Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:22 PM, for 9h 02m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 70.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred sixty-eighth day.
Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM and the Whitewater School Board at 7 PM.
On this day in 1903, the Wright Brothers make the first powered airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Although initially doubtful of their accomplishment, European sentiment changed after the Wright Brothers demonstrated their plane in France:
The French public was thrilled by Wilbur’s feats and flocked to the field by the thousands, and the Wright brothers instantly became world-famous. Former doubters issued apologies and effusive praise. L’Aérophile editor Georges Besançon wrote that the flights “have completely dissipated all doubts. Not one of the former detractors of the Wrights dare question, today, the previous experiments of the men who were truly the first to fly …”[104] Leading French aviation promoter Ernest Archdeacon wrote, “For a long time, the Wright brothers have been accused in Europe of bluff … They are today hallowed in France, and I feel an intense pleasure … to make amends.”[105]
Recommended for reading in full:
Craig Timberg and Tony Romm write New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation’s scale and sweep:
A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office.
The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), its ranking Democrat. The bipartisan panel hasn’t said whether it endorses the findings. It plans to release it publicly along with another study later this week.
The research — by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm — offers new details of how Russians working at the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. officials have charged with criminal offenses for interfering in the 2016 campaign, sliced Americans into key interest groups for targeted messaging. These efforts shifted over time, peaking at key political moments, such as presidential debates or party conventions, the report found.
Scott Shane and Sheera Frenkel report particularly that the Russian Effort to Influence 2016 Election Targeted African-Americans:
The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 election made an extraordinary effort to target African-Americans, used an array of tactics to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and unleashed a blizzard of posts on Instagram that rivaled or exceeded its Facebook operations, according to a report produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee.
