October, 2022 archive
A French Twist to Phoning It In 0
Frankly, I wouldn’t mind this happening here:
According to the Journal Officiel, a new regulation for commercial phone calls (eg [sic] from call centres) will come into place on March 1st, 2023.
Specifically, telephone canvassing will only be allowed between the hours of 10am to 1pm and 2pm to 8pm, from Monday to Friday, according to the new decree, which was published on Friday, October 14th.
QOTD 0
Rex Stout:
One of the brain’s most efficient departments is the one that turns possibilities into probabilities and probabilities into facts.
Stout, Rex, Too Many Clients, (New York: Bantam, 1971), p. 123
A Tune for the Times 0
Mangy comments at the Youtube page:
Mangy Fetlocks grew up around guns and has a few himself, but he doesn’t believe God gave him the right to own them. Honestly, Mangy doesn’t believe that God is any more interested in whether Mangy has a gun than God might be interested in whether Mangy has a four-slice toaster or one of those blade balancers for when he sharpens his lawnmower blades. Mangy does believe God sends his own mower blades out to be done and has a “Holy Toast” brand 42-slice commercial toaster. (J.C. is big on toast. Says so in The Bible, if you read it backwards.) Anyway, Mangy thought he’d write a little song about this absurd linkage, in the minds of many Americans, between God and guns.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Thus passeth another day in the NRA’s Garden of Bleedin’.
Trickle-On Economics and the New Gilded Age 0
Professor Richard Wolff suggests that the Fed’s actions to control inflation are misguided, ignore the influence of monopoly, and may be leading us down a road to stagflation. An excerpt from Professor Wolff’s comments:
Prices in this economy are set in this economy by employers. Less than one percent of the American people are employers. All their basic decisions . . . are to be governed by how that action impacts the bottom line. Why do what imflation? Because employers raise the prices.
Paper Trail, Reprise 0
It’s a paper train, and Michail in Norfolk follows it.
Freedom of Screech on the Disinformation Superhighway 0
At AL.com, Dana Hall McCain reflects on the Alex Jones damages award. A snippet:
Methinks she is onto something. Follow the link for the rest.
Geeking Out 0
I do loves me my wallpaper collection.
Once, a long time ago, I visited that site.
Oh, by the way, that’s Mageia v. 8 with the Fluxbox window manager. Xclock is in the upper right, GKrellM in the lower right.
Break Time 0
Off to drink liberally.
No Place To Hide from the Dragnet 0
The EFF reports on a California court’s decision to disallow evidence from a “geofence” warrant.* The report also discusses Google’s procedure for responding to such warrants and notes that this is one of several rulings questioning such warrants.
Here’s one bit from the article; follow the link to read the rest.
Me, I keep “location services” turned off on my phone unless I have a positive need, which is almost never, because I know how to read a map. Remember maps?
________________________
*Briefly, a geofence warrant is issued to the corporate surveillance state–all those companies that track the location of our phones or other devices so they can “improve your online experience”–to find out who was in the vicinity of a crime. The police then go through the list to pick out and pursue possible suspects.
All the News that Fits 0
>center>
Republican Family Values . . . 0
. . . have always been a con to ensnare the gullible, but, when you look closely, there’s no there there.
Here Comes the Judge . . . 0
. . . and now we know what he wears under his robe.
The Art of the Con 0
In a longer piece about Donald Trump’s crumbling credibility (with everyone except the cultists and the craven pols who fear them, that is), John Young suggests that Donald Trump considers himself to be brand royalty. A snippet:
Among many of the tricks Donald Trump employed to inflate the worth of all that is him, now called “BS” by New York’s attorney general, is what analysts call a “brand premium.” In other words, he deemed his properties vastly more valuable simply because they had his name on them.
Follow the link for context.
