Alrighty then, as TV news is still consumed by the Chinese balloon thing, I need to get a couple of things in. Did the US shoot it down when over Cheney’s sparse area of the country? Nope. Nor before that. Let it wander all the way to The Atlantic. If it was ever a threat (and no, it was not), that thing would have been taken out days and thousands of miles before it was.

But, now, after constant briefing of President Biden, it was shot down. And now there are only 98 instead of 99.

There are now only 98 Luftballoons left. Marcy was spot on with “Wag The Derigible”. Yes, it is exactly that stupid. Every second of it. Make it stop please.

That said, our friend Scribe sent me something. 99 Luftballoons was not just a one hit wonder on American MTV.

Prior to today, I could not have named the musician/singer, Gabriele Susanne Kerner, if my life depended on it. But, holy shit, it is not just she, but an entire band in Germany, and they are seriously good.

NENA. Wow.

Jeff Beck has passed away. He was not in the Beatles, not in the Stones, nor in The Who or Experience. But Jeff Beck could really play guitar.

RIP Mr. Beck.

There is professional football afoot too. Squawks are at the Niners. Brock Purdy may encounter midnight, but he is not that kind of kid. Pete Carroll can own any one game. Should be interesting.

Then there is the Bolts at the Jags. Also fascinating. Save for Mahomes, are there two better young QBs in the NFL? Okay, maybe Joe Burrow.

Hope I did not besmirch the blog or anything!

So, some commenter that has five comments here since late October of last year, “aduckisaduck”, stated:

“So, to any who have felt that this thread has besmirched EW’s usual level of commentary, I’d just say that reading and remembering have been a lot of fun.”

That is maybe a fair comment, or not, but without context and support, hard to evaluate, and not worth much.

Are there allegations that anybody but Marcy posting here is “besmirschment”?

I’ve had it with this garbage. Everybody at our blog really care and have been here forever. Two of us from the start, the rest very close behind. We all knew each other before the formal start of the Emptywheel blog.

“Besmirched”?

Seriously?

This blog has always talked about sports. Marcy was the first person I recall suggesting it as to Trash Talk. Yeah, I talk about F1 sometimes. Have a lifetime lending to that. Music? Sure, we have from the start also done that.

So I want to know who thinks anybody but Marcy is “besmirching” this blog? Is it just me? Is it Rayne? Is it Ed? Is it Peter? Was it Jim White? What is your agenda and why?

Can you explain the “besmirching”? I’ll be waiting. I know “aduckisaduck” has very few, and limited in time, comments. But what should people who have been contributing here for over a decade and a half do? Just bow down to randos wandering in? Should we have no moderation no matter what garbage is attempted to be posted as “commentary”?

This is a position by me and me only. But a lot of current crap, including “besmirching”, insults everybody here, and who have ever been here. That is not supporting Marcy, nor Emptywheel, as a collective effort. It is insulting and petty garbage.

Okay, I probably junked up enough substantive threads already with casual music stuff, so am going to separate that out. Pretty much agree with Stella Blue that ribbon tweeters are great, but also with VVV that they will not take the pounding.

Late in high school, I got a pair of Cerwin Vega towers. “Made Loud To Be Played Loud” was their motto back then. I literally got a roll of stickers that said exactly that with the purchase. They were great.

Somewhere after joining the bar, I was offered a pair of Altec A7’s. They needed help, but I think they were free. Had to recone the massive woofers on both, and replace the diaphragm on one of the horns. They were huge. You could literally play a mid sized club with these things. But if you blew out a woofer, just recone it. Blow out a horn diaphragm it’s $50 and a ten minute surgery. I originally had Marantz tube equipment, then later changed to Adcom. Pump a bunch of clean watts into the A7’s, and you can rock the entire block.

Then I up and got married. When we were expecting, Mrs. bmaz bluntly told me to lose the giant speakers. I inverted them and loaded the horns in the baffles hoping to minimize and save the situation. No go. So, as they came to me, the Altecs left to a friend with a small band, same as they came, for nothing, just come get them.

Now I have the same rack of Adcom amp, pre-amp and switcher. But played through Polk towers with B & W studio monitors sitting on top of them with a Velodyne 15 sub. Still usually listen to vinyl on a turntable.

So, that is the story of Bungalow bmaz, what is yours? Let’s stereo!

From the Washington Post up all night desk:

Many close observers of the Jan. 6 committee are still looking for testimony transcripts, particularly with key White House advisers and campaign aides. Transcripts involving most of those names are still unreleased — and have been promised in the coming days. Many days of testimony by Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson are not yet out, nor are transcripts for Trump’s family, lawyers and top campaign advisers. The committee talked to a remarkable number of people, and their exact words will be closely examined when the transcripts are released — including by Republicans looking for ammunition against the report.

Yeah, where are those?? It is Christmas weekend and they have released a whopping 34 of their supposed 1,000 or so transcripts. Why are they dribbling them out when their work is done? Have they given it all to the DOJ yet? My understanding is no, but cannot confirm that. DC, including DOJ, are going into holiday mode and this goofy Committee is still playing keep away. Why? What the hell are they doing? This is just ridiculous.

Well, here it is. J6 Chairman Bennie Thompson, clearly fueled by Liz Cheney, is going to do one of the dumbest things ever.

A “criminal referral” from this Committee means absolutely nothing. The DOJ will prosecute individuals and/or entities on their own. “Referrals” from Thompson, Cheney and the J6 Committee mean less than nothing legally.

It is noise. It is garbage. And worthless except for preening J6 members. They are proving themselves to be the infomercial jokes they are.

Last night Punaise and I had a discussion about the Pretenders. There are not a lot of bands that have to be seen live, but Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders are one of them. If they get anywhere near you, go see them, they are that good.

Here is a really good sample. Get past the drum solo, because this performance is really kick ass.

USC was not that good last night. Not sure it was a surprise, the Utes beat USC earlier this year, and totally beat the Trojans down last night.

Talk some trash and have some fun. And, yes, the baby blue Tele is hot.

[This is a guest post by our long time Roving Reporter, Rosalind]

It may have been the moment I found a private drone filming me at night through an upstairs window.

Or at the end of a recent physical therapy session, after an hour divulging the most private and confidential health information, when I bent down to put on my shoes and discovered an Amazon Alexa blinking back at me.

Doorbell Surveillance Cameras and Microphones. License plate readers. Delivery robots. Security robots. Dashboard cams. Bike helmet cams. All recording our every move. Our personal privacy is being striped-mined, data-mined and packaged up for corporate profit, and we the people are assisting all the way.

I am not a technophobe. I AM someone who has the perhaps radical idea that before any device that permanently collects our biometric info is put out in the world, the company must first provide verifiable proof that their widget actually does what it claims, and fills a true societal need.

As the Amazon/Apple/Google panopticon leads the way in creating ever more horrific ways of monetizing our individual selves, we must collectively hit pause and consider the ramifications. The technology feeding our Brave New AI (Artificial Intelligence) Algorithmic World isn’t being built by benign super geniuses. Ignore the number of supposedly astute folk who wax orgasmic over the possibilities of AI as if it’s untouched by human hands. Newsflash: (Charlton Heston voice) AI – is – people! More specifically, a self-selected narrow slice of the human spectrum. Flawed humans propagating and programming their every bias and prejudice into their final products that are then put on the market to travel the world.

Say hello to medical devices that don’t work on darker skin. Light sensors that don’t register darker skin. Home computer school proctoring software that don’t register darker skin. Sensing a pattern here?

The hottest area in surveillance is emotional recognition, companies claiming their products are able to discern our very thoughts. Smiling = happy! Frowning = Sad! Congrats, Silicon Valley, for finding a way to monetize Resting Bitch Face! It would be funny if it wasn’t so fucking scary. Forget the idea that each internal brain, processing the world in its own unique way, could ever be decoded by the exterior. Full stop at the idea that private corporations are claiming rights to our private thoughts, as they insert this fatally flawed algorithm into programs currently denying you a job, a mortgage or health care.

We gotta hit the brakes. The first way is to understand what you’re agreeing to when you bring new tech into your life and home. The tiny font, multi-page “Terms of Service” and “Privacy Notice” are designed for you to give up and auto-smash the “accept” button. The three things to remember are “The Corporation” may collect and keep forever anything it wants, any agreement you signed is null and void upon sale of “The Corporation” to another, and your personal info becomes the property of the new “Corporation”. And “Personal Information” includes: facial recognition, iris scan, voiceprint, fingerprint, palm print, body type, gait, emotional state, DNA, health conditions, and on.

It’s time to re-discover the power of “no”. We have the ability and the right to challenge privacy violations. Corporations count on, and invest millions seeding one-sided stories, for us to simply accede to ever more invasive tech without a fight. After discovering the Amazon Alexa with its multiple omni-directional microphones blinking back at me in my physical therapy office, I went home and composed a polite but pointed email to the owner. She replied a few hours later thanking me. She hadn’t considered the ramifications of these devices, and had removed them from the rooms.

Beyond the personal invasion of privacy inflicted by our growing Surveillance Nation, is the very real damage it’s doing to the fabric of our Nation. The chief driver in my opinion is the Amazon Doorbell Ring Camera & Microphone. First Amazon turned us into package addicts, promising faster and quicker fixes. Then when the inevitable occasional package theft occurred, flooded the zone with cameras and mics and smartphone notifications amping up fear beyond the facts. Then the sharing – often in realtime – of the footage with Facebook or Next Door or the Local Police and the weaponization of the nosey neighbor began.

Most articles about the Ring set it in a single family home suburban setting, with footage capturing the street and the homes across. They never consider the Ring in an apartment or condo setting where doors face one another from just a few feet away, where a neighbor you have never met may film and record your every move. This is my reality, but thankfully no neighbor on my floor has yet installed one, but they are spreading throughout the complex and every conversation with neighbors is “ZOMG, Crime!!”. Impervious to the facts that our local crime rate has stayed stable, and no package has been stolen for years, their solution to any perceived problem is lights, cameras and microphones – so they “feel” safer.

Instead of safer, a nation of paranoid voyeurs is creating life-threatening situations for innocents caught up in their cameras, calling the police out for anyone they deem suspicious – i.e. a white person seeing a person of color in “their” neighborhood (hey, Amazon was able to create a tech that DOES recognize darker skin!). This week saw the idiotic example of a neighbor helpfully returning a mis-delivered package, placing it on the recipient’s porch, when Father and Son inside got the doorbell camera alert and rushed out – armed – to bag the thief messing with their package. No one in sight, they ran into the parking lot where they saw a woman sitting in her car. Aha! Blam! Blam! Blamblamblam! Thankfully the woman, a different person than the helpful package returner, was unharmed.

My personal breaking point occurred when I experienced a medical situation that required my calling 911 (all good – a minor issue producing dramatic blood). As I stood at my front door awaiting the paramedics, staunching the blood flow, I stared at my neighbor’s door staring back, realizing if I lived a floor below every moment of my terror would’ve been captured up close and forever, potentially broadcast live to the world. My Amazon datafile would be updated to include “this is what Rosalind looks like undergoing a medical emergency” and the Bezos Borg’s definition of who “Rosalind” is duly repackaged for redistribution.

For a neighbor on another floor who chose to die at home under hospice care, her final exit in a body bag on a stretcher was captured by four cameras and mics, her file updated to “this is what the neighbor in 4B looks like when she is dead”. Her mortal self ceased, her captured biometric self doomed to life eternal.

Before any device that permanently collects our biometric info is put out in the world, the company shall first provide verifiable proof that their widget actually does what it claims, and fills a true societal need. Then We the People have a choice to make. Please choose wisely.

Not really a Trash Talk. The stage is changing in women’s tennis. Serena beat Kontaviet, which was kind of unexpected. But lost to Ajla Tomljanovic. Not sure that was unexpected. Time comes for all of us. Even Serena. Long ago, Serena came for her big sister.

Tennis is cutthroat.

Flushing is flushing. Let it rock and roll in NYC

As you may know, DOJ is ordered by Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart to submit a “suggested” redacted version of the warrant affidavit for the Mar-a-Lago search executed on August 8, 2022.

The federal magistrate judge who authorized the warrant to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate emphasized Monday that he “carefully reviewed” the FBI’s sworn evidence before signing off and considers the facts contained in an accompanying affidavit to be “reliable.”

Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart offered his assessment in a 13-page order memorializing his decision to consider whether to unseal portions of the affidavit, which describe the evidence the bureau relied on to justify the search of the former president’s home.

“I was — and am — satisfied that the facts sworn by the affiant are reliable,” Reinhart said in the order.

Reinhart ruled last week that he would consider unsealing portions of the affidavit after conferring with the Justice Department and determining whether proposed redactions would be sufficient to protect the ongoing criminal investigation connected to the search. But in his order, Reinhart emphasized that he may ultimately agree with prosecutors that any redactions would be so extensive that they would render the document useless.

The last sentence of that quote is the key. Unless DOJ is going to capitulate to the clicks and reads voyeurism of the overly exuberant political press, nothing whatsoever should be released unless and until charges are filed against some defendant, whether it be Trump or otherwise. Why? Because that it how it is done, and properly so.

Reinhart has received abuse and threats. Is his willingness to even entertain a “redacted version” sound under such threat? His decision will yield the answer to that question.

In the meantime, I have a proposed example of what DOJ should submit to Reinhart. Yes, this example is from CAND, not SDFL, but it is exactly what ought be handed over to Reinhart. And if Reinhart grants any “redacted version”, DOJ should appeal immediately and fully. Leave the affidavit sealed. The voyeuristic public, and press, thinks they have an interest because Trump. But they really do not. Do it the right and normal way.