Hexio

I am really enjoying playing this game on my phone. It's little logic puzzles that I find soothing. You have to figure out the right configuration of rubberbands to stretch between little hexagonal nodes, according to various conditions.

Gobble.

Here you go, you turkeys.

Moar FB

Mossy Character writes: FB in Nigeria

So far, Facebook's third-party fact-checking partners, AFP and Africa Check, have committed just four people full-time in Nigeria to analysing and debunking false news, on a platform that is used by 24 million Nigerians every month.
[...]
We sent Facebook the video of the man's head split open - the clip that was filmed years ago in Congo-Brazzaville, but which spread across Plateau State in the hours of the reprisal attacks in June this year. Facebook immediately removed the post, saying that it violated its policy on violence and graphic content.
But a quick search of Facebook the following day revealed the same distressing film in other posts, still circulating and still accompanied by the false claim that it showed a massacre in Nigeria. Since it was first uploaded to Facebook in 2012, the video has been used to whip up fear all over the continent.
[...]
BBC Africa Eye reported one of his posts about "wiping out" Berom "terrorists" to Facebook on 8 November. The company removed the post the following day and disabled Ahmed's account for a third time. His second Facebook account however - which has more than 30,000 followers and on which he has also referred to "Berom terrorists" - remains active.

Heebie's take: AND YET. FB can also write algorithms so aggressively indiscriminating that they constantly yank photos of breasts off breast cancer/mastectomy/reconstruction private groups to the distress of women who desperately want advice on whether or not their wound looks necrotic enough that they should go to the ER or wait until Monday. Sometimes I question their dedication to sparkle motion.

Anyway, the linked article is really distressing.

GTFO

Holy shit:

A remote tribe in India's Andaman Islands shot arrows at an American man, killing him, after he tried to illegally approach and befriend them.

Andaman Police identified the man as John Allen Chau, a US citizen who was reported missing after traveling to North Sentinel Island as a Christian missionary.

[...]

"If they'd welcomed him with open arms, he could have decimated the entire tribe," said Grig, who has spent more than 20 years researching the Andaman Islands.

"This in itself could be the thing that decimates them, if he got close enough to them. This could be a devastating moment," said Grig.

[...]

The few recorded instances of contact have all included the Sentinelese attacking anyone approaching with arrows and spears.

Undoubtedly a dispreferred use of "decimates," but hey, Happy Thanksgiving, folks!

Ocasio-Cortez, Abrams

Am I the only one a little starstruck by Ocasio-Cortez? She's such a lightning rod for the right, and just so deft about owning and being unapologetic for strong lefty principles. Obviously she hasn't been tested yet, and there's a lot of skills necessary for legislation and blah blah blah. Let's just enjoy the moment.

Also, Abrams is suing over the election. You have to imagine that when she first decided to run for governor, she understood that there was a 90% chance that her real endgame was crafting this particular lawsuit, and that she has every last one of her ducks in a row, labeled, documented, and ready to go.

Guest Post - ACE 2018

CharleyCarp writes: I'd never heard of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology until the kerfluffle about having it here. Last year it was in London, and this was the keynoter. The year before it was in Osaka. So why not Missoula, right? For some reason, the organizers invited Steve Bannon to give the keynote. Clamor ensued -- there were calls to our public university to deny use of its facilities for the conference, but, ultimately, what happened is that a bunch of the papers were withdrawn, and people dropped out, apparently not wanting to be associated with Bannon.

So they cancelled the conference. While likening protests to a Nazi book burning.

Bannon is supposedly coming anyway, hoping to debate someone. Why would you pick Bannon to keynote a conference where last year's keynote was about sex with robots? Seems like a lot of work just to own the libs.

Heebie's take: Carpy is not exaggerating one iota. This is from the ACE 2018 link:

What has happened to the ACE conference in 2018 by the angry free-speech mob is very similar to what happened in Germany in 1933. In 1933, the Nazi university student association created blacklists of works by literary and political figures such as Bertolt Brecht, Erich Maria Remarque, and Ernest Hemingway that were to be thrown into the flames. In the aftermath of the book burnings, the Nazi regime raided book stores, libraries, and publishers' warehouses to confiscate materials it deemed dangerous or "un-German." The Nazi book burnings provoked international criticism from intellectuals and the press. They saw it as a barbaric act that was out of keeping with a modern, civilized society.

They seriously believe that the protesters are the Nazis, who are the ones protesting an honest-to-god Bannon-Nazi. I mean, where to start.

Guest Post - Migration/Venezuela/Brazil

Mossy Character writes: Something I was utterly unaware of, from this article from two years ago:

2002 Mercosur Residence Agreement [...] provides that nationals of Mercosur Member States [and Associate Member States, ie. all South American countries] may reside and work for a period of two years in another Member State if they can prove citizenship and a clean criminal record (Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela still must incorporate the Residence Agreement into national legislation before it can take effect). The treaty also provides a number of rights to these migrants, including the right to equal working conditions, family reunification, and access to education for their children. After two years, the permit may be transformed into permanent residency.* [...] the region is now moving toward a deepening of the regime with the aim of eventually establishing a South American citizenship.

Since then:

around 2.3m Venezuelans now live abroad, with 1.6m having left since 2015. [...] According to Brazilian statistics, 120,000 Venezuelan immigrants entered the country via Roraima between June 2016 and June 2018. As a consequence, Roraima's state government points to a 6,500% increase in attendance at health clinics and a 132% rise in crime since 2015.

And today:

Far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who had previously described refugees who came to Brazil as "the scum of the earth," won Roraima handily with 69.32 percent of the vote in the first round and 71.55 percent in the second [...] His gubernatorial candidate, Antônio Denarium, was also elected in the second round, winning with 53.34 percent of the vote.

(Which is not to say the party's over: based on the second link other countries appear to be responding in more humanitarian fashion; there are proposals even for "allocating migrants across the region".)
*Although "the agreement has not been implemented consistently in each country".

Heebie has no take! But it is really interesting to learn this.