Snowflake's Forum

In the aftermath of yet another mass shooting in America, loved ones grieve, gun control advocates call for common-sense reforms, and politicians suggest new “solutions” that won’t do anything about guns. These proposals frequently focus on mental health, but  a new plan before the White House  to monitor “neurobehavioral” predictors of violence isn’t just misguided, it’s terrifyingly dystopian. Last week,  the Washington Post reported  that the White House had been briefed on a plan to create an agency called HARPA, a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA. Among other initiatives, this new agency would reportedly collect volunteer data from a suite of smart devices, including Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echos, and Google Homes in order to identify “neurobehavioral signs” of “someone headed toward a violent explosive act.” The project would then use artificial intelligence to create a “sensor suite” to flag mental changes t...

WELCOME - AGAIN - TO SNOWFLAKE'S FORUM Some differences from the Disqus channels: You have to be invited to be an author, and I need authors, SO PLEASE step up and offer your services - I would need your email address to set you up. I NEED MODS, to keep order and decorum on here. ANYONE who does not want to be involved in News and Politics is welcome to moderate No-Po topics. Also, your name will not appear as the author of an OP, so if you want the credit, be the first to comment on your own OPs, as well I NEED everyone to recommend OPs, because we are not able to send out invites. Also change your settings so you get notifications: ALSO: MODS: I have been trying hard to add people to trusted user list as they appear, help me out with this, and add people as you see them as well, thanks. HOPEFULLY, this forum will thrive, it can only do so with YOUR SUPPORT

Former Vice President Joe Biden plays up his Pennsylvania roots as much as anything and has heavily courted organized labor in his presidential campaign, but a key union in Biden's backyard is feeling neglected by the leading Democratic candidate. At issue is a forum the AFL-CIO's Philadelphia branch is holding Sept. 17, which the union is branding as a "Workers' Presidential Summit." Seven candidates have agreed to attend so far, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, billionaire activist Tom Steyer and entrepreneur Andrew Yang. But Biden is not among them. "He always calls himself a Pennsylvanian at heart. His headquarters are here in Philadelphia. But his folks haven't found the importance of coming together and talking to our workers. And so that's very disappointing," AFL-CIO Philadelphia Council President Pat Eiding told NPR. "There's got to be some respect for the working people, if they want ...

A key concern in feminist rhetoric has always been the unwarranted sexualization of breasts. The argument goes: Breasts might be secondary sex organs, but they aren’t inherently sexual in nature; breasts serve a purpose in reproduction, i.e. producing milk and feeding a newborn. But the sexualization of boobs in popular culture — from celebrating ‘sexy’ cleavage to shaming women who breastfeed in public to banning women’s nipples on social media — has led them to be a privately celebrated and consequently publicly taboo organ in society. They are believed to be sexualized without any fundamental basis in sexual activity, yet their representation in pop culture to satisfy the male fantasy has made them a mainstay in sexual rhetoric. But do breasts have a role in the sexual pleasure for those who have them? “Sometimes it’s just hilarious to watch men be so fascinated by [boobs] during sex. Like, it’s just a bag of fat you’re fondling. How’s that making you so happy?” said Simran, 23,...

STUNNING: People are so used to posting on familiar channels, even with the channels closing in a few days, they still post OPs there, but hoping that eventually all those I have tagged and pestered will make their way over to THIS FORUM. I know of several Disqus-like Forums that have opened, to draw crowds who are used to the setup and are familiar with the features, while other Forums are being set up that don't use Disqus as their platform. I will stick with this for now, or till it becomes unpopular, as well as I intend to pop in on the other forums, even the non-Disqus ones. WELCOME: Though I have proposed this forum for news and politics, I want anyone who visits to feel they can post any kind of OP except of course, no porn, no bigoted posts, nothing nasty. IF you have a particular interest, such as our Meghan has in history, you can do your own daily, weekly, or occasion theme and be more than welcome. I WILL BE looking for moderators, so please step up if you ...

To briefly recap the company's early history, Netflix was founded in 1997 by software engineers Reed Hastings and Marc Rudolph. The business provided DVDs by mail through an online rental and sales site, a major change to the then-popular brick-and-mortar movie rental shops such as Blockbuster and Family Video. DVDs were also a new format at the time. Over the next several years, Netflix pioneered concepts such as a subscription service offering unlimited monthly rentals for one fee, no late charges and a personalized recommendation system to predict movie choices for members. By 2005, Netflix had  4.2 million members . Things seemed great when the company unveiled streaming in 2007, which let you watch TV shows and movies on your personal computers. By 2008 — the starting point of TechStuff's third and final podcast on the topic — Netflix expanded streaming to the Xbox 360, Blu-ray disc players and TV set-top boxes. But it now faced a major competitor: Hulu, a joint opera...

About 60 people gathered inside a modest bowling alley recently at Naval Support Activity Bethesda, a military base in a Maryland suburb of Washington D.C., to say goodbye to a place that many of them call their second home. The 40-year-old alley shut down on Aug. 21 because of apparent funding constraints and a steady decline in customers over the past three years. Built in 1979, it needs about $500,000 in repairs to its pinsetters and lanes, according to the installation's public affairs office. But people who have been bowling there for years, many on a weekly basis, feel hurt and angry about the decision to shutter the alley. To them, it signals a lack of concern for recovering soldiers and their families. They see the alley as one of the few places in the region where civilians and military can mix. "I know that this bowling alley has saved multiple lives, including my own," said Michael Marquette, a retired Navy corpsman medic who sustained multiple i...

The Senator from New York has fallen in with a bevy of other Democratic candidates such as "what's his name" and "who?" to let her two dozen constituents know that she will be officially ending her campaign.  Although not the most obscure candidate, she and Eric Swalwell sought to boost their relevance by competing for most cringe worthy.  Obviously, not every candidate needs to be recognized as a caring and compassionate human being,  but Gillibrand decided to forgo any sense of life and campaign as a T-1000 ready to scare small children, dogs and voters alike.

While visiting family in Money,  Mississippi , 14-year-old  Emmett Till , an African American from  Chicago , is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier. His assailants—the white woman’s husband and her brother—made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till As is now well-known, the woman who told her husband that Emmett had assaulted her had completely made up the story. Right now for my true-crime book club, we're reading a book called The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist, about how an untrained medical examiner and a dentist were able to put away many, many innocent people in Mississippi, many of whom were bla...

I don't know if it will work on this platform, but here's an attempt... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS90B4sZf7U

On August 27, 1883,  Krakatoa  (alternately called Krakatau), an uninhabited volcanic island near Indonesia, erupted spectacularly, expelling huge clouds of gas and ash, generating massive tsunamis, and killing more than 36,000 people. Here are a few things you might not have known about one of the most powerful and devastating eruptions in modern history, which had effects worldwide. [snip] Starting at 5:30 a.m.  on August 27, Krakatoa experienced four massive explosions over the course of 4.5 hours. The blasts were so loud they could be heard as far away as Sri Lanka and Perth, Australia— 3000 miles away . The force of the final blast at 10:02 a.m. was  10,000 times more powerful  than the one unleashed by the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and shockwaves generated by the eruption registered all over the world. https://mentalfloss.com/article/67852/10-facts-about-krakatoas-1883-eruption It feels like there is a parallel here between Krakatoa ...

In 1848 women and men met in Seneca Falls, New York to advance the cause for women’s rights. The convention, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright, Mary Ann M'Clintock, and Jane Hunt marked the beginning of a formal women’s suffrage movement. The men and women of the movement made speeches and petitioned Congress, pressuring government officials to recognize the woman’s right to vote. Stanton, Mott, and suffrage advocate  Susan B. Anthony  did not live to see women get the right to vote. Instead, they paved the way for future suffragists like  Alice Paul ,  Ida B. Wells , and  Mabel Ping-Hua Lee . The women leading the women’s suffrage movement were not always unified. Some suffragists thought only white women should exercise their right to vote. Others like  Charlotte Forten Grimke ,  Mary Ann Shadd Cary , and  Mary Church Terrell  knew women of color also had a right to participate in electing government ...

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p07kw1xw/this-is-what-10-years-of-reforestation-can-do

On the morning of August 23, 1973, an escaped convict crossed the streets of Sweden’s capital city and entered a bustling bank, the Sveriges Kreditbanken, on Stockholm’s upscale Norrmalmstorg square. From underneath the folded jacket he carried in his arms, Jan-Erik Olsson pulled a loaded submachine gun, fired at the ceiling and, disguising his voice to sound like an American, cried out in English, “The party has just begun!” After wounding a policeman who had responded to a silent alarm, the robber took four bank employees hostage. Olsson, a safe-cracker who failed to return to prison after a furlough from his three-year sentence for grand larceny, demanded more than $700,000 in Swedish and foreign currency, a getaway car and the release of Clark Olofsson, who was serving time for armed robbery and acting as an accessory in the 1966 murder of a police officer. Within hours, the police delivered Olsson’s fellow convict, the ransom and even a blue  Ford Mustang  with a full ...

Don't worry, I don't want to eat them, just pick them. My fellow addict and house mate and I are working hard to turn my house into a sober living home, which will be a place where recovering addicts can rent a room and have a safe and supportive place to stay while they concentrate on getting their lives back together. I am doing research, trying to make sure this whole thing is legal. So I contacted DHS (Department of Human Services in my state). They sent me some paperwork to fill out so they can tell me what statutes and rules I have to follow. The first thing they asked on the questionnaire is the business name. We have done a lot of thinking and discussing about it and come up with the name, Phoenix House. I decided to check to see if anyone else is using that name, and I'm glad I did. Here is a list of what I found so far: Phoenix House (addiction recovery) Phoenix Rising House (addiction recovery) The Phoenix (addiction recovery) Phoenix Counseling (addic...

On the evening of August 21–22, 1831, an enslaved preacher and self-styled prophet named Nat Turner launched the most deadly  slave revolt  in the history of the United States. Over the course of a day in  Southampton County , Turner and his allies killed fifty-five white men, women, and children as the rebels made their way toward Jerusalem, Virginia (now Courtland). Less than twenty-four hours after the revolt began, the rebels encountered organized resistance and were defeated in an encounter at James Parker's farm. Following this setback, Turner and other rebels scrambled to reassemble their forces. The next day, a series of defeats led to the effective end of the revolt. Whites quickly and brutally reasserted their control over Southampton County, killing roughly three dozen blacks without trials. Within a few days of the revolt, white leaders in Southampton became increasingly confident that the revolt had been suppressed and worked to limit the extralegal killing o...

https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2019/08/20/190819_cindymccain_ohara_resized21_slide-d490f72e9afbbe8c9ea7a58c5642350180061d4c-s1500-c85.jpg To some, Republican Sen. John McCain embodied principles of a bygone Washington: He sought common ground; he reached across the political divide; he had close friendships with Democrats. His wife, Cindy McCain, would like to try to get back to those days. So to mark a year since her husband died of brain cancer, she is encouraging Americans to be more civil. "We're missing John's voice of reason right now in so many ways," McCain tells NPR's David Greene. In politics and in life, the climate has grown especially nasty since John McCain died. And so, his wife says,  to honor his legacy , "it felt to me that the right thing to do was to encourage people to perform acts of civility" during the last week of August and then post about them on social media. "Agree to disagree, but just be civil about it,...

Ok, Snowflake has said that some are having a hard time with creating new posts. So I'm going to do my best to help out. FIRST: In order to 'author' in the blog, you MUST have a Google account. If you don't have one, you won't be able to contribute as an author. So if you don't have one and you want to be an author, sign up for a Google account. You can use your main email address to set it up but make sure you go through all of the privacy settings so that no personal information shows through the Google account. You can 'hide' your name (should you use your real name) and choose a 'screen name' that will show instead and I'd recommend that name be the same as your Disqus name so that people will know who it is. Once you have created a Google account, you will use that to log in through blogger.com and once you are there, the blog 'should' automatically show to you being you are an author. If not, check up in the top left corner ...