 12 months.
Smitherman and her husband, Steve, started helping out the teen and his guardian, Charles Gerard, 97, a great-uncle, according to the probable cause affidavit. That assistance included buying clothing for the boy and cleaning the home in the 400 block of South 33rd Street.
The guardian was not home at the time she picked up the student Jan. 9, so she did not ask for consent, Smitherman said.
According to the probable cause affidavit, Smitherman told investigators she had avoided reporting the boy’s living conditions to the Indiana Department of Child of Child Services because she did not want him placed in foster care.
hmmm
Homeboy Industries & Father Greg
By 1988, having buried an ever growing number of young people killed in gang violence, Father Boyle and parish and community members sought to address the escalating problems and unmet needs of gang-involved youth by developing positive opportunities for them, including establishing an alternative school and day care program, and seeking out legitimate employment. They called this initial effort Jobs for a Future. “Gang violence is about a lethal absence of hope,” Father Boyle has said. “Nobody has ever met a hopeful kid who joined a gang.”
In the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Jobs for a Future and Proyecto Pastoral, a community-organizing project begun at Dolores Mission, launched their first social enterprise business in an abandoned bakery that Hollywood producer Ray Stark helped them purchase. They called it Homeboy Bakery.
….Today, Homeboy Industries employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to 15,000 men and women who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life.
…Each year over 10,000 former gang members from across Los Angeles come through Homeboy Industries’ doors in an effort to make a positive change. They are welcomed into a community of mutual kinship, love, and a wide variety of services ranging from tattoo removal to anger management and parenting classes. Full-time employment is offered for more than 200 men and women at a time through an 18-month program.
…We offered a simple question, “What if we were to invest in this population rather than just endlessly incarcerate?” that has redirected our attention away from suppression and onto treatment and education. Homeboy played an integral role in replacing the “tough on crime” mantra that predominated in the 1980s and 1990s with a “smart on crime” model that many police and sheriff’s departments have adopted.
What this place discovered was that it was a lethal absence of hope that leads kids into gangs, and the fact that there was no way out of the cycle of gang violence compounded people’s despair. So Homeboy offered this model, in the fullest sense, of community trumping gang.
… We have learned in that time that jobs are probably about 80% of what these folks need to redirect their lives. The other 20% is a mixture of therapeutic and support services. So, in addition to paying men and women to receive job training, we also require that they spend part of their working day here working on themselves. We offer education, therapy, tattoo removal, substance abuse treatment, legal assistance, and job placement services. We also offer six different social enterprise businesses where trainees can receive real job training that they can use immediately upon graduation from Homeboy. And we provide all of this in a trauma-informed, therapeutic community setting that also allows them to work on attachment repair and building healthy relationships with co-workers who may formerly have been members of rival gangs.
…In 1994, the ceiling leaked, the oven broke, and the bakery closed. Father Greg found new partners; a worker from the Southern California Gas Company repaired the oven free of charge and USC Medical Center stepped up and said they would buy whatever the bakery could turn out. The business of job training and re-entry grew. Total disaster struck in 1999 when the bakery burned down, but despite these obstacles, Homeboy continued to grow and expand. More social enterprise businesses and new, free social programs were added and by 2001, Homeboy Industries was an independent non-profit. …Today, Homeboy is located in gang-neutral downtown Los Angeles.
…Thousands of young people have since walked through the doors of Homeboy Industries looking for a second chance, and finding community, sanctuary, and family.
…Social enterprises are businesses that apply commercial strategies to improve the well-being of individuals rather than creating enterprises for profit. Homeboy is an organization with many true social enterprises where trainees are paid to learn job skills and take advantage of comprehensive services. By offering former gang members a place to work, Homeboy provides a place for them to learn soft skills, like administration and customer service, and also vocational skills from solar panel installation to pastry baking or catering. These jobs in Homeboy’s social enterprises, often the first “legit” employment our clients have ever held, give our clients confidence and self-esteem while enabling them to provide for their families.
The jobs our clients have through our social enterprises offer them alternatives to re-incarceration or a return to their former gang lives.
Homeboy’s Social Enterprises include:
Homeboy Bakery (storefront, wholesale, and online at homeboyfoods.com.)
Homeboy Silkscreen & Embroidery
Homegirl Café
Homegirl Catering
Homeboy Merchandise
Farmers Markets
Homeboy Diner at Los Angeles City Hall
Grocery – Salsa
Homeboy Café and Bakery in LAX Terminal 4
What services are offered at Homeboy?
Case Management
Tattoo Removal
Employment Services
Mental Health Services – individual therapy, substance abuse counseling, and group classes
Legal Services
Education – including academic, life skills, wellness and enrichment classes,and a partnership with LearningWorks Charter High School.
Solar Panel Training and Certification
…Homeboy Recycling is the newest venture at Homeboy. We have partnered with Isidore Recycling who’s mission has been and still is to make recycling electronics easy, secure and accessible, while creating employment opportunities for people who have successfully exited California’s correctional system.
…All of Homeboy’s services, offered free of charge, are designed to equip our clients to successfully turn their lives around. Participants in the 18-month program are offered case management and comprehensive wrap-around services while at Homeboy. All of our services (with the exception of case management and individual therapy) are free and open to community clients as well.
…Homeboy Industries offers employment services to community clients. We provide assistance with developing job leads and building an individual’s marketing package to include resumes, references, and cover letters. Employment services assists with some transportation needs, offers free professional clothing, identification, certifications, work history documents, and other support services for individuals seeking employment.
Homeboy Industries – Father Greg |
(Yes, this is a break from the new cycle. Because we at the Peanut Gallery needed it!)
What a mensch this Father Greg, guy!
The End Of Plastic Cutlery, Plates And Straws: EU Market Says Goodbye To Single-Use Plastic Products
The aim of the directive, which is part of the European Plastics Strategy, is to protect the environment and reduce marine litter by avoiding the emission of 3.4 million tonnes of CO2. However, it should be noted the importance of the economic benefits that the new regulation will bring: the directive may avoid environmental damages which would cost the equivalent of €22 billion ($24.9 billion) by 2030 and save consumers a projected €6.5 billion ($7.38 billion).
…The measures discussed are closely related to the latest estimates on marine litter, according to the European Commission, plastics make up 85% of beach litter, which is causing catastrophic consequences on the environment. The organization WWF has already pointed out the dramatic effects that the excessive use of plastics, poor management of waste and mass tourism are having in the Mediterranean Sea, the most visited sea in Europe.
…The new rules aim to stop the use of throwaway plastic products and packaging for which alternatives exist and is focused on the most frequently found items polluting European seas: plastic cutlery (forks, knives, spoons, and chopsticks), plastic plates, plastic straws, cotton bud sticks made of plastic, beverage and food containers made of expanded polystyrene (such as fast food and takeaway boxes), and products made from oxo-degradable plastic, which contributes to microplastic pollution. According to the European Commission, together these products constitute 70% of all marine litter items.
…The global production of plastics has not stopped to increase since 1960. According to the European Commission, in 2015 the global production reached 322 million tonnes and it is expected to double over the next 20 years. In Europe, around 25.8 million tonnes of plastic waste is generated every year and less than 30% of such waste is collected for recycling.
The End Of Plastic Cutlery, Plates And Straws: EU Market Says Goodbye To Single-Use Plastic Products
hmmmm
Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection For Activist Workers
While Google publicly supported employees who protested company policies, it quietly asked the government to narrow the right to organize over work email.
…Google, whose employees have captured international attention in recent months through high-profile protests of workplace policies, has been quietly urging the U.S. government to narrow legal protection for workers organizing online
…Google has long fostered a culture of employee feedback, allowing open debate in meetings and online forums, where staff have advocated for changes to products and facilities over the company’s 20-year history. But the last year has seen an unprecedented wave of concentrated and forceful advocacy from employees, often at direct odds with the positions of management. After Google was awarded a Pentagon contract for using artificial intelligence to analyze drone footage, thousands of employees signed a petition demanding Google remove itself from “the business of war,” nine software engineers refused to work on a security feature that could help the company win more military contracts, and in June the company said it wouldn’t renew its Department of Defense deal. An employee introduced a shareholder resolution to tie executive compensation to diversity and inclusion, while others wrote a letter to their chief executive officer decrying the treatment of sub-contracted staff as “part of a system of institutional racism, sexism, and discrimination.”
…Google’s objections to the legal protection for employees organizing via employee email came in filings defending itself against allegations brought by a regional director of the NLRB. In a 2017 complaint, the agency had accused Google of violating federal labor law, including by maintaining workplace policies that infringe on workers’ rights and by making threats against employees. The complaint also alleged that Google violated the law in 2015 by issuing a warning to an employee because of comments made via email and on the company forum G+ “regarding workplace diversity and social justice initiatives, workplace policy viewpoints, and regarding employees’ rights to express their opinion on G+.”
…The protection established in Purple Communications is “pretty fundamental” given the centrality of email to modern workplace communications, said Wilma Liebman, who chaired the NLRB during Obama’s first term. Given Google’s rhetoric about “the free exchange of ideas, and itself as a purveyor of mechanisms for communications,” she said, “That’s an irony that Google, of all companies, would take such a narrow position.”
Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection For Activist Workers – Bloomberg
hmmm
Standing Rock’s Surprising Legacy: A Push for Public Banks
Once Seattle had committed to move its money, the city needed somewhere to move it to.
“When we were organizing around getting [Seattle] to divest, the question all along was what to do with the city’s money,” Remle said. “And our philosophy was it’s not going to be a victory to close accounts with Wells Fargo and go to Bank of America.”
Organizers saw public banks as the solution.
A public bank is an institution owned by a governmental body, funded with taxpayer money, and mandated to serve the public interest. In summer 2017, Remle and other Seattleites started advocating for the city to establish a public bank, a process that could take years.
Sawant said a public bank “would be accountable to the people of Seattle in a way that you could never hold a private bank accountable,” adding that the city could better direct the bank’s resources, like loans, to projects that support community-directed goals. Remle noted affordable housing, homelessness services, and funding for higher education as causes the city might fund.
…The next step, the council member said, is to demand that obstacles—such as the inability for credit unions to serve municipalities and the Washington law that bars cities from establishing any type of business entity—are removed so that the city or state can establish a public bank.
…Because proposed banks have unique business plans, market competition, and local economic context, among other factors, the FDIC does not prescribe a minimum of initial capital. But the agency does suggest that organizers examine “the risks inherent in the institution’s business model, the potential variability in earnings projections, and the skill and ability of the management team to carry out the business plan” when planning to apply for insurance.
…There are also legal challenges to establishing public banks in some locations. Many states and cities—including Oregon state, as well as Sante Fe and Los Angeles—have clauses in their constitutions or charters that inhibit the establishment of public banks. There’s movement in some places to overcome institutionalized policy barriers to establishing public banks. In Los Angeles, a measure on the November ballot that would have amended the city’s charter and allow it to explore establishing its own financial institution did not pass. And in San Francisco, a city report recently showed that state laws could not prevent the city from creating a public bank.
…The main obstacle to starting a public bank in Washington is that the state constitution prohibits the state and its cities from loaning money or credit to individuals, associations, or corporations.
Standing Rock’s Surprising Legacy: A Push for Public Banks by Deonna Anderson — YES! Magazine
hmmm
Wilbur Ross doesn’t understand why furloughed federal workers need food banks
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says he does not understand why federal employees who are furloughed or have been working without pay during the partial government shutdown would need assistance from food banks.
Wilbur Ross doesn’t understand why furloughed federal workers need food banks
What a fucking moron! How does this pre-Christmas eve Scrooge even get out of bed or cross the street by himself? Total cluelessness and this is who the Cheetoh has in his cabinet. Sad!
Mark Zuckerberg Thinks You Don’t Trust Facebook Because You Don’t ‘Understand’ It
Mark Zuckerberg Thinks You Don’t Trust Facebook Because You Don’t ‘Understand’ It
He also thought he had the right to fence off land that wasn’t his.
He may be a genius, but not in all areas…
Comments From The Peanut Gallery 