The Hearing

source: Libération

author: Philippe Coste, on assignment  in New York - July 30, 2020

translation: GoogleTranslation/doxa-louise

GAFA

From theUnited States: the "emperors" of tech under crossfire from representatives of Congress

Mark Zuckerberg by videoconference during a hearing of the Judicial Subcommittee of the House of Representatives, Wednesday. Photo Graeme Jennings. AP

The top executives of Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon have been heard by the antitrust commission. Democrats blame them for their anti-competitive practices, Republicans their opposition to Trump.

 Only three months away from an election where every danger lurks, the cordial understanding seemed dream-like. On Wednesday, the elected Republican and Democrats in the House of Representatives, usually at loggerheads, concluded a five-hour truce,  time enough to turn their arms towards one of their rare common enemies: "Big Tech", represented by Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, CEOs of the four titans Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon. Heard by videoconference by members of the Congressional Antitrust Commission, the latter had to answer to the Democrats for their anti-competitive practices and to the Republicans for their alleged hostility to conservative values ​​and the Trump administration.

Attacked from all sides, by the American justice department, by the competition authority (the infamous Federal Trade Commission), by the prosecutors of several states and facing European sanctions, the flagships of the Gafa were duly prepared for this new offensive in the form of a popular trial co-orchestrated by the two camps of Congress. While Donald Trump opened the White House session with a tweet promising to restrict the power of the digital giants by decree if Congress failed in its task, Democrat David Cicilline, chairman of the sub-committee, recalled that 'Like our founding fathers, who did not want to bow down to a king, we do not bow down to the Emperors of the online economy '.

Humble mortals

Like him, his fourteen colleagues saw in this hearing under oath a unique opportunity to take public opinion as witness to their bravery in front of a camp of Silicon Valley moguls, including the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, present for the first time before Congress, and the sixth planetary fortune in the person of Mark Zuckerberg.

The “emperors” -  in the opinion of some - wanted to remind us that they were also humble mortals. Jeff Bezos, who at this  time is also seeking through a national advertising campaign to deny the poor working conditions in Amazon warehouses, described his childhood in Arizona, with a single mother who was 17 years old when he was born. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google once again confided that he did not own a computer or television when he was youth in India, and spoke of his dismay at the first sight of a computer room at an American university.

Reduced to their simple human expression, in the absence of the swarms of congressional photographers and their army of advisers, they nevertheless suffered heavy fire from elected officials. Sundar Pichai was asked “why his company steals content from honest entrepreneurs,” alluding to the power of the Google search engine. Mark Zuckerberg was sharply criticized for "cloning the applications of his competitors by abusing their data", before being confronted with an internal exchange of emails supposed to prove that his acquisition of Instagram was to take control of a potential rival.

"These rules may have been broken"

Jeff Bezos, visibly unaccustomed to this type of performance, had to answer a series of nested questions from the Democratic representative of a Seattle constituency including Amazon headquarters, Pramila Jayapal, tech-savvy, dismantling the practices of Amazon in terms of pricing and the use of data from sellers using its platform to promote its own in-house products. Bezos, pointing out that internal directives prohibit this kind of hacking admitted that "these rules could have been broken".

In a less technical and much more emotional register, the congressmen, hearing him deny any pressure on these sellers, served him a recording of a telephone conversation with a publisher begging the latter to raise the prices of his books on the site. Tom Cook, boss of Apple, was largely spared by members of Congress, except for a few jabs on the access of program developers to the Apple App Store; but he, like his three colleagues, had to proclaim his patriotism loud and clear in response to Republicans' attacks on the Silicon Valley elite.

Trump versus Google

The pro-Trump camp, once again, gifted its electoral base a lawsuit against Google, accused of censoring conservative voices on its search engine, and even, to make matters worse, of directing personal emails sent by Republican Representative Greg Steube to his family to the spam bin. Sundar Pichai, the only Asian present, was entitled to heavy attacks from Tim Jordan (Ohio) who reproached him for his alleged pro-Chinese leanings and asked "the multicultural leader"  - accusing him of having pushed Hillary Clinton in 2016 - to swear that 'he would not promote Joe Biden on Google leading up to the November election ...

The coup de grace came from the Democrats, and the conclusions of the chairman of the antitrust subcommittee. Assenting that these four companies "exercise  monopoly power" , he advanced that "some must be dismembered, others better regulated and accountable".  While a Federal Trade Commission antitrust action against Facebook is possible this summer, the Gafams were thus able to gauge their popularity in Washington.

Philippe Coste serving in New York

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source: The Times UK

Congratulations!

NASA does it again. Perseverance has been launched and will be exploring
a dired-up lake site to lift samples that mght contain signs of ancient life. It will
take a future mission to pick that up, possibly as soon as 2031.

According to Le Figaro, a rover is an 'astromobile' in French. The mission to pick-up
the samples will be Euro-american.

YouTube History of England

There are quite a few YouTube videos on English history on YouTube,
and it is all  quite fascinating. Here is how I make sense of it.

source: Wikipedia

The little sugary quote above actually holds the key to understanding
the formation of Western Europe as we know it today: with France and
England as distinct countries, as geography would seem to suggest.

The set up for conflict arises from the sequence of how peoples came
to inhabit those regions. The Celts actually colonized the edges of the
bodies of water and both areas fell under Roman control with  .
Later, Germanic tribes - the Franks for France -  then the Angles and Saxons 
for England, spilled over from Germany from the East. And finally, the Vikings from
Scandinavia - themselves seafarers - raided both parties.

The Hundred Years' War is about England and France being distinct countries.
The War of the Roses is a civil conflict within Britain about who should rule. The
advent of the Tudors (from Théodore) is the Renaissance. The death of Elizabeth 1
(daughter of Henry VIII, who famously disposed of various wives in search of a male
heir, and  created the Church of England)  gives England a Scottish King.

If tribal kings were dominant within their tribe, medieval Kings  were meant to
lead dominant armies and ultimately nations. Henry VIII had invoked the divine right of
Kings to justify his actions, but here it is the right which is divine in scope. The divinity
notion would take a tragic turn in France, leading to the French Revolution of 1789.

So how should Kings be chosen, and counties governed. Primogeniture says the first
male born. 'Agnatic' is male, 'cognatic' male and female, cadet branch runs succession through
cadet members of a family ie younger than first-born...

Happy YouTube!

Hail

HAIL WARNING!

Emerging

Been wondering how this New Yorker cover was done.
Clearly, we are dealing with three different emerging  inmages...

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5f11d27990769236f61f392d/master/w_760,c_limit/2020_07_27.gif

Results

So these are my pictures from yesterday, to use as cartooning templates; which I 

will be working on.

Looking at these in the cool light of morning, I was struck by how deep the

laugh lines around my cheeks have gotten. Connected with a neat  facial yoga

video below. No results yet, but it can't hurt!!!

Not Stupid

Rummaging through my drawing apps this morning, looking for
what I might use for animation. Got a nice surprise:
Autodesk Sketchbook is currently absolutely free; all features. And
one can even animate with it, with a timeline and keyframes.

I think this is a much appreciated app because it is not stupid.
For example, one could write HELLO with a pen, decide that one
of the Ls is too thick and adjust it with the soft erase tool. No
eraser on this earth will do a good job on something written with
ink on paper, but a computer app can do it, no problem. it is the
same, and it is different as using an ink pen; just the particulat genius
of the computer. I do not doubt that, with time, one might approach
computer drawing with ever less of a reliance on  primitive real-world
technologies for art. Who knows?!

https://www.sketchbook.com/

                                                                 *     *     *
Layer 1

 Layer 3

Cm'On!

Is this reasonable (or even comprehensible). The CPP is
indexed in January to make sure the incomes of the elderly
keep up wih inflation. But now, Old Age Security is recalibrated
in July with respect to the last year's income. So that the small
amount added in January pushes one into a higher income level...
yielding a lesser payment!?

Accordez vos violons, as one would say in French! 💢

                                                                *     *     *

Rounding to 1%, someone whose global monthly income for July 2020 is up 1%
from July 2019 is keeping up with the cost of living.

The CPI went up 2% in 2019.

                                                            *     *     *

A longish piece on the curent debate within Economic Theory:

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/07/25/the-covid-19-pandemic-is-forcing-a-rethink-in-macroeconomics?fsrc=newsletter&utm_campaign=the-economist-today&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2020-07-23&utm_content=article-link-1

                                                            *     *     *

Slack

Found a fun YouTube channel showcasing historical recipes
for foods we still enjoy. The vid below, in particular. made me
feel a lot better about my cake cooking. Turns out that - before
electrical ovens - one might not calibrate with the temperature
of the oven. Bread would be baked first, when the oven was at its
hottest; then in would go the cakes to cook while that very hot
oven would cool down aka the 'slack' oven.

How charming! I'm forever worrying about too cooked spots
on the top - or worse - sides of my cakes. Not with this system.
One just needs to check for doneness; that is, use a toothpick in the
middle of the cake. Voilà! that's the way to the perfect cake!
Can't wait to try this 😊

Staying In!

What to say: the Covid-19 epidemic is spreading at an
accelerated rate in the US, spearheaded by younger people ie
under 41. I did read yesterday one interesting thing: modeling
shows that the three basic steps: hand washing, distancing, wearing
a mask can do the job of slowing this epidemic. AND, partial
compliance is still effective. By this is meant, no all or nothing
thinking: some distancing, kinda wearing a mask,
washing one's hands now and again are better than not. It's
like dieting, we can do this!!

Lyse made a striking remark to me the other day, as I told her how
soe Florida hospitals were reaching ICU capacity. "They're not used
to staying in. In Canada, it's like a continuation of winter. Oh H..., but
we know what to do. These people lack practice staying home...'

Probably true, lockdown weariness is surely a factor. So
some advice from Canada: give yourselves time off from
each other, with separate spaces for things. Put a TV in the kids'
room; let Dad drink beer and sulk on his own, leave mom alone
when she raids the pastry bin. Be TOLERANT. One thing that works
for Lyse and me is different schedules. I sleep when she is up and
vice versa. Our schedules overlap four hours a day, and we enjoy
seeing each other when we do...

                                      *     *     *

Larger cities in the US have seen hotels offer day rentals for those
who need a clean and private space to work form.

 https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/work-remote-hotel-room-covid-19/index.html           

The EU Accord

source: le Figaro

author: Anne Rovan

translation: GoogleTranslate/doxa-louise

The Twenty-Seven agree on a recovery plan worth 750 billion euros

Members of the EU have agreed on the mind-bending envelope intended to restart the economies of the bloc. It will be financed by a common loan. Rebates, rule of law, climate ... Many concessions have been made to ensure a compromise

At the end of a marathon summit, the Franco-German joint loan project was finally adopted by the European Union on July 21. The Europeans, however, had to grant concessions to "frugal" countries, particularly on costly discounts.
The Twenty-Seven will be able to go on vacation with a much lighter mind, telling themselves that they have put EU affairs in order. Tuesday July 21, shortly after 5 a.m., at the end of a rough and tortuous negotiation of four days, that is to say 92 interminable hours , they agreed on a plan of recovery worth 750 billion euros. Its staggering volume is identical to that proposed at the end of May by the Commission. Its ambition is no less so since it is to be the first common loan for the Twenty-Seven. A further step towards integration which should almost automatically lead to others.


Charles Michel as well as Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, maneuvering throughout the summit, welcomed this agreement. " We have demonstrated that European magic works, that when we think it is impossible, there is resilience, thanks to mutual respect and the ability to cope by being united, beyond differences ", welcomed Charles Michel, speaking of " a pivotal moment in the European journey ". The ex-Belgian prime minister, who had failed the EU budget in February, looked relieved to succeed on the very day of Belgium's national holiday. It is " a summit whose conclusions are historic ", greeted the president, and emphasizing the effort and concern for  compromise it required ”. Less lyrical, Angela Merkel said she was " very relieved " that after difficult negotiations, Europe has shown that it " can still act together ". This is " an important signal which goes beyond Europe ", " a response to the biggest crisis of the EU since its creation ", she said.


If it is intact in terms of amount at the end of this difficult summit, the composition of the European recovery plan has, on the other hand, changed a bit compared to that which had been put on the table by the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. And, we have to admit that it loses some of its power in the process. The amount of subsidies intended to revive and modernize the bloc's economies shaken by the coronavirus crisis has been reduced to 390 billion euros, instead of the 500 billion that France and Germany jointly pushed in the name of European solidarity in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. Conversely, the loans made available to Member States are increasing, going from 250 billion to 360 billion. The frugal camp, who favored loans and did not want to deal with outright grants , therefore obtained a small victory since the share of the money that will need to be repaid has increased. A symbolic victory knowing that the loans are incidental. Only grantss count.

France will receive 40 billion to finance its recovery plan

In any case, the volume of direct subsidies granted to Member States to boost and strengthen their economies - Italy and Spain in the lead - is preserved. For good measure, and because it is, as the Elysee insists, the " heart of the reactor ", they are expanded by some 2 billion euros, rising to 312.5 billion euros. France is doing well. It will receive 40 billion instead of 35 to help finance its recovery plan. Subsidies granted to Italy are down by 200 million euros to 81.4 billion. Spain also loses.

To preserve the " heart of the reactor " and because it was necessary " to fit the downcover in the suitcase ", some of the subsidies which were to come to supplement the European budget are seriously amended. This is the case for those dedicated to health and research. This is also the case with the just transition mechanism, intended to support highly carbon-intensive Member States towards neutrality by 2050, which are plunging from 30 to 10 billion euros. The solvency instrument that was supposed to support companies in difficulty - 26 billion euros - will never see the light of day. Here are some of the figures contained in the arid agreement of the Twenty-Seven and which inevitably reveal many other surprises and acrobatics.

The so-called normal European budget - that is to say excluding the recovery plan - amounts to 1074 billion euros versus 1100 billion expected by the Commission. While it had given rise in February to  many clashes with the so-called “frugal” countries - the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Denmark - the multi-year budget this time passed by a hair. The “ thrifty ”, who did not want to go beyond 1000 billion at the start of the year, had to choose what to fight for.

To reach this agreement, the Twenty-Seven have made more concessions - something the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen and Emmanuel Macron readily admitted . " The agreement is no less good because concessions have been made, " he argued, wishing to retain only the revolutionary side of this recovery plan. “ There is no such thing as the perfect world ,” he commented.

Emergency brake

Mark Rutte, very suspicious when it comes to " easy money " and riding on reforms, obtains his emergency brake allowing one or more member states to freeze the subsidies promised to a country if the proposed stimulus is not considered relevant or if its implementation is too slow or unsatisfactory. This instrument carries with it the seeds of future battles between the Twenty-Seven.

The frugal, who were the toughest in the negotiations, are not only getting their discounts maintained after the UK has left the EU. They even see these rebates increase because of the stimulus plan. In the end, this will cost the EU's net contributors - including France - € 53 billion over the next seven years, or € 7 billion more than over the current period. Above all, it amounts to setting this rebate in stone. Customs duty collection costs are also increased from 10% to 25%. A beautiful and juicy operation for the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, which are home to the largest ports in the EU, entry points to the internal market. It was a request from Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. His country will pocket more than 200 million euros more each year. The price to pay for trying to appease Dutch people allergic to "easy money ”and a not very docile national Parliament, where the coalition led by Rutte does not have a majority. " I am happy with this agreement, I see no disappointment, " Mark Rutte welcomed during a very long press conference.

To convince Poland and Hungary, the Europeans took care not to push the fires on conditionalities in terms of the rule of law. Ditto with climate requirements. The objective of carbon neutrality by 2050 is now a European objective and not a national objective for each Member State. To the great relief of Poland, which sees, so to speak, the horizon brightening. Enough to overshadow the fact that 30% of the sums spent between 2021 and 2027 by the EU will be directed towards  climate cange.

This agreement between the Twenty-Sept is only the starting point of a long and perilous journey. It will be set out in some fifty legislative texts. As the EU will increase its resource cap in order to allow the Commission to borrow this money on the financial markets, it will also require the prior approval of the EU's national and regional parliaments before the end of the year. Obtaining this stamp will be a test for the fragile coalitions of the countries of northern Europe. “ Do you have a plan B? Recently asked a journalist. " No ", answered the European civil servant questioned.

Immunity

The Oxford Vaccine:

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/07/20/trials-of-a-vaccine-and-new-drug-raise-hope-of-beating-covid-19

The Mask

First day of compulsory masking in indoor public spaces here
in Quebec. I went out this morning to a - largely empty - Giant
Tiger distributor. My mask doesn't seem to want to hold up.

Below, a picture of Ursula Von der Leyden in a medical mask.
She was trained as a doctor, so I'm going to assume she is wearing it
properly.

Going back tomorrow to return the pyjamas and pick up some fruit. I have one

medical mask in my bag I might try...

                                                *     *     *

Hoorah! I can tell from the Environement Canada site, when rain
has stopped for good, thanks to timely radar readings.

It is 9:46 for me.

https://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/qc-28_metric_e.html

BBuckle

Made dessert, yesterday. A Blueberry Buckle cake;
didn't even buckle. Probably because I baked it in a
round spring pan, ususally reserved for cheesecakes.

I followed the recipe below, from Canadian Living 2010.
Used a bit of wholewheat flour, for the crumble on top,
as well as brown sugar instead of white. I messed up and
added the nutmeg to the crumble, and the cinnamon to the
cake rather than vice versa.

Turned out super, in site of my shortcomings. Those blueberries
were BIG. Used close to a pint in all, and eyeballed things.

Oxford Vaccine

It's a nail-biter: will the Oxford vaccine for Covid-19 work!?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-15/oxford-s-covid-19-vaccine-is-the-coronavirus-front-runner

The Show

                                      *     *     *

Going somewhere!?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/china-s-tianwen-1-mars-spacecraft-everything-we-know-about-the-daring-mission/ar-BB16LyCu?ocid=msedgntp

                                      *     *     *

Parallax

The notion of parallax starts with the rather obvious
fact that, depending on where one stands to look at an object,
one might well see it as having two or more diferent backgrounds.

This finds application in Astronomy. Below, how one might use

parallax over a one year period to calculate the distance to a star.
Once the star is anchored between two invariant celestial objects,
one can takes two measures, six months apart. Thus, one calculates
the angles ABE and BAE and the parallax, angle theta. D = R/ϴ, with
ϴ in radians.

source: French-language Wikipedia

NEOWISE

I've got this!!

Because the Earth rotates a full circle in 24 hours, the sky
above us appears to turn like a knob. The center of that nob will  be
Polaris - the Night Star - which is directly above the North Pole.

Seen from the Equator, the North Star is on the horizon; anywhere
else, it expresses the latitude of one's position on the globe.

Below, Saint-Jean sur Richelieu, at 45 degrees of Latitude sees Polaris
up 45 degrees.

https://skyandtelescope.org/interactive-sky-chart/

Comet  C 2020 F3 (NEOWISE) was only discovered in March 2020.
there is an interactive chart from Greenwich, England (Latitude 51 degrees)
that allows onthe see its path.

https://theskylive.com/3dsolarsystem?obj=c2020f3


https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/neowise/main/index.html

HAPPY BASTILLE DAY!

         
                                                                 *     *     *



                                                              *     *     *

Less Sick

Not totally clear on what is being claimed here, but it
would appear asymptomatic Covid-19 sufferers may be getting
off easy because they have an enhanced immune response to the .
common cold. This respose doesn't involve anibodies, but other
types of T-cells...

https://www.lapresse.ca/covid-19/2020-07-13/une-proportion-de-la-population-protegee-grace-aux-coronavirus-responsables-du-rhume.php

Small Victory

That's what it's like with Synfig: for a long time, one
doesn't know how to do something, and then one day,
one does.

Below, a comet in the night sky. (A comet if a chunk of ice and dust
that burns off when heated in the proximity of the sun).

Still have a bit of work mastering the Blur function.
but wow, might even have a little fireworks for Bastille Day
on July 14 😉

Below, what folks at Google are up to:

*     *     *

Did manage a proff-of-concept on generating a fiereworks of sorts

from the Synfig interface. tomorrow is going to be a busy day!!

Enigmatic

Watched a documentary on the Minoans with my first coffee
in the cool of the morning. This enigmatic image showed up.
it might be trivial; but it might also signal how Europeans came
to be - andsee themselves - as fairer skinned. Men are warriors
and leaders but women are about diet and lifestyle. The Mioans
were the first 'European' civilization, on the Island of Crete, and
over a long incubation period in the Bronze Age.

https://youtu.be/0LIEA7oZBJI

BBC Weather

Sometimes, it takes the BBC to make sense of things!!

https://www.bbc.com/weather/6077243/day2

China Now

source: The Times UK

authors: Michael Evans | Catherine Philp

China now our biggest military threat, says US

Beijing overtakes Russia as top Pentagon priority

The strength of China's forces and other activities by Beijing has thrust it to the top of America’s strategic rivals.

China presents the biggest military threat to the United States, according to a new strategic assessment by the Pentagon. The US has now formally promoted China to the top of a list of its most dangerous rivals.

Mark Esper, the US defence secretary, has ordered military chiefs to recalibrate training and operations to match Beijing’s capabilities. The military must make China “the pacing threat in all our schools, programmes and training,” he said in a message to Pentagon staff marking his first year in the role.

“We are now in an era of great power competition and China, then Russia, constitute our top strategic competitors,” he added. In the 2018 national defence strategy delivered by James Mattis, his predecessor, China and Russia were on equal footing as the “great power rivals” to the US.

The assessment comes as tensions between the US and China gather pace. These have been fuelled by competing narratives over trade, intellectual property theft and hacking, as well as Chinese influence campaigns, counterintelligence and Beijing’s growing military activities in the Pacific.

Congress has also passed sanctions on China over the repression of minority groups in Xinjiang and its crackdown in Hong Kong. The State Department has announced visa bans on Chinese officials involved in abuses in Tibet, prompting reciprocal bans by Beijing.

There are also tensions over China’s growing nuclear arsenal, with the Trump administration demanding Beijing join its talks with Moscow to forge a multilateral arms treaty. Beijing said the demands were a ruse for Washington to abandon the bilateral treaty but suggested it could take part if the US shrank its arsenal to the size of China’s, an offer President Trump would never accept.

In another sign of their growing co-operation, Russia and China announced that they had agreed to boost joint economic enterprises including in energy and civilian aircraft manufacture after President Xi and President Putin spoke by phone.

Christopher Wray, the FBI director, warned on Tuesday that China was “engaged in a whole-of-state effort to become the world’s only superpower by any means necessary” and presented “the greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality”.


The economic damage wreaked by China’s intellectual property theft was “breathtaking”, he said and half of all counterintelligence investigations in the US involved China. “The stakes could not be higher,” he added.

Mr Esper said he had set up a special China strategy group to focus the Pentagon’s efforts on countering the growing threat from the Chinese military.

In the last year all existing Pentagon war plans for countering China have been reviewed and updated after previous simulations judged China to have the upper hand in in the Asia-Pacific because of its huge inventory of anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles.

The build-up of these missiles by the People’s Liberation Army is part of an “anti-access, area-denial” strategy to deter the US Navy from sailing into the region in the event of a crisis.

Two aircraft carriers, USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan, are operating in the South China Sea, flying multiple fighter jet missions to underline America’s strike capabilities. A B-52H nuclear-capable bomber took part in exercises this week.

Mr Esper said the US military was now investing in “game-changing technologies”. These included hypersonic weapons capable of flying to targets at 20 times the speed of sound.

In an address to the Hudson Institute, the FBI’s Mr Wray warned that Chinese agents were using an anti-corruption programme called Operation Fox Hunt to pursue dissidents living overseas including in the US.

“China describes Fox Hunt as some kind of international anti-corruption campaign. It is not. Instead, Fox Hunt is a sweeping bid by [President] Xi to target Chinese nationals who he sees as threats and who live outside of China across the world,” Mr Wray said. “We’re talking about political rivals, dissidents and critics seeking to expose China’s extensive human rights violations.”

Mr Wray said that the campaign was active in countries where Chinese dissidents had settled, believing they would be outside of Beijing’s reach. He told of one who was given the choice of returning to China or killing themselves.

He said: “When it couldn’t locate one Fox Hunt target, the Chinese government sent an emissary to visit the target’s family here in the US. The message they said to pass on: the target had two options, returned to China promptly or commit suicide.” Coercive tactics also include threats against family members back in China. “Use your imagination. You’re not going to be far off,” Mr Wray said.

Operation Fox Hunt was launched six years ago by China’s ministry of public security to track down “economic fugitives”, most of whom were corrupt former government officials.

Hello

I must admit I have ye to make the effort to really
use brushes on the software i do have.

Below, with Expression Blend. What is being orked on now is ease
of use as much as anything!!

                                                 *    *     *

Below, an important technique used by ollustrators to
hide/reveal what one sees:

Here I have, on its own layer, a map of expected het indices for later today.

If i had a blue rectangle on top, all will becovered. I can, though,
work with a brush on the same blue rectangle layer. If the brush
is set on eraser, everywhere I brush will be revealed. I am also free
to vary the opacity on my reveal.

The opacity of the eraser function is 100% on Savannah but only 60 % on
Tampa.

*     *     *

Gary Larson, the cartoonist who used to publish The far Side, is out of retirement

with new digital content:

Keep Cool

A popular craze on Instagram is to create cartoon versions
of pictures using Procreate on ipad 9using the new ipad pencil).
don't really have that equipment, but tried my hand anyway...

*     *     *

Been getting notices for days that I need to free up space so that Windows 10 pro can

install updates. Never enough!! I finally got wise to temporary files, which is where

Windows puts things on a temporary basis, but it can add up. Cleaning up those got me

an astounding 6G of free space!!

Settings, Storage, Free Up Space Now

Beer

Found a concise history of beer consumption in French-language Wikipedia.
The issue is interesting because, the distinction between ale and lager rests on
the temperature at which fermentation takes place, historical beer being fermented
at high temperature. The most recent 'lager' yields a pale drink we often confuse 
with beer itself although ale, rooted in history, can take on a whole gamut of colors.

A beer in a pub, a Stella Artois, an American beer all pack roughly the same alcohol
hit as a hard drink or glass of wine. In England, pubs offered a weaker beer to working
people, in an effort to wean the population  - and women - off gin. Today, these pubs
also offer cider, which can be quite alcoholic...

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The history of beer is intimately linked to that of its ingredients , as well as to the technological advances that made this drink the beverage we know today. The first cultures of cereals , in particular barley and spelt (a variety of wheat ), were attested in 8000 BC. AD in Mesopotamia  . All the ingredients being available at this time, beer could therefore exist and its invention / discovery is estimated to be 6000 BC. BC However, formal evidence of its existence, discovered in the province of Sumeria , dates back to the IVth  millennium BC  At that time, beer, then called "  sikaru  "  (whose literal translation is "liquid bread") was the basis of the diet daily. It was made by cooking pancakes made from spelt and barley which were soaked in water , in order to trigger the fermentation necessary for the production of alcohol , and which were seasoned with the cinnamon , honey or other spices depending on customer preferences. Beer, known to the peoples of Chaldea (now Iraq , Kuwait ) and Assyria ( Iraq , Syria , Lebanon , Palestine ), being used as currency, began its dissemination. Archaeological research has demonstrated that the Provencal already brewed their beer in the v th  century  BC. AD  .

Dionysos drinking a beer, Qingdao Beer Museum .

Consumed with family and used as a means of payment in Babylon , drink of the gods in Egypt , beer became in ancient Greece ( Diodorus of Sicily says that it was invented by Dionysus  ) and in the Roman Empire that of the poor, and while wine was deemed of the gods. It remained however the drink of choice of the peoples of the North , Celts and Germans . The preference for wine was confirmed in Christian Europe at the beginning of the Middle Ages , in particular thanks to the Council of Aachen of 816 which encouraged episcopal and monastic viticulture in order to celebrate the Eucharist . It was not until the viii th  century that we see brewing there take on importance, particularly in Bavaria . Subsequently, around the xii th  century , some monasteries (eg in Alsace and Bavaria ) became specialized in brewing beer, drunk by the people instead of water, often undrinkable.

Token of the corporation of brewers of the North.

Today, beer enjoys worldwide success as a thirst quencher and tasting drink. This success goes back to the xix th  century when control of low-temperature fermention along  with refrigeration and pasteurization allowed the production of new varieties of beer and export.

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FunnyM

No Tourists

Things are down in Paris, to say the least.The tourist season
was largely carried by American and Asiatic visitors, absent
for the moment.

https://www.liberation.fr/france/2020/07/04/paris-deconfine-mais-inquiet-d-un-ete-sans-touristes-etrangers_1793238

Happy Fourth!

Wait!

A GIF, using Pencil 2-D:

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In close-up:

Difficulty

Harder than it seems, this book page problem. The letter has to disappear -
from the right - before the image reforms without a letter...

sorta, the solution, below. Will be looking how Adobr Afer Effects
handles this tomorrow!