Down the 1619 Project's Memory Hole

 From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "ALL THE HISTORY THAT’S FIT TO MEMORY HOLE.

We Are All Algorithms Now

 Andrew Sullivan is so damn good. It's freaky, too, since he's such a weird guy. 

But this is really good. I look forward to Fridays, when I can read his column. I think Matt Taibbi posts his big pieces on Friday as well, so I'm going to go troll over there for a while, to see what he's got going. 

Here's Sully, "Is that what's really destroying the legitimacy of our democracy?":

Remind yourself that hefty chunks of our society still insist that Covid19 is a hoax, perpetrated for the sake of social control. Re-read Richard Hofstadter. Remember how vast numbers of white liberals drastically shifted their view of America — almost overnight — from a flawed but vibrant multiracial democracy to a version of apartheid South Africa because of a single video of a brutal arrest and murder. This week, I watched videos of people literally burning Harry Potter books, like latter-day Nazis, in the cause of transgender liberation. It’s safe to say, I think, that many of these people have lost their minds — just by staying online. And they not only think they’re perfectly sane; they think they’re heroes.

And online is increasingly where people live. My average screen time this past week was close to ten hours a day. Yes, a lot of that is work-related. But the idea that I have any real conscious life outside this virtual portal is delusional. And if you live in such a madhouse all the time, you will become mad. You don’t go down a rabbit-hole; your mind increasingly is the rabbit hole — rewired that way by algorithmic practice. And you cannot get out, unless you fight the algorithms to a draw, or manage to exert superhuman discipline and end social media use altogether.

But the thing about algorithms and artificial intelligence is that they don’t rest, they have no human flaws, they exploit every weakness we have, and have already taken over. This is not a future dystopia in which some kind of AI robot takes power and kills us all. It is a dystopia already here — burrowed into our minds, literally disabling the basic mental tools required for democracy to work at all. 

If you watch video after video of excessive police force against suspects, for example, and your viewing habits are then reinforced by algorithms so you see no countervailing examples, your view about the prevalence of such excessive force will change, regardless of objective reality. A new study shows how this happens.

RTWT.

Whose America Is It?

This is worth a read, from Thomas Edsall, at the New York Times.

Between 30 and 50 Percent of West Virginia Schools Lack Internet Access

Fascinating. Kinda sad, but fascinating.

Not sure if the figures include private schools, but either way, it's unreal.

At WSJ, "Remote Schooling Out of Reach for Many Students in West Virginia Without Internet":

HARTS, W.Va.—Just before 9 a.m., Hollee Blair sat in her boyfriend’s Toyota Tacoma in the parking lot of Chapmanville Regional High School and waited for attendance to be taken.

With no broadband internet at home, Ms. Blair, a 17-year-old honors student who plans to study nursing after high school, used her boyfriend’s iPhone to connect to the school’s Wi-Fi for an hour-long orientation over Zoom.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to keep up,” said Ms. Blair, shielding her eyes so she could see the phone’s screen. “If it means doing this every day, I’ll do it. It’s worth it.”

Much of southern West Virginia had already been struggling with a drug epidemic and persistent poverty before the coronavirus pandemic took hold here. Now, as students return to school online, the region is coming up against another longstanding challenge: a lack of broadband internet access.

Nationwide, about 21 million people lack access to broadband, according to the Federal Communications Commission. When people with slow or unreliable internet connections are included, the number swells to 157 million, nearly half the U.S. population, according to a study by Microsoft Corp.

Providing service in sparsely populated areas is typically more costly and less profitable than in suburbs and cities. In Appalachia, the terrain has made it difficult to install and maintain the infrastructure necessary for broadband.

In West Virginia, between 30% and 50% of K-12 students don’t have internet access at home, according to the state Department of Education. By the start of school on Tuesday, the state had set up nearly 850 Wi-Fi hot spots at schools, libraries, National Guard armories and state parks for students.

So far, nine of West Virginia’s 55 counties, including Logan County, where Ms. Blair lives, are teaching all classes remotely after spikes in Covid-19 cases pushed them above a threshold for new daily cases set by the state.

But in the state’s other 46 counties, many students will still need to connect online as some districts choose a blended model that mixes in-person and remote classes. Counties may also be required to halt in-person classes if case levels rise too high.

Logan County has had 536 cases of Covid-19 and 36 related deaths.

This week, Gov. Jim Justice lifted a $50 million cap on how much the state can receive from a fund created by the FCC to bring high-speed broadband to rural areas. But it isn’t clear how much the state will ultimately receive and how long it will take providers to connect homes.

“You’ve just got to step up and meet this challenge,” the governor said.

Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, is seeking federal funding to set up broadband hot spots across the country to aid remote learning during the pandemic.

“This is a short-term fix to a long-term problem, but until we treat access to broadband like the need for electricity was treated in the 1930s, our students will fall behind,” he said.

In Logan County, which is blanketed by rugged mountains, nearly a quarter of residents live below the federal poverty line, according to census data. At Logan High School, the hallways and classrooms are empty, and teachers are troubleshooting tech problems as they begin broadcasting their classes to students from laptops.

Jennifer Stillwell, a history teacher, said some poorer students won’t have transportation to get to a hot spot. She is giving students the option to use a photo of themselves rather than live video, in case they don’t feel comfortable having their home appear on screen.

She was encouraged that after three days of classes, she had been unable to reach only five students who may lack internet out of 105 on her roster.

On Thursday, her AP history class got off to a smooth start, with 16 students logging in. “Let’s see if we can chat,” she said brightly, as she introduced herself from her neat classroom.

The Logan County school district is using a $375,000 grant from the state to get students connected. Patricia Lucas, the district’s superintendent, said as many 40% of K-12 students in the county might not have internet at home...

Still more.

Hard Times for High Times

A fascinating piece, at Politico, "How Legal Weed Destroyed a Counterculture Icon."

Fishnet Babes

 At Drunken Stepfather, "FISHNET FRIDAY OF THE DAY."

Byron York, Obsession

*BUMPED.*

Out today this week, at Amazon, Byron York, Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment's Never-Ending War on Trump.

California is Toast

At WaPo, "Warmer. Burning. Epidemic-challenged. Expensive. The California Dream has become the California Compromise":

SAN FRANCISCO — The cityscape resembles the surface of a distant planet, populated by a masked alien culture. The air, choked with blown ash, is difficult to breathe.

There is the Golden Gate Bridge, looming in the distance through a drift-smoke haze, and the Salesforce Tower, which against the blood-orange sky appears as a colossal spaceship in a doomsday film.

San Francisco, and much of California, has never been like this.

California has become a warming, burning, epidemic-challenged and expensive state, with many who live in sophisticated cities, idyllic oceanfront towns and windblown mountain communities thinking hard about the viability of a place they have called home forever. For the first time in a decade, more people left California last year for other states than arrived.

Monica Gupta Mehta and her husband, an entrepreneur, have been through tech busts and booms, earthquakes, wildfire seasons and power outages. But it was not until the skies darkened and cast an unsettling orange light on their Palo Alto home earlier this week that they ever considered moving their family of five somewhere else.

“For the first time in 20-something years, the thought crossed our minds: Do we really want to live here?” said Mehta, who is starting an education tech company.

It would be difficult to leave. They love the area’s abundant nature and are tied to Silicon Valley by work and a network of extended family members, who followed them west from Pittsburgh. But Mehta says it is something she would consider if her family is in regular danger.

“Yesterday felt so apocalyptic,” Mehta said. “People are really starting to reconsider whether California has enough to offer them.”

This is the latest iteration of the California Dream, a Gold Rush-era slogan meant to capture the hopeful migration of an old nation to a new, rich West. For generations, the tacit agreement for California residents resembled a kind of too-good-to-be-true deal. Live in the lovely if often drought-plagued Sierra, or beneath the beachfront Pacific Coast cliffs, and work in an economy constantly reinventing itself, from Hollywood to the farms of the San Joaquin to Silicon Valley.

But for many of the state’s 40 million residents, the California Dream has become the California Compromise, one increasingly challenging to justify, with a rapidly changing climate, a thumb-on-the-scales economy, high taxes and a pandemic that has led to more cases of the novel coronavirus than any other state.

During the course of his term, President Trump has singled out California, a state he lost by 30 percentage points, as an example of Democrat-caused urban unrest, irresponsible immigration policy and poor forest management, even though nearly 60 percent of the state’s forests are managed by the federal government. Several are burning today, with millions of acres already scorched.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has responded specifically in some cases, but in others, he has invoked the California Dream, an aspirational noun attached to no other state. In his January 2019 inaugural address, Newsom warned that “there is nothing inevitable about” that dream.

“And now more than ever, it is up to us to defend it,” he said.

As the state’s climate has shifted to one of extremes, soaking wet seasons followed suddenly by sharp, dry heat and wind, no region has been safe from fire. This year — even before peak fire season has gotten underway — widespread fires have forced evacuations, from San Jose in Silicon Valley to the distant hamlet of Big Creek along the western slopes of the Sierra.

More than two dozen major fires are burning around the state and have consumed a record 3.1 million acres of land, more than 3,000 homes and at least 22 lives. Los Angeles has reported the worst air quality in three decades as a result of fires surrounding that city, already notorious for orange air and seasonal dry cough.

Wine Country has burned four straight years, with a number of vineyards lost. Homes have been destroyed far to the south in San Diego County, and more than 200 campers had to be airlifted to safety amid the Creek Fire, still burning hot and fast between Fresno and Mammoth Lakes...

Keep reading.

'Insane Video' of Big-Rig Slamming Into 11 Vehicles on Interstate 5 in South Sacramento, California

 My goodness!

Watch, at the New York Post, "Insane video shows moment big rig triggers massive deadly crash."

Evelyn Taft's Saturday Forecast

She's looking fabulous in that mauve dress. 

For CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

The Dialectic of Woke

 At Free Beacon, "Why politically correct institutions cave to Communist China."

Remembering 9/11

It's been 9 years since I visited New York on September 11. See, "Faith, Freedom, and Memory: Report From Ground Zero, September 11, 2010."

At USA Today, "'America will always rise up': Trump and Biden pay respects to 9/11 victims in memorial visits."

And here's CJ Pearson, for Prager University:

"Lululemon, a Karen-Facing Company That Sells $3 Worth of Spandex as Yoga-Wear for $98, Retweets Leftwing Agitation All Day Long, Including an Exhortation to 'RESIST CAPITALISM...'"

At the irrepressible AoSHQ.

It's the Stress

At Instapundit, "IN THESE STRESSFUL TIMES, TRY TO RELAX YOUR JAW: Dentists Are Seeing an Epidemic of Cracked Teeth. What’s Going On?"

Evelyn Taft's Thursday Forecast

 Nice and cool this morning, overcast. 

The beautiful Ms. Evelyn, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Selena Gomez, Looking Good

At Drunken Stepfather, "SELENA GOMEZ OF THE DAY."

Ignore the National Polls

Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by 6 points in the current RCP presidential polling average, 49.9 to 43.8.

The real margin is probably within the margin of error. There for sure is going to be a secret Trump vote this year, and I'm betting it'll be larger than the 3 to 5 five percent of shy Trump voters in 2016.

Don't trust the polls. They've been terrible now for years, and, well, this is 2020. Democrats are even more desperate to win.

Check all the headlines at Memeorandum, "Presidential Contest Tightens as Campaigns Move Into Eight-Week Home Stretch."

And at see the Miami Herald, "Biden is struggling to win Miami Latinos, new poll finds. Will it cost him Florida?"

Your Definitive Guide to Understanding Polling (and Why Most Polls Are Garbage)

From Stephen Green, at Instapundit, "New You Can Use."

Why White Lives Don’t Matter

At the Other McCain:

No, I’m not talking about this — not yet, maybe later today — but rather about an interesting fact you probably haven’t noticed: Nobody cares how many white suspects get shot by cops. And I mean absolutely nobody cares. Certainly no black person has ever bothered to investigate how often the police shoot white suspects, but white people don’t care, either. Like, if I got pulled over by cops tomorrow and became belligerent when they tried to arrest me, nobody would care if this resulted in me being shot to death. My own family wouldn’t really care. My friends would be like, “He probably had it coming. He was always an idiot.”

There would be no protest marches. Benjamin Crump wouldn’t be all over CNN complaining about the “excessive force” if I got shot by cops. And this is not just true me, but of any other white person.

Keep reading.

What to Expect After the November Election

Chaos, in a word, and also "coup."

Lots of theories going around about what's going to happen in the election aftermath. Unless Trump or Biden wins a landslide, expect days or week of delays, protests, and riots. See Michael Anton, at the American Mind, "The Coming Coup?" And FWIW, at the Daily Beast, "The Left Secretly Preps for MAGA Violence After Election Day."

And Tucker's on the case: