SoylentNews

For those of you who figure us indian types sit around bemoaning our terrible fate every November, I offer you a message from Bill Annoatubby, Governor of the Chickasaw Nation (Since 1987. We dig him that much.). Yup, we get our family and too much food on and spend our day off appreciating what we have to be thankful for too. If you're being a contrarian asshat, you're not just doing it alone, you're doing it in direct opposition to the folks you think you're supporting.

I really don't torrent much. I set up my client (qbittorrent) long ago, was satisfied, and haven't looked at it much. Now and then, I add something to the download queue, when it completes, I use the download, and just leave the client run. It is set to upload 500% then pause the torrent. Nothing much to think about, it just runs at startup, and hangs around, waiting on me to add a torrent. My upload ratio is great, so I get good download speed even from strict superseeders. All is good.

Or, I thought all was good.

For some reason, I thought I would look at qbittorent this morning. Oddly, it appeared that I was feeding hundreds, even thousands, of leeches. Clients like Torrentstorm, Monotorrent, Flud, and a Chinese client with a numeric and random symbols string instead of a name. (internet search reveals that the Chinese client is named "Thunder") There were a few other clients with names I recognized, but very old versions. All of them were leechers that contributed nothing back to the swarm.

A couple more searches revealed that others have complained about that sort of nonsense, with Thunder being a leading cause of complaint.

A bit more searching, and I figured out that there are no real tools to block leech clients. The only real solution is to right click the individual torrents, and select "superseeder mode". Of course, you don't want to use "strict superseeder" in advanced settings if you care about the health of a slow swarm.

Having set all my torrents to superseeder, almost all of those weird clients have disappeared from my peers tab. I still see a monotorrent client, but apparently, it does some honest "sharing". A few torrentstorm clients are still listed in the peers tab, but they don't seem to be getting anything from me. The Chinese Thunder clients have completely disappeared.

There are still lots of other "normal" looking clients like utorrent, qbittorent, libtorrent, deluge, transmission. My upload speeds have decreased somewhat.

Hey, I don't mind sharing at all - uploading to 500% should prove that. But, I can't see any reason to feed a sea of leechers!

How a Human Rights Angel Lost Her Halo (archive)

Ten years after she left house arrest and vowed to fight for justice, Myanmar’s civilian leader has instead become a jailer of critics and an apologist for the slaughter of minorities.

One day I'll have time for these.
All of them require no screws, nails or glue.

Hypothetically, does the Secret Service have any role in protecting a president, either past, present, or president-elect from a criminal prosecution?

I'm assuming that political party does not and should not enter in to the answer. (But if you think it does, please elaborate.)

Does it make any difference if the prosecution is federal or state?

Update: Question: would/could/should the Secret Service protect a president from arrest? Should SS expect to be presented with an arrest warrant by the arresting officers?

This question is purely hypothetical. Any resemblance to current, former or yet to be presidents is unintentional and purely coincidental. Very few animals were harmed in the making of this post.

It's important that we do more, much more, to ensure that we can weather this dire health crisis.

The number of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths are skyrocketing across the US, almost every day seeming to break new records.

But this isn't enough!

If we are to bring our economy back, we need to be able to go about our lives without worrying about some bullshit dempanic.

As such, the solution is obvious. We need *everyone* to contract COVID-19 as quickly as possible, to drive up immunity and weed out the sick and weak.

As I said, the current boom is a start, but it's not nearly enough. And states are taking action to make sure that *all* their citizens contract the virus as quickly as possible.

Several states (Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama) have joined together to implement a new plan to infect as many people as possible.

The plan includes a variety of public events featuring group sex, GHB laced beverages and sponsored bar fights to make sure that everyone gets infected quickly.

The new initiative has raised concerns from some in the religious community, especially a provision setting up glory holes in local churches.

Religious leaders understand the importance of infecting everyone quickly, but bristle at the idea of having gay men as well as women sucking off the congregation.

Reverend Gnar Slabdash (the 'n' is mostly silent) told a reporter that "just like marriage, a glory hole is a man and a woman, or in this case, many men and a woman or teenage girl. If God had wanted men on both sides of a glory hole, he would have created Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve."

Despite these differences, the neighbor states' collaboration has received significant support from the public.

The new initiative will kick off on Saturday with orgies on the floor of the state houses in Montgomery, Little Rock and Nashville.

Church-based glory holes will begin operations on Sunday, starting just after morning services and running all day.

There will be nightly raves at arenas, stadiums and public libraries which require all participants to dose with Molly when entering the venues. And condoms are *strictly* prohibited.

Alabama health commissioner Harlon Gateau said, "we didn't think about banning condoms at the orgies and raves at first, but thankfully Roy Moore got in touch and gave us some really useful suggestions."

At least some folks in this country are getting with the program! Now we just need to get the rest of the nation to start acting as responsibly as these three states.

Pro-democracy lawmakers resign in Hong Kong's 'darkest day ... so far'

Cheung is among 15 lawmakers who announced they'll resign en masse on Thursday to protest the disqualification of four fellow pro-democracy legislators.

On Wednesday, Beijing's top lawmaking body, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, or NPCSC, empowered the Hong Kong government to bypass the local judiciary in order to ban any lawmakers deemed "unpatriotic" or considered to be conducting themselves in a manner that "endangers national security."

[...] By exiting the chamber, the 19 pan-democrats effectively leave the 70-seat legislature entirely to Beijing-friendly lawmakers, without any meaningful opposition voice. Their exodus also raises questions about how the democracy movement will move forward without any legitimate channels or democratic avenue for dissent.

Protests have more or less died down in Hong Kong because of pandemic restrictions on gatherings and the deterring effects of the national security law, which was directly imposed by Beijing in June.

Until this week, the democratic camp had vowed to continue to be a voice inside the chamber, but Cheung explained that when the four members were disqualified they "lost the one-third of the votes needed to avoid impeachment initiatives."

Britain, EU, Join U.S. In Condemning China's Crackdown On Hong Kong Lawmakers

_{(in the loving memory of Runaway1956, who succumbed after a long battle to gatewaypundits. May his brain rest in peace, squeaky clean and smoothed over)}

because "Doing your own research" is far easier nowadays than building the habit of thinking critically.
Add COVID-anxiety, a chaotic narcissistic Orange clown and compound with the lack of survival problems to solve for the everyday life in a westernized society and (where appropriate) a good dose of American exceptionalism.

Google admits to censoring the World Socialist Web Site

While both Dorsey and Zuckerberg refused to give names—claiming they would provide a list at a later date—when Lee got to Pichai, the Google executive responded that “we have moderation policies which we apply equally... We have had compliance issues with the World Socialist Review [sic], which is a left-leaning publication.”

Although Pichai used the name “World Socialist Review,” a print newsletter that ceased publication in 2011, it is clear that he was referring to the World Socialist Web Site. In fact, a Google search for “World Socialist Review” actually yields the WSWS in its top two results.

Pichai did not explain what he meant by “compliance issues,” but his response to Senator Lee was absolutely clear. He was saying that Google does in fact take censorship action against left-wing and socialist publishers, and an example is the censorship of the World Socialist Web Site.

Pin your reports of angry Republicans killing, stealing, and destroying en masse over the election here. I'll expect a list at least as bad as the one of Dems from 2016.