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RBG: I'm getting better...
Mad dog put down after seven killed, and 20+ injured
by: LISA MARIE PANE, Associated Press
Posted: Sep 2, 2019 / 12:19 AM EDT / Updated: Sep 2, 2019 / 12:00 PM EDT
When law enforcement authorities gathered to discuss details of a mass shooting in West Texas that left seven people dead, there was one bit of information they refused to provide on live television: the name of the gunman.
Instead, they decided to release the name through a Facebook post. Odessa Police Chief Michael Gerke made it plain why he wouldn’t mention the name at the news conference: “I’m not going to give him any notoriety for what he did.”
Even with such restraint, it remained a challenge to curb the spread of the gunman’s name. The Odessa Police Department has fewer than 25,000 followers of its Facebook page, but the social media platform easily reaches millions of Facebook’s members around the globe and the post was shared hundreds of times. Within minutes, Twitter lit up with posts mentioning his name. Journalists and advocates on both sides of the gun debate also began spreading the word, spewing a firehose of information about the suspect.
In this era of a saturation of social media and around-the-clock news, it’s next to impossible to keep a lid on such information.
“Ultimately, the police department can only directly control what they do, and that name, that information can be reposted and retweeted and republished hundreds of thousands of time,” said Adam Lankford, a criminologist at the University of Alabama who has studied the influence of media coverage on future shooters. He and others appeal to the media to limit the volume of information about these perpetrators, saying it does little to understand the reasons for the violence or stop it in the future.
The Associated Press names suspects identified by law enforcement in major crimes. However, in cases in which the crime is carried out seeking publicity, the AP strives to restrict the mention of the name to the minimum needed to inform the public, while avoiding descriptions that might serve a criminal’s desire for publicity or self-glorification.
The “No Notoriety” movement was partly inspired by the 1999 Columbine school shooting outside Denver. The gunmen became household names and even in death appeared to motivate a whole new crop of mass shooters.
In in recent years, it has gained momentum amid a seemingly steady stream of mass shootings. The idea is to urge news organizations to refrain from naming the shooters in mass slayings and to curb the volume of biographical information about them. In New Zealand, after a mass shooter there killed 51 people at two mosques, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern refused to mention the perpetrator’s name at all.
FBI leaders, leery of inspiring copycat killers and hesitant to give them what they see as undue attention, have occasionally been reluctant in recent years to refer to them by name.
Former FBI Director James Comey expressed that concern in a briefing with reporters the day after a 2016 rampage at an Orlando nightclub, repeatedly referring to the gunman not by his name but simply as “the killer.”
“You will notice that I am not using the killer’s name, and I will try not to do that,” Comey said. “Part of what motivates sick people to do this kind of thing is some twisted notion of fame or glory, and I don’t want to be part of that for the sake of the victims and their families.”
FBI special agent Christopher Combs, who previously worked at FBI headquarters leading the bureau’s efforts to respond to mass shootings, has held to that view. As the top FBI official in San Antonio, he has overseen the bureau’s response to multiple mass shootings in Texas, including a 2017 massacre at a church in Sutherland Springs that killed more than two dozen people.
At a news conference after the shooting where officials refrained from naming the gunman, Combs said, “We don’t talk about the shooter.”
And in a television interview after the shooting, Combs said he understood that the media had to name a shooter “once,” but “after that, we certainly don’t want to draw any type of positive attention to the shooter. And we have found through studies that there are people out there that are troubled, and when they see that, they believe this is how I can show the wrongdoings that have been done to me.”
All these years later, the Columbine attack continues to motivate mass shooters, including two men who this year stormed their former school in Brazil, killing seven people. The gunman in New Zealand was said to have been inspired by the man who in 2015 killed nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The University of Alabama’s Lankford urges journalists to refrain from using shooters’ names or go into exhaustive detail about their crimes. These attackers are trying to outdo previous shooters with higher death tolls, he said, and media coverage serves only to encourage copycats. Experts call it the “contagion” effect.
Lankford lauded the approach in Texas to avoid mentioning the name on live television. That medium is especially problematic, he said.
“There’s the issue of B-roll where the sound bite can be played over and over and over again,” he said. “They’re trying to set a moral position and a lead they hope the media will follow.”
Tom Manger, senior associate director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said there are a number of challenges. The name of the shooter is considered public information that must be disseminated, and there’s a general thirst for information about mass shooters. As Americans consider ways to prevent future shootings, knowing more about the gunman might help figure out effective solutions.
But there are practical issues at play, too: How can the information be contained?
“It goes out in a hundred different ways,” Manger said. “Once it goes out on social media, it goes everywhere.”
For Caren Teves, the issue is personal. Her son, Alex, was among those killed in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater in 2012. She and her husband, Tom, created the No Notoriety movement, encouraging media to stick to reporting relevant facts rather than the smallest of biographical details.
“It is a tough thing to navigate. But it’s a start,” Teves said. “We’ve never said it’s the only solution. It’s just one of them.”
It's an AP story, found on many sites - here's one - https://www.mywabashvalley.com/news/national/not-so-easy-to-prevent-the-spread-of-mass-shooters-names/
I'm just like everybody else. I'd vote for Oprah
Even if the dems nominate her. I like her more than that other lady
Richard Simmons for VP
Let's bring America back from the brink!
Fuck Industry, and Parliament too
On the hot and humid afternoon of August 28, United Kingdom's Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, dispatched Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lord President of the Privy Council, to Balmoral Castle.
His mission: to interrupt the Queen's holiday, and request the prorogation -- that means suspension to you, Unwashed Plebs -- of Parliament.
The Queen approved, thereby avoiding a crisis in Britain's constitutional monarchy system.
Britain, you see, has no real written Constitution. Instead it has a series of political gentleman agreements and historical details. Not abiding by these will hit you with the cruel punishment of being called impolite. In extreme circumstances, the word fekking! may be added.
In short, the Queen's refusal would have led to a situation in which nobody really seemed to know what to do -- no precedence and all that, especially during Afternoon Tea.
Which is an apt description for the hot potato in British politics: Brexit.
While the PM insists that this is only to prepare an ambitious investment program, critical minds [theregister.co.uk] think otherwise: Parliament now has only three weeks left to prevent Britain leaving the EU on WTO terms only. Hard to do when legislation must pass back-and-forth between the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
Voters, as interviewed on the BBC [bbc.com], seem not to be too concerned, going as far as to claim that it is actually Parliament which is undemocratic, for trying to block the result of the 2016 referendum.
Suspending Parliament to end all those unnecessary tit-for-tat and back-and-forth discussions: maybe the nephews at the other side of the pond can learn a thing or two from the Boris?
Swimming in the Sea
I think I understand now why some people are very keen on open water swimming (wild swimming). I've just been on holiday and spent a lot of time swimming in the sea (yes, in the UK, with a wetsuit) and doing a spot of body boarding. It's very relaxing. You can spend hours in the water. It's quite fun when the waves are breaking over you, but it's also good when they're smooth and you bob over the top.
There's a bit of a knack to body boarding, catching the wave at the right point, and adjusting the attitude of the board so it stays on the leading edge of the wave for longer. I don't think I'll ever get around to trying proper surfing. I think that would take some lessons and quite a bit of time. It's fun to watch though.
3DSoC Press Release (Foundry Gets Equipment for Nanotubes)
Evatec AG of Trübbach, Switzerland (which makes thin-film production equipment for advanced packaging, power device, MEMS, optoelectronics, wireless communication and photonics applications) has delivered the latest generation of its CLUSTERLINE thin-film deposition tool (including evaporation capability) to SkyWater of Bloomington, MN, USA – a US-owned DMEA-accredited technology foundry that manufactures integrated circuits for markets including aerospace & defense, automotive, cloud & computing, consumer, industrial, the Internet of Things (IoT) and medical.
The tool is said to bring new levels of thin-film performance, key to the production of carbon nanotubes and other emerging technologies. CLUSTERLINE is an industry-proven, high-volume single-wafer processing production solution enabling integration of PVD (physical vapor deposition), highly ionized PVD, soft etch and PECVD (plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition) process technologies, along with extensive pre- and post-treatment steps. The open system architecture allows easy tool configuration.
The latest tool from Evatec provides SkyWater new capabilities in processing of metals and dielectrics, and is important in its 3DSoC (system-on-chip) work, providing unconventional processing capabilities for a CMOS-based foundry. This new tooling supports SkyWater’s business model as a technology foundry by giving innovators additional processing options to establish manufacturable process flows for emerging technologies. This capability supports on-going process development at SkyWater not only for carbon nanotubes but also for photonics and MEMS device types as well as where conventional PVD processes do not provide flexibility or the precision that these applications require.
Previously: DARPA's 3DSoC Becoming a Reality
Starship Presentation Sept. 28, 20km launch in October
SpaceX's Next Starship Prototype Launch Will Be a 12-Mile-High Test Flight, Elon Musk Says
"Aiming for 20km flight in Oct & orbit attempt shortly thereafter," Musk said on Twitter before making another promise to his followers. "Starship update will be on Sept. 28th, anniversary of SpaceX reaching orbit. Starship Mk 1 will be fully assembled by that time."
[...] SpaceX's current plans for Starship call for a 100-passenger spacecraft powered by six of the company's Raptor rocket engines. Starhopper, for comparison, used a single Raptor engine, while the Mark 1 Starship will apparently use three Raptors for early tests. When Starship and the Super Heavy are on the launchpad, they'll stand 387 feet (118 meters) tall, Musk has said.
Those details may change on Sept. 28, when Musk rolls out his Starship and Super Heavy update. He has said the presentation will he held at SpaceX's Boca Chica test site in South Texas, home of the Starhopper and the first Starship prototype, the Mark 1. (A second, the Mark 2, is being built at SpaceX's facility in near Cape Canaveral, Florida.)
Starship construction in Florida is halted due to the incoming Hurricane Dorian.
"I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it."
Threadripper 3000 Leak Shows 8-Channel Memory Support
Case Dismissed
Ok, moving along... What's next on the docket?
