I was surprised that the leaks from within the CIA of nearly 9,000 documents that WikiLeaks has labeled ‘Vault 7’ that revealed information about its spying methods on Americans and how they lost control of the systems it was using have not received much greater prominence in the news, though it is now receiving more scrutiny as both the FBI and CIA launch criminal investigations into the leaks.
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I suspect that many of us worry, at least occasionally, that we might fall asleep or leave the house with the stove left on and have visions of the burner overheating and catching fire and destroying everything. I have on numerous occasions gone back into the house after leaving it, just to check the stove. But how bad could it really be? According to this article by Steve Rousseau, John Drengenberg, the Consumer Safety Director at Underwriters Laboratories, says that the manufacturers of stoves have taken this possibility into account.
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The report released by the University of California system about 113 reported cases of sexual harassment by professors of their students was eye-opening for me. The blatant nature of the propositioning and assault was quite shocking.
University of California professor Eric Gans told his female graduate student that he loved her – and that “in another universe”, they were meant to share a life together.
“I have never seen you more beautiful than the past two days,” the French and Francophone studies professor wrote to the student in May 2011, when he was 69 years old. “I can’t help feeling that … you are being beautiful for me, that I somehow inspire this beauty.”
The letter came one week before the UC Los Angeles (UCLA) student had to take an exam that Gans would evaluate. It caused her to become anxious and depressed, and according to a university investigation, was one of many sexually harassing messages he sent even though she repeatedly stated she was not interested in a romantic relationship.
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It was disgusting to see how the media fawned over Donald Trump’s speech to the joint session of Congress. Simply for acting like a normal human being for a brief time, they gushed that he had suddenly become presidential. But as Trevor Noah astutely pointed out, Trump knows exactly how to fake the media into thinking he is presidential and has mocked them in the past about how easy it was to fool them. In the speech, he did exactly what he said he would do and they still fell for it.
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WikiLeaks has issued a blockbuster press release today along with a tranche of documents that were leaked to it that describe the CIA’s efforts to infiltrate people’s communications systems. The documents reveal that the CIA targeted smartphones and computers and turned so-called Smart TVs into eavesdropping devices. The documents allege that the CIA then lost control of this spying arsenal which means that others may now possess these same capabilities, which would constitute a massive breach in its security systems.
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In the groundbreaking book Manufacturing Consent published in 1988 by Noam Chomsky and Edward Hermann, they proposed a model of how the media in the US is used by the establishment as a means of control of the population. This works less overtly than in openly authoritarian countries where state dominance over the media is obvious. In the US, control of the media is not by the state but by an establishment elite. This control is hidden and achieves its effects more subtly and this feature actually makes the propaganda more effective because people do not realize that their opinions are being manipulated.
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I have been reading the book Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction by David C. Catling where he discusses the possible conditions under which life might be able to originate and replicate, and the likelihood of those conditions existing on other planets in the universe. It turns out that life can exist under conditions that to us humans seem extremely hostile. Organisms have been found on Earth under conditions of extreme heat (thermophiles) or cold (psychrophiles) or high acidity (acidophiles) or basicity (alkaliphiles) and other parameters and such organisms are collectively referred to as extremophiles.
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The administration of Donald Trump careens all over the place and his behavior continues to be erratic, leading to an explosion of palace intrigue and gossip. Take this story:
With the White House struggling to gain its footing almost two months into Donald Trump’s presidency, administration officials are increasingly putting the blame on one person: Reince Priebus.
In interviews, over a dozen Trump aides, allies, and others close to the White House said that Priebus, the 44-year-old chief of staff, was becoming a singular target of criticism within the White House.