Providing accurate and timely information about what matters in Franklin, MA since 2007. * Working in collaboration with Franklin TV and Radio (wfpr.fm) since October 2019 *
Thursday, January 21, 2021
"to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside"
Friday, January 15, 2021
Emergency relief plan announced
"President-elect Joe Biden laid out a $1.9 trillion emergency relief plan Thursday night that will serve as an early test of his ability to steer the nation out of a pandemic disaster and rapidly deteriorating economy — and his promise to unite a divided Congress.The wide-ranging package is designed to take aim at the twin crises Biden will confront upon taking office Wednesday, with provisions delivering direct aid to American families, businesses and communities, and a major focus on coronavirus testing and vaccine production and delivery as the pandemic surges."
Friday, January 8, 2021
"About 15% of adults in America report hearing loss, and about 1 million use sign language to communicate"
Enabling access to information for all is key.
"Saamanta Serna describes herself as a Coda – the child of a Deaf adult. She grew up up with a Deaf mother and a father who is hearing and an American sign language (ASL) interpreter, and later decided to pursue interpreting herself after high school.
Now a certified ASL interpreter, Serna has done frequent in-person interpreting for medical appointments during Covid. She has also noticed a change in the world’s perception of sign language since the beginning of the pandemic: more people are paying attention.
Conveying updated information to everyone in the time of Covid is a matter of life or death, as the Trump administration learned recently after losing a groundbreaking federal lawsuit to the National Association for the Deaf, which ensured that a sign language interpreter must be present in Covid briefings and visible on the live feed from the White House. The Trump White House did not include its first sign language interpreter on a Covid briefing until 11 November, a full nine months after the pandemic reached America."
ASL interpreters (like Rupert Dubler) are present for Gov Baker's press conferences |
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
The Guardian: "How the 'shecession' will cause long-term harm for women in the US"
"For the first time in history, the US is in a “shecession” – an economic downturn where job and income losses are affecting women more than men. The term was coined by C Nicole Mason, president and chief executive of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), a thinktank.Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)
Mason put forward the term to highlight the disproportionate impact of this economic downturn on women. More than 11 million women have lost their jobs and another 2.65 million have left the workforce since February, according to an IWPR analysis of labor department data.
Mason spoke to the Guardian recently about what needs to change to get an equitable economic recovery."
Sunday, December 27, 2020
From The Guardian: Yes, climate crisis stickers coming soon to gas stations in Cambridge, MA
From The Guardian: Yes, climate crisis stickers coming soon to gas stations in Cambridge, MA.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, has become the first US city to mandate the placing of stickers on fuel pumps to warn drivers of the resulting dangers posed by the climate crisis.
The final design of the bright yellow stickers, shared with the Guardian, includes text that warns drivers the burning of gasoline, diesel and ethanol has “major consequences on human health and the environment including contributing to climate change”.
The stickers will be placed on all fuel pumps in Cambridge, which is situated near Boston and is home to Harvard University, “fairly soon” once they are received from printers, a city spokesman confirmed.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/25/massachusetts-city-to-post-climate-change-warning-stickers-at-gas-stations
climate crisis stickers coming soon to gas stations in Cambridge, MA |
So much for a deal, it still is waiting for a signature....
The Boston Globe has the following:
"Unemployment benefits for millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet lapsed overnight as President Donald Trump refused to sign an end-of-year COVID relief and spending bill that had been considered a done deal before his sudden objections.
The fate of the bipartisan package remained in limbo Sunday as Trump continued to demand larger COVID relief checks and complained about “pork” spending. Without the widespread funding provided by the massive measure, a government shutdown would occur when money runs out at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.
“It’s a chess game and we are pawns,” said Lanetris Haines, a self-employed single mother of three in South Bend, Indiana, who stood to lose her $129 weekly jobless benefit unless Trump signed the package into law or succeeded in his improbable quest for changes."
"As unemployment benefits were due to expire for millions of Americans on Saturday, Donald Trump, who spent Christmas playing golf in Florida, continued to block a $900bn pandemic relief bill that would extend them.The package, which Congress passed with bipartisan support on Monday after months of negotiations, would keep unemployment benefits in place until March and expand state benefits by $300 a week – as well as extending an evictions moratorium, providing federal loans to small businesses and $600 direct payments to many Americans.But without Trump’s signature, the entire package – set to be the second biggest in US history – is stalled and the US government now faces a shutdown on Tuesday."
Thursday, December 24, 2020
"Travel bans are an overly simplistic solution"
"Travel bans are an overly simplistic solution to new variants with potentially new properties & reflect a superficial understanding of viral mutation. They are also a missed opportunity to educate people with more nuance. My latest for the @guardian."https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1341773116549132300
"We can probably expect to see other variants that may be more effective at spreading, causing disease or circumventing our immune responses. We must be prepared to respond in an informed and thoughtful way, rather than reactively. Unfortunately, because Sars-CoV-2 is spreading so widely, the virus has many opportunities to develop mutations that give it a competitive advantage. The only way to stop the virus from mutating is to take away its ability to replicate, which means drastically reducing community transmission.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/23/travel-bans-effective-new-covid-variant
Mutations do not automatically make a virus a more exceptional pathogen. The advantages conferred by positively selected viral mutations are good for the virus, but aren’t necessarily always bad for the human host. Many mutations can make the virus better at infecting cells, replicating, or transmitting to new hosts, but will have no effect on the severity or type of disease that they cause. In the case of B.1.1.7, there is fortunately no indication that the 23 mutations distinguishing the variant result in more severe Covid-19"
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
Cyber security: inside the hack of a journalist; extent of US Government penetration not known
"A series of abusive text messages sent to an Al Jazeera investigative programme were the first crumbs that eventually led to the discovery of an unprecedented hacking operation against dozens of staff from the Qatar-based media network, according to one of the journalists who was targeted.
Researchers at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto claimed on Sunday that the UAE and Saudi Arabia used spyware sold by an Israeli private intelligence company to access the phones of at least 36 journalists, producers and executives from Al Jazeera, as well as that of a London-based reporter with the Al Araby network.
Traces of the cyber-attack were unearthed in July when a phone used by an Al Jazeera programme, The Tip of the Iceberg, exhibited suspicious network activity that was undetectable to its users."
"The Russian hackers who penetrated United States government agencies broke into the email system used by the Treasury Department’s most senior leadership, a Democratic member of the Senate Finance Committee said on Monday, the first detail of how deeply Moscow burrowed into the Trump administration’s networks.
In a statement after a briefing for committee staff members, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who has often been among the sharpest critics of the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies, said that the Treasury Department had acknowledged that “the agency suffered a serious breach, beginning in July, the full depth of which isn’t known.”
"President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. accused President Trump on Tuesday of “irrational downplaying” of the widespread hack of the federal government and American industries, saying that the current administration was denying him intelligence and warning Russia that he would not allow the intrusion to “go unanswered” after he takes office.
“This assault happened on Donald Trump’s watch when he wasn’t watching,” Mr. Biden said at a news conference in Delaware. “It is still his responsibility as president to defend American interests for the next four weeks, but rest assured that even if he does not take it seriously, I will.”
The direct critique was a remarkable departure from tradition, in which incoming presidents are careful about not second-guessing the actions of the incumbent. But Mr. Trump’s refusal to recognize Mr. Biden’s election victory, and his effort to subvert the results, has clearly poisoned elements of the transition process."
Sunday, December 20, 2020
Dr. Fauci vaccinated Santa
"Children around the world should not worry about the logistics of Christmas present delivery while the coronavirus pandemic rages, Dr. Anthony Fauci said – because he vaccinated Santa himself.“I took care of that for you,” the top US infectious diseases expert told CNN. “Because I was worried that you’d all be upset.“So what I did a little while ago, I took a trip up there to the North Pole. I went there and I vaccinated Santa Claus myself. I measured his level of immunity, and he is good to go. He can come down the chimney. He can leave the presents, he can leave, and you have nothing to worry about. Santa Claus is good to go.”
Saturday, December 19, 2020
"What we know – and still don’t – about the worst-ever US government cyber attack"
The Boston Globe has the following:
It’s going to take months to kick elite hackers widely believed to be Russian out of the US government networks they have been quietly rifling through since as far back as March in Washington’s worst cyberespionage failure on record.
Experts say there simply are not enough skilled threat-hunting teams to duly identify all the government and private-sector systems that may have been hacked. FireEye, the cybersecurity company that discovered the intrusion into US agencies and was among the victims, has already tallied dozens of casualties. It’s racing to identify more.
“We have a serious problem. We don’t know what networks they are in, how deep they are, what access they have, what tools they left,” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security expert and Harvard fellow.
- A good summary from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/18/orion-hack-solarwinds-explainer-us-government
- More inside technical details From Bruce Schneier (reference in article quote from Boston Globe: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/12/nsa-on-authentication-hacks-related-to-solarwinds-breach.html
- Also good technical details from Krebs on Security: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/12/vmware-flaw-a-vector-in-solarwinds-breach/
Saturday, December 12, 2020
Supreme Court rejects suit to overturn election results
The NY Times
Monday, November 23, 2020
The Guardian: "Here's what interviewing voters taught me about the slogan 'defund the police'"
"Joe Biden won the electoral college, leads the popular vote by millions, and will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. Taking down an incumbent president is no easy feat and Biden deserves credit for his disciplined and effective campaign.
But there is no question Biden underperformed vis-Ã -vis the consensus of pollsters and pundits. In Congress the underperformance was even more stark. Democrats expected to make gains in the House of Representatives. Instead, they are poised to return to Washington with an unexpectedly pared-down majority. In the Senate, Democrats were considered favorites to retake the chamber and deliver their party unified control of the federal government. Instead, they made only modest gains. This isn’t where the party wanted to be.
I run a Democratic political consulting firm and wanted to immediately get to work to understand why this underperformance happened. While there are certainly multiple answers to that question and various dynamics at play, we decided to start our inquiry with voters who leaned towards voting for Joe Biden in the last weeks of the election, but ultimately voted to re-elect Donald Trump. We put together a focus group to discuss the election with these voters and explore what changed their minds.
It will be easy for some to dismiss these participants as Trump voters (and they are!) but 70% of them told us they have a negative view of Donald Trump and at some point they supported Joe Biden before ultimately casting their vote for Trump. These aren’t Maga hat-wearing folks. "
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
PFAS from a new angle
"The successful uptake of any vaccine for Covid-19, a crucial step in returning a sense of normalcy after a year ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, could be hindered by widespread contamination from a range of chemicals used in everyday products.
Small amounts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl (or PFAS) chemicals are commonly found in the bodies of people in the US, as well as several other countries. These man-made chemicals, used in everything from non-stick pans to waterproof clothes to pizza boxes, have been linked to an elevated risk of liver damage, decreased fertility and even cancer.
But scientists warn some of these chemicals can also cause another little-known but potentially significant defect by reducing the effectiveness of certain administered vaccines. This impediment could cast a shadow over efforts to roll out a Covid-19 vaccine to enough people that restrictions on day-to-day life are eased.
“At this stage we don’t know if it will impact a corona vaccination, but it’s a risk,” said Philippe Grandjean, an adjunct professor of environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health. “We would have to cross our fingers and hope for the best.”
Friday, August 21, 2020
The Guardian: "Revealed: how the gas industry is waging war against climate action"
"When progressive Seattle decided last year to wipe out its climate pollution within the decade, the city council vote in favor was unsurprisingly unanimous, and the easiest first step on that path was clear.About one-third of the city’s climate footprint comes from buildings, in large part from burning “natural” gas for heating and cooking. Gas is a fossil fuel that releases carbon dioxide and far more potent methane into the atmosphere and heats the planet. It is plentiful and cheap, and it’s also a huge and increasing part of America’s climate challenge....The effort died. The ban wasn’t politically tenable, it seemed.But internal records obtained by the Guardian show the measure’s defeat and the “wall of opposition” that advocates experienced were part of a sophisticated pushback plan from Seattle’s gas supplier, Puget Sound Energy.Seattle’s story isn’t unique. In fact, it’s representative of a nationwide blitz by gas companies and their allies to beat back climate action they consider an existential threat to their business, according to emails, meeting agendas and public records reviewed by the Guardian."
The Guardian: "Revealed: how the gas industry is waging war against climate action" |