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(Source: Boing Boing, via merelygifted)
News Article About First ACTIVE DUTY Marine Corp OFFICER Arrested For Jan 6th Insurrection. -
(Source: dailykos.com, via merelygifted)
Sec. Miller reveals that Trump delayed National Guard for hours on 1/6 -
(Source: dailykos.com, via merelygifted)
Proud Boys leader to former guy: 'F*ck you Trump. You left us on the battlefield bloody and alone' -
(Source: dailykos.com, via merelygifted)
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Facebook loses bid to block a potentially major change to EU data sharing -
(Source: theverge.com, via merelygifted)
Twitter politely asks you to protect its targeted ad dollars in new iOS 14.5 prompt -
… Companies like Twitter and Facebook rely on tracking users to support their separate, often very lucrative ad businesses. After all, it’s usually ad sales that pay for free social networks, and customer data helps to target those ads. As a company that’s more interested in selling hardware and subscription services, Apple doesn’t really have to worry about things like that, but brash changes like the new tracking permissions can leave developers scrambling.
App Tracking Transparency has proven popular, though — around 96 percent of US users are opting out of tracking according to some recent surveys. And with Google considering developing its own methods for blocking tracking on Android, we might just have to get used to apps coming to us and begging for free data.
(Source: theverge.com)
Hostile UK border regime traumatises visitors from EU -
Italian woman visiting family was locked up in detention centre as they waited at the airport, Guardian told
(Source: theguardian.com)
Cameron's clever defence: that he can't do a proper job after leaving office either | Marina Hyde -
His plea over the Greensill scandal seems to be that he’s a standup guy made to look like a chancer by a spellchecker, says Guardian columnist Marina Hyde
Hauled before two select committees to answer for his Greensill lobbying role, David Cameron yesterday claimed his text to the Treasury mentioning a “rate cut” might in fact have meant to say “VAT cut”. As the former prime minister put it: “I think I’m a victim of spellcheck here.” A what now? Still, you’ll have nothing but respect for this excuse, which is basically: “I fear that I, a standup guy, have been autocorrected into a complete chancer.” And yet … on which phone software does VAT autocorrect to rate? I’m afraid I found it rather difficult to watch this section of the hearings and not think: can you ducking believe this aunt?
I say “this section of the hearings”. In fact, Cameron’s appearances provided if not an embarrassment of riches, then certainly an embarrassment of embarrassments. Though he declined to reveal either his vast Greensill salary, or precisely how many millions he made in 2019 when he sold just some of his shares, the audience was repeatedly invited to consider his plight. “There isn’t really a roadmap for an ex-prime minister,” Cameron lamented at one point, “particularly a young one … ” Seriously, dude. I’ll give you a ducking roadmap.
Hilariously, Cameron had come ready-armed with a solution to the problem of himself. Namely, “a new special committee” to guide former holders of the highest office in the land through the moral maze of acquiring huge amounts of money. (But who would chair it? A former politician, I guess. George Osborne?)
It does seem genuinely incredible that such a professed opponent of the nanny state should believe it is the state’s job to provide some kind of aftercare facility to assist former prime ministers on their financial trolley-dashes. Politicians who are permanently telling ordinary people that they need to take personal responsibility are so often appalling at doing it themselves. Then again, I’m sure it’s harder when you’re super-rich as opposed to just trying to make in-work benefits stretch the week. Maybe this is what former Telegraph editor Charles Moore meant when he lamented that Cameron was “trapped in wealth”. Either way, great to see a prime minister who could barely wake up without shutting a community library finally want to build something. Unfortunately, it’s the Whitehall Halfway House for Former Prime Ministers Who Can’t Read Good.
It is unclear how much Cameron read about Greensill’s difficulties. He seems to have relied rather heavily for information on the firm’s own internal podcast, which we must assume was the supply-chain-finance version of Soviet headlines such as “TRACTOR PRODUCTION UP 9,000 PER CENT”.
Other lowlights? “Just because a business goes into administration,” said Cameron at one point, “it doesn’t mean that everything was wrong, it doesn’t mean the whole thing was necessarily a giant fraud.” Oof. I enjoyed imagining Cameron’s post-hearing debrief with his lawyer-appointed media trainer. “Jesus wept, David. You had one job – DON’T SAY ‘GIANT FRAUD’.” “But I said it doesn’t mean it was a giant fraud.” “Oooooh, ‘DOESN’T MEAN’! Do you think anyone is going to remember the words ‘doesn’t mean’, you daft shepherd-hut plonker? Or do you think that thanks to you, every time they close their eyes and think of Greensill, the words lining their eyelids are going to be ‘GIANT FRAUD’?”
For all the excruciating theatrics of his Greensill inquisition, though, there is something slightly arse-about-tit about Cameron being pulled up on his failure to understand what was happening in some job he did after office, when his own book revealed how he didn’t understand what was happening while he was in office. Here he is not bothering to have a clue about Andrew Lansley’s disastrous health reforms. “[Lansley] was too submerged in the detail,” breezes Cameron. “The jargon he’d use was baffling. I remember sitting in cabinet when he shared his reform white paper. It was like an artist unveiling a piece he’d spent years on, and everyone wondering what on earth it was.” Ah well. I see you rushed it all through anyway. But hey – what’s the worst that could happen? Like, the worst scenario where it would have really helped if health HADN’T been reorganised by some under-read dilettante?
Oh right. We’re still living through it. If only we’d had a second special committee to assist serving prime ministers who can’t read good. For now, all we’ve got is David Cameron, just another somewhat affronted guy in a long, long line of somewhat affronted guys who have donned the spectacles of contrition and retorted: “I didn’t sit on the audit committee.” …
(Source: theguardian.com)