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Heard on CBC radio from Toronto/Ottawa and also just posted to BBC --
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38324045
A special archiving event is being held in collaboration with Archive's End of Term project. Since 2008 this has saved US government websites at risk during government transitions.
Canadian "guerrilla" archivists will be assisting a rushed effort to preserve US government climate data.
Environmentalists, climate scientists and academics are collaborating to protect what they view as fragile digital federal records and research.
They want the data saved before Donald Trump takes office.
The CBC report interviewed a Canadian scientist who described some of the scientific data that was lost during the Harper government.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @06:35PM
> trump, I can deal with. a bozo who has no motivations other than to line his pockets. we've seen that and it does not destroy things, per se.
Money is not Trump's primary motivation. The presidency was not about making him rich. It was about making him loved and respected. His father was distant and unloving. His entire life has been spent trying to fill the hole his father left in his heart. He's packing his cabinet with generals because his father sent him to a military boarding school where officers became surrogate father figures. Watch how he behaves on twitter - anything even mildly negative said about him provokes a completely over the top attack in response. And the attacks aren't even topical, he'll reach for anything to use as a weapon because as far as Trump sees it, everything is personal so everything is on the table.
He's never going to get the love he wants because his personality is defective. He's completely transactional, 'If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.' [washingtonpost.com] But transactional love is what you get from a hooker, it only lasts as along as you are willing to pay for it so he's always going to have that empty hole in his heart.
That personality defect makes him vastly more dangerous than somebody just out to line their pockets. It makes him easy to manipulate [washingtonpost.com] and easily provoked into completely disproportionate actions. It also means you can not count on him to act in his own rational self-interest.
Look at his "victory tour." It does nothing to make him any money. It costs him money -the tickets are free and he's gotta pay for the facilities and his travel on that jet which is about $11,000/hour to fly anywhere. [aviationcv.com] But the rallies give him the adoration of the crowds. And BTW, the last time a western politician held post-election victory rallies was 1930 Germany. [groopspeak.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @07:18PM
Psycho-babble all you want, but the bottom line is that people have been voting against the status-quo all over the world. Change is in the air, and we would do better to help shape the change than engage in character assassination.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @07:32PM
And Neville Chamberlain rises from the grave to post on soylent!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @07:48PM
Well what do you think we are doing????
Delusion is flying thick and heavy through the air, fascism and dictatorship are reaching new levels in many countries. There is change in the air, now make sure you choose the right path. Trump himself may not be the anti-christ, but his cabinet picks aren't making him look any better.
Are you just blind? Insane? A true believing evangelical christian who can't wait to slam the hammer on some illegals and muslims? Not saying that is guaranteed to happen with Trump, but that is his rhetoric and the beliefs of a good portion of his cabinet.
Appointing Elon Musk? Pure PR move to gain support (heeeey, it might not be so bad they got Muskie on board!) Pffft.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday December 17 2016, @02:28AM
[...] people have been voting against the status-quo all over the world. Change is in the air [...]
In Mr. Trump's speech on energy policy, he seemed to favour continued, even increased, emphasis on fossil fuels.
/article.pl?sid=16/06/03/1944223 [soylentnews.org]
His selection of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state only reinforces that impression.
He holds investments in several fossil fuel companies.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2838696-Trump-2016-Financial-Disclosure.html [documentcloud.org]
He's expressed reluctance to sell his stocks or place them in a blind trust. Not doing so would leave him in a position to profit from his office.
I appreciate that Ms. Clinton wasn't, for many people, the change they were looking for, but Mr. Trump appears to me to represent a reinforcement of the status quo in regard to energy.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Saturday December 17 2016, @11:13AM
It has more to do with which way policies have been trending and the economic issues involved:
The trend for the past 8 years or so has been to emphasize reduction of fossil fuel usage. More tax funds are being spent on public transit initiatives and financial incentives for adding solar power or buying a hybrid or electric car. The people that can afford to buy those things have been getting use of the carpool lane in traffic jams, first–row parking with free charger access, huge discounts (or money back) on their utility bill, and so forth.
Meanwhile, thanks to the economic mess, there's a lot of people who can't afford to get solar equipment or a hybrid/electric car, and who have had to watch the more fortunate get all of those perks in addition to their existing socioeconomic status. From that perspective, “change” is then more about curbing or reversing those policies, and possibly about reducing/removing the sales & gas taxes that have been footing the bill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @12:10PM
The people that can afford to buy those things have been getting use of the carpool lane in traffic jams, first–row parking with free charger access, huge discounts (or money back) on their utility bill, and so forth.
Heh. None of those are federal policies. And the nissan leaf is eminently affordable at less than $30K after the federal subsidy - less than the average new car price of $33.6K [kbb.com]
But it has been interesting to watch your mind at work trying to rationalize trumpism.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday December 17 2016, @09:09PM
> [...] for the past 8 years or so [...] sales & gas taxes that have been footing the bill [...]
The federal tax has remained the same, 18.4 cents per gallon, since October of 1997.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/incometaxandtheirs/a/Federal-Gas-Tax-Rates.htm [about.com]
The people that can afford to buy those things have been getting [...] free charger access, huge discounts (or money back) on their utility bill [...]
Those subsidies are intended, it would appear, to make electric cars and solar panels more affordable. Of course they are a burden, but the reasoning has been that the benefits—less pollution, less greenhouse effect, less dependence on the fossil fuel industry and on imported fuel, less need to build central power plants—would outweigh the costs. Earlier this month, OPEC convinced 11 non-member countries, including Russia, to cut oil production.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-opec-russia-cuts-idUSKBN14513U [reuters.com]
Back in 2000 and 2001, Enron and a few other companies coerced California into paying exorbitant prices for electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis [wikipedia.org]
https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/enron-caused-california-blackouts-traders-say [marketwatch.com]
If the rate-payers were generating much of their own electricity, such a situation would be unlikely to occur.
More tax funds are being spent on public transit initiatives [...] The people that can afford to buy those things have been getting use of the carpool lane in traffic jams, [...]
Try to forgive me for quoting and responding out of context. Public transit ought, in my opinion, to be affordable to the masses. It also ought to lessen traffic congestion. I do acknowledge that it sometimes fails to do either.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 17 2016, @07:10AM
Just listened to the news on the radio. Talking about the protests in Poland. Seems they voted in a conservative government and now the people are really not happy as the government removes the freedom of the press.
The problem is that voting against the status-quo, just to vote against the status-quo, seems to lead to reduction of freedoms more often then not.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Saturday December 17 2016, @11:37AM
Its not just freedom of the press that is getting reduced now in Poland: Since the paranoid swivel-eyed PiS conservatives are in government and have absolute majority in parliament (sounds FAMILIAR??!?), they also:
2016-10-06 Poland's parliament rejects near-total ban on abortion after protests [theguardian.com]
Poland has strict abortion laws; only in 3 cases a. rape, b. mother's life is in danger, c. foetus is deformed and will die soon. The government tried, but failed, to pass a law that only in case b. mother's life is in danger, abortion would be allowed.
2016-10-24 Polish abortion law protesters march against proposed restrictions [theguardian.com]
Extremely conservative catholic Poland makes an even more limited abortion law; if the foetus is deformed and will die soon after birth, it must be brought to term against the mother's wishes so that it can be christened and buried.
So only allowed in case of a. rape and b. mother's life is in danger.
2016-11-14 Poland exhumes president Lech Kaczyński's remains [theguardian.com]
Poland's president's brother's body dug up to prove that somehow the "Russians did it", when the government of Poland visited Smolensk in dense fog despite weather warnings and their plane crashed.
2016-12-14 Poland restricts public meetings [theguardian.com]
Freedom of assembly is voted out; the Polish government probably had a (for them) important reason to forbid complete freedom of assembly, namely to make sure that on the day of remembrance of the president's brother's plane crash, only the Catholic church and his own government could hold manifestations. So that no dissent could be heard on that day. It still sounds a bit stupid to me to write a law for that, though. "You have freedom of assembly, except on the following days, because then I'll put you in jail if you disrupt my important meetings"
2016-12-17 Polish government tries to keep the budget secret [theguardian.com]
To be honest I didn't 100% understand this article, they held the budget vote in another room of the parliament building so that it could not be recorded or made public??