KGB Report

For what it's worth, I've managed to avoid for the most part the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard spectacle. For those keeping track, though, on social media, Johnny Depp is winning public sympathy over Amber Heard. The hashtag #IStandWithAmberHeard has earned about 8.2 million views, compared to 15 billion views for #JusticeForJohnnyDepp. Closing arguments are expected to start on Friday. Also, The Johnny Depp–Amber Heard trial is not as complicated as you may think. The entirety of the case rests on twelve words.

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Active shooter incidents rose over 50% in 2021 compared to 2020. As opposed to passive shooters? I guess this is one way to avoid using the more accurate but NRA-unfriendly "mass shootings".

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South Asia's intense heat wave a 'sign of things to come'. Indian cities and Pakistan consistently saw temperatures above 45°C (113°F) in the past weeks. In Pakistan, scorching temperatures over 50°C (122°F) were recorded in some places like Jacobabad and Dadu. Parts of the Indian capital New Delhi saw temperatures reaching 49°C (120°F) this month.

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Top Southern Baptists plan to release secret list of abusers. ...the largest Protestant denomination in America, said Tuesday that they will release a secret list of hundreds of pastors and other church-affiliated personnel accused of sexual abuse. Also: 'I was just 16': Pastor's 'adultery' confession in church goes off the rails. With video, no less.

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'Predator' spyware let government hackers break into Chrome and Android, Google Says. A shady private surveillance company sold access to nearly half a dozen powerful security flaws in Chrome and Android last year to government-affiliated hackers, Google revealed Monday.

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Georgia was deliberately destroying unopened and unexpired baby formula.

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The profound impact of giving American families a little more cash. Six months of payments lifted millions of children out of poverty. Then they stopped. The effects of the expanded tax credit's expiration were just as stark as its introduction: Child poverty increased 41 percent the first month after the credit expired, according to the researchers at Columbia.

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Can you ditch cable and go with Verizon or T-Mobile's 5G home internet? Not really.

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Shell Oil consultant quits, says company causes 'extreme harm' to planet. Oil giant's expansion plan prompted resignation email accusing firm of dismissing climate risks.

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Florida man does it again: Appeals court: Florida law on social media unconstitutional. A Florida law intended to punish social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, dealing a major victory to companies who had been accused by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis of discriminating against conservative thought.

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Clarence and Ginni Thomas are telling us exactly how the 2024 coup will go down. Also, guess who? The Supreme Court just condemned a man to die despite strong evidence he's innocent. He would have received a new trial if the Supreme Court hadn't changed the law.

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Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman) is 81 today.

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Tweets, observations, and diversions:

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Births increase in US for first time in seven years. Births remained below "replacement" level, the rate necessary to fully replace the number of people in the current adult generation. I know I like to think of us Generation Jonesers as irreplaceable.

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Republicans are complaining about declining birth rates after making America a place where nobody in their right mind would want to raise a child.
-Middle Age Riot

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'Sharkcano' is erupting! NASA satellite images capture a plume of discolored water emitting from the Kavachi Volcano, where mutant sharks live in an acidic underwater crater.

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Friends and patients of the late Lawrence J. Nelson, MD... A memorial will be held Sunday, June 12 at noon at the George Irvin Green Funeral Home, 3511 Main Street, Munhall.

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Categories: 5G, Amber Heard, Android, Baby formula, Birthrate, Bob Dylan, Child Poverty, Chrome, Clarence Thomas, Climate change, FBI, Florida, Georgia, Google, Johnny Depp, Mass shootings, Ron DeSantis, Sharkcano, Shell Oil, Southern Baptists, Supreme Court

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One of the problems associated with being thrown into Facebook jail is ignorance of the alleged offense.

The announcement states that your post has violated Facebook's "Community Standards," a dense, 27-page litany of offenses that will get you kicked off the platform.

I found the section which I believe addresses my post:

"We care deeply about the safety of the people who use our apps. We regularly consult with experts in suicide and self-injury to help inform our policies and enforcement, and work with organizations around the world to provide assistance to people in distress.

"While we do not allow people to intentionally or unintentionally celebrate or promote suicide or self-injury, we do allow people to discuss these topics because we want Facebook to be a space where people can share their experiences, raise awareness about these issues, and seek support from one another."

"We define self-injury as the intentional and direct injuring of the body, including self-mutilation and eating disorders. We remove any content that encourages suicide or self-injury, including fictional content such as memes or illustrations and any self-injury content which is graphic, regardless of context."

Here's the offending cartoon:

I maintain this isn't a cartoon about suicide- it's a cartoon addressing the power of social media to influence otherwise sane people to do insane things. If anything, it's an anti-suicide cartoon.

I've appealed prior suspensions and won, because it was obvious the artificially intelligent bot or stressed human outside contractor didn't grasp the concepts of satire, parody, or irony and made a bad call. Most of the time Facebook admitted it was in error and unhid the post. But I don't think it's going to work in this instance, because self-injury is one of those categories of which Facebook seems to have a zero tolerance policy. There is no way to contact any human at Facebook to offer a defense. And a small potatoes page administrator with a mere 10,134 followers really can't create enough media outrage to get Facebook executives involved.

I suspect Facebook adopted this policy to aggregate a number it can use in its "we're doing our best, but we can't catch everything" defense. They can point to their mountain of context-free suspensions and say, "Look, we suspended n accounts in the last month for violating our policy against self-injury."

Supplementary viewing/reading:

25+ best memes about jumping off a cliff

Little evidence supports the claimed effectiveness of zero-tolerance policies.

"The whole principle is wrong (censorship); it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak."
-Robert A. Heinlein

"The written word will soon disappear and we'll no longer be able to read good prose like we used to could. This prospect does not gentle my thoughts or tranquil me toward the future."
-James Thurber

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"The first way to answer the questions in the song ('Blowin' in the Wind') is by asking them. But lots of people first have to find the wind."
-Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman. He's 80 today.)

Actor Gary Burghoff is 78 today. The video above is the 1984 pilot episode of a M*A*S*H spinoff that wasn't picked up.

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The first text message: On this day in 1844, Samuel Morse sent the message "What hath God wrought" (a biblical quotation, Numbers 23:23) from a committee room in the United States Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland, to inaugurate a commercial telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington D.C.

On this day in 1940, Igor Sikorsky performed the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.

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NOT REAL NEWS: a look at what didn't happen last week.

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Pentagon's UFO footage- and Obama's curiosity- ratchet up expectations for a big reveal. When Congress passed the $2.3 trillion omnibus appropriations bill in December, it included a requirement that the Pentagon and a number of intelligence agencies prepare a report laying out what they know about UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), which is the new military-speak for UFOs. The report is expected to be delivered as early as June 1, and at least part of it will be made available to the public.

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Good news for a Monday morning: "...greater coffee consumption is associated with a decreased risk of all-cause mortality."

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Liz Cheney's GOP primary challenger admits to impregnating 14-year-old when he was 18. Liz Cheney's GOP primary challenger admits to impregnating 14-year-old when he was 18. The Facebook video he released, called "Senator Bouchard takes on the fake news media," claimed "I was young" and "you've heard those stories before. She was a little younger than me, so it's like the Romeo and Juliet story," he said, neglecting several glaring differences like the Shakespearean characters were fictional and neither was running for Congress in the so-called "family values" party.

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Can the news be fixed? The fix is already in. Oh, you mean like repaired.

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The Great Amazon Purge... "About three weeks ago, several major Amazon brands were suddenly kicked out. Most people were unaware of the names of more than 12 disappearing Chinese companies, such as Mpow and Aukey. However, these two sell a number of electronic devices, such as phone chargers and external batteries for smartphones. If you click "Buy" on Amazon's first phone charger or wireless headphones, it could be from one of the sellers currently suspended."

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Alabama will now allow yoga in its public schools (but students can't say 'namaste'). But on the other hand, Alabama becomes latest state to legalize medical marijuana.

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Life as we know it:

Solar storms are back, threatening life as we know it on Earth.

A massive heat dome is about to make the Southeast sweat. "Temperatures starting on Monday will run between 10-15 degrees above normal, and border on record maximum temperatures, both for daily highs and lows."

Spermageddon: Could men be infertile by 2045? One word: parthenogenesis.

New coronavirus discovered- and dogs are spreading it. It could be the eighth coronavirus known to cause illnesses in humans.

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Categories: Alabama, amazon.com, Anthony Bouchard, Bob Dylan, Coffee, Covert Comic, Dogs, Drugs, Facebook, Fact check, Gary Burghoff, Helicopters, Igor Sikorsky, James Thurber, January 6, Liz Cheney, M*A*S*H, News Media, Republicans, Robert A. Heinlein, Romeo and Juliet, Samuel Morse, Self-injury, Spermageddon, Suicide, Telegraph, The Sun, Weather, William Shakespeare

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Bob Dylan (b. Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, artist, and writer. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for more than five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly reluctant figurehead of social unrest. A number of Dylan's early songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'," became anthems for the US civil rights and anti-war movements. Leaving behind his initial base in the culture of the folk music revival, Dylan's six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" radically altered the parameters of popular music in 1965. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)

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A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

And don't criticize what you can't understand.

Behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain.

Chaos is a friend of mine.

Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside and it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'

Don't matter how much money you got, there's only two kinds of people: there's saved people and there's lost people.

Everything passes. Everything changes. Just do what you think you should do.

I believe strongly in everyone's right to defend themselves by every means necessary.

I have no message for anyone. My songs are only me talking to myself.

I once loved a woman, a child I am told
I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul.
But don't think twice, it's all right.

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.

Money doesn't talk, it swears.

Morality has nothing in common with politics.

People dissect my songs like rabbits but they all miss the point.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around- the music and the ideas.

Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean. Sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.

The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that before they start spending their life with all those gadgets.

The first way to answer the questions in the song ('Blowin' in the Wind') is by asking them. But lots of people first have to find the wind.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

We may not be able to defeat these swine, but we don't have to join them.

You can't be wise and in love at the same time.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

The official Bob Dylan web site.

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Categories: Bob Dylan, Music, Peter, Paul and Mary, Video, YouTube

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