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SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) Amid a year of contagion and turmoil, Chileans vote Sunday on whether to draft a new constitution for their nation to replace guiding principles imposed four decades ago under a military dictatorship.

The countrys conservative government agreed with the center-left opposition to allow the plebiscite a month after the outbreak of vast street protests that erupted a year ago in frustration over inequality in pensions, education and health care in what has long been one of South Americas most developed nations.

If approved, a special convention would begin drafting a new constitution that would be submitted to voters in mid-2022.

Chiles current constitution was drafted by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and was sent to voters at a time where political parties had been banned and the country was subject to heavy censorship.

It was approved by a 66%-30% margin in a 1980 plebiscite, but critics say many voters were cowed into acceptance by a regime that had arrested, tortured and killed thousands of suspected leftist opponents following the overthrow of an elected socialist government.

I think that many people went to vote out of fear, said political scientist Claudio Fuentes, who wrote a book about that plebiscite titled, The Fraud.

The current constitution has a flaw of origin, which is that it was created during the military dictatorship in an undemocratic process, said Monica Salinero, a 40-year-old sociologist who supports drafting a new charter.

The free-market principles embodied in that document led to a booming economy that continued after the return to democracy in 1990, but not all Chileans shared.

A minority was able to take advantage of good, privatized education, health and social security services, while others were forced to rely on sometimes meager public alternatives. Public pensions for the poorest are just over $200 a month, roughly half the minimum wage.

Recent polls have indicated heavy backing for a new constitution despite opposition from conservative groups, and expectations among many are high.

Luisa Fuentes Rivera, a 59-year-old food vendor, said hopes that with a new constitution we will have better work, health, pensions and a better quality of life for older people, and a better education.

But historian Felipe Navarrete warned, Its important to say that the constitution wont resolve the concrete problems. It will determine which state we want to solve the problems.

Claudia Heiss, head of the political science department at the University of Chile, said it would send a signal about peoples desires for change, and for a sort of politics that would allow greater inclusion of sectors that have been marginalized from politics.

Conservative groups fear the revamp could go too far, and endanger parts of the constitution that have helped the country prosper.

The people have demonstrated saying they want better pensions, better health, better education. and the response of the political class is a process that wont solve the problems and will open a period of uncertainty, said Felipe Lyon, 28-year-old lawyer and spokesman for the group No, Thanks that opposes the change.

The decision to allow the vote came after hundreds of thousands of Chileans repeatedly took to the streets in protests that often turned violent.

The vote was initially scheduled for April, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has killed some 13,800 Chileans, with more than 500,000 people infected by the new coronavirus.

Officials trying to ensure voters feel safe are barring infected persons or those close to them from the polls. Voters must wear masks dipping them only briefly for identification purposes and must bring their own pencils.

The manner of drafting a new constitution is also on Sundays ballot. Voters will choose between a body of 155 citizens who would be elected just for that purpose in April, or a somewhat larger convention split equally between elected delegates and members of Congress.

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Chileans vote on whether to rewrite dictatorship-era charter - Associated Press

The Menlo Park Library hosts Ladera resident John Billheimer virtually in a talk about his Edgar Award-winning dive into the fascinating career of filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, who spent a career battling and finessing the Motion Picture Production Code. The talk takes place on Tuesday, October 27 from 6:00 to 7:00 pm. Register online.

Throughout his career, Alfred Hitchcock had to deal with a wide variety of censors attuned to the slightest suggestion of sexual innuendo, undue violence, toilet humor, religious disrespect, and all forms of indecency, real or imagined.

During their review of Hitchcocks films, the censors demanded an average of 22.5 changes, ranging from the mundane to the mind-boggling, on each of his American films. Code reviewers dictated the ending of Rebecca (1940), absolved Cary Grant of guilt in Suspicion (1941), edited Cole Porters lyrics in Stage Fright (1950), decided which shades should be drawn in Rear Window (1954), and shortened the shower scene in Psycho (1960).

In Hitchcock and the Censors, the author traces the forces that led to the Production Code and describes Hitchcocks magician-like touch when negotiating with code officials and sidestepping censorship to produce a lifetime of memorable films.

John Billheimer is the author of two mystery series; one with West Virginia failure analyst Owen Allison, and the other featuring Ohio sportswriter Lloyd Keaton. He has taught courses in film noir, hard-boiled fiction on film, and the modern mystery in film and print at Stanford and Santa Clara Universities.

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Author John Billheimer talks about Hitchcock and the censors on October 27 - InMenlo

Overheard While Waiting to Vote in Doylestown. An older man with a Veteran's baseball cap was speaking with a younger man. They didn't seem to know each other. The young guy was asking about his military service. Vet told some stories about being in Viet Nam. Vet says something like "Trump would have been fragged in Nam". Then says the officer who planned the Bin Laden raid voted for Biden, he read it in the Wall Street Journal. Looked it up - worth sharing (from The Hill):

McRaven describes himself in the op-ed as pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national-anthem-standing conservative.

However, he wrote, I also believe that black lives matter, that the Dreamers deserve a path to citizenship, that diversity and inclusion are essential to our national success, that education is the great equalizer, that climate change is real and that the First Amendment is the cornerstone of our democracy.

We need a president who understands the importance of American leadership, at home and abroad. We need a leader of integrity whose decency and sense of respect reflects the values we expect from our president. We need a president for all Americans, not just half of America, McRaven wrote.

The retired admiral has been critical of President Trump in the past. In 2018, he wrote that Trump has "embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation."

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Neighbor discussion: Why are you censoring and/or not allowing comments on the... - Patch.com

Though Mortal Kombat 11 is still going strong with the next update to Ultimate bringing with it Rain, Rambo and Mileena coming in less than a month, it's still fun to go back to its predecessor for a good time or two and maybe even some bugs.

During a recent Mortal Kombat X stream match between Smash|PNDKetchup and Smash|PNDMustard, some unexpected censorship pops up at the perfect moment in Sub-Zero's Fatality thanks to Leatherface's iconic attire.

After taking the game, Mustard has his Sub-Zero go for the ice spike stomp Fatality, but the most gruesome parts end up getting completely obscured thanks to some glitchy cloth physics.

Leatherface's apron hilariously flips upwards to cover up his entire upper body and head, so we only see some pointy pieces of ice jutting out through the piece of fabric instead of his face and chest.

The pair then dub the funny glitch a YouTube-friendly Fatality considering the video platform has long demonetized Mortal Kombat videos for their violent content and bloody finishers.

You can check out the fun MKX clip below though you can still see a loose eye ball sticking out at one point before full inadvertent censor.

Click image for full version

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Leatherface's outfit comedically censors Sub-Zero's Fatality in Mortal Kombat X to make it PG-13 instead of rated R - EventHubs

This week, social media giants Twitter and Facebook proved that their monopolistic malpractice is a big problem for politics and culture in America.

When the New York Post published a story about suspicious emails that had been allegedly discovered between Hunter Biden and officials at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where he was paid tens of thousands of dollars a month to serve on the board, the revelations were remarkable.

In one alleged missive from 2015, a Burisma adviser named Vadym Pozharskyi thanked the vice presidents son for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent (sic) some time together. Its realty (sic) an honor and pleasure.

The Biden campaign has insisted that no such meeting was found to be on the official schedule, but they do not outright dispute the content of the emails or deny that an informal meeting could have occurred.

A year earlier, right after the younger Biden had been added to the companys board, Pozharskyi asked him for advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message/signal to put a stop to an investigation into the company. Later, Vice President Biden bragged he had been able to get the prosecutor fired.

The trove of correspondence was passed on to the Post by Rudy Giuliani who has been loudly trying to draw connections of corruption between interests in Ukraine and Joe Biden via his son, Hunter.

According the the New York Post, the emails were recovered from a computer that was dropped off at a Delaware repair shop and never retrieved. It is not known who dropped the machine off.

What makes all this most newsworthy is that Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for president, has been denying that hed ever taken part in his sons business overseas or that he was even aware of what that business was.

These emails go directly to refuting that and suggest that Biden was used by his son for payment in exchange for influence.

Thus, the story ran and was distributed through social media until prominent, anti-Trump users demanded that it stop.

Kyle Griffin, an MSNBC producer with more than 900,000 followers tweeted, No one should link to or share that NY Post report. You can discuss the obvious flaws and unanswerable questions in the report without amplifying what appears to be disinformation.

Andy Stone, who works in the communications department at Facebook but has a long resume featuring jobs with various Democratic organizations was also containing the story. While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, Stone tweeted, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebooks third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.

By the afternoon, Twitter started blocking sharing of the article in any form, warning users away from the link, and locking prominent accounts that shared it, including that of the New York Post itself, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and the Trump campaign account @teamtrump.

In doing so, they turned a shady October surprise leak that would have been ignored by many in the mainstream into a major story that is reverberating through the country. What, many Americans wonder, do these massive tech companies want so badly to hide from them?

The selective censorship by social media monopolies threatens to divide our nation to a degree we have never seen before.

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Social media censorship threatens to widen rift in U.S. - Boston Herald