October 22, 1968 More than 300,000 protesters marked International Antiwar Day in Japan. The U.S. war in Vietnam and the ongoing (since the end of World War II) and massive American military presence on the Japanese island of Okinawa helped swell the ranks of the demonstrators; nearly 1400 were arrested.
October 22, 1979 The deposed Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, arrived in New York for medical treatment from Mexico. He received permission to do so from the U.S. government (which had installed him as shah in a 1954 coup) despite warning from the newly established Islamic republic in Iran demanding that the Shah be turned over to them for trial. More on the Shah
October 22, 1983 Capping a week of protests, more than two million people in six European cities marched against U.S. deployment of Cruise and Pershing nuclear missiles: 1.2 million Germans, including 180,000 in Bonn; a 64-mile human chain between Stuttgart and New Ulm (and Hamburg, W. Berlin); 350,000 Rome; 100,000 Vienna; 25,000 Paris; 20,000 Stockholm; 4000 Dublin; plus 140 sites in U.S. In London, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) held its biggest protest ever against nuclear missiles with an estimated one million people taking part. Read more
NBC apologizes for the Don becoming our problem, AI audiobooks; well, are all books just AI now? and an orange hair in your fries. Enjoy! The AI one is long; it is of interest, though, and is important to authors and readers, and not only romance authors and readers. A great deal of work & lots of info went into the article.
NBC’s former chief marketer regrets selling an illusion that has had dire consequences for the world.
By John D. Miller | ContributorOct. 16, 2024, at 5:35 p.m.
I want to apologize to America. I helped create a monster.
For nearly 25 years, I led marketing at NBC and NBCUniversal. I led the team that marketed “The Apprentice,” the reality show that made Donald Trump a household name outside of New York City, where he was better known for overextending his empire and appearing in celebrity gossip columns.
To sell the show, we created the narrative that Trump was a super-successful businessman who lived like royalty. That was the conceit of the show. At the very least, it was a substantial exaggeration; at worst, it created a false narrative by making him seem more successful than he was.
In fact, Trump declared business bankruptcy four times before the show went into production, and at least twice more during his 14 seasons hosting. The imposing board room where he famously fired contestants was a set, because his real boardroom was too old and shabby for TV.
Trump may have been the perfect choice to be the boss of this show, because more successful CEOs were too busy to get involved in reality TV and didn’t want to hire random game show winners onto their executive teams. Trump had no such concerns. He had plenty of time for filming, he loved the attention and it painted a positive picture of him that wasn’t true. (snip-MORE. And US News and World Report leans right, even. It’s a fine read.)
OverDrive is the company that provides a lot of digital content to libraries. If you’ve borrowed an ebook or an audiobook in Libby, or read a magazine in Kanopy, that’s OverDrive.
It seems there is some AI weirdness with audiobook narration on OverDrive, and the narrator is only part of the story.
On Monday, October 14, librarian Robin Bradford posted on Bluesky that she’d purchased an AI audiobook for her library system and she was really upset about it: (the Bluesky post is embedded; I can’t get it here.)
Over 100 titles by AI “narrators” were in their catalog, and Robin was having trouble finding indications that the authors themselves are real?
Be advised: This newsletter uses profanity like it just found a gross orange hair in its fries.
Note: Sexy Patriots! It’s so great to see you. We missed you yesterday, but it’s probably best that we took the day off. Otherwise we were gonna do one of our fake interviews with one of Arnold Palmer’s testicles (it was the left one), and nobody needs that. But can you really judge us for being a little goddamn loopy these days? This shit is intense! And dumb. So so dumb…
What the effing fuck?! Look, there are a million things that bothered us about Trump’s cheap stunt yesterday — the credulity of the media, his ducking questions about raising the minimum wage, the fact that his man boobs clearly dipped into the french fry grease — but we’re oddly stuck on this notion that Trump voters are so goddamn dumb that they had to practice going through the drive-thru…
Is this it? Am I doing it right?
No, Brenda. You’re talking to a trash can. Try talking to the box with the speaker.
This is so confusing! Am I doing it right?
No, Brenda. You just stuck a chicken McNugget in your ass.
Oh no! I’m going to starve to death!
Anyway, America, be smart and be healthy and just say no to Trump and McDonald’s. Y’all have a blessed day.
Note two: How’s everybody holding up? Yeah, we’re pretty freaked the eff out and fired the eff up too. It’s a weird and exhausting combination of emotions. The good news is we got one of those polls you should admire. It’s been a while since we’ve seen some high-quality polling, and today we got some swing state polls from the Washington Post that show Kamala Harris winning a tight race after taking Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The poll has us tied in Nevada and losing in Arizona and North Carolina. Let’s run the table and end this fucker. More: Washington Post
Note three: Yikes! The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says that Trump’s proposals would drain Social Security in six years. It’s kind of amazing how all of Trump’s plans would be totally destructive. There aren’t even any that are like neutral. They’re just all dumb and dangerous. More: CRFB
Note four: VP Harris’ fundraising will be studied for years because she has just crushed it. Politico reported over the weekend that the VP outraised Trump 3-to-1 in September. Dayum. She brought in $222 million for the month while Trump limped to the barn with $63 million for the month. Hers is bigger. More: Politico (snip-MORE)
Kimmel sent his staff his staff to ask a few normal questions to tRump supporters to see if they understood the things they supported or were against, if they even knew what the words meant. I cued it up to start then, but if you want you can back it up and watch the entire bit. Hugs.
October 21, 1837 Osceola painted by George Catlin, 1838 The U.S. Army, enforcing President Andrew Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Act, captured Seminole Indian leader Osceola (meaning “Black Drink”) by inviting him to a peace conference and then seizing him and nineteen others, though they had come under a flag of truce. Under the law, they and the others of the “Five Tribes” (Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Cherokees) were to be moved, by force if necessary, west of the Mississippi to Indian Territory (Arkansas and Oklahoma).The Seminole had moved to Florida (then under the control of Spain) from South Carolina and Georgia as they were forced from their ancestral lands, then forced further south into the Everglades where they settled. Read more about Osceola
October 21, 1967 In Washington, D.C., more than 100,000 demonstrators from all over the country surrounded the reflecting pool between the Washington and Lincoln monuments in a largely peaceful protest to end the Vietnam War.It was organized by “the Mobe,” the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Some then marched on, encircled and attempted to storm the Pentagon in what some considered to be civil disobedience; 682 were arrested and dozens injured. This protest was paralleled by demonstrations in Japan and Western Europe, the most violent of which occurred outside the U.S. Embassy in London where 3,000 demonstrators attempted to storm the building. at the Pentagon Read two different accounts of the day with photographs:
October 21, 1983 In the first public action of the new Seattle Nonviolent Action Group (SNAG), 12 people blockaded the Boeing Cruise Missile plant in Kent, Washington; none were arrested.
October 21, 1994 In an “Agreed Framework” to “freeze” North Korea’s nuclear program, the United States and North Korea (Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea or DPRK) agreed over the next 10 years to construct two new proliferation-resistant light water-moderated nuclear power reactors (LWRs) in exchange for the shutdown of all their existing nuclear facilities. The DPRK also agreed to allow 8,000 spent nuclear reactor fuel elements to be removed to a third country; to remain a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); and to allow inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In the deal negotiated by Ambassador at Large Robert Gallucci, the U.S. agreed to normalize economic and diplomatic relations with Pyongyang and to provide formal assurances against the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the United States. The details of the agreement and what has followed Interview with Robert Gallucci, Dean, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown U.
Many Australians now sell solar power generated on their rooftops into the grid on sunny days. In a handful of years, it may be possible to do the same thing when it’s dark – with the help of an electric vehicle (EV).
Nascent vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology operates around the idea of EVs with bi-directional chargers: they can charge from power sources, but they can also be used to provide power. EVs could be used as mobile grid storage, with owners charging them on rooftop solar and then either using the power themselves later in the evening, or selling it back to the grid.
At the moment, the technology is rare in Australia, with both technological and economic research still needed to figure out how it will best fit into our energy mix.
Some of that research has just started at a model house in Port Macquarie, on the Mid-North Coast of New South Wales.
“If we can get the energy optimisation answer right with vehicle-to-grid technologies, we can avoid unnecessary expansion on the network, and we can help customers minimise their energy bills,” Brad Trethewey, manager of innovation at energy company Essential Energy, tells Cosmos.
Essential Energy has partnered with the CSIRO to trial V2G technology. The trial is running at a mock-home, fitted out with solar panels, batteries, a hot water system, and appliances including a fridge, a dishwasher, a TV and a pool pump.
Some of the devices at the Innovation Hub in Port Macquarie. Credit: Essential Energy
“In this first phase, we’re looking at how vehicle-to-grid can be technically integrated into the home of the future. We’re doing tests where the vehicle powers a lab for periods of time, and we’re doing scheduled discharge and charge cycles with the vehicle,” says Trethewey.
“The second phase of the test is how we can coordinate the vehicle-to-grid technology, in a more integrated sense, with customers’ appliances and their flexible loads to minimise bills and maximise the use of their renewable energy resources – so, solar.”
The team expects the first phase to finish in late March next year.
“I don’t have an end date for second phase, because we expect the emergence of V2G to have ongoing research needs, even after it’s technically available,” says Trethewey.
While there are currently EVs being made with V2G technology, they’re not yet much use in Australia. Many EVs aren’t sold here with the right hardware or software, and regulations and standards around electricity can’t yet accommodate it.
Part of the work in the trial will be helping to assess how EV and solar owners might best use V2G.
“What is the value proposition? Does the market need to change as a result of vehicle-to-grid capability, or is most of the value in self-consumption – using it for your own energy consumption and needs?” says Trethewey.
The Innovation Hub trialling vehicle-to-grid technology at Port Macquarie. Credit: Essential Energy
Once the second phase of the trial has wrapped, Trethewey says that the team will be interested in seeing how V2G plays out at scale – and in different areas, with different energy mixes.
One way or another, though, he expects bi-directional chargers and energy-storing EVs to become commonplace – soon.
“I think that there’s an inevitability about this. Once vehicle manufacturers produce vehicle-to-grid capability in their cars, cars are going to come with it, and when customers realise the value of that in terms of reducing their energy bills in their house, it’s going to become widespread.”
When might this happen? Trethewey thinks it’s possible before the end of the decade.
“Most vehicle manufacturers are saying they’re going to have some vehicle-to-grid capability in Australia, they’re talking late 2025, early 2026. Now, that doesn’t mean they’ll have it switched on – it just means that they’ll have the vehicles capable for it.
“So the next five years, I think, is probably well within reason.”
This was really difficult to get through. As angry as I get just speaking these words, they don’t express a fraction of my true feelings. I don’t know if there are words for that. I don’t know if this will help, but I feel helpless, so I’m using my platform, which is something most people don’t have. At first, I wondered if it conflicted with my previous video, but after some contemplation, I realized that it doesn’t. My previous video never advocated disregarding injustice and atrocity. It never advocated abdicating righteous indignation. It was an anti-hate video. On the contrary, my commitment against hatred is what compelled me to make this video.
I think I’m done trying to make moral arguments. They all feel like bad faith now, like a waste of time. I guess if I ever do bring them up again, I’ll really have to consider who exactly I’m trying to convince, because some people have proven to be so completely delusional or dishonest, that it would be useless to argue – like talking to a tree.
October 20, 1947 The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) opened public hearings into alleged Communist influence in Hollywood. To counter what they claimed were reckless attacks by HUAC, a group of motion picture industry luminaries, led by actor Humphrey Bogart and his wife, Lauren Bacall, John Huston, William Wyler, Gene Kelly and others, established the Committee for the First Amendment (CFA).Read more =================
October 20, 1962 A folk music album, “Peter, Paul and Mary,” hit No. 1 on U.S. record sales charts. The group’s music addressed real issues – war, civil rights, poverty – and became popular across the United States. The trio’s version of “If I Had A Hammer” (originally recorded by The Weavers, which included the song’s composers, Pete Seeger and Lee Hays) was not only a popular single, but was also embraced as an anthem by the civil rights movement. About Peter, Paul and Mary ================== October 20, 1967 The biggest demonstration to date against American involvement in the Vietnamese War took place in Oakland, California. An estimated 5,000-10,000 people poured onto the streets to demonstrate in a fifth day of massive protests against the conscription of soldiers to serve in the war. [see October 16, 1967]Read more ================ October 20, 1973 In what was immediately called the “Saturday Night Massacre,” President Richard Nixon’s Press Secretary, Ron Ziegler, announced that Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox had been dismissed. Cox had been investigating Nixon, his administration and re-election campaign. Nixon had demanded that he rescind his subpoena for White House recordings. Archibald Cox Richard Nixon Earlier in the day, Attorney General Elliot Richardson had resigned, and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus had been fired, both for refusing to dismiss Cox. Solicitor General Robert Bork, filling the vacuum left by the departure of his two Justice Department superiors, fired Cox at the president’s direction.
at the Pentagon
Archibald Cox 
Richard Nixon
Scottie's Playtime 