Impeach Or Breach! Spare Oath-Breakers No Quarter

TITLE: "Impeach Or Breach! Spare Oath-Breakers No Quarter." 

AUTHOR/COPYRIGHT: Lisa Tolliver (1/13/2021) 

To All U.S. Representatives and Senators:

You must do it. (You did not quit!) 

45's glove fits*: you can't acquit. 

Afraid** to play? Don't take the pay! 

You kept the pay? Then, you must play. 

 

You must impeach, or you're a leech. 

You must impeach, lest oath* you breach. 

Oath-breach is crime, with fines and time.

Can't do the time? Don't do that crime. 

###

*5 U.S. Code § 3331.Oath of office

Source: Cornell Law School

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/3331

**https://www.rawstory.com/gop-official-fears-impeachment/?fbclid=IwAR2VVqmJalcpR0xp8JFUEqiKmJGlCX7RI0Wg-Ua3UyqTjAOndfPe-kt-7gY

DIGITAL USERS BEWARE: "Samsung Warns Customers Not to Discuss Personal Information In Front of Smart TVs" | TheWeek | Feb. 29, 2015

Continuing the saga of apps/software/devices snooping on users.

This info is no longer breaking news, but it's worth remembering:
"Samsung Warns Customers Not to Discuss Personal Information In Front of Smart TVs" | TheWeek | Feb. 29, 2015
 http://theweek.com/speedreads/538379/samsung-warns-customers-not-discuss-personal-information-front-smart-tvs

Here are the latest devices to beware of  if you value your privacy:
...Amazon's Alexa/Echo product line
...Google's Home device

Articles on the subject:
https://www.google.com/search?q=echo+used+in+court&hl=en&sa=X&as_q=&nfpr=&spell=1&ved=0ahUKEwjSpY7D5pTSAhXL5SYKHdgDCEQQvwUICg

Who's reading/listening to/watching whom? Chronicles, #4 - "A Secret Catalogue of Government Gear For Spying On Your Cellphone"

Who's reading/listening to/watching whom? Chronicles, #4 -

Remember when Tony Soprano said he never uses GPS, and he always used burner phones? Given he was a mafioso and all, that made sense, right? Why help the FBI track him?  But in recent years, even law-abiding "civilians" should be aware of the increasing number of ways their gadgets are contributing to invasions of privacy.

"A Secret Catalogue of Government Gear For Spying On Your Cellphone"

(By Jeremy Scahill & Margot Williams (December 17, 2015) | The Intercept)


###
-->

Who's reading/listening to/watching whom? Chronicles, #3: "The walls have ears: Warrant granted for Amazon Echo recordings", "Goodbye privacy, hello 'Alexa': Amazon Echo, the home robot who hears it all", "Virtual standoff: Amazon Echo vs. Google Home"", and "Amazon Alexa vs. Google Home and how they’re always listening"

Who's reading/listening to/watching whom? Chronicles, #3 -

• Here's the article that inspired me to write this post:

"The walls have ears: Warrant granted for Amazon Echo recordings"

(Published time: 28 Dec, 2016 02:31, Edited time: 28 Dec, 2016 23:14; RT America)

• Here's another take on Alexa's intrusion on privacy:

"Goodbye privacy, hello 'Alexa': Amazon Echo, the home robot who hears it all" 

(by Rory Carroll in Los Angeles; Published Saturday 21 November 2015 07.07 EST; The Guardian)

We had Rory Carroll invite ‘Alexa’ aka the Echo into his home. There was helpful cooking assistance, endless facts and figures, an amusing misunderstanding – and concerns over what exactly Amazon does with all that interaction data

• The privacy concerns  posed by Alexa apply equally to Google Home 

"Virtual standoff: Amazon Echo vs. Google Home"

(By Kim Komando , Special for USA TODAY 8:11 a.m. EST December 30, 2016)

Privacy issues

For Amazon or Google to answer your questions on demand, it has to be listening all the time. According to Amazon, when Alexa detects its wake word and glows blue, it streams "a fraction of a second of audio before the wake word" to the Amazon's servers and closes once your command has been processed. That fraction of a second gets saved along with your main command.

Google Home operates in a similar way. It constantly listens for the phrase "OK Google." Once detected, its LED lights activate and the recording is sent to Google's servers.

I wrote an entire article about how these devices are always listening and also tell you the steps to delete your recordings. Click here to learn more about this now.

• Here's more on the subject, from Kommando.com 

"Amazon Alexa vs. Google Home and how they’re always listening"

(By Francis Navarro, Komando.com; November 12, 2016; Komando.com)

Here's the creepy part, Amazon and Google keep an audio recording of each and every voice command you've issued to Alexa or Home in their respective servers.
Why so? Amazon claims that it keeps the recordings to improve and enhance your user experience. The Echo uses these recordings to fine tune its comprehension by creating your unique voice profile.
Google uses the voice data to make their services "faster, smarter, and more useful". This information is also used to provide a more personalized experience across all Google services.

###

ON TV: Showdown - "Hell on Wheels"' Lily Bell v. Thomas Heywood's "The Fair Maid of the West"

I've been binge-watching Hell on Wheels and am glad I came aboard. In fact, I just finished watching season 3, episode 2 ("Eminent Domain") and have decided to lay a stake:   I'll add this richly textured, though occasionally flawed, antebellum western set during the Union Pacific's westward construction of the First Transcontinental  Railroad, to the arsenal of pop culture/mass media resources I draw from (get it?) for various projects.

Today's focus: Showdown - Hell on Wheels' Lily Bell v. Thomas Heywood's The Fair Maid of the West


In the AMC series Hell on Wheels, Thomas "Doc" Durant (a real-life character portrayed by Colm Meaney) references Thomas Heywood's English Renaissance drama, The Fair Maid of the West, or a Girl Worth Gold, Parts 1 and 2 (1631) to promote his Union Pacific Railroad, by publicizing Lily Bell* as "The Fair-haired Maiden of the West" and exaggerating the extent of the travails she endured during a Cheyenne Dog Soldiers massacre. However, though Bell actually was beautiful and blonde (and, therefore, both fair and fair-haired), had been seriously wounded by the brave who intended to kill her, had been stalked by a posse of warriors aiming to finish her off, and had to be  rescued by not one, but two heroes on horseback (Joseph Black Moon and Cullen Bohannon - both of whom, like Bell, were spreading their wings beyond their socially constrained molds and finding a mis-fit with the worlds they found themselves in), the widow generally behaved more like the maiden in the first half of Heywood's drama than either the heroine in that quarto's back half or the maiden Hell on Wheels' Durant fabricated.

There's no two ways about it: Bell was avant-garde, adventurous, brave, liberated, and resourceful. She looked and acted like a lady but drove hard bargains, was sexually aggressive, didn't hesitate to slap a b* (male or female), assumed her late husband's role as chief surveyor in addition to increasing responsibilities in running the railroad, was neither a bigot nor a snob, and bested Durant when he and his wife tried to oust her from the railroad enterprise (that would have failed without Bell and her husband's contributions). Nonetheless, in the season 1 finale ("God of Chaos"), Bell granted Durant's request that she assume the fair damsel image, to garner support at the event Durant hosted to impress railroad stakeholders.



*Love the name, like that of "Sweet Polly Purebred"



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fair_Maid_of_the_West
http://www.amc.com/shows/hell-on-wheels/cast-crew/lily-bell

DIGITAL READERS: BEWARE!: Jellybooks' code candy.js "is code embedded inside an ebook to track how users actually read" - and such data's being collected not only by Jellybooks but by "a growing list of others"

[Image Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Snow_White%2C_c1919_%285686351086%29.jpg]

In October 2014, I posted Lisa Tolliver On Air and Online: DIGITAL READERS: BEWARE! Adobe Digital Editions 4 Spies On Users (And They're Not the Only Ones) - Includes "Who's Reading Whom? (Be afraid. Be very afraid.)", a short horror story.

This next installment in the DIGITAL READERS: BEWARE! saga was prompted by Andrew Rhomberg's article in DBW, "What Code Is Revealing About Readers" (31 July 2015) describing (actually, boasting about and promoting) Jellybooks' code, candy.js, "code embedded inside an ebook to track how users actually read", and announcing his new monthly column, Audience+Insight, that will "detail how acquiring, editing, positioning, promoting and marketing are all being reshaped by data—collected by Jellybooks and a growing list of others—about the ways consumers actually read books".

The article reminds me of the following famed stories:

• The Trojan Horse, the well-known, oft-told legend from the Trojan War about the subterfuge the Greeks used to enter the city of Troy and win the war, nowadays often used in other contexts, as well
• The poisoned apple the wicked stepmother gives Snow White 
• The forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Satan gives Eve, and that Eve shares with Adam, causing the couple's banishment from Eden and spiritual death
• Poisoned candy myths

See the excerpt and link to the article below:

"What Code Is Revealing About Readers"

By: Andrew Rhomberg | July 31, 2015http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2015/what-code-is-revealing-about-readers/

There’s a brave new world in book publishing, and it’s being shaped by and around audience insights. Not only are publishers becoming more adept at using data to work smarter, but code and algorithms are also getting better at gathering information and executing tasks without the help of humans.

At Jellybooks, we recently developed a piece of code called candy.js, which is embedded inside an ebook to track how users actually read. Penguin Random House UK was among our earliest partners in a pilot program of the technology, and the insights we gathered were fascinating. The question now becomes what story this data tells us and what impact it might have.

To explore, I’m kicking off a new monthly column called “Audience+Insight” that will detail how acquiring, editing, positioning, promoting and marketing are all being reshaped by data—collected by Jellybooks and a growing list of others—about the ways consumers actually read books.

-->


###
Who's reading/listening to/watching whom? #2

Dr. Seuss, Happy Birthday to You!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss, happy birthday to you!


(March 2, 1904-September 21)

“The more that you read,
The more things you will know.
The more that you learn,
The more places you'll go.”
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!



“Young cat! If you keep
Your eyes open enough,
Oh, the stuff you will learn!
The most wonderful stuff!”
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!    



“I can read in red.
I can read in blue.
I can read in pickle color too.”
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!



“You have to be a speedy reader because there’s so so much to read.”
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! -->

LIBRARY STORIES: "The Library Policeman"

I can't think of Stephen King's novella, "The Library Policeman" (the third story in the 1990 collection Four Past Midnight) without thinking of Gus Hasford's Library Book Theft Charges. Or vice versa. 

LIBRARY STORIES: Gus Hasford's Library Book Theft Charges

Are you, too, a fan of Gus Hasford's novels?

• The Short-Timers (1979) ISBN 0-553-23945-7
• The Phantom Blooper (1990) ISBN 0-553-05718-9
• A Gypsy Good Time (1992) ISBN 0-671-72917-9

Or of the award-winning film Full Metal Jacket (1987), based on Hasford's first book?

Wikipedia: Gustav haford - First novel and film

In 1978, Hasford attended the Milford Writer's Workshop and met veteran science fiction author Frederik Pohl, who was then an editor at Bantam Books. At Pohl's suggestion, Hasford submitted The Short-Timers, and Pohl promptly bought it for Bantam.^[5]
The Short-Timers became a best-seller, described in Newsweek as “The best work of fiction about the Vietnam War”.^[1] It was adapted into the 1987 feature film Full Metal Jacket, directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay written by Hasford, Kubrick, and screenwriter Michael Herr was nominated for an Academy Award. Hasford's actual contributions were a subject of dispute among the three, and ultimately Hasford chose to skip the Oscar ceremonies.^[1]

This story has long haunted me:

Wikipedia: Gustav Hasford - Library books theft charges

In 1988, shortly before the Oscar ceremony, Hasford was charged with theft after campus police from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, found nearly 10,000 library books in his rented storage locker. At that time, he had 87 overdue books and five years of the magazine Civil War Times checked out from the Cal Poly-SLO library; the materials were valued at over $2,000.^[6]

Hasford's book collection included books borrowed (and never returned) from dozens of libraries across the United States, and from libraries in the United Kingdom and Australia. Others were allegedly taken from the homes of acquaintances. Among them were 19th-century books on Edgar Allan Poe and the American Civil War.^[6] He had obtained borrowing privileges at Cal Poly-SLO as a California resident, but submitted a false address and Social Security number. In 1985, he had borrowed 98 books from the Sacramento, California public library, and was wanted for grand theft there.^[6]

Hasford initially denied the charges but eventually admitted possession of several hundred stolen books, and pled nolo contendere ("no contest") to possession of stolen property. He was sentenced to six months imprisonment (of which he served three months) and promised to pay restitution from the royalties for his future works.^[6]

Hasford claimed that he wanted the books to research a never-published book on the Civil War. He described his difficulties as "a vicious attack launched against me by Moral Majority fanatics backed up by the full power of the Fascist State."^[6]

-->

30 Funniest Cartoons About eBooks and Digital Reading

From EbookFriendly