Do you watch movies?

A lot of video games have a plot and I'm not sure what autism has to do with it as plenty of people play video games. The average age is 35. I believe one of the site administrators plays video games.


?w=420

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/11/younger-men-play-video-games-but-so-do-a-diverse-group-of-other-americans/ft_17-09-11_videogames_youngeramericans/

I never had autism myself.

Anti-slavery amendment passed, but faced resistance in rural Colorado

Coloradans had a rare opportunity to take a stand against slavery. Even in 2018, there are still holdouts.

The proposed constitutional amendment to abolish slavery as a criminal punishment received more than 765,000 votes against it. The likely reasons were a combination of misinformation, a lack of outreach in rural areas and a fear of going soft on crime. Despite passing, the opposition was widespread: the majority of voters in 26 counties opposed the constitutional amendment.

“Our reach was very limited,” said Kamau Allen, a spokesman for Abolish Slavery Colorado, the group that pushed the amendment. “So we didn’t have as many coalition people out there as we did at other locations in the state.”

The measure, called Amendment A, had a straightforward purpose: Get rid of archaic language in the state constitution that allows slavery and involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime.

The amendment passed with 65 percent support statewide. Another 35 percent of voters rejected the amendment, according to Secretary of State results.

https://www.denverpost.com/2018/11/09/slavery-abolished-colorado-election/amp/

Mom of Calif. shooting victim: "I don't want prayers... I want gun control"

Voting is so simple and secure in other countries

How Estonia Secures Its Electronic Elections From Kremlin Attacks

Americans fret a lot about the threat of a crippling cyber attack. But the small European country of Estonia lived through one, a 2007 Kremlin-led effort to destabilize the country by attacking government websites. Yet the experience only strengthened Estonians resolve to extend digital service to its people, most notably electronic voting.

Just two years before Russia’s attack, Estonia began a pilot program that essentially allows its citizens to vote from home or work. To many Americans, this seems to promise a solution to increasingly common election-day problems: long lines, fewer polling places, uneven hours, etc. Some 25 U.S. states are experimenting with some form of e-voting for military service members. But most U.S. citizens can’t do it, despite polls showing a strong preference for it, particularly among young voters.

The Estonians haven’t had any major problems with e-voting, thanks to pioneering approaches to securing elections and keeping digital records that have made its government a best-practices showcase. But not all of them are easily transferable to the United States.

To begin, everybody in Estonia has a unique national identification number, similar to a social security number. “Your vote is tied to your personal Identification number but kept away from the prying eyes of politicians and election officials, unless there’s a certain incident where they have to see what happened in one precinct or another. In any case, it’s secure,” Erki Kodar, Undersecretary for Legal and Admin Affairs at the Estonian Defense Ministry, said during a recent visit to his country’s embassy in Washington, D.C

That state-issued number works alongside a personal identification number chosen by each citizen. The two, together, form a lock and key relationship, authenticating one another. You log into the system with your state ID number and your PIN. Result: there’s no question of whether someone should be disqualified because of a dubious signature discrepancy. Instead, an individual uses their secret PIN with their state ID number to verify who they are. “In the sense of your PIN number, that’s your digital signature,” said Kodar.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/11/how-estonia-secures-its-electronic-elections-kremlin-attacks/152582/

I'll Never Forget Brett Kavanaugh's Anger

I saw a frightening side of him in 1998. I saw it again at the Christine Blasey Ford hearing 20 years later.
By Judi Hershman
Nov. 5, 2018 6:20 PM
Back in the 1990s, when my last name was Nardella, I was a mother of two living in a Virginia suburb of Washington, working as a Republican fundraiser. Through community engagement and charity work, I met Alice and Ken Starr. The Starrs, in turn, introduced me to the head of a Dallas-based strategic communications firm, Merrie Spaeth, and around 1997, Spaeth hired me to run her boutique D.C. office. Starr was then serving as the independent counsel investigating the relationship between Bill Clinton and a White House intern, and in 1998, Spaeth and I were charged with helping prep Starr to present his history-making report to Congress. In the course of our work, I met one of his team’s key lawyers, 33-year-old Brett Kavanaugh.

One day, after a group meeting in the independent counsel’s offices, I was alone in the conference room, walking around the table and gathering up materials. The door opened, and someone came in. I don’t believe I looked up to see who it was—I just assumed that somebody had forgotten something. In what seemed like a split second, Kavanaugh had come around to my side of the table and was invading my space, badgering me in a way that I didn’t understand. I changed directions around the table and kept moving. He followed on my heels.

Here’s how I remember our interaction:


Him (very angry): You are going to tell me exactly who you are and why you are here.

Me: I am here at the invitation of Judge Starr, and he shared with the group who I am and why I’m here.

Him (pointing a finger in my face, I can feel his breath): No. I’m telling you—

Me (defiant stance): And I’m telling you to go talk to Judge Starr.

I didn’t know what prompted the confrontation at the time, and I still don’t. He couldn’t have possibly thought I was a spy, because he knew who I was—we had met before and been in each other’s company several times since.

https://amp.slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/brett-kavanaugh-ken-starr-heidi-heitkamp-republican-campaign-democrat.html

"Misery Mountain": Violence plagued West Virginia prison before Whitey Bulger killing

An independent government commission found that United States Penitentiary Hazelton, near the state's border with Maryland in Bruceton Mills, has been overcrowded for years. Inmates have repeatedly expressed concerns about their safety at the high-security prison, which houses 1,270 male inmates. A 2016 report from the District of Columbia's Corrections Information Council said that prisoners warned officials, "Inmates can lose their lives quickly here."

According to news reports, the penitentiary has garnered a grim nickname among inmates: "Misery Mountain."

(Snip)

Justin Tarovisky, executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 420, which represents Hazelton prison guards, said Bulger's death "outlines how dangerous this prison is." The union voiced its concerns about staffing in a picket outside the prison as far back as 2015.

The letter sent to Sessions last week by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.; Pat Toomey, R-Pa.; Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.; and Bob Casey, D-Pa.; and Rep. Bill Schuster, R-Pa., said Congress had provided additional funding to ensure there would be at least two corrections officers on duty in each housing unit for each shift and that the policy was "not being enforced as intended." The legislators said they were concerned that the Bureau of Prisons hasn't followed Congress' direction to curtail "its overreliance on augmentation, particularly in housing units."

A hiring freeze imposed by the Trump administration has left the agency short-staffed and some already overloaded federal prisons have been housing immigration detainees in recent months as well.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/whitey-bulger-dead-misery-mountain-violence-plagued-west-virginia-prison-hazelton/