Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc. NetHappenings Newsletter 11-16-2020

Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc. NetHappenings Newsletter
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TRUMP DID NOT WIN THE POPULAR VOTE.

HEALTH

TO UNDERSTAND WHY YOU CAN TAKE THE VACCINE
FIRST WATCH THIS VIDEO

WATCH THIS VIDEO

Shutting Down COVID-19 Virus’s Destructive Proteins with Aerosolized Molecules

The story of mRNA: How a once-dismissed idea became a leading technology in the Covid vaccine race

Katalin Kariko

IS A GODDESS

WHO SAVED THE WORLD

FROM COVID

“I thought of going somewhere else, or doing something else,” Karikó said. “I also thought maybe I’m not good enough, not smart enough. I tried to imagine: Everything is here, and I just have to do better experiments.”

Katalin Kariko spent the 1990s collecting rejections.
Katalin Karikó leads the mRNA-based protein replacement program for BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals. She has more than 30 years of experience working with RNA. Prior to joining BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Karikó was on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School for 25 years. It is a story that began three decades ago, with a little-known scientist who refused to quit. Katalin Karikó spent the 1990s collecting rejections. Her work, attempting to harness the power of mRNA to fight disease, was too far-fetched for government grants, corporate funding, and even support from her own colleagues. Katalin Karikó, a senior vice president at BioNTech overseeing its mRNA work, in her home office in Rydal, Pennsylvania. After a decade of trial and error, Karikó and her longtime collaborator at Penn — Drew Weissman, an immunologist with a medical degree and Ph.D. from Boston University — discovered a remedy for mRNA’s Achilles’ heel.

COVID-19 Surges Threaten to Overwhelm Hospital Staff
because the business end of hospitals are laying off doctors and nurses to cut costs.

Vitamin C Cuts COVID Deaths by Two-Thirds

‘Breakthrough Finding’ Reveals Why Certain COVID Patients Die

US to Start Distributing Lilly COVID-19 Antibody This Week
https://www.staging.medscape.com/viewarticle/940705

Over Half of Isolation Gowns Fail to Meet Protective Standards
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/940807

Why Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Will Not Be at the Local Pharmacy Any Time
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/940641

POLITICS

“Stop depending on the rule of law. We’re in an endless loop. The left keeps depending on the system, and the right rigs the system and then the left is positively STUNNED when things don’t work out its way.”

“No matter what you do, we will be attacked by the establishment…We are living in a nation with massive income and wealth inequality…What Congress has got to do immediately with a COVID-19 package is start protecting working families.” –@BernieSanders
@SenWarren Student loan debt is holding back a whole generation from buying homes, starting small businesses, and saving for retirement – all things we rely on to grow our economy. Executive action to #CancelStudentDebt would be a huge economic stimulus during and after this crisis.
come Jan 21st is when the @GOP will also start caring about budget deficits again. #GOPHypocrisy at it’s finest.
@KarlMcKinnie
Remember when conservatives and the GOP were so upset abt Obama expenses It has been estimated that Trump and his klan are averaging over a $105 million per year. Obama’s expenses were $98 million for his entire 8 years.
Why no @GOP outrage now? I wish I could get an answer!
ANSWER: The GOP feels that they’re the ruling class. Whatever they want to do is fine. In their mind it’s their world and the rest of us are just servants in it. No one likes an uppity servant.

If Democrats can’t stop acting like losers when they win, America is doomed

Democrats let DeJoy get away with it

More than 600,000 Georgians have requested their mail ballots for the January 5 runoff elections. Help elect https://twitter.com/ReverendWarnock @ReverendWarnock and @ossoff to the U.S. Senate by requesting your ballot today http://ballotrequest.sos.ga.gov

“Everyone With Self-Respect Will Steer Clear”: For Ivanka and Jared, the Post–White House Future Is an Island Alone

Rothschild descendant claims initial victory in legal battle with Vienna

The Day One Agenda: Highlights
Laws already on the books give a president great discretionary power for constructive change—without abusing executive authority.

Pence says Trump administration plans to be in place for 4 more years

POLITICAL WHEELS

William F. Buckley and Argentina’s Dirty War
[ . . . American marketing and PR firm Burson-Marsteller, which kept a list of potentially sympathetic journalists for the use of the junta. On the list, next to Buckley’s name, someone from the firm had written, “could be convinced to make the trip to Argentina after the US elections.” And now, here he was.

By cross-referencing contracts and other documents from the PR campaign with episodes of Firing Line, diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks in 2010, and the NSA Archive Project, it is possible to gain a fuller picture of the role Buckley, and international media in general, played in helping to paper over the atrocities of the Argentine government.

Rise of the Nazis | Episode 1 | Politics | PBS

13 Routine Aspects of FBI Investigations Sidney Powell Says Should Not Be Used with Mike Flynn

BLACK LIVES MATTER

BLACK LIVES MATTER
CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? RELEASED PAST FRIDAY THE 13TH

Philadelphia city council apologises for deadly 1985 Move bombing
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/13/philadelphia-1985-move-bombing-apology

Philadelphia City Council voted Thursday to apologize for the MOVE bombing 35 years ago that left 11 people dead, including five children, and burned 61 homes in West Philadelphia.

https://fusion.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/move-bombing-apology-philadelphia-walter-wallace-20201112.html

K12 EDUCATION

! ! ! THIS ! ! !
Cheating-detection companies made millions during the pandemic. Now students are fighting back.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/cheating-detection-companies-made-millions-during-the-pandemic-now-students-are-fighting-back/ar-BB1aX8Qa

TECHNOLOGY

This horrifying Zoom hack will deter you from ever side-chatting again
It’s time to rethink the way we connect Zoom, Skype, and Google Hangouts. USE JITSI MEET

Zoom lied to users about end-to-end encryption for years, FTC says
Ars Technica: Video calling giant Zoom has agreed to settle with the Federal Trade Commission, which accused the company of lying to its users by claiming for years that it offered end-to-end encryption. Zoom’s usage rocketed from 10 million to 300 million meeting users during the pandemic while everyone was working from home, and the company’s claims caught the attention of reporters — and later regulators. Zoom is now required to have a “robust information security program” as part of the settlement, and must roll out multi-factor authentication. Zoom can face heavy fines if it violates the terms of the order.
More: Cyberscoop | TechCrunch

Why Can’t You Download Videos on YouTube? How a 20-Year-Old Law Stops you. We’re in a world where it might be illegal to modify the software on your own rice cooker that you bought with legal tender money. If that sounds absurd, that’s because it is.”

New lawsuit: Why do Android phones mysteriously exchange 260MB a month with Google via cellular data when they’re not even in use? Ad giant sued after mobile allowances eaten by hidden transfers

AI is wrestling with a replication crisis (MIT Tech Review)
Tech giants dominate research but the line between real breakthrough and product showcase can be fuzzy. Some scientists have had enough.
EXCERPT:
Last month Nature published a damning response written by 31 scientists to a study from Google Health that had appeared in the journal earlier this year. Google was describing successful trials of an AI that looked for signs of breast cancer in medical images. But according to its critics, the Google team provided so little information about its code and how it was tested that the study amounted to nothing more than a promotion of proprietary tech.

“We couldn’t take it anymore,” says Benjamin Haibe-Kains, the lead author of the response, who studies computational genomics at the University of Toronto. “It’s not about this study in particular—it’s a trend we’ve been witnessing for multiple years now that has started to really bother us.”

Haibe-Kains and his colleagues are among a growing number of scientists pushing back against a perceived lack of transparency in AI research. “When we saw that paper from Google, we realized that it was yet another example of a very high-profile journal publishing a very exciting study that has nothing to do with science,” he says. “It’s more an advertisement for cool technology. We can’t really do anything with it.”

Science is built on a bedrock of trust, which typically involves sharing enough details about how research is carried out to enable others to replicate it, verifying results for themselves. This is how science self-corrects and weeds out results that don’t stand up. Replication also allows others to build on those results, helping to advance the field. Science that can’t be replicated falls by the wayside.

At least, that’s the idea. In practice, few studies are fully replicated because most researchers are more interested in producing new results than reproducing old ones. But in fields like biology and physics—and computer science overall—researchers are typically expected to provide the information needed to rerun experiments, even if those reruns are rare. <//>
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/12/1011944/artificial-intelligence-replication-crisis-science-big-tech-google-deepmind-facebook-openai/