All of the various findings, articles, videos, pictures, and other stuff I dig up on the web. Anything on this site was posted by me. Any opinion expressed here is only my own
2020/10/28
Lincoln Rolling in his Grave
2020/10/21
More Shenanigans
2020/10/07
teen spenders
2020/10/01
The "V" shaped recovery
2020/09/29
Trump is a Security Risk
2020/09/10
2020/09/09
A few Articles
2020/09/02
Wind & Solar adoption Spreads.
2020/08/21
Banon Busted
2020/08/18
save the mail
2020/08/15
Suburban White Dreams
2020/08/14
Giant Repercussions
This is a Big Change
Witness requirement removed
2020/08/07
Government Buys Marketing Data
I know their marketing statements talk about not gathering PII data, but what most don't realize, is that you don't need specific PII data to track someone. You can still identify a person by multiple means when the data set is large enough.
2020/07/30
start your engines
2020/07/22
2020/07/14
2020/07/13
I Like the Titanic Reference
2020/07/11
telegram boots neo-nazis
2020/07/09
Hell No
2020/07/08
good take on this
2020/07/07
Neat little Phrase (it's not really)
2020/07/06
Way out of line
Police State Cracks Down
Shocking
Extreme Gaslighting
2020/07/05
Definitely Bad Apples Here
2020/07/02
2020/07/01
So much for Hoax
Liberal Ideas are the threat
2020/06/26
2020/06/25
Google Deletes Data
2020/06/24
2020/06/15
Doctors Stand Up
2020/06/11
2020/06/05
Drumpf/ Nixon compared
2020/05/29
more patriot act stuff
this is not good
2020/05/20
Party like it's 2008
2020/05/14
Populism Round 2.0
2020/05/08
2020/05/04
How many Utah knew about this?
Damien Patton, who helped launch and now leads the secretive startup Banjo, was part of the Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as a 17-year-old and joined a leader of the group in a drive-by shooting of a synagogue in a Nashville suburb, according to a report by the online outlet OneZero, citing transcripts of courtroom testimony, sworn statements and more than 1,000 pages of records produced from a federal hate crime prosecution.
Utah officials in 2018 had awarded Patton’s company a sole-source, $750,000 contract to provide massive real-time surveillance of 911 calls, social media and traffic cameras. The company has also signed a $20.7 million contract with the state.
2020/04/30
Jobs situation worse than advertised
So, does this mean in reality almost half are unemployed now?
The most recent government data are for mid-March, and report a 72.7% employment rate for 18- to 64-year-olds. As of mid-April, according to RPS, this rate dropped to 55.8%. That stunning 23% decline marks the lowest employment rate for the U.S. since 1962.
2020/04/28
Don't Listen to me
This guy is unreal
"""
Donald J. Trump on Monday blamed his sinking poll numbers on people paying attention when he talks.
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Seriously?
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he said, “There are a lot of people out there who are listening to things I say and basing their opinions on them, and I think it’s very sad.”
"""
2020/04/24
Such a generous man
He does realize that New York puts a lot more money into the Federal coffers, than his state?
Also, his state takes out more from that pot, than New York gets.
OK, no bailout. no big deal we can move on.
No more money from us for your state in the future...
Is that the game he is pushing towards? How petty is that?
Food Chain Strain
Food is going to become a much greater issue in 6 months if this continues.
2020/04/16
The Yearly Shutin
https://www.wired.com/story/what-if-covid-19-returns-every-year-like-the-common-cold/
"""
The role of seasonality “is certainly not zero,” Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard who coauthored the study, said at a press conference held Tuesday. He cautioned that seasonal variability is not the same thing as saying the virus will go away in the summer. Outbreaks could occur at any time, he noted, but those that begin in the fall might be more severe. That kind of variation could have important implications for how social distancing measures are timed.
"""
2020/04/15
Not protecting Stimulus
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The payments are going out this week, two weeks after Mnuchin was first informed about the issue. And under the CARES Act, the Treasury Department has the ability to write rules protecting that payment from being taken by financial actors. But Treasury has done nothing of the sort.
"""
2020/04/14
FINALLY
2020/04/13
Very Good Read
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But you did. You are not crazy, my friends. And so we are about to be gaslit in a truly unprecedented way. It starts with a check for $1,200 (Don’t say I never gave you anything) and then it will be so big that it will be bigly. And it will be a one-two punch from both big business and the big White House — inextricably intertwined now more than ever and being led by, as our luck would have it, a Marketer in Chief. Business and government are about to band together to knock us unconscious again. It will be funded like no other operation in our lifetimes. It will be fast. It will be furious. And it will be overwhelming. The Great American Return to Normal is coming.
"""
Health by lobbying
Trump had directed Veterans Administration officials to take instruction from three un-appointed Mar-a-Lago members who had never served in government or the military. Emails obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington show how VA officials bristled under the shadow leadership of the “Mar-a-Lago Crowd”: Marvel Entertainment Chairman Ike Perlmutter, attorney Marc Sherman, and internist Bruce Moskowitz.
Democracy dies a little more now
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This November, it’s all too possible that Trump will eke out an Electoral College win thanks to widespread voter suppression. If he does — or even if he wins cleanly — everything we’ve seen suggests that he will use a second term to punish everyone he sees as a domestic enemy, and that his party will back him all the way. That is, America will do a full Hungary.
"""
I think this is a fact, not a possibility.
Even the military says watch out
Rent-to-own outfits, such as Aaron’s and Rent-A-Center, fill an important segment of this alternative economy. They offer appliances, electronics, and furniture on weekly or monthly payment plans. If a customer makes payments for the full term of the contract (usually 12 to 24 months), they own the good outright. Even though most customers aspire to, and ultimately do, own items obtained through rent-to-own, the industry insists it offers rentals and so is not subject to federal and state credit protections. Disclosing the cost of credit under the federal Truth in Lending Act would mean informing customers that a rent-to-own TV comes with an annualized interest rate as high as 370 percent. The industry also criminalizes debt, routinely filing police complaints and threatening criminal prosecution to extract payments from distressed consumers. The Department of Defense, in a 2006 report, described the rent-to-own business, which targets members of the military, as predatory.
Food Supply Chain is under heavy stress
What accounts for this massive logistical failure, now artificially creating shortages? In nonviral times, much of the food being produced on farms would be sent to schools and restaurants. But with those locations shut down almost categorically nationwide, there’s no infrastructure in place to simply redirect the food to grocery stores and food banks, especially with short-shelf-life items like vegetables, meat, and dairy. Those two tracks—commercial and consumer food supply chains—remain fiercely separated.
Quote
2020/04/07
Cost of the vaccancies
https://prospect.org/health/trump-war-on-veterans/
The department is now reeling under roughly 50,000 vacancies—a number larger than the Departments of State, Labor, Education, and Housing and Urban Development combined. These shortages make it difficult to deliver timely care to veterans under normal circumstances.
2020/04/06
2020/04/04
Do not tell the Truth
Hospitals are threatening to fire health-care workers who publicize their working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic -- and have in some cases followed through.
2020/04/02
They never had Morals
Jeff Bezos is the one guy in high school who got picked on, and now he has to make everyone pay for the abuse he received.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse-jobs-worker-conditions-bathroom-breaks
https://www.inquirer.com/news/working-amazon-warehouse-fulfillment-center-emily-guendelsberger-on-the-clock-20190709.html
"""
There is no greater illustration of the moral decay of 21st-century corporate America than Amazon. Past behemoths trafficked in noblesse oblige, tolerating unions and even investing in their workforce. Automobile plants and steel mills accepted that the price of doing business was guaranteeing their workers more than a subsistence wage.
"""
2020/04/01
Are we really that surprised?
Add in the fact that no one is "on the floor" trading, so all of the algorithms have a chance to run crazy now.
USA Fails at pandemics
More evidence on how the trump virus has totally laid bare the misconceptions and the facades of readiness here in this country.
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On the Global Health Security Index, a report card that grades every country on its pandemic preparedness, the United States has a score of 83.5—the world’s highest. Rich, strong, developed, America is supposed to be the readiest of nations. That illusion has been shattered. Despite months of advance warning as the virus spread in other countries, when America was finally tested by COVID-19, it failed.
"""
2020/03/29
pathetic
2020/03/24
2020/03/23
Democrats demands
2020/03/21
Republicans like his response
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/states-are-moving-quicker-than-trump-in-fighting-coronavirus
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/try-getting-it-yourselves-trump-tells-governors-seeking-ventilators-in-coronavirus-outbreak/
https://twitter.com/NYGovCuomo/status/1239626747903082502
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-09/trump-s-coronavirus-claims-often-contradicted-by-his-own-experts
Supply Chain Meltdown
Will be interesting how many companies adopt a distributed internet like model for their supply chains. Who knows.
Don't here to much about LATM::
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Peru’s state of emergency and nationwide lockdown have led major mining companies like Freeport-McMoRan Inc. and Newmont Corp. to curb copper production there. The same is happening in other mining centers like Chile, Canada and Mongolia, with economists at Scotiabank saying the initial result from the hit in Chile and Peru alone leading to the loss of some 325,000 metric tons of copper production, or about 1.7% of global annual output.
"""
"""
“I think it’s irresponsible for anyone to make assumptions right now.”
"""
2020/03/16
An utter buffoon
2020/03/14
he will deny
he will deny
And they continue closing
2020/03/10
2020/03/09
it wasn't me
why Democrats lose
Make the numbers better
https://news.yahoo.com/betsy-devos-introduces-rule-making-193325446.html
2020/03/06
watching the workers, learning....
2020/03/03
the non-Deep state
2020/03/01
Clearview hacked
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/02/28/clearview-ai-loses-entire-database-of-faceprint-buying-clients-to-hackers/
The other thing I find funny about this whole thing. Not the hack per se, but clearview.
Facebook is pissed this person scraped all those pictures.
Isn't that how Zuck started Facebook????
2020/02/29
the Amazon trap
blocking the votes
2020/02/28
corruption is my name
Can you get more Obvious
This far into his presidency, and this headline of the obvious is their choice?
No wonder the media is part of our problems.
This is who you voted for
At that point the administration appears to have finally realized that it might need to do something beyond insisting that things were great. But according to The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman, it initially proposed paying for a virus response by cutting aid to the poor — specifically, low-income heating subsidies. Cruelty in all things.
2020/02/27
Nice Counterpoint
Vance's story pretty much ignores the working-class battle to get its share of the pie, and the racial turmoil, riots, and struggle for civil rights that would shape the politics of America's cities. It bypasses how millions of white workers would enter America's middle class in the three decades after World War II, as the government invested in their education and subsidized their homeownership. It misses how these workers' legs were then kicked out from under them by foreign competition, technology, globalization, and trade agreements like NAFTA that undercut American jobs. Indeed, Vance sympathizes with company executives who fought off unions, writing, “I might have done the same.”
HUMINT asset arrested
2020/02/26
not a unifier
2020/02/25
Another Krugman GOP hypocrisy article
2020/02/24
Carville is going slightly mad
There is one point in the article, where Carville is said to have turned to the camera, smiled, waved, and said "Hi Vlad!" Carville has become more insistent that Russia is pushing the Bernie Sanders campaign, and this article has certainly come up in the news as well. This does make sense, as Russia only wants to sow more seeds of dissent in the US and other countries around the world.
Carville handed a nother win to Vlad, when he pulled his stupid stunt. You giving the idea at air at all, James, also gives Putin a win. Jim, you are not helping.
The party is not where his politics is at, and I don't believe the country is where he is at anymore. A lot has changed since he helped Billy boy get elected. I am sorry if he can not keep up with the rate of change.
2020/02/18
Dollars over People
No one should be really surprised at the level of Trump's empathy here. The dollar is the most important thing in our society so we should do everything we can to screw people over.
2020/02/17
2020/02/15
2020/02/11
Further Corruption of Justice
War against those with need
The $4.8 trillion budget proposal released Monday would cut Medicare by $850 billion, cut Medicaid by $920 billion and cut Social Security by $30 billion over the next decade, according to The Washington Post. The proposal would also slash food stamp spending by $181 billion. The plan also calls for a steep 8% cut to the Education budget; a 9% cut to the Health and Human Services Budget, including the Centers for Disease Control; and a 26% cut to the Environmental Protection Agency budget. The Interior Department would see a 13% budget cut; the Department of Housing and Urban Development would see a 15% cut; and both the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development would be slashed by 22%.
2020/02/07
2020/02/01
2020/01/23
2020/01/20
Any privacy is now gone
But without public scrutiny, more than 600 law enforcement agencies have started using Clearview in the past year, according to the company, which declined to provide a list. The computer code underlying its app, analyzed by The New York Times, includes programming language to pair it with augmented-reality glasses; users would potentially be able to identify every person they saw. The tool could identify activists at a protest or an attractive stranger on the subway, revealing not just their names but where they lived, what they did and whom they knew.
More Warming News
Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is so remote that only 28 human beings have ever set foot on it.