The final Trumplican straw
It's come to this: Boycotting the Commission on Presidential Debates
Sree’s newsletter is produced w/ Zach Peterson (@zachprague). “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” Sree took this photo at Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. in 2011.
🗞 TUNE IN: Our NYT Readalong guest this week is AP’s national race and ethnicity reporter, Aaron Morrison (@aaronlmorrison). Watch this episode, and our archives, at http://readalong.link/youtubeplaylist. The Readalong is sponsored by Muck Rack. Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Email sree@digimentors.group and neil@digimentors.group.
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I DON’T LIKE PUBLIC CONFRONTATIONS WITH FRIENDS. I prefer quiet conversations, away from the spotlight. Cajoling, convincing, etc, are my methods of choice (public figures are a different matter; see me slam anti-vaxxing Aaron Rodgers, for example; or not-fit-for-office Dr. Mehmet Oz running for the Senate in Pennsylvania).
So, for the past five years, since Donald Trump came down that escalator and made America worse, I’ve been quietly trying to convince my Republican friends to speak up against everything ruining the party they grew up in (or converted to when they made their fortunes and suddenly found they dislike paying taxes). These include, but are not limited to: xenophobia (remember when Republicans liked immigrants?); white supremacy; public, open, unashamed racism; hating non-evangelical Christians; anti-globalism; anti-intellectualism; anti-scientism; attacking women’s rights; actively harming the lives of the poor and marginalized; and so much more. None of these started with Trump, he just accelerated and amplified the worst tendencies of the Republican party.
But this week, something happened that has finally convinced me to confront my friends in public. I won’t name names here, but I am calling on my Republican friends to actively denounce or leave their beloved party.
I’m ashamed to say it wasn’t the phony wall, or the Muslim ban, or mishandling the pandemic, or the Big Lie, or even the Jan. 6 insurrection that sent me over the edge. It was the announcement by Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, that she is calling for a boycott of the Commission on Presidential Debates.
That the GOP would boycott the most staid, down-the-line, bipartisan organization shocked me and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the few Trump critics in the party.
I asked Rina Shah (@RinaInDC), a lifelong Republican who bravely spoke up against Trump, putting #CountryOverParty and costing her some friends and business opportunities, about this latest outrage. She wrote:
By refusing to appear on the debate stage, the RNC wouldn’t just be hiding from the American public but would be attempting to engage in what they believe is a winning strategy for the 2024 Presidential election overall. If there are no CPD debates in the lead-up to Election 2024, it’s the American public, writ large, that will lose out — on one of the only major opportunities we have to see and hear the real substantive differences between both major party candidates. Not only is that bad for our democracy because of the risk of increasing civic disengagement in the American electorate, but also because the entire race would then naturally shift focus to each candidate’s personality traits instead of their policy positions and how they’d govern.
If the RNC does indeed require their nominee to refuse participation in these debates, they’re outwardly displaying what many of us Washington insiders have seen coming down the pike for the past decade: a GOP that’s becoming increasingly unserious about governing and doesn’t believe in having to proving to the American public that they’re a party with the ideas and solutions to lead our country forward during and after one its most difficult chapters.
Hillary Clinton was 100% right when she described that famous “basket of deplorables.”
Under today’s Republicans, the deplorable has become the tolerated, the acceptable, the celebrated.
I know you love your tax cuts, buddy, but the time to speak up is NOW.
— Sree / Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube / Cameo
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A Word from Armory Square Ventures
As we embark on a third pandemic year, the ASV team is grateful for a few, distinctive days in 2021. We collaborated remotely but being in multiple geographies at the outset has meant staying agile. Regardless of where the wind carried all of us, we stayed in close touch, Zoom meetings and calls notwithstanding.
2021 inspired confidence at Armory Square Ventures that not only could our companies flourish and endure through unpredictable tailwinds, but that our souls and spines could be whole and remain intact.
It was an eventful year. Check out our highlights.
With our gratitude + our best for a safe, healthy 2022,
- The Armory Square Ventures team
Read Something
This has been a right-wing talking point since the beginning of the pandemic, but it deserves attention again. Every Fox News employee is vaxxed, boosted, and wears masks in the office. They are tested all the time, and have to have a negative test to see Rupert Murdoch. This is all just a performance-based grift, and it’s truly awful.
While we are here, let’s all say goodbye to Novak Djokovic from the Australian Open. I am a big fan of his game, but he’s a lousy human being - fighting equal pay and throwing tantrums BEFORE being an anti-vaxxing liar (see my thread). Right-wingers want to say what has happened to do him will affect others, but here’s the truth:
Tech Tip w/ @newyorkbob: Innovative Asus Laptop Sure Knows How to Fold ‘Em
By Robert S. Anthony
Each week, veteran tech journalist Bob Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him @newyorkbob.
While CES 2022, the nation’s premier tech show, was notable for low attendance and fewer exhibitors due to the pandemic, there was no shortage of cool product and technology debuts, including a raft from PC maker Asus, which has never been short on innovation.
While Asus commands just a 7.2 per cent share of global PC sales, according to Statista, its second-tier sales status hasn’t stopped it from producing cool desktop and mobile units. The new Asus Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, billed as “the world's first 17.3-inch foldable OLED laptop” offers ample proof.
The 3.5-pound unit features a huge, seamless 17.3-inch display which is just 8.7 mm (0.34 in.) thin when laid flat and folds smoothly into twin 12.5-inch 1,920-by-1,280-pixel screens in laptop mode, in which case you can have different content on each half or use the entire screen as one.
You can type directly on the touchscreen, place the included Asus ErgoSense Bluetooth keyboard over half of the display or use the wireless keyboard while detached, in which case you essentially end up with a 17.3-inch PC. The well-powered Zenbook 17 Fold OLED comes with an Intel Core i7 U-Series main processor and uses Intel's Iris Xe graphics hardware.
The Zenbook 17 Fold OLED’s display can provide rich colors and deep blacks because of the way OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screens work. Most laptops have LCD (liquid crystal display) screens made up of tiny pixels that filter the illumination provided by a backlight. OLED pixels, on the other hand, generate their own light. Thus, while an LCD pixel creates the color black by blocking as much of the light behind it as it can, an OLED pixel simply shuts off—thus resulting in a true black.
Not only is the screen big and colorful, it’s also Pantone-validated, which means it can render colors very accurately, an essential feature for professional image editing. According to Asus, the OLED screen also emits 70 per cent less eye-tiring blue light than an LCD display.
Of course, with a folding screen durability always comes into question. Asus said that its display and hinge has been tested for 30,000 open/close cycles. The unit also comes with a four-speaker Harman/Kardon sound system with Dolby Atmos immersive sound technology and ample connectivity, including two 40Gbps-capable USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports.
No pricing was announced, but given the OLED technology and other specifications, it certainly won’t be cheap. The Zenbook 17 Fold OLED will be available by the middle of the year, according to Asus, but that remains to be seen given today’s chip global chip shortages and shipping challenges.
Follow-up: Podcasts & Disinformation
A few weeks ago, I wrote about podcasts and how the landscape is flooded with disinformation, and how, unlike social media, the industry has faced little in the way of scrutiny, let alone consequences. The final boss of the I Did My Own Research universe, Joe Rogan, once again illustrates the point perfectly.
Here’s the clip in question — which Rogan has somehow tried to walk back:
Odds & Ends
🩺 Be sure to check out “She’s On Call” podcast with surgeons Sujana Chandrasekhar, MD (@DrSujanaENT), and Marina Kurian, MD (@MarinaKurian). And the live show on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
🗞 TUNE IN: Our NYT Readalong guest this week is AP’s national race and ethnicity reporter, Aaron Morrison (@aaronlmorrison). Watch this episode, and our archives, at http://readalong.link/youtubeplaylist. The Readalong is sponsored by Muck Rack. Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Email sree@digimentors.group and neil@digimentors.group.
👀 Did we miss anything? Make a mistake? Do you have an idea for anything we’re up to? Let’s collaborate! sree@sree.net and please connect w/ me: Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube / Cameo.
You're a more forgiving person than I. Sure I'm civil, but I haven't really socialized with any republicans since 2015 when it became clear they were going to vote for Donald Trump. Yes, our car mechanic is a republican and probably a lot of people we do business with upstate (though our Congressperson is a democrat). I am lucky and privileged to live mostly in an area of NYC where people have politics similar to mine. It makes me feel safe. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how long my sense of safety will last.