We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The distribution of significant community outbreaks along restricted latitude, temperature, and humidity are consistent with the behavior of a seasonal respiratory virus. Additionally, we have proposed a simplified model that shows a zone at increased risk for COVID-19 spread. Using weather modeling, it may be possible to predict the regions most likely to be at higher risk of significant community spread of COVID-19 in the upcoming weeks, allowing for concentration of public health efforts on surveillance and containment.
Our study found that the proportion of inpatients with COVID-19 who wear eyeglasses for extended daily periods was lower than that of the general population, suggesting that daily wear of eyeglasses is associated with less susceptibility to COVID-19 infection.
Can't wait for Fauci to tell us to wear two pairs of eyeglasses.
Even once inflation is factored in to produce the safe real interest rate, a steady decline after the Volcker era is clearly visible. This indicates that something fundamental is changing in the economy’s view of saving and investment. Bloomberg pundit Joe Weisenthal has glibly suggested, echoing views common on Wall Street, that sovereign bonds—indeed, a wide range of financial assets—are actually stores of value and that negative rates are fees for safehousing money.
Paul Volcker was either a god or a devil, depending on who you ask. But he was certainly nowhere in-between.
According to reports, Plummer died peacefully at his home in Connecticut with his wife Elaine Taylor at his side. Lou Pitt, his long-time friend and manager of 46 years, remembered him as "an extraordinary man who deeply loved and respected his profession".
He was Commodus before Joaquin was born, and better at it too. He was the definitive Rudyard Kipling, THE skinflint millionaire, Kaiser Wilhelm, more Rommel than James Mason, and more Barrymore than Barrymore. And still they hang the Sound of Mucus around his neck. Rest easy Sir Charles Litton. We'll remember you.
The collection has been purpose-built to reach a wide base of both public and academic library patrons, and to contain books that people want to read and access online—titles that are widely held by libraries, cited in Wikipedia and frequently assigned on syllabi and course reading lists.
When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes -Erasmus
West is the latest Republican to come out in support of declaring Texas an independent nation. Last month, thestate representative Kyle Biedermann confirmed that he will introduce the bill for a referendum as early as this week. “Texit,” named after the British referendum to leave the European Union, refers to the process of Texas exiting the United States to become an independent, self-governing nation.
Please keep in mind that secession is only cool when California threatens to do it.
Behind the scenes, a power struggle for control of r/wallstreebets erupted on Wednesday when the oldest moderators of the forum booted over a dozen newer mods from their duties. The banned moderators then accused the old guard of selling out, and conspiring to secure a lucrative movie deal about r/wallstreebet’s role in the meme stock craze. “They (the old mods) left for years and came back when they smelled money,” wrote “zjz," a banned moderator.
Like campus politics, the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small.
“I think if you have solid projections and a solid budget and you plan accordingly, you can certainly do all these things, but we didn’t have any of those,” brand director Kaelin says. Scott, who as head of production oversaw at least $1 million in expenditures, says in three years he was never asked for or given a budget, and never had to file an expense report for his company credit card. “I could put $8,000 worth of vanilla on a credit card and nobody would say a thing,” he says.
Huh. It turns out you have to know something about ice cream, and something about business, in order to run an ice cream business. Who knew?
VONNEGUT I would do the same thing with commencement speeches, I want them to be shapely and to be fun possibly for an actor to say. Where’d you go to college?
CARO Princeton.
VONNEGUT I’ve heard of it.
Kurt Vonnegut was funny. Robert Caro wrote four books about Lyndon Johnson, which is another kind of joke entirely.
Semiconductors are extremely important components of new vehicles for areas ranging from infotainment systems to more traditional parts such as power steering. They’re also used in consumer electronics.Ford’s confirmed plans come a day after General Motors said it would take down production next week at four assembly plants in Fairfax, Kansas; Ingersoll, Ontario, and San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
Ahem. A pickup truck has one bench seat, a metal dashboard, three on the tree, and an AM radio. I have no idea what exactly an F 150 is anymore, but it ain't a pickup truck.
Have a nice weekend, y'all. Or if you're Bird Dog, a nice weekend yawl.
The Proposal to Prevent the Feminisation of Male Adolescents called on schools to fully reform their offerings on physical education and strengthen their recruitment of teachers. The text advised recruiting retired athletes and people from sporting backgrounds - and "vigorously developing" particular sports like football with a view to "cultivating students' masculinity".
The American version is reminding the male students that they'll never be half the man their mother was.
Nationwide, the U.S. is averaging about 139,000 new cases per day — a 16% improvement over last week, which was a 16% improvement over the week before.
Flu season in the US runs from October to February. It's February. You're welcome
Threadneedle Street’s monetary policy committee (MPC) voted unanimously to keep the official interest rate at historically low levels while it agreed to set the deadline for banks to prepare themselves after policymakers said they were ready to make negative lending rates part of their toolkit.
Well, after giving away money doesn't work, there's nothing left to do but pay you to take it.
23andMe, founded in 2006 and led by co-founder Anne Wojcicki, has raised a total of just under $900 million to date, including an $85 million Series F round announced last December. The company was one of the first to debut at-home genetic testing for individual consumers, providing kits that people can use to find out more about their own DNA, and what it says about their potential health issue, ancestry and more.
If you're unfamiliar with 23andMe, they're like Facebook, but instead of spying on your browsing habits, they rifle through your medical waste if you're dumb enough to send it to them.
The blue verified badge on your house lets people outside know that you're an authentic public figure. To receive the blue check crest, there must be someone authentic and notable actively living in the house.
The iPhone maker plans to set up production with Kia and build Apple cars at the automaker’s facility in Georgia, U.S., DongA Ilbo reported, without citing anyone. The companies may sign a deal on Feb. 17 and aim to introduce Apple cars in 2024, according to the newspaper, which said they have an initial target to produce 100,000 autos a year.
You can get it in any color you want, as long as it's... white?
Researchers from SINTEF, the Norwegian Polar Institute and the University Centre in Svalbard have collected samples from Arctic crustaceans close to the settlement of Ny-Ålesund on the west coast of Spitsbergen. During the spring and summer, they discovered a number of drugs in a variety of different concentrations. “These included ibuprofen from Ibux, diclofenac from Voltaren, antibiotics and an antidepressant,” says SINTEF researcher Ida Beathe Øverjordet.
You know, I'd kinda noticed that my Svalbard mollusks seemed a tad taciturn recently. They've completely lost the urge to fetch sticks and dig in the garden, too.
Staff at Balthazar poured the two wines into identical decanters, but the one containing Mouton Rothschild 1989 was accidentally sent to the young couple’s table, said the New York restaurant’s owner, Keith McNally. Four Wall Street businessmen at another table had ordered the Bordeaux First Growth – the most expensive wine on the restaurant’s list at $2,000 (£1,528) – but were served the $18 Pinot, the restaurant’s cheapest, said McNally on his Instagram account.
I remember this one time I was at a boring convention, but they had an open bar with a half-decent wine selection. I guess I sorta took advantage of the open bar thing. After my eighth trip across the auditorium to get another glass, a guy handed me a big trophy, a pretty girl kissed me, and the master of ceremonies announced over the public address system that I'd won the dance contest.
The hardware and software will be supplied by Netradyne, a California company behind a platform called Driveri that uses cameras and artificial intelligence to analyze a driver as they operate the vehicle. The camera then gives real-time feedback — including automated suggestions like “distracted driving” and “please slow down” — while collecting analysis that is used to later evaluate drivers during their shifts.
Amazon should just install the driver's mother-in-law in a jump seat and get it over with.
“What these companies were doing was essentially fudging the numbers, lying to investors, other companies and the SEC,” said Schwartz. “Eventually, you have to make up for the money that was lost, that really never existed, so shareholders lose money, people lose retirement plans, people lose jobs. It’s very, very damaging.”
I was walking down the sidewalk in New York once, when I noticed a stockbroker I'd met at a party recently coming towards me. "Hello," he lied.
“Firms don’t allow employees to go out and make predictions on stock,” he said of employees who aren’t analysts. Many financial firms also require employees to disclose if they have brokerage accounts with other firms to monitor their trading activities, he added. Mr. Gill, as a securities broker, is registered with FINRA. His broker registration does not indicate he has any outside business activities. FINRA rules prohibit brokers from filing incomplete or misleading information about themselves.
This dude is in for an SEC enema with a Maxine Waters rubdown finish. He'll be used as a political football. If he's useful in their endless efforts to raise taxes, they'll call him a little guy and let him keep the vig. If he hurt the wrong hedgies, they'll stake him out on an anthill. But his real problem comes later. Some enterprising lawyer with a client who dumped their college money into GameStop and lost it all will sue him, and win. It's pit bull season, and he's wearing milk bone underwear.
Well, that's the links for today. Don't forget to shift your buttocks slightly on the couch at least once a day.
Ned Beatty explains how the world really works to a doe-eyed crank in Network. A wonderful parable for our times, and still spot on 45 years after it was made. The Wall Street Bets kids will be cozened into Janet Yellen's boardroom shortly, and get Citadel's version of this speech.
It was kind of wonderful to watch Peter Finch ramble and rave for two reels, lulling you into the false idea that this was as far out as a man could get. Then Ned Beatty goes intergalactic compared to Finch's low Earth orbit. They gave all the Oscars to everyone else in the movie, so there were none left for him. Well, real boardrooms are supposed to be filled with faceless men.
Television's mesmeric effect was very real, but it's nothing compared to the internet. No one was walking around all day, every day, with a running television in their hand in 1976. TV was an alternate reality, a reality more beguiling than real life was, surely, but not a replacement.
There is no life outside the internet. It's Arthur Jensen's wildest dream, fully realized.
Much of this is down to the idiosyncratic nature of the Reddit investment phenomenon, which is the key difference between this deleveraging episode and others spurred by economic anxieties or macro shocks such as the pandemic. While the retail crowd can whip up a trading frenzy in a few stocks through its message board, the targets tend to be concentrated and relatively small.
I'll explain the GameStop/Reddit/Wall Street Bets frenzy in the simplest terms possible. They've all joined a joint-stock Amway.
The agreement came at a cost. In a six-page statement of facts, Smith acknowledged evading more than $43 million in taxes over a decade and repeatedly filing false tax forms. He agreed to pay a penalty, forsake tax-deduction claims for $182 million of charitable contributions and cooperate for five years with prosecutors on investigations, including their case against Brockman, whose web of opaque Caribbean entities was allegedly used to hide $2 billion in income earned from Vista.
His company manages $73 billion in assets for public pension funds. Public pension funds are about to get maybe a third of a trillion or so in bailouts, masquerading as aid to state and local governments. He won't be eating ramen anytime soon.
IBM’s blockchain unit missed its revenue targets by a wide margin for two years in a row, said a second source. Expectations for enterprise blockchain were too high, they said, adding that IBM “didn’t really manage to execute, despite doing a lot of announcements.”
I guess IBM is being haunted by the ghost of Romettys past. You will be visited by three spirits. Listen to them, and do what they say, or your (block)chains will be heavier than mine.
Together, these hieroglyphics give archaeologists hints about where the workers came from, what their lives were like, and who they worked for. Nowhere have archaeologists found signs of slavery or foreign workers. Meanwhile, there is ample evidence of labor tax collection throughout ancient Egypt. That’s led some researchers to suggest workers might have rotated through tours of construction, like a form of national service. However, it’s also unclear if that means the workers were coerced.
Got that? "Researchers" say it wasn't slavery. It was "national service." Give them another couple years to research the topic, and they'll be able to explain it was just like playing Minecraft, only with real blocks. Loads of fun for the whole conscripted family!
Women in China's "re-education" camps for Uighurs have been systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured, according to detailed new accounts obtained by the BBC.
No sweat. Xi will just get some researchers to rename it "national service."
The Justice Department withdrew a lawsuit that alleged Yale University violated federal civil-rights law by discriminating against white and Asian-American undergraduate applicants, the latest indication that the Biden administration is shifting the federal government’s stance on civil-rights enforcement from that of the Trump administration.
Pretty soon, we'll perfect bizarro world college admissions where the only way a white male can attend is to make the football team.
The character trait that typically accompanies fame is extreme narcissism. Many friends quickly went messianically deranged when their social media accounts exploded with followers. I remember being in the ‘backstage’ area of a Bernie rally thinking that it felt less like a protest and more like the greenroom at a pop concert. People chatted to each other distractedly, glancing every few seconds at their phones or over each other’s shoulders for someone more famous to talk to before going on stage to passionately expostulate on the evils of inequality. For all its supposed utopianism, this is a cynically competitive and rigidly hierarchical scene.
I've been accused of being a narcissist. But enough about me. What do you think about me?
“They're going to get rid of the infrastructure that allows individualized tracking and profiling on the web,” says Bennett Cyphers, a technologist at the civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “They're going to replace it with something that still allows targeted advertising—just doing it a different way.”
Cookies for me, but not for thee, says Google, and every toddler's mother.
Last September, India was confirming nearly 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day. It was on track to overtake the United States to become the country with the highest reported COVID-19 caseload in the world. Hospitals were full. The Indian economy nosedived into an unprecedented recession. But four months later, India's coronavirus numbers have plummeted. Late last month, on Jan. 26, the country's Health Ministry confirmed a record low of about 9,100 new daily cases — in a country of nearly 1.4 billion people. It was India's lowest daily tally in eight months.
Flu season in India runs from October to February. It's February. You're welcome.
In new research published in Advanced Materials in December, the QUT team describes a design that uses a capacitor-style titanium carbide-based negative electrode and a battery-style graphene-hybrid positive electrode. The result, says the team, is a hybrid capacitor with a power density (and thus charging capability) "about 10 times that of lithium batteries", and an energy density "close to that of nickel metal hydride batteries."
People mistakenly believe that designing electric cars is an electric car problem. But electric cars are about as old as gasoline-powered designs. They didn't catch on because the batteries sucked, and gasoline rocked, and was damn near free. The batteries still suck, and only work on a boondoggle basis. Supercapacitors are the future of electric cars and solar storage.
Well, that's the links for this morning. I hope you found them enjoyable or informative or amusing. But remember: It's the individual that's finished. It's the single, solitary human being that's finished. It's every single one of you out there that's finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It's a nation of some two hundred odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods.
I'm sorry. Did I say that out loud? I meant to say, "Have a nice day!"
Today I stopped at Costco after working at the food bank. I had to buy some things, but most importantly I had to return the laundry detergent I'd purchased. Naturally, not being aware of anything besides price, I'd bought a brand I was familiar with, but for some reason was on sale at a rate considerably cheaper than Costco's house brand. Seems like a deal. Until Mrs. Bulldog said "No, return it." So today was return day.
As I stood in line, I noticed the 3 people ahead of me having their returns rejected, which I thought was odd. I've returned a few things to Costco, and it's rarely a problem especially if you have a receipt or plan to use the credit immediately (as I intended to). When I got to the desk, I was told that Governor Murphy had passed a "Hoarding Law" which meant certain items couldn't be returned because they were deemed "essential" and the government had worried in March that hoarders would purchase large amounts to gouge prices. Laundry detergent is on the list.
Now, I really have no problem with price gouging. It's part of the natural turn of events in certain crises and will usually help increase production (which eventually drives down prices) and services to the areas which are impacted by a crisis. I don't even have a problem with hoarding. I'm not likely to do either of these things, but if others want to, that's their gig, not mine. But now I'm stuck dealing with this detergent and the ire of Mrs. Bulldog, clearly an event our governor, who is obviously kindly and greatly more intelligent than everyone else in the New Jersey area, doesn't care about. Actually, I'm less concerned with the ire of Mrs. Bulldog and really was more concerned with the people I noticed who were distraught because they'd purchased things they didn't want/need and just wanted to return them.
I should be clear that my Costco isn't exactly in a really wealthy part of my county. Lots of locals, many who probably have been very adversely affected by Covid, shop here. So seeing them getting upset at the counter didn't surprise me. But it's just an annoying example of how politicians insert themselves into everyday lives and make life difficult. Sure they "mean well" - but they rarely realize they are hurting the people they are trying to help more often than not.
It's not kind to find amusement in other people's distress. So I won't. I'll just casually mention that it's a tremendous waste of money to send some people to college. So it's not that big of a deal that this money was dumped into a meme stock at a stratospheric high, shortly to make its way to the Pink Sheets. According to modern monetary practice, it's a much better allocation of the same money to send a stockbroker's kids to college. In a Porsche.
As much as young people on the internet like to imagine this as an epic, David vs Goliath, Wall Street vs Main Street showdown for the history books, from a bird's eye view it's actually just a brief dumpster fire where a couple hedge funds lost their shirts betting on one little small cap stock. It has happened before, and it will happen again. In 6 months, nobody will remember or care, except that (maybe) it will become more difficult for retail investors to trade options.
Ah, GameStop remorse will become a thing now. Well, say what you want about the Tulip Mania, but at least you could grow some flowers with what was left of your investment. Experts suggested planting the bulbs point down in the smoking hole of your finances.
The reputation of Dante Alighieri needs little burnishing: his Divine Comedy, tracing the poet’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, is widely regarded as one of the greatest works ever written. But more than 700 years after Dante was accused of corruption and condemned to be burned to death, his descendant is looking to clear his name. Sperello di Serego Alighieri, an astrophysicist, and the law professor Alessandro Traversi are working to see if Dante’s 1302 sentencing for corruption in political office can be reversed.
They're also thinking of revising the book to be more topical. They're adding a tenth circle to hell. It has a bad internet connection.
It used to be a joke, but it’s not so funny anymore. Google is threatening to block searches in Australia if the country implements a compulsory profit-sharing deal that would force tech giants like Google and Facebook to pay media companies for their content. But Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, isn’t sweating it. Morrison suggested Monday at the National Press Club of Australia that Australians can just use Microsoft’s search engine Bing if Google really wants to leave the country.
There are only two ways to look at this situation. If there is no adequate alternative to Google, then Google is a monopoly, and it can safely be regulated into the ground. If there are adequate alternatives, then Google can safely be regulated into the hereafter. Simple.
Amazon is paying nearly $62 million to settle charges that it took tips from its delivery drivers. The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday that Amazon didn’t pass on tips to drivers for more than two years, even though it promised shoppers and drivers it would do so. The FTC said Amazon didn’t stop taking the tips until 2019, when the company found out about the FTC’s investigation.
I have no idea where the exact inflection point was, but somewhere along the way WalMart became a charming, plucky, mom and pop store compared to Amazon.
It has been announced that Andy Jassy will become the new CEO of Amazon at the time. Jassy currently oversees the company's booming Amazon Web Services (AWS) division. Bezos says that he will be leaving Amazon in good hands as Andy is "well known inside the company" and has been a part of the Amazon family for "almost as long as I have."
He's going to retire to spend more time with his family and his employee's tips.
This paper explores the consequences that language change might trigger in the languages of crew members during a long journey in space or interplanetary settlement. Languages drift apart as communities grow more isolated from each other, so the long isolation of a traveling community may lead to enough difference to render its language unintelligible to the original community it left.
I don't know what this dialect would sound like, but I know that no matter how far out into space they go, no one is ever going to be able to correctly spell loser, rein, definitely, compliment, it's, or their ever again.
Suspected Chinese hackers exploited a flaw in software made by SolarWinds Corp to help break into U.S. government computers last year, five people familiar with the matter told Reuters, marking a new twist in a sprawling cybersecurity breach that U.S. lawmakers have labeled a national security emergency.
Research leader Prof Chris Stringer, from London's Natural History Museum, said: "Given that modern humans overlapped with Neanderthals in some parts of Europe after 45,000 years ago, the unusual features of these La Cotte individuals suggest that they could have had a dual Neanderthal-modern human ancestry."
No word on modern New Jersey teeth, but after watching Jersey Shore, I have my suspicions.
The new code of conduct bans harassment on and off the site, barring behaviors like hate speech, the use of slurs, stereotypes or attacks based on personal characteristics, as well as threats of physical violence and ‘hounding,’ or following someone across different articles to critique their work. It also bans deliberately introducing false or biased information into content. Wikipedia is a relatively trusted site compared to major social media platforms which have struggled to curb misinformation.
I can't imagine from what political perspective information will be determined to be "false or biased." It's a deep mystery.
Leasing fell by nearly 47% from the same period last year. That came even as asking rents dipped for the seventh straight month to $73.65 a square foot on average, the lowest in almost three years.
It's going to be really hard to get the working wealthy back into pants.
Well, the whole country is shoveling today. The West Coast is shoveling mud, the Midwest is shoveling snow, the Northeast is shoveling slush, and you know what they're shoveling in Washington. Hint: It's not shinola. By the way, our first item is an entire rundown of how that offal gets shoveled. Pay attention.
These organisations constantly cite each other’s work, recycle the same personnel and fund, ‘support’ and ‘partner with’ each other’s projects on multiple different levels. Moreover, perhaps the most startling thing for me in conducting this impromptu investigation was how many people I knew who were on the boards, steering committees or staff of these organisations. And I don’t mean know of. I mean, personally, know. Because that’s how far-reaching and yet incestuous this sector is. It’s virtually impossible to be politically active without running into them, yet they stick together like a highly-funded clan.
I hate to break it to you, but deplatforming conservatives from any meaningful place online was the last step, not the first. Act accordingly.
The Inspiration4 crew will receive commercial astronaut training by SpaceX on the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, orbital mechanics, operating in microgravity, zero gravity, and other forms of stress testing. They will go through emergency preparedness training, spacesuit and spacecraft ingress and egress exercises, as well as partial and full mission simulations.
It's impolitic to say so, but America's trips to the moon were just stunts. Yeah, yeah, we got Tang and Velcro, and showed up the Soviets, but the moon is just a really boring Disneyland with a very expensive ticket. Well, pretty soon, you can buy tickets, too.
During a routine compliance evaluation, the department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs identified pay disparities affecting female employees in software engineering positions at its facilities in Mountain View, and in Seattle and Kirkland, Washington. The agency also identified hiring rate differences that disadvantaged female and Asian applicants for software engineering positions at Google’s locations in San Francisco and Sunnyvale, and in Kirkland.
Recent attempts to unionize at Google are superfluous. Apparently everybody's got to be paid the same already. Or else.
Ford Motor Co. and Google on Monday said they have formed a six-year "strategic partnership" under which the automaker will introduce the Android operating system into millions of vehicles and use Google technology for everything from in-vehicle connected services to manufacturing processes.
Ford and Google Cloud? I don't know why, but I'm reminded that two drunks often lean on each other to keep upright. Have fun with your new Woke dashboard.
To recreate a meal that comes close to what may have been served here, one can begin by looking at the archaeological remains found inside. This includes the imagery in the frescoes painted on the service counter and the contents of the amphorae and the dolia. One dolium contained the bones of duck, swine, goat, and fish, as well as shells from land snails. The duck bones in particular correspond to the fresco of two mallards painted on the front of the counter, perhaps as a pictorial menu for the illiterate majority at the time.
Pretty interesting, but if you're prone to telling the truth, the counter of the excavated food joint in Pompeii looks exactly like a Subway sandwich shop.
The warrior interred with the ship is thought to have been an Anglo-Saxon king, perhaps Rædwald of East Anglia, who ruled a kingdom that included Suffolk between about 599 and 624. Dates on coins buried at the site coincide with his reign, and the quality and value of the grave goods suggest a person of extreme influence.
Two women meet at the mall. -Hello Gladys, it's nice to see you. I was sorry to hear that your husband passed away. -Yes, he was a good man, always looking out for me, even in death. -Really? What do you mean? -On his death bed, he told me not to spend more than $10,000 on the stone. The widow then holds out her hand with a giant diamond ring on it. -How did I do?
In a press release, the company said its contract, with the U.S. Defense Department, will help fund construction of Ellume's first manufacturing plant in the U.S. Once completed, it will produce more than 500,000 tests per day, according to the company. The test uses a relatively short nasal swab to collect a sample. The sample is put into a digital analyzer linked to a smartphone app. In December, the company told NPR that the test would be available for about $30.
It'll be fun to sneeze on your phone instead of just cursing at it.
Simpson is CEO of OTC bulletin board company Zann Corp, a provider of advanced technology products for niche markets, and has experienced an inexplicable excess shares situation over the past two-and-a-half years. Since November 2003, Zann's stock price has plummeted over 98%. This, Simpson claims, makes no sense since his company has performed relatively well. The reason for this extreme underperformance, Simpson believes, is that his company has been subject to severe naked short selling – where stocks are short sold without having been borrowed before the time of settlement, if at all.
Those crazy kids at Wall Street Bets have stumbled onto a real nest of snakes. They'll eventually be broken on the Wall Street wheel, of course, and blame the wrong people for their troubles, and the problem won't get fixed, but think of the demagoguery and additional taxes we can look forward to from all this!
The patent, which was filed in 2018 and granted on 12 January, would allow the streaming giant to "make observations" about a user's environment and emotions using speech recognition technology. Spotify could then play music reflecting their mood or even their social setting - "e.g. alone, small group, party," according to the patent.
Why does Spotify keep playing Rage Against the Machine songs over and over? I went as far as saying I liked disco and Wayne Newton, but it saw right through that ruse.
Bird Dog's at the vet, getting his teeth sharpened or something. Sorry, you're stuck with me again. I'm afraid I'm rather cranky this morning. On top of my general demeanor, I haven't read a newspaper or watched TV in over 20 years. That indicates that this isn't shaping up to be an informative session for you fine people. However, I'll do my best, because back in my day, we gave everything our best effort, even if it was doomed to failure. You know, like elections and public school.
“It won’t work on Internet Explorer; it only works in Chrome. The ‘Next’ button is all the way down and to the right, so if you’re on a cell phone, you literally can’t see it,” says Rowe. “In the first round, people using VAMS mostly had advanced degrees. If you’re 75 and someone asks you to log into VAMS, there is zero way it’ll happen without help.”
Back in my day, a woman with a beehive hairdo and more eyeshadow than Cleopatra wearing eyeglasses on a chain would make our doctor's appointments, and we were too terrified of her to miss one.
Well, I didn't browse 1990s television in the 1990s, and I'm not going to start now. And back in my day, we used a compliant toddler to change the channel, not a remote.
All but two US states — Montana and Wyoming— now have police or fire departments participating in Amazon’s Ring network, which lets law enforcement ask users for footage from their Ring security cameras to assist with investigations, the Financial Times reported.
Why, back in my day, we made the Stasi build their own system of totalitarian surveillance.
Silveti had paid his brother-in-law to send his workers on vacation and broke a hole in an exterior wall large enough for a truck to pass through. CIA station vehicles idled outside, their drivers studying their mirrors for agents of the KGB. Meanwhile, the farewell party was underway at the hotel. According to Silveti, the Soviet soldiers “let loose with the American prostitutes, and with the drinks.” Zambernardi’s son Paul told me that his father bought LSD to “put a Mickey on them all.” With every shot of tequila, thoughts of shipping manifests and cargo evaporated.
Why, back in my day, we had to pay for our own LSD and prostitutes.
Silver broke above $30 an ounce for the first time since 2013 on Monday as an army of retail traders stormed into the metal after betting billions of dollars on stocks last week, triggering risks of a multi-asset melt-up in global markets.
Why back in my day, we had to mine our own silver.
I loved building those crazy WWI biplanes and triplanes. The construction was unbelievably intricate. It was basically building the actual plane, just smaller. The wings and fuselage would get covered with some sort of flimsy paper stuff, and you’d paint it with some kind of toxic goo that gave you a headache for a month
Why, back in my day, our parents encouraged us to sniff glue.
Online retailers know a lot about how their customers are navigating their virtual stores. Offline retailers are not so lucky. Together with consumer behavior experts B:Clarity and a multinational home appliance brand we built a system to help understand customer movement and behavior.
Back in my day, you had to shoplift something to get followed around the store like that.
Policymakers are growing increasingly interested in the effects of vocational training on labour-market outcomes. This column uses a quasi-experimental design based on admissions cut-offs to secondary education in Finland to study the long-term effects of access to vocational education.
Why, back in my day, we'd greet research like this with a resounding, "Duh." And vocational training consisted of a very dirty plumber yelling at you to go get a Stilson wrench off the truck, and be back in two minutes or you're fired.
The New York-based hedge fund sustained a $4.5 billion fall in its assets from the end of last year to $8 billion, even after a $2.75 billion cash injection from Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel. Melvin became the target of retail traders who coordinated to drive up the share price of GameStop on online message boards such as Reddit, after the firm disclosed its bet against the company in regulatory filings.
Back in my day, you didn't have to hire an expert to lose half your money in the stock market. You could just buy ten shares of anything and vote democrat.
The coup follows a disputed election in November that Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won by a landslide. The main opposition party, the army-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, claimed the vote was marred by fraud. Myanmar's election commission rejected the allegations but tensions between the two sides had been rising for weeks.
Back in my day, jokes about coups following stolen elections didn't just write themselves. And we called it Burma.
And of course, back in my day, we told everyone to have a nice day. I still do, and mean it.
I had to write and read a few paragraphs on that topic in middle school. I can't remember what I said but it was probably something optimistic about the "American mythology."
“Nationalism” is now seen as a destructive ideology, next-door to or perhaps cohabitating with “fascism.” Our would-be liberators hold that the Declaration and the Constitution are instruments of tyranny, and that taking them seriously poses a grave threat to the kind of wise, benevolent government that the experts are earnestly trying to “deliver” for us. A nation, after all, has borders and other kinds of boundaries. If it is a republic, it expects its citizens to take responsibility for electing its leaders and helping to shape its laws. These are unquestionable goods in the eyes of those who uphold the teaching of the American Founding, but they are obstacles to progress in the eyes of those who are eager to move us into a new historical epoch.
More or less without exception each one of the executive orders promulgated by the gentleman from Madame Tussauds on January 20 belies the principles of good government, though each one in its own distinctive way. Taking the rationale of any one of them to its logical conclusion, one can infer the others and the tyrannical dystopia they mean to hang around our necks. We’re on the road to find out...
As I predicted, as soon as Joe Biden became president, the narrative on COVID-19 would change. Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) proved me right.
What really was/is the point of COVID testing? Unless you are ill and your doctor needs to know?
I have posted several times about my Food Bank work. I'm not doing this to say "Hey look at me aren't I so giving?" After all, I'd barely done any work over the years with them, aside from donations and occasional assistance at the pantry.
I'm a firm believer in giving back in some form, and doing it quietly. In the Bible, Jesus made it clear you shouldn't promote your good works in order to promote yourself, and I believe that. My grandfather also felt this way, his donations always came from "A Friend" and no other ID was provided. I tend to do this, as well. Anonymity (or some degree of it) here helps reduce the impact of me promoting myself via 'good works'.
On the other hand, drawing attention to needs, and providing useful information about charitable works is not easily done without a reasonable voice. To a degree, I give some celebrities a pass when they promote their 'good works'. A lot depends on just how they are doing that work. If they make it about themselves and what they are doing (Ed Begley, Jr. and his incessant BS about how 'green' he is would be an example - he's wealthy, so it's easy to be 'green' and it's a means by which he can draw attention to his declining celebrity status), then I tend find their points less credible.
My weekly time at the Food Bank has been very enlightening. Yesterday was different, I did something I wasn't used to doing. "Separating and stocking" it was called. Normally I pack food into boxes for shut-ins, SNAP supplement, or other family assistance. Some of that food is donated by large supermarkets or food producers, unsold stuff that hasn't quite hit expiration. Most is purchased by the bank itself, from donations. A commenter had asked where the food came from, and I have learned that a good portion is purchased, another good chunk donated.
Yesterday I learned about another big portion of it. Individual donations. When you clean out your pantry and drop it off at your local Food Bank, it goes into a bin and when there's enough volunteers like me spend hours unpacking and sorting. It's astounding, to be honest. For several reasons.
First, and I say this because we don't tend to think about it, and we mean well, but a good portion of the food donated is useless. Not the majority, but a noticeable minority of it.
To explain why, and maybe help save other volunteers time and effort, it's worth noting how the food is broken out. There are about 20 separate boxes, among them: Coffee & Tea, Cereal, Rice & Pasta, Canned Protein, Condiments, Baking Goods, Snacks, Drinks, Water, Peanut Butter, Vegetables, Fruit, Soups and Broth, and Peanut Related products. There are more, but these are the main ones.
There are at least 3 reasons I noticed for why food is tossed. First - boxed foods often are donated partially opened. Even if there is a wrapped package inside, many banks will reject the food immediately. Particularly if it includes individually wrapped packages without expiration dates on them. And that's a second reason - Expiration Dates. While a canned good dated Oct. 2, 2020 is acceptable until 2022, a boxed good with the same date is not always. It may have a 3-6 month acceptable shelf life, and if it is baby food it must not be past expiration.
These may seem somewhat questionable guidelines for food freely donated, but trust me, the artichoke hearts I picked up 3 years expired were not in the least appetizing. I may have eaten them if I'd stored them in my refirigerator at home, but realizing the nature of the situation (as my supervisor said) is such that maybe a year ago we MAY have been willing to push some limits, but right now we can't afford to.
In addition, I picked up 2 twenty pound bags of rice. Some of the rice spilled out, and I knew that bag had to go (who wants to attract rats and insects? That's the third reason...resealed boxes/bags. The first bag I threw out. The second wound up getting tossed when a supervisor noticed a hole which someone had taped over.
One other thing I learned had to do with peanuts. As you probably realize, anything that had peanuts in it, or was prepared in a facility with peanuts, was put in the "Peanut" box. What you may not realize is how much food is prepared in facilities that handle peanuts. I handled 3 different kinds of Ramen packages. The most well-known brand, Top Ramen, was a "Peanut" product. The others were Soup and Broth, but I was shocked at all the items that wound up in "Peanuts". Sometimes you just don't think much about it.
While I am always proud that we manage to prepare weekly food boxes for people, often up to 750 in a 3 hour shift, yesterday was another kind of learning experience. When I donate food in the future, I'll be sure to box it, separate it and make sure the expiration dates are acceptable. I'm sure I meant well donating a jar of olives that was 3 years past expiration, but I had no idea I was probably making someone do the work I should have done and just tossed them. Or that half open box of mac and cheese, which I taped closed, and which someone could have used. That someone being me...not someone else.
It was good knowing we sorted 524 boxes of these various foods. They are sent to local food pantries for distribution, or used in local food kitchens.
One last thing I noticed while I was there was the number of meals served each year. This past year, 2020, the number more than doubled.
Part of that was due to the ill-considered and misguided lockdowns which cost us jobs and productivity. But every year from the year it was founded, the Food Bank has seen the numbers of meals served increase. This past year may wind up being an anomaly. I hope it is. But it's worth knowing that volunteers are needed, and if you have it in you to spend a few hours a week, it's worth it. Hopefully I can convince my next employer that this is an important thing I do and get 3 hours a week to continue doing the volunteer work. I recommend it. As much as I I'd like to say I'm doing it because I ike to help people, the reality is I'm doing it for me. It makes me feel good. That's pretty much why we do most of whatever we do in life, and I'd never recommend doing it if you find it annoying or a pain in the ass. I have learned a lot, I can say that.
The Bee Gees 
TRAWLER BLAST - 
How many early human species