Bellingcat: Why Ukraine is winning the information war

Partly due to “open-source intelligence (OSINT)”:

In 2014 (Eliot) Higgins used Kickstarter to found Bellingcat (the name refers to resourceful mice tying a bell to a cat), a nonprofit, online collective dedicated to “a new field, one that connects journalism and rights advocacy and crime investigation.” Three days after its launch, a Malaysian passenger jet was shot down over the part of Ukraine held by Russian troops. Bellingcat proved the culprit was a Russian surface-to-air missile, by using largely the same array of tools—including Google Earth, the social media posts of Russian soldiers, and the passion of Eastern European drivers for posting dashcam videos—that hundreds of volunteer sleuths are now using to document the Russian invasion of Ukraine in granular detail….

In Ukraine, Russia has been outflanked. Its attempts to establish a pretext for invasion by circulating video evidence of purported “atrocities” by Ukraine were exposed as frauds within hours by Bellingcat, fellow OSINT volunteers, and legacy news media outlets that have picked up reporting tools the open-source crowd hands around.

https://time.com/6155869/bellingcat-eliot-higgins-ukraine-open-source-intelligence/. About 3,500 words.

Cure for leukemia?

From February 2022:

Two people with leukemia achieved remission over a decade after being infused with CAR-T cells, immune cells that had been modified in a lab, according to a new study. The findings suggest that this approach could be a long-term therapy for leukemia — and some researchers describe it as a possible cure.

Chimeric antigen receptor or CAR-T cell therapy may be a “curative regimen” for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, according to the researchers, who announced their findings in a news briefing this week. Chronic lymphocytic leukemia accounts for about a quarter of new cases of leukemia.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/02/health/cancer-t-cell-therapy-remission-study/index.html

and discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30192209.

Obituary of Renay Mandel Corren

Obituary:

Hers was a bawdy, rowdy life lived large, broke and loud. We thought Renay could not be killed. God knows, people tried. A lot. Renay has been toying with death for a decades, but always beating it and running off in her silver Chevy Nova. Covid couldn’t kill Renay. Neither could pneumonia twice, infections, blood clots, bad feet, breast cancer twice, two mastectomies, two recessions, multiple bankruptcies, marriage to a philandering Sergeant Major, divorce in the 70’s, six kids, one cesarean, a few abortions from the Quietly Famous Abortionist of Spring Lake, NC or an affair with Larry King in the 60’s.

See the whole thing at https://www.fayobserver.com/obituaries/m0028451. Some story behind it from The Guardian:

The obituary describes abortions and an affair with Larry King, but he (Andy Corren, Renay’s son) said that he actually toned down some of Renay’s life – for the protection of those living and dead, and because not all statutes of limitations have expired.

How to reduce Facebook tracking

Let’s face it. You’re not paying for Facebook, right? Therefore you are not the customer. You are the product.

Facebook even tracks you when you are on non-Facebook sites so they can sell your information to advertisers.

Here are seven steps to stop Facebook tracking, starting with the nuclear option. ((Each step has details in the article.))

1. Quit Facebook and Instagram

2. Change these Facebook privacy settings

3. Limit app tracking on your phone

4. Bolster your Web browser

5. Block more app trackers

6. Obscure your email

7. Tell companies to stop selling your data

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/08/29/stop-facebook-tracking/. About 1,400 words.

Deepfakes

Artificial intelligence programs can modify video to show actors speaking a fluent foreign language…

This AI makes Robert De Niro perform lines in flawless German

…The technology has been used to create fake celebrity porn and damaging revenge-porn clips targeting women. Experts worry that deepfakes showing a famous person in a compromising situation might spread misinformation and sway an election.

Article: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/robert-de-niro-speaks-fluent-german-in-taxi-driver-thanks-to-ai/.

Tweets about cats and dogs

Some of these are pretty funny. Click a “pic.twitter.com” link to see the Twitter entry, and clicking a picture shows you a somewhat larger and more complete image. Here’s HuffPost’s 2021 list:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/funniest-tweets-cats-dogs-2021_n_61ccf5f9e4b0bb04a6362061

For example, from https://twitter.com/the_shb/status/1443740333041328128: “Today seems as good a day as any to share these pics of the cat done as a Zen garden with the world.”

Reducing violent crime

Last year in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, 562 citizens were murdered—an all-time high and a 12 percent increase over 2020. Almost 90 percent of these homicides involved firearms, and the spike followed an even bigger surge in 2020, when killings were up by 40 percent. The numbers are sobering, but gun violence has been climbing in the city since 2013.

Philadelphia is not alone. At least ten other major cities lost historic numbers of residents to murder last year.
…
The fact is, we can have safety and justice at the same time. We can reduce violence and promote reform simultaneously. We can be tough when the circumstances call for it and be empathetic and supportive to achieve our goals as well. We have to reject either/or choices and insist on both/and options. We have to remember that it’s about solving a deadly serious problem, not winning an abstract argument. It’s about bringing people back together, not pulling them apart.
…
In Los Angeles, Community Safety Partnership (CSP) officers work in collaboration with community stakeholders in some of the city’s toughest neighborhoods. They work tirelessly to connect residents with public and private resources and form alliances with public health professionals, prosecutors, community advocates, gang interventionists and educators. …. It’s working: a recent report shows that CSP reduced crime while improving relationships with residents.
In Chicago, the Rapid Employment And Development Initiative (READI) works with those at the highest risk for gun violence to help them stay safe, free from incarceration and able to support themselves and their families. … An early analysis indicates that READI is substantially reducing arrests for shootings and homicides among program participants.

Across the country, there are dozens of strategies like these with documented success in reducing gun violence.

2,350 words: https://time.com/6138650/violent-crime-us-surging-what-to-do/

Overcoming a racist background

How do people who grow up in an all-white environment learn what racism is? Some things that made a difference for some people:

They can imagine being in someone else’s shoes.

Hawn was diagnosed at age 13 with Type I diabetes. He had to carry his blood-sugar meter everywhere, and insulin to his baseball games. He was painfully thin.

“I was very sick for a long time,” Hawn says. “My entire seventh-grade year I was sick.”

The illness made him stand out at a young age…

They’ve been transformed by a relationship

Hawn… says he began to question what many of his peers believed when he met a Black teenager in an American Legion program designed to promote teenage boys’ civic engagement. The teens spent a week together with others in a dormitory. Hawn bonded with his new friend over their love of hip hop music, sports and girls.

They have been moved by a story

Johnson started reading other African folk tales. Then she read the “The Diary of Anne Frank.” The girls in the books looked different than her, but she shared many of their dreams and hopes.

They are willing to pay the price

Hawn, too, is paying the price for his beliefs.

His parents have stood behind him. But some people in his staunchly conservative community denounced him on Facebook, and the lengthy dismissal process, which ended with his firing last May, has worn him down at times.

Full article: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/01/us/white-people-overcoming-racist-backgrounds-blake-cec/index.html. About 3,000 words.

Two funnies (XKCD and GEICO)

Too lazy to put up something more useful, but these might make you smile.

xkcd.com is mostly tech- and science-related funnies, but everyone should get this. Note that every xkcd has an extra comment when you hover the mouse over it:

https://xkcd.com/2579

And sometimes a group does something so… wrong… that it makes even a serial killer shake his head. (A little subtle, watch carefully.) It’s an ad, yes, but one of my favorites. (30 seconds)

Snowplow names

What? You never realized that states and DOT snowplow drivers and citizens might like to name their plows?

Some of my favorites:

Ctrl Salt Delete
Clearopathtra
Large Marge
Salt Salt Baby
Clearing Present Danger, Fast and Flurryous, The Big LePlowski, Mission Implowsible
Blades of Steel
Dolly Plowton and Snowprah Winfrey
Darth Blader, Han Snow-Lo, Snowba Fett, Snowbegone Kenobi

https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/0,4616,7-151-9615-575096–,00.html

https://www.dot.state.mn.us/news/2021/03/02-snowplow.html

And some discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29883840.