National Geographic
@NatGeo
Scientists found that vulnerable people and communities of color are disproportionately exposed to air pollution from firework celebrations //

This weekend, at least 92 people were shot, with 16 killed since Friday. Imagine if we take that statistic and place it somewhere other than Chicago? Would we then get people to pay attention and do something? This is something that “disproportionately affects people of color.” So where’s your story on this, National Geographic? Why is there no attention to this? Because it’s a Democratic city? Because you really don’t care about black lives unless you can use them to further a left-wing political purpose?

Six children were among the wounded, including a five-year-old girl who was shot in the leg and a six-year-old girl.

Colin Kaepernick
@Kaepernick7
“What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? This Fourth of July is yours, not mine…There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.”

• Frederick Douglass

12:03 PM · Jul 4, 2019

Ted Cruz
@tedcruz
You quote a mighty and historic speech by the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, but, without context, many modern readers will misunderstand. Two critical points:

(1) This speech was given in 1852, before the Civil War, when the abomination of slavery still existed. Thanks to Douglass and so many other heroes, we ended that grotesque evil and have made enormous strides to protecting the civil rights of everybody.

(2) Douglass was not anti-American; he was, rightly and passionately, anti-slavery. Indeed, he concluded the speech as follows:

“Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country.

“There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. ‘The arm of the Lord is not shortened,’ and the doom of slavery is certain.

“I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from ‘the Declaration of Independence,’ the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.”

Let me encourage everyone, READ THE ENTIRE SPEECH; it is powerful, inspirational, and historically important in bending the arc of history towards justice: https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/2945

ABC’s Steve Osunsami asked the Carters about the secret to the longevity of their 75-year marriage. If you are engaged to be married or have yet to find that special someone, please pay attention to President Carter’s words here and write them on your heart. You will receive no better advice than this.

First of all – choose the right person.

This may seem like simple advice. Even easy advice. Do not let the stark truth of this get lost in the simplicity. //

Loving someone is what happens when the clips of the dress bust, and the glamorous exterior falls away, revealing undergarments that don’t seem nearly as attractive as the original dress. And then you choose to keep loving that person anyway.

Being in love is not a good enough gauge of whether or not to marry someone. It costs nothing to fall in love and wallow in that bliss.

Love is a choice.

That choice has to start at the start — to put it as simply as the Carters frame their own marriage. You don’t choose who you fall in love with, but you can choose whom to marry and too many people make bad choices when it comes to the start. A marriage based on a bad choice is going to be a tough road to travel. It can be done, but it will be painful and costly. If you can learn to be discerning before you walk down the aisle, you will spare yourself a lot of heartache down the road. //

Is your partner patient? Does he treat you and others kindly? Is she arrogant or boastful? Is he honest? Is she often selfish or does she anger easily and treat others poorly? Does your partner hold a grudge? Is he able to rejoice in the successes of others or does he instead get a kick out of when bad things happen to successful people? Does your partner choose trust, choose hope, choose perseverance?

These are the simple but foolproof measures of a love that can survive a 75-year marriage.

Tip #1: Have a Plan
Let us start easy: Have a plan. If you have not suffered a ransomware attack, congrats! You now have time on your side – hopefully. Use that to get a plan in place, even if you do not have a security team. Start with this simple question: If you got hit by an attack right now, how would you respond? //

Tip #2: Work Together: Ransomware is More than Security.
Ransomware is no longer just a “security problem.” A ransomware attack impacts users, legal, HR, finance and many others, including of course the security team. You cannot successfully defend against an attack if the organization is siloed within itself. //

Tip #3: Audit, and Limit, Highly-Privileged Accounts in Active Directory
One of the first objectives for attackers in a victim environment is to find and gain elevated credentials. These credentials are often necessary to achieve their objectives – they need privileges to find additional systems, move laterally around the environment, execute certain commands, establish persistence, etc. Far too often in our investigations we uncover environments with simply too many highly privileged accounts – and attackers are betting on this. //

Tip #5: Implement and Simulate. Wash, Rinse and Repeat.
Once you have account protections in place, utilize open-source tooling or a security vendor to test your environment. No need to ransom yourself – instead, focus on earlier stages of an attack such as credential theft or lateral movement. What did you detect, what were you able to achieve? Frequent testing will not only give you more insight into your environment, but it will also show you where you have detection gaps and coverage.

We cannot simply plug in tools and expect to be defended with the “push of a button.” Proper information security requires knowledge of the environment and frequent testing and tuning. If you have not suffered an attack, good. Do not wait for the “if” – instead, minimize the “when.”

I am amazed the Levine and his ilk can so cavalierly skip over the over 4,900 words Douglass wrote which precede the paragraph that they love to use as a cudgel. Douglass spoke about the country’s founding as an arbiter and source for good. That the foundation of America is a blueprint for liberty, and this is why that foundation must be made true by ending slavery in the United States. Douglass rightly expounded that slavery is antithesis to the heart and soul of a great nation, and if America was to continue to be that, it must change its ways.

Douglass debunks the 1619 Project blather that America’s founding is rooted in systemic racism and slavery with this insightful phrasing:

Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it.

[…]

Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

Cori Bush
@CoriBush
When they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this: the freedom they’re referring to is for white people.

This land is stolen land and Black people still aren’t free.
10:48 AM · Jul 4, 2021

Ted Cruz
@tedcruz
Hateful, divisive lies.

The Left hates America. Believe them when they tell you this.

Two years ago, Colin Kaepernick tried to spread the same lies on July 4. I responded with the wisdom of the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass:

https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/amp/ted-cruz-colin-kaepernick-2645842138?__twitter_impression=true

For posterity’s sake, I will argue on the merits just a bit here, though. The United States is not built on “stolen” land. Rather, it’s built on a combination of bought and conquered land via several wars. That makes it not unique at all in the annals of history. Almost every single nation on earth gained and maintained its borders via force and bargaining. Nations that haven’t done so are a result of other nations doing it for them and then protecting them along the way.

In fact, every piece of land the United States now rests on was fought over and “stolen” by some tribe from another tribe long before Europeans arrived. That’s simply the way of the world. It doesn’t mean you don’t recognize the wrongs of history, discuss them, and learn from them. It does mean you resolve to live in the current reality as it exists, observing the totality of history, not just what fits the woke narrative.

As Cruz says, these misleading rants by far-left race grifters are meant to divide and nothing else. Bush wants power, and she sees power in division. There is no need to read any deeper into her rant than that.

380360: Digital Megohmmeter
1000V digital tester with automatic 3 minute test
The 380360 is a 1000V digital tester with an automatic 3 minute test. Three test voltages of 250V, 500V and 1000V. Insulation Resistance to 2000MΩ. Automatic discharge when safety "Press to Test" button is released. Complete with 6 x AA batteries, heavy duty 2.5 ft. (0.8m) test leads, alligator clip, large probe and case with neck strap.

The brouhaha started just a few months ago when Audacity was bought by the Muse Group, the company behind equally popular music software like MuseScore, which is also open source, and Ultimate Guitar. So far, Audacity remains open source (and can’t really be changed into proprietary software in its current form), but that doesn’t mean that Muse Group can’t do some pretty damaging changes. Those changes come in the form of the new privacy policy that was just updated a few days ago, a policy that now allows it to collect user data.

As a desktop application with no core online functionality, Audacity never had any need to “phone home” in the first place. Now the privacy policy says that the new company does collect data and does so in a way that’s both over-arching and vague, most likely by design. For example, it says that it collects data necessary for law enforcement but doesn’t specify what kind of data is collected.

There are also questions regarding the storage of data, which is located in servers in the USA, Russia, and the European Economic Area. IP addresses, for example, are stored in an identifiable way for a day before being hashed and then stored in servers for a year. The new policy also disallows people under the age of 13 from using the software, which, as FOSS Post points out, is a violation of the GPL license that Audacity uses.

Far-leftists have despised America for decades. Members of Congress who call themselves progressives decry the ills of American society like police brutality, poverty, and all kinds of injustice. Activists march and protest in the streets and on college campuses for equity. However, despite governing most of the areas in which the afflicted masses reside, they have done little to nothing to affect significant change.

In light of this reality, it is appropriate to ask: What exactly do these people want? What has to happen before the adherents of wokeism finally develop at least a modicum of respect and – dare I say it – love for the United States?

Leftists who rail against America are conspicuously quiet when it comes to laying out specific objectives. Take racism, for example; since racial bias can never truly be wholly extinguished, how much will it need to be decreased before these people acknowledge that the country is worthy of respect? Furthermore, if they care so much about racial disparities due to racism, why have they not pursued real solutions? Finally, why have they not encouraged productive conversations on these matters instead of just lazily accusing everyone with whom they disagree of being slobbering bigots? //

The hard left will never love America – at least not in its current incarnation. The America these people would love is one in which the government has the most control and influence over our lives. Affection for the U.S. can only come after their pipe dreams of a western utopia are realized.

To put it another way, those on the hard left will not be satisfied until they have destroyed America and then, from the rubble, rebuild it in their own image. Marxism must rule the day if America is to be worthy of respect. //

It is important to remember this when watching how the hard left moves. Their objective is not to improve America, it is to remake America. They will not stop until they finish what President Barack Obama started when he declared they would “fundamentally transform America.”

David French
@DavidAFrench
I was honored to work with @kmele, @thomaschattwill, and @jasonintrator to write in the NYT against broad, vague laws designed to suppress CRT. They’re speech codes and thus “antithetical to educating students in the culture of American free expression.”
Opinion | Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws Are Un-American
nytimes.com //

There are hundreds of different schools of thought that are not taught in K-12 education. You can’t teach Holocaust denial, for example, nor would any student be educated by such tripe. The same is true for CRT, which exists as racial essentialism pushing the notion that certain races of people are inherently oppressive. It’s pseudo-science garbage.

But my point in writing this is not to take the Times article apart or to do another breakdown of why CRT is bad. Rather, it’s to point out that French (he’s one of the multiple authors of the piece) represents a type of Republican that is always looking to surrender. The idea that there is any danger to freedom of speech or ideas because CRT isn’t allowed in school curriculums is obviously ridiculous. Yet, French makes that argument because he needs some way to counter the fact that Republicans are actually making headway regarding a major culture war issue. //

DaveM_2
16 minutes ago
"...antithetical to educating students in the culture of American free expression."

This statement is ludicrous on it's face. CRT can only be taught by suppressing any "free expression" that does not support it. To wit- look at every school district in the country that tried to sneak this through by fiat. Look at the behavior of every school management official confronted by parents. Look at the sudden change in employment status of every teacher that tries to oppose it -to crickets by the union that supposedly represents them. //

writeofcenter
2 hours ago
There is no middle ground here. The CRTers aren't proposing to have a free and open discussion of their philosophy in Townhall forums. They intend to infiltrate elementary and secondary school US history and political science curriculums w/o being answerable to anyone. CRT is the greatest danger to the future of the Republic right now simple because it brooks NO OPPOSITION!

French should be asked if during the Cold War, US history should have been taught from the Soviet point of view painting us as the aggressor and purveyors of a failed economic system. From the Soviets point of view, we were little different from the Nazi invaders.

Dell PowerEdge R740xd2 rack server

Actually 1 per rack across 20 racks. The Backblaze Vault architecture uses one drive from each of 20 servers to form a tome, which is the storage unit.
The xd2 model which holds 26 3.5 inch drives. That's what we use.

The pilot of a disabled aircraft radioed the air traffic control facility that he was “putting it down in the trees.” Six words no pilot ever wants to say, and six words no controller ever wants to hear.