This is what they really fear

In case you ever wondered why so many tech companies impose individual arbitrations on their users, this class action lawsuit filed against Facebook should suffice to explain their reasoning:

A new class-action lawsuit has accused Facebook of illegally harvesting biometric data on its subsidiary platform Instagram with a photo-tagging tool that allegedly stores facial recognition data. The lawsuit, filed on Monday in state court in Redwood City, California, accuses the company of collecting, storing and profiting from the biometric data of more than 100 million Instagram users, without their knowledge or consent.

Facebook does not impose arbitration, and its lawyers are obviously a little more up on California law than Patreon’s, as they do not impose an illegitimate waiver of class action litigation. So, there shouldn’t be any procedural impediments to this lawsuit, although Facebook’s lawyers will almost certainly invent as many as they need in order to delay discovery. But Facebook has a near-infinite supply of financial and legal resources, so it can afford to lose even a very large class-action lawsuit without its operations being disrupted.

I have no idea if the litigants have a claim or not; I don’t use Facebook or Instagram. But I do note that the company’s objection – “Instagram doesn’t use Face Recognition technology” – does not even contradict the lawsuit’s primary claim that the company was “collecting, storing and profiting from the biometric data of more than 100 million Instagram users, without their knowledge or consent.”

You’ll note that “face recognition technology” is a small subset of “biometric data”. Facebook’s non-denial denial is not unlike a company saying they weren’t collecting, storing, and profiting from your DNA because they don’t use fingerprint technology.

That’s why it is so interesting that Patreon is so Hell-bent on avoiding arbitration of the claims concerning their deceptive practices and violations of California law. They genuinely seem to believe that they’d be better off facing the class action litigation they specifically imposed individual arbitration to avoid. Or, at least, their outside lawyers would be.

Crazier than you think

And possibly a little darker too. I refer, of course, to the Jordan Peterson family saga, which, among other things, now involves a Russian man possessed by a demon named Igor.

Mikhaila started “The Lion Diet” which consists of only eating Beef, Salt, & Water. Although this verges on an eating disorder, Mikhaila claimed that it cured many of her health problems. She even announced that she stopped taking her medications, including an anti-herpes drug. She then convinced her father to start her diet. Soon after starting, Jordan reported that he stopped taking his anti-depressants.

It was around this time that Peterson reported not being able to sleep for 25 days straight while experiencing an “overwhelming sense of impending doom” after drinking some apple cider.

I’m still amused that anyone ever thought Jordan Peterson had anything at all to offer anyone. I mean, didn’t any of you Peterson fans ever read anything he wrote? It took me about 30 seconds reading one blog post to know he was a liar, and less than one chapter of his first book to know he was a lunatic.

This time, it’s different

Nate Silver attempts to explain that although Joe Biden’s lead over Donald Trump is even bigger than Hillary Clinton’s was, he’s giving Creepy Joe a much lower percentage chance of winning the U.S. Presidential election than the 89.2 percent chance he gave Hillary on August 15, 2016.

Joe Biden currently has a robust lead in polls. If the election were held today, he might even win in a landslide, carrying not only traditional swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania but potentially adding new states such as Georgia and Texas to the Democratic coalition.

But the election is not being held today. While the polls have been stable so far this year, it’s still only August. The debates and the conventions have yet to occur. Biden only named his running mate yesterday. And the campaign is being conducted amidst a pandemic the likes of which the United States has not seen in more than 100 years, which is also causing an unprecedented and volatile economy.

Nor has it been that uncommon, historically, for polls to shift fairly radically from mid-August until Election Day. Furthermore, there are some reasons to think the election will tighten, and President Trump is likely to have an advantage in a close election because of the Electoral College.

That, in a nutshell, is why the FiveThirtyEight presidential election forecast, which we launched today, still has Trump with a 29 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, despite his current deficit in the polls. This is considerably higher than some other forecasts, which put Trump’s chances at around 10 percent. Biden’s chances are 71 percent in the FiveThirtyEight forecast, conversely.

Except, of course, the difference is that Biden is going to be beaten even more decisively than Clinton was. Let’s just enjoy this little meltdown from Election Night 2016. “Look, this election is over. Trump cannot win! I think Hillary will have 320 electoral votes when all is said and done.”

Q 1, Republican Establishment 0

The Republican Establishment’s control of the grass roots is being broken by nothing more than a rhetorical message of hope:

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a GOP candidate with a track record of incendiary rhetoric and ties to the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, prevailed in a Georgia primary runoff, CNN projected Tuesday, a victory that puts her in a strong position to win a congressional seat in the fall representing a solidly Republican district.

The victory will also put national Republicans in the difficult position of how to respond to a conspiracy theory touting nominee who’s also made comments using Islamophobic and anti-Semitic tropes.

Greene faced off against GOP opponent John Cowan in the runoff. The two candidates previously competed against one another in a June primary election where Greene won roughly 40{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d} of the vote, while Cowan received only 21{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d}. A runoff was triggered after none of the candidates received over 50{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d} of the vote in the initial primary.

The primary runoff for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, which is situated in the northwest corner of the state, drew national attention as a major flashpoint in the race has been Greene’s promotion of the wild and unsubstantiated conspiracy theory known as QAnon.

The Republican Establishment is desperate to preserve “racist” and “anti-semitic” as rhetorical disqualifiers for those who see and stand up for the observable truth. But more and more people are beginning to see through the lies, and realize that “anti-semitic” is merely a synonym for “anti-satanic”.

Christian conservatives are going to discover that they will soon have to choose between their professed love for Jesus Christ and their professed love for the Pharisees. Because both the Pharisees and their fellow Prometheans are working very hard to ban both Christianity and the New Testament as “hate speech”.

Jewish people running the world or controlling major institutions such as media networks, the economy or the government

This means any reference to Israel, AIPAC, or Facebook itself is now a bannable offense on Facebook. Interesting. And remember, John of Patmos warned Christians that they would be subject to a deception that would be considered widely credible. So, ask yourself, what is the greatest deception to which Christians today are currently subject?

A brave choice

I think it was courageous of Joe Biden to pick a Spanish actor as his running mate. That, or the dementia. But constitutionality be damned, it’s not as if Javier Barden has any less pull in the swing states than Pocahontas or that weird Michigan governor.

Trumpslide 2020 confirmed….

Bloodbath at DC

Employmentwise, that is, not a literal one. DC Comics is downsizing in a big way, with around one-third of its staff being eliminated, and presumably, a similar percentage of its comics.

Earlier today, Bleeding Cool posted the news that DC Comics staffers, along with the rest of Warner Bros were undergoing a downsizing of staff. At the time, we were lead to believe that the brunt would be felt by DC Universe, as part of an alignment of streaming services being offered. But instead, it became rapidly clear that DC Comics editorial was being targeted in a major way for such changes. With everyone describing this as the DC Bloodbath – or New DC Implosion – and on a Monday as well.

I am told that these layoffs will have an immediate effect on the publication of DC Comics monthly titles, and I am to expect a rapid reduction of titles. If you thought DC Comics published an unhealthy percentage of Batman books, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The Batbooks, most of the Justice League books and some of the Superman books will stay safe, as will the digital line, the original graphic novel line. But a lot of comics will have to disappear as there simply aren’t enough people to work on them.

Meanwhile, Arkhaven marches on. Slower than we’d like, but stronger than we’d expected. One of the first new projects is the Webtoon that Chuck Dixon is creating for the Patreon backers, GO MONSTER GO!

Cleaning house at the USPS

I’m sure this “sweeping overhaul of the agency” has nothing with Democrats’ plans to subvert the election through mail fraud:

Government watchdogs, Democratic lawmakers, and pro-democracy advocates declared it a “Friday Night Massacre” for the U.S. Postal Service after news broke in a classic end-of-the-week dump that Louis DeJoy—a major GOP donor to President Donald Trump and the recently appointed Postmaster General—had issued a sweeping overhaul of the agency, including the ouster of top executives from key posts and the reshuffling of more than two dozen other officials and operational managers.

The Trumpslide beckons.

Looting is reparations

Apparently white US citizens don’t owe anything to their black counterparts anymore:

Black Lives Matter Chicago said early Monday’s looting of stores was a form of ‘reparations’ as the group held a protest Monday night in support of the more than 100 people arrested after an evening of violence.

Downtown Chicago was otherwise quiet after authorities cut off access, with drawbridges leading into the city pulled up and freeway exits blocked after riots sparked by a false rumor of a child shot by police.

At least 13 police officers were injured as the violence claimed an estimated $65 million in property damage.

Ariel Atkins, a BLM organizer, called the looting ‘reparations’.

If looting is reparations, then wouldn’t 155 years of black crime more than suffice to pay off any debt incurred by slavery? The lowest estimate of the annual cost of crime in the United States is $690 billion, and blacks account for 37.6 percent of all robberies and burglaries, so if BLM is to be taken seriously, then reparations to US blacks are being paid at an annual rate of $259.4 billion.

Mythopoeia

Are myths true? In the third episode of The Forge of Tolkien, MYTHOPOEIA, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown reads Tolkien’s poem “Mythopoeia” as a riddle about the relationship between poetry, sub-creation, and the reality of myth. We explore the structure of the poem and its language for clues as to how Tolkien convinced his friend Jack Lewis to read myths not as “lies,” but as invitations to sub-create in the image and likeness in which human beings are made.

If you’re enjoying the Prof. Brown’s new Unauthorized stream and wish to support it, subscribe here.

Big 10 down

PAC-12 and the rest of the NCAA to follow soon, I expect:

The Big Ten has voted to cancel the 2020 college football season in a historic move that stems from concerns related to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, multiple people with knowledge of the decision confirmed to the Free Press.

The sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the decision. A formal announcement is expected to Tuesday, the sources said.

The presidents voted, 12-2, Sunday to end the fall sports in the conference. Michigan and Michigan State — which both has physicians as presidents — voted to end the season, sources said. Only Nebraska and Iowa voted to play, Dan Patrick said on his radio show Monday. 

And this will help considerably with regards to popping the higher education bubble:

At stake is at least $4.1 billion in fiscal-year revenue for the athletics departments at just the 50-plus public schools in the Power Five conferences — an average of more than $78 million per school — a USA TODAY Sports analysis of schools’ financial reports to the NCAA shows. That’s more than 60{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d} of these schools’ combined total annual operating revenues, based on amounts reported for the 2019 fiscal year.