Link Roundup August 2020

NYPD Used Facial Recognition Technology In Siege Of Black Lives Matter Activist’s Apartment

The NYPD deployed facial recognition technology in its hunt for a prominent Black Lives Matter activist, whose home was besieged by dozens of officers and police dogs last week, a spokesperson confirmed to Gothamist. Derrick Ingram, the 28-year-old co-founder of Warriors in the Garden, was targeted by officers in riot gear during an hours-long NYPD raid on August 7th, after allegedly shouting into a police officer’s ear during a June protest against police brutality. More than 50 officers surrounded his Hell’s Kitchen apartment, shutting down his street and urging him to voluntarily surrender, as NYPD helicopters hovered overhead.

Mail delays are frustrating Philly residents, and a short-staffed Postal Service is struggling to keep up

Residents have filed customer-service complaints and have gone to their post office trying to pick up their mail, but they’re told they must wait for the carrier to deliver their items.

Internal USPS Documents Outline Plans to Hobble Mail Sorting

The title of the presentation, as well as language used in the notice to union officials, undermines the Postal Service’s narrative that the organization is simply “mov[ing] equipment around its network” to optimize processing, as spokesperson Dave Partenheimer told Motherboard on Thursday. The May document clearly calls the initiative an “equipment reduction.” It makes no mention of the machines being moved to other facilities. And the notice to union officials repeatedly uses the same phrase. Multiple sources within the postal service told Motherboard they have personally witnessed the machines, which cost millions of dollars, being destroyed or thrown in the dumpster. USPS did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump Just Admitted He's Sabotaging the USPS to Screw Up the Election

President Donald Trump said the quiet part out loud, admitting he’s intentionally withholding money from the U.S. Postal Service to undermine its ability to handle mail-in voting in the 2020 election. “They need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said on Fox Business Thursday morning of the states that are implementing universal mail-in voting ahead of the November election. “But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped to have it.”

Postal Service removes some mail-sorting machines, sparking concerns ahead of election

Some of these machines have the capacity to sort up to 30,000 mail items and take only two Postal Service workers to run, according two machine technicians CNN spoke with. They estimate it would take about 30 employees over their entire shifts -- they have to have scheme training to do the work -- to do that amount of work by hand.

USPS will stop removing letter collection boxes in Western states until after the election, spokesman says

In a statement Friday night, Rod Spurgeon -- a USPS spokesperson for the service's the Western region -- told CNN that the service will stop the removal of letter collection boxes in 16 states and parts of two others until after the election. That means, according to Spurgeon, the USPS will stop collecting the letter collection boxes only in: Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, Alaska, Nebraska and small parts of Wisconsin and Missouri. It's not clear if the removal freeze would go into effect across the nation. Kim Frum -- a spokeswoman for USPS based at headquarters -- could not say if the freeze would go into effect across the country and would not comment on the freeze in the Western region.

Coronavirus outbreak on U.S. bases in Okinawa grows, fueling anger in Japan

With 99 cases confirmed on five different U.S. bases, the COVID-19 surge in Okinawa represents the largest outbreak reported by the American military in Asia since the pandemic started, and local officials are skeptical that containment policies were sufficient to prevent the disease's spread.

Uber may shut down in California if forced to classify drivers as employees, CEO says

If drivers were classified as employees, Uber and Lyft would be responsible for paying them minimum wage, overtime compensation, paid rest periods, and reimbursements for the cost of driving for the companies, including personal vehicle mileage. But as independent contractors, drivers receive none of these benefits.

Someone made a video game lock pick museum that you can play

“It’s a lot of trouble to dig up old games and play them until you find the pieces you want,” Nordhagen said. While he could load up YouTube videos to see previous attempts by other games, it’s not the same as experiencing the minigames firsthand. So he built the mechanics from scratch and put them in a museum he could interact with, ultimately uploading it to the internet so other game developers can use it as a resource.

Copaganda: What It Is and How to Recognize It

Take, for example, the Ohio “dancing cop,” a white police officer who went viral in 2015 for a video in which he danced outside with Black children. That officer was investigated and eventually cleared, in 2019, after body camera footage surfaced of him punching a Black man in the face.

'No one should go hungry': street fridges of free food help Americans survive Covid pandemic

A hot pink fridge with bright blue trim now sits outside her home, with the words “FREE FOOD” and “COMIDA GRATIS” along the top. Neighbors help her watch the fridge, and people come looking for food at all hours of the day. “If you’re getting off work at 3am, that’s when you can have a meal,” Smith says, noting many Black and brown people may work multiple jobs with odd hours.

Black Lives Matters protesters could face life sentence for mischief charges in Utah

Defense lawyer Jesse Nix, who represents protester Viviane Turman, told The Salt Lake Tribune that it was an “absolute conflict” for Gill to file charges relating to the damage done to his own office. “I’m disappointed that they didn’t recognize the conflict and send it out to someone else to decide what to charge,” Nix said, “because right now, it feels like Sim Gill is upset at the damage to his beautiful building so he’s going to do everything he can to scare protesters.”

Chicago Public Schools will go fully remote to start the fall

Moving to a fully remote plan helps City Hall avoid a drawn out public battle — or even another work stoppage — with the Chicago Teachers Union, which last fall went on strike for 11 days. This week CTU leaders significantly escalated their public attacks on the mayor as they called for teachers and students to be kept home.

Over 80,000 mail-in ballots disqualified in NYC primary mess

One out of four mail-in ballots were disqualified for arriving late, lacking a postmark or failing to include a voter’s signature, or other defects. The Post reported Tuesday that roughly 30,000 mail-in ballots were invalidated in Brooklyn alone. The high invalidation rate provides more proof that election officials and the Postal Service were woefully underprepared to handle and process the avalanche of mail-in ballots that voters were encouraged to fill out to avoid having to go to the polls during the coronavirus pandemic, critics said.

USPS Headquarters Tells Managers Not to Reconnect Mail Sorting Machines, Emails Show

"Please message out to your respective Maintenance Managers tonight. They are not to reconnect / reinstall machines that have previously been disconnected without approval from HQ Maintenance, no matter what direction they are getting from their plant manager," wrote Kevin Couch, Director of Maintenance Operations. "Please have them flow that request through you then on to me for a direction." A subsequent email sent to individual maintenance managers across various regions forwarded that request along with a single sentence: "We are not to reconnect any machines that have previously been disconnected."

AOC Introduces Measure to Stop the Military from Recruiting on Twitch

The U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force all run esports teams and connect with potential recruits via Twitch. The Army and Navy both banned viewers from their channels for discussing American war crimes. The ACLU said the move may have violated the first amendment, and the Knight First Amendment Institute has sent letters to the Army and Navy telling them to stop censoring Twitch viewers.

'Virtually entire' fashion industry complicit in Uighur forced labour, say rights groups

Despite these abuses, the coalition of human rights groups says many of the world’s leading clothing brands continue to source cotton and yarn produced through a vast state-sponsored system of detention and forced labour involving up to 1.8m Uighur and other Turkic and Muslim people in prison camps, factories, farms and internment camps in Xinjiang. It says that the forced labour system across the region is the largest internment of an ethnic and religious minority since the second world war. Global fashion brands source so extensively from Xinjiang that the coalition estimates it is “virtually certain” that as many as one in five cotton products sold across the world are tainted with forced labour and human rights violations occurring there.

Basic Budget Peanut Sauce

I visited my mom recently, and she made this recipe she got from a friend of hers when we had summer rolls for lunch one day.

Smooth (or whatever) peanut butter, 1.5 cups
Maple syrup (or other sweetener), 1 tablespoon
Lemon juice, 1-2 tablespoons to taste
Bragg's Liquid Aminos, 2-3 teaspoons
Crushed red chili flakes, 1-2 teaspoons

Mix ingredients.
Bring some water to a boil.
Pour hot water, a bit at a time, and stir into mixture until it reaches the right thickness.

Not really a recipe...

...but here is a list of things my mom added to ground beef to make tasty taco meat.

Chopped onions
Chili powder
Garlic
Onion powder
Paprika