Wear the Mask, Don't EAT the Mask

Couples: if one of you ain't putting out because of virus fears, remind them that you're both ok and working from home.

Be careful of Fido, though. A few dogs have shown symptoms, so make sure he wears one of those silly masks. And good luck getting it on him.

• The mayor of Philadelphia, Jim Kenney, is on board with the shelter-in-place order, except for gun crimes and people who don't pay their soda tax. Mayor Kenney said they deserve to be shot anyway.
• Illegal Aliens will be allowed to move into City Council, much to the chagrin of City Council. The denizens of Philly are surprisingly behind the move, as the illegals will no doubt steal less than City Council proper.
• I kid - Kenney will order all $250/night and up hotels to house the illegals.

But seriously... we wouldn't know what to do if Penny got sick. She has some 'habits' that would prove... difficult. Every night when I get in bed, she races me to my pillow and licks my face until she has to be physically removed from me. Even Mrs lefty doesn't do this, so we're not sure what the dog finds appealing (as opposed to appalling).

• Staying in has really cramped this blog's style. Some of you are surprised to discover this blog has any style.
• I'm just kidding: I barely go out anyway. I actually have masks, but different kinds.

Can you imagine that, in some country that is not the US, people are coming to this blog to learn what it's like for Americans? This should guarantee fat aid packages from overseas.

• Are you missing live sports?
• I'm not.

Even uncontacted tribes in Brazil may face coronavirus risk

Of course they do - the cannibals may eat infected hunters.

In times of emergency, you have your people who operate with good sense, and you have your Type-A overachievers who could use some serious medicine: the people who build themselves standing desks. These are the people who should be tested first, just so they get out of the house.

Now that you're mostly housebound, here's a factlet to share with friends and family: vampire bats bond by grooming first to build trust before sharing blood. So sleep with your neck exposed: maybe the little f'ers will get coronavirus.

A third of men carrying out rough sex acts such as biting and choking do not ask for consent, a survey finds. One must really learn to behave, especially in the current climate. If one takes a bite out of another, one should ask first. A stupid little virus and people go cannibal...

• Senator Rand Paul has tested positive for the virus, but he's asymptomatic. Which gives me an idea.... let's quarantine all politicians. Hopefully they can do a lot less damage there.

GameStop will temporarily close all storefronts to customers.
No one will notice the difference.

• Harvey Weinstein tested positive. I'll bet nobody's visiting.

Today I identify as   Area 50  (Area 51's old, disused relative)

• OOPS - all 16 Dead Sea Scroll fragments in the Museum of the Bible are fakes, most likely by the same source.
• Museum changes name to Museum of the Bible, forged.

Mozilla is removing FTP from Firefox shortly. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It's ancient and not secure. They can replace is with the secure SFTP (Secure FTP) but won't, perhaps due to the weather. It's been quite a while since I've used Windows, but I remember a program called Filezilla for FTP. If you rely on FTP, give it a look. I think Microsoft Explorer does FTP but it's been a while and let's face it - who wants to use Explorer?

• Faceyspaces to lower video quality in Latin America, following Europe
• Now if they could only raise their reader quality...

Hackers were caught by white hat hackers after getting into the Instagram account of an unnamed porn star and demanding $5,000. I'm thinking to myself, my mom would say "now is the time to put your skills to the test." She's right. Plus the fringe benefits would be wild.

• Our favorite pizza place is open. So remember: stockpile garlic.

SJW Hits Corona  - spot the made-up story

Speech recognition algorithms may also have racial bias.

Upset that Coronavirus hits cis hetero whites less than blacks; calls for deliberate infection of Patriarchy.

there's nothing like a Chow

My Service Elephant has Coronavirus

Thirdhand smoke wafting off moviegoers hurts air quality in theaters

Thirdhand smoke? Is that the smoke by the candy stand?

When was the last time you saw someone smoke at the movies?

UPDATE: Are you ready? Thirdhand smoke is the residue of smoke left on coats and clothes. Think of the benefits... you can smoke without smoking! Just go to a theater and inhale. You'll still get cancer, but at least you didn't have to light anything.

• You can now jailbreak an iPhone with an Android phone
• No, I did not write that headline.

Linspire 8.7 Is Trying to Persuade More Windows Users to Use Linux

I'd recommend Xubuntu, but take a look.

• Harvey Weinstein moved to jail after heart surgery
• Yeah, sure. Convenient walker, convenient heart surgery. Upcoming: convenient AIDS. His entire body is failing before prison - this is unprecedented. And shocking! He's trying to escape, one piece at a time.

SJW Speakings

Described as a horror drama, Antebellum tells the story of a 'modern-day social activist who finds herself traveling back in time to the 1800s.' It's Blog Gold here at ThermionicEmissions.

• The citizens immediately institutionalize her because she has green hair.
• They burn her at the stake, because she has a bone through her nose.
• She gets wooden teeth! Every time she says something about women running things, people hit her in the mouth with a 2x4.
• Her sex life is exactly like it was in 2020: even her fellow inmates think she's too crazy to have sex with.
• frequently accused of being a weird man
• her fellow inmates at the Happy Place<tm> keep asking who Hillary is and why women should vote for her. Also, what is vote?
• Insists that women are just as crazy as men, so why aren't there more women in the Loony Bin?
• Never makes it back to 2020 because she was killed after trying to explain that men can have periods too.

We went out for dinner just for fun. Usually this involves people dying (and we hoped it wasn't us). As we walked in, there were ladies handing out roses for Women's Day.
Women's Day?
I couldn't hear the explanation because of the blood boiling in my ears. She refused to give me a rose. I told her I identify as a woman, and can get pregnant like a woman, and even menna... minister... mennistrate..... but she did not recognize me as a woman. Next weekend we're picketing the place. I'm bringing in the Ladies Guild: at the front of the march will be 20 very large women with facial hair and signs, demanding gender equality. And free food.

• Alanis Morissette's debut - Jagged Little Pill, is 25 years old.
• And still sounds like a cat having an operation without anesthetic

Ya know Virgin Media? A data breach exposed 900,000 customers' info.

In other words, a breach made them Virgin no more.

• Microsoft, Faceyspaces, Amazon workers told to stay home because of coronavirus
• And because nobody likes them 

Special Coronavirus Coverage

The coronavirus has spread to Venice, California.
Governor Newsom is passing a law against it.

Speaking of coronavirus, we have it locally now. 

Why?

Because some idiot who has it attended a function. 5 schools are closed.

They need to jail this person, but I have it on good authority that you can't arrest someone for excessive stupidity.

Some local groups have canceled weekly meetings, claiming there are cases closeby.

People are going insane in stores, like they do here when 1/4" of snow is forecast: they buy all the bread and milk. Now they're buying masks and flu medicines. And condoms, because you gotta do something while you're stuck inside.


There has never been a better time to have some strange neuroses, especially with coronavirus running rampant, like Congress running to vote itself a pay raise.

• Agoraphobes are now being celebrated - they don't leave the house!
• Germphobes take all sorts of precautions and never shake hands.
• Obsessive Compulsive hand-washers are now being recognized as The Neurosis to Have, according to Time Magazine.
• The paranoid wear masks so no one knows who they are. Now they blend right in. Plus facial recognition doesn't work with masks.
• The depressed don't feel like getting out of bed anyway.
• The bipolars are running to the store to buy everything, but.. they're... probably.. gonna... stay...in...bed... for.... a...while.
• The schizophrenics don't go out because they're having a perfectly nice conversation. With the front door.

Today I identify as   a 5 day Postal Service delivery box that costs $24.99 to mail across town.

• I asked Wife why coronavirus doesn't attack the eyes.
• She said nothing.
• I asked again.
• She said nothing again.
• I think she's onto me.

Most people are in PANIC mode, not helped at all by the 24 hour TV/Radio/News/social media barrage. It's quite frankly not fair. Nobody talks about the Good that the virus will bring

• you will finally be able to get a seat at that restaurant (although you'll probably be ignored for 30 minutes when you first enter)
• there will be no traffic at all, when you paint CORONAVIRUS on your car
• while police and fire get right of way, World Health Organization will always get in first
• there will be a coronavirus baby boom, but the kids won't know what that means
• there will be a divorce boom, after husband and wife are forced to be in the same house for a few weeks

• I just discovered I'm dyslexic. Mrs lefty asked me how it took so many years to figure this out.
• Because I see the year 2020 and read it as 1970.

In the time I have had my last 2 phones, my dear wife has had only one. The screen is cracked (in letters that spell her name). The case resembles a pair of jeans that just gave up and keeps ripping itself, hoping its owner will finally develop sense and throw it out. I think it has encephalitis: it randomly changes account pictures and phone numbers, so you never know who you're dialing. This week, I'm Dr lefty Giancanna, with a picture of her sister's dog. Nobody in or out of the phone industry has ever seen this before. It's not a virus.

Normally this would not bother me at all.
But this is my house we're talking about. The phone rings only when I need to be undisturbed. Mrs lefty sets an alarm when she takes a nap. I know this because the alarm goes off 6 times because the phone was left near me, not taken to the bedroom. She has alarms set to remind her there are alarms set.

The worst, and I mean worst, thing about the phone is that it randomly changes ringtone. I made her a bunch of ringtones from her favorite songs, guaranteeing we'll never hear any of them. The current tone sounds like... stay with me for a moment... take a set of stairs, with about 20 steps. Line up a marching band, complete with instruments, 2 per step. Push the top person down, starting a domino effect, taking the rest of them down, one step at a time. If anyone doesn't fall over, the second set of marchers will go down, so we'll have several lines of marching band, falling down the steps, playing their instruments.

And that's what the ringtone sounds like.

• Before we invented civilization, the White House area was nothing but swampland. Since we upgraded civilization, the White House is a beautiful building, occupied by mud, mosquitos, and lethal parasites.

We got one of those horrible noise alerts coming from our phones the other day. We hoped it was a test of the Emergency Broadcast System, because those are cool. It turned out to be a serious weather warning: EXTREME SUN FORECAST FOR THE NEXT 2 DAYS. REPEAT - EXTREME SUN FORECAST FOR THE NEXT 2 DAYS. Keep small children inside and use plenty of sunscreen, especially if you're walking to your car.

Fortunately we had a Family Plan, so after we got done yelling PANIC PANIC, we consulted the family plan. We just got done spending two days in the basement, where it was cold and dark, like every other day. That was a close one.

The March of the Magnetic Moles

Blue Cross and Blue Shield laid out $55M for a test of making cheap generic meds. This is a very interesting and clever concept. Assuming Big Pharma doesn't find a way to kill this, costs to cover meds will go down. Unless BC/BS chooses to pass the savings along to itself.....

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.” Walter Elliott

The Harvey Weinstein trial continues, with some sort of Huge Process Debate over Rosie Perez appearing on the stand. Nobody will admit to calling Rosie to take the stand, but the judge has been called upon to adjudicate the matter. It has further been suggested that no one called Ms. Perez to appear; she just showed up because she likes judges and hasn't been in a hit movie for years.

The judge ruled that Rosie cannot participate in the trial because she may be involved in the penal phase: if Weinstein is convicted, he will be sentenced to 23 hours per day of Rosie talking at him in his cell.

I'm picking up law via tv...

• Everybody stands up, as some person in an evil looking black robe walks into the room. There is no applause or verbal utterance.
• Robe seems to be in charge, backed up by several severe-looking folks with weapons. Whenever someone misbehaves, these folks observe and make a determination as to whether it merits movement on their part.
• The room is divided down the middle, with the guilty party (the Accused) on the right and a lot of people in suits on the left (The Attackers). There's a large box on the right, with 12 Dudes sitting there.
• Robe asks someone from the audience to sit by him. Again, there is no applause. Seat looks up to Robe.
• Regardless of which side, Suits get up and ask Seat things, frequently nasty.
• The moment a Suit asks a question, the other side's Suits scream "OBJECTION," and Robe barks a 2 syllable word.
• New Seats are seated now and then, after which, Suits and Robe bicker.
• Dudes listen to everything Seats say, unless Robe says they are to ignore what Seat says. Somehow they're supposed to unhear what Seats say. This is a quantum leap in physics.
• When the arguing is done, Dudes go to hotels, where they get free food and hotel and they chat about what they heard. A few days later, one of the guys with the guns pops by and tells them they have to all agree on what they heard. Oh. So Dudes sit and chat, between swimming, sunbathing, and gambling. If they're clever, they can make this go on for weeks. 
• Eventually Dudes come to a consensus or they don't, whereupon they go back into the box, reluctantly, with bitchin' tans. They tell Robe if they agreed or couldn't agree.
• Robe says Accused goes to jail or home. If jail, Robe tells Accused to come back in a few weeks to learn how long he'll be in jail. Nobody knows why.  One time a Suit suggested Robe say how long Accused will stay in jail after Robe makes the decision. This particular Suit is still in jail.

The Oregon Supreme Court ok'd signature-gathering on a petition to limit self-checkout kiosks in stores.

There's so much going on here.....

As citizens, we don't like these things. They're a pain in the ass, frequently misbehave, and we feel bad for displaced staff. Or some of us do.

Another serious backer is the public-welfare-minded AFL-CIO.
This union, surprisingly enough, represents 300,000 workers and is worried about technology taking jobs. STOP LAUGHING. They claim the kiosks make customers feel socially isolated, particularly elderly people. I SAID STOP LAUGHING. The AFL-CIO employs a team of 1,427 lawyers and public relations people, who generate Ridiculous Shit<tm> like this. "Make sure to get the old people in there somewhere - people love old people."  They are only slightly concerned that the kiosks allow the store to use part time workers. I almost forgot: the kiosks make it easier for minors to buy alcohol and people to steal from stores. "Hey Bob - make sure to get something in there for the children. People love children."

I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the union representing the workers, for their thoughtless campaign for the rights and well-being of the public.

In totally unrelated news, Walmart bombed the state of Oregon.

• Best online for the month:  What did Kobe know about Hillary Clinton?

WTF is wrong with you people department

20 state Attorneys general are filing a suit challenging a federal regulation that could allow blueprints for making guns on 3D printers to be posted in the internet. Let's conveniently ignore the fact that the gov't has no business messing with the internet....

Proponents: we have a legal right
Attorneys general: but but but increase in gun violence, weapons in the hands of criminals, domestic abuse, dogs and cats living together.....

We don't give a care for rights - we want this stopped!
It's for the children.

Information wants to be free, as it should.
The 2nd Amendment doesn't technically give us the right to bear arms. What it does is guarantee there will not be any laws against our natural right to bear arms (...endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights...). Understand: the right to bear arms is considered a natural right. It supersedes the Constitution, along with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Choosing to ignore this legal bit, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro took to Twitter to say nobody needs weapons made from 3-d printers and the instructions shouldn't be online. AG Shapiro didn't open Twitter the next day because of 1,003 'polite' responses from people who don't choose to ignore the Constitution. When I say 'polite,' I mean the response I sent, not the 1,002 others.

• I didn't want to read Shakespeare because the words were all in the wrong place.   - Steven Bassett

• Conspiracy:  Rip Taylor, often confused with Rip Torn, died in 2019 at 88. Rip Torn, often confused with Rip Taylor, died in 2019 at 88.

Rip Taylor, with his famous mustache and rug

Rip Torn - fought aliens with Will Smith

Linda Fiorentino - also fought aliens with Will Smith. Makes my heart go faster.

There is a story about a woman (a Registered Nurse) driving her car in the Southwest, with some sort of orb pacing her. Pulling into her parking spot, she sees a rabbit, which was about 4-5 feet tall. She phones her parents in the apartment and tells them to come out, armed. One comes out and Rabbit disappears.

They call Police, who, for some reason, call MUFON (Mutual UFO Network). Mufon comes out and checks things out. The side of the car near the orb is magnetized. Radiator and oil were magnetized. They call in the local Navaho Rangers, who also take a look. In this neighborhood, this isn't terribly odd. The Navaho are somewhat suspicious of Paleface and you do not walk on their land without permission.

So if you see any giant rabbits in your driveway, call MUFON and the Navaho. If nothing else, they have some great jewelry.

• Annanuki: giants who came to earth from the heavens
• Spannunaki: fuzzy creatures with large flaps, who came to earth to be a friend to Man.
• Afghanistan: a huge drug producer, occupied by the US for years for some good reason, that we're not privy to.
• CockerSpanistan: a land where you can't sit or lay down because a dog is on your seat or pillow.

Previously I asked about what we (armed forces) have in the can, as concerns technology. The SR-71 Blackbird was being worked on in the 50s, I think, so by the time we saw it, it was awe-inspiring and fascinating. The head of Skunk Works (a division of Lockheed Martin), the guys who put the technology together and produce planes, said we have the technology to take ET home. I wondered what this is, because we haven't seen it, other than a few reports of things here and there.

To answer my own question, Skunk Works is working on the SR-72, and have released a little info. It has a combined cycle propulsion system that merges a supersonic jet engine with a rocket engine, to exceed Mach 6. It will go right to the military, which gets all the Good Stuff<tm>. It is referred to as hypersonic, which makes me wonder what kind of word they need to describe the SR-72s successor. It is expected to be tested early this year.

An interesting intel site is Deep Black Horizon. Worth reading regularly.

I want to restate that the release of the Tic Tac ufo that the Navy documented was opposed by many High Up Officials because it was caused by demons. These people are in very high position in the Pentagon (and elsewhere?). I don't care what their religious persuasion is: I don't want these people in government.

• When buying dog treats, do you taste them first, or is it just...

[Insert I WAS RIGHT graphic. Again.]

Avast subsidiary sells 'Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site.'
The people who 'help protect your computer from malware' are selling your information. Read the very tiny print: free antivirus owns every bit of data going through it. When it's free, your data is the price.

Either buy a very good antivirus, or switch operating systems to a safer one, where malware is less likely.

UPDATE: For some reason, Avast shut down its subsidiary that sells your information. It hasn't stopped collecting your data, though.

• It turns out New York's Borgata Hotel is not in a central New Jersey wildlife preserve, but the ad the placed in Waze directed them to the preserve (govt-ese for swamp). 10 cars were towed.
• Must be related to the three GPSes that tried to send us into the Delaware River.

Today's trivia question: When watching British tv, the announcer can pronounce Illinois, but also says MARYland. Why?



Dear lefty

• What's this impeachment thing?
• One ass clown took office. The other group of ass clowns were out to get him since he took office. So it's the anti-gunners who own guns against the anti-big businessmen who own big businesses.

Today I identify as  instant coffee





SJW Stool

Being a white savior will not end gun violence and neither will white fragility - David Hogg

Cut down on emails if you want to fight global warming...

Welcome to the Snot Factory

Sometimes a man can get in trouble, through no fault of his own.
Like when your girlfriend answers with a simple hello, and you're in the shower and it's your wife on the phone...  Joe Walsh - Certain Situations

• In these times of ubiquitous surveillance, it's important to have and use all the tools to keep you relatively safe. Toward that end, PornHub has come out with their own VPN (virtual private network). This is the thing to use at free wifi spots and anywhere else, to keep your data safe. Available for android, iOS, and Windows, the app comes in free and paid versions. It is not restricted to PornHub use.
• I have not checked out the policies of the VPN, so if you want to install it, I highly recommend that you look at them first. One of the most important features is no logs.

Your friends at Faceyspaces just want you to know that they're not paying for the theft and misuse of your data by Cambridge Analytica. Oh, and by the way... they knew about this last year, but didn't say anything til they got caught in March. Lastly, Zuckerberg has a special message for all of Faceyspace's users: 

Nyah nyah, I'm not paying you for SHIT - all your data is MINE and I'll sell it to whomever I want and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

• I wanted to be the first to bring you the news: a new study by the Goodman Institute for Public Policy Research says the reason any Americans are poor is they're not working.
• I have advanced copies of next week's studies, where we discover: the reason she suffocated is that she wasn't breathing; the reason Americans are tired is they're not sleeping; and the reason men are so horny is they're flipping men.

So you bought one of those Amazon Alexas because they're so gee-whiz futuristic and it will listen and answer you, unlike your family.  As it turns out, it certainly does listen. It emailed and entire conversation a couple had to one of the people on their contact list. Amazon confirmed that's what happened and they're "taking steps to avoid this from happening in the future." It is extremely rare.

Before we proceed with my analysis, let's get one little thing out of the way: I TOLD YOU SO. Anything you can talk to that has a microphone in it can listen. These days it will listen. Anyone who has watched tv or read online news knows about devices eavesdropping. Anyone who reads this blog knows about it, in even greater foreboding detail.

The device is supposed to hang out, doing nothing, until it hears "Alexa", at which point you ask a question or tell it to do something. Then it goes back to sleep. Now Amazon tells us it definitely listened and definitely recorded a conversation that was not preceded with "Alexa" and definitely sent it to a contact on their list (because you gave it permission to access your contacts). Furthermore, it's rare, meaning it has happened before. 

Then there's the box from Google, which is trying to surpass Microsoft for Most Evil Corporation. Make no mistake - these boxes aren't there for your convenience. You are paying Amazon or Google to collect your conversations, emails, purchases, and whatever else it can mine.

• there was a police call today described as vehicle vs building. I wonder which one won.

Are you ready for more happy privacy news?
On the heels of the discovery that Securus was providing/selling cell phone tracking information to police, another company, LocationSmart, had an online feature that would, with the user's permission, give you their location information. However, and there is always a however, a Carnegie Mellon University PhD (Piled High and Deep) candidate discovered that you didn't have to use credentials at all to get the information. The feature was very accurate, from 100 yards to a mile. It was removed from the website.

They also store other technical data such as speed, heading, and IP address information among others, to provide accurate geo-targeted promotions for marketers, IoT assets, and tracking of business personnel in the field.

Now read that again.

We have at least two companies that track your cellphone. One did it quietly, without a warrant. One asked for your permission. Wanna bet there aren't more? It stores all sorts of information for marketing and tracking. No one is trying to hide it.... this is already built-in, unlike security. 

And this, me hearties, is how the system is going to fail everybody except its owners. In a mad rush to track and store all information possible on you, all sorts of sneaky projects will get launched, with all sorts of bugs. The ability to validate input (limiting input and making sure it can't fake the system) is junior level programming. 

Then there's Internet of Things (IoT). Because security is an afterthought here too, your light bulbs can be the way hackers get into your network. There is no serious use for internet-connected light bulbs. Or your toaster won't toast because your internet is down and it can't contact its server for updates. Or because some junior level programmer forgot the safety controls.

The Remaining Rant is that nothing that's happening is a real secret and hasn't happened before, in some variation. We've known about hacking forever, long before the personal computer was around. With each new technology, it seems we failed to learn the basic issues from the previous cycle. Plus the data hoarding is out of control. And you're paying for the privilege of being tracked.

• Isn't it cool that you can come for the sarcasm and stay for the security news? Please don't answer that.

Our president has taken the unprecedented step of making Twitter his official announcement platform. As is his wont, he blocked a number of people. As is their wont, seven of them sued under the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Two courts upheld the sevens' opinion, on First Amendment grounds. The courts held that, since Twitter is the official announcement platform, blocking them results in a violation of their First Amendment rights

"is a kind of digital town hall in which the president and his aides use the tweet function to communicate news and information to the public, and members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides and exchange views with one another”

I didn't expect this to go to First Amendment, especially the right to shoot replies to an elected official. Perhaps being excluded from the announcements, though. This can be remedied by not logging in to Twitter.   In addition, it would be smarter to mute these people, rather than block them. Muting shuts down any tweets from the muted individual and they are not aware of it.

Opinion:
I concur with the decision, but it's so ridiculously small a point...

The idea of "exchanging views with one another" is complete nonsense. These people are just butthurt that they can't be total assholes in their replies to the president. They happened to find a legal loophole that will allow them to sue and direct more negative attention to Trump. It's a pretty smart ploy.

Have you seen some of the crap directed at Trump on Twitter?
By way of observation, no other president had to deal with this level of nasty, down to death threats. Whether or not you agree with him.
As with most matters, I'm inclined to go with the law.

• Hillary Clinton says she wants to be the CEO of Faceyspaces because it's the largest source of news in the world. I think it's a match made in heaven. Zuckerberg is quietly evil; Hillary is overtly evil. Faceyspaces is in the middle evil. In addition to the largest source of news, it's the largest database of what people had to eat (with pictures), cat gifs, and when they're going on vacation (while listing their home address). It's the front page of the NSA - who better than Hillary to be in charge?

The good news: scientists have discovered the next superfood

More good news: it's non-dairy

Potentially bad news: it's cockroach milk crystals.

Question: Do you want to milk them?

• Seattle mussels have tested positive for opioids.
• Seattle Mussels is a football team, right?

Molestation, Thy Name is Weinstein

Good old Harvey is back in the news, as if he ever left.

He was arraigned on rape and criminal sex charges. 

What that means is that someone put reigns on him for some sex that was so good, it was criminal.

As a result, he must wear an electric monitor.

On his dick?

He posted a $1 million bail, because the judge did not want to see him in a place like jail. It's horrible there.. 

he'd be likely to become a participant in some rape and criminal sex.

Harvey's lawyer, in a well thought out strategy, said that Harvey didn't invent the casting couch. 

THAT was his defense? He didn't invent it. He sure as hell took good advantage of it.

• Another day, another school shooting. Does it occur to anyone that these things are coming fast and furious? That they're too close together to be statistically probable?

An Indian man needed a six inch shower head removed from his rectum. because he slipped and fell on it.  Ummmm..... let us ponder the mechanics of this, shall we? Your typical shower head exists at a level of roughly six feet. If this fellow slipped, he should be in the Olympics, as some sort of gymnast/contortionist. So he slipped and either turned around 270 degrees or slipped and levitated about four feet. His target accuracy was exemplary. The doctors removed the foreign object with gentle anal stretching. Perhaps the gentleman went to the emergency room for this procedure. Fortunately the piece of plumbing lodged up there came out easily, as the fellow fell on a bottle of lube before falling on the errant shower head. The article features x-rays, so you should get on over there.

• Chelsea Manning says mass surveillance is 'getting worse'
• With insight like that, the NSA should snap her up immediately. We can't afford to have her fall into the arms of the Russians.

Don't Ask for Creativity Before 8am

A little joy for you this morning: iPhone apps with camera permissions can take pictures and video, using the front or rear camera, without you noticing. There is nothing you can do about it at present, other than cover your camera lenses.

• Hey - where's your stick? Sensitive data on Heathrow Airport security was found on an abandoned memory stick. Most of it wasn't encrypted.
• This can be avoided in a number of ways:

1. hold onto your memory sticks, stupid.
2. encrypt the entire stick, stupid
3. don't allow this data to leave the network, stupid
4. if this didn't come from an insider, you're in deep doo-doo, stupid

• This isn't new security practice. It shouldn't come as a surprise to any computer security student.

A bug just discovered in LG IoT (Internet of Things) communication technology can allow someone to create an account and access all your LG smart appliances. This could result in your toaster committing suicide by walking into your preheated oven, then calling police and fire to tell them it's a false alarm after your smoke detectors go off.

Do not put this stuff in your house. When you go appliance shopping, tell the eager salesperson that you want dumb appliances. You want your appliances so dumb, they can run for office.  When the salesperson ignores you because he has no dumb appliances to sell, tell him you read ThermionicEmissions and you're scared shitless. This blog will either become highly read or Google will be petitioned to remove it by the IoT Safety Committee (somewhat related to the Congressional Ethics Committee).

• It's time for the Weekly Marshall Update.  Marshall is halfway through his chemo. His bloodwork is very good and Doggy Onco Doc is very happy with his progress. He has a small colored bandage around a different leg after each visit.
• We are extremely thankful for the clinical luck.
• As you'd expect, there's weirdness afoot. For the first time in recent memory, Marshall is acting like he used to. The dog who was having trouble getting up steps and jumping on furniture now sleeps in bed and relaxes on the couch. 
• Tissue shredding has recommenced! It's a good thing I get into bed in the dark, lest I see that night's freshly-shredded tissues from the trash can. The dirty ones make much better shredding.

This morning, the news introduced us to Rosebud, the therapy chicken.

Therapy chicken.

This is going to be hysterical on airplane flights.

mmmmm... tastes like chicken...

• It's dark and dreary. I suppose it's not necessary to say that, as it's our default weather. Regardless Loud Construction, Inc, is already out, making the circular saw on concrete noise.
• This goes on roughly seven days a week, yet water never gets into the power tools and electrocutes the handler.
• WTF are they building - a secret bunker? Pizza shop for soon to be missing children?

Pretenders' front woman Chrissie Hynde warned the audience of their strict no cellphones policy. The phones came out and never left. She let the audience have it midway through the first song, saying if it continued, she'd stop singing. They continued but she didn't. The band shortened its set as a result.

The self-important screaming from the audience on social media stated that the band was there for the audience and the audience was paying for the band, so they should be allowed to do whatever they want. 

I'm not a fan, but go Chrissie!

• To my vast legion of left-handed musician readers, The Southpaw Store, Disneyland in Houston, is having a sale on lefty ukuleles. The policy of this blog is still that it is not polite to speak French or play ukulele in public.

Don't forget, kids... it's Halloween!  Now get out there and offend somebody!

Appropriate someone's culture. Be creative. If all else fails, try blackface.

• My wife is so good to me... she got me a Halloween shirt that says JACKING-LANTERN.

Harvey Weinstein has been banned for life from the Producers Guild.

Because he got caught.

None of this was a secret within the industry.

Nor was Kevin Spacey. The stories are coming out about many underage males he got drunk and propositioned. He used the Gay Excuse to get out of it but gay does not equal pedophile.

It's Raining Twinkies. Or Minions

Israel hacked into antivirus provider Kaspersky, where they discovered the FSB (Russian spy agency) has been, along with NSA spy tools and viruses. Kaspersky said they don't help any governments nor will they. Kaspersky detected a breach and reported on it. Israel warned the US in 2015. Quick as you can say 'chrysanthemum,' two years later, the US government banned Kaspersky from its networks. At this point, no one has proven Kaspersky to be involved in any of this directly. Regardless, they've been smeared and implicated and their business is going to take a hit.  It's like James Bond on acid.

• October 11 is National Coming Out Day. I'd like to make an announcement. It's been very difficult on me for many years, but it's time to reveal myself to my readers for what I am. From this day forward, I will be known as heterosexual.

The Department of Treasury denies domestic spying.

The Office of Intelligence and Analysis (OIA) is under Treasury and examines foreign intelligence. However, there is evidence (twelve anonymous sources) that, like their friends in the NSA and CIA, it is spying domestically too.

The Department of Treasury denies domestic spying.

Banks and financial organizations are required to turn over information daily and the OIA has had its nose there.

The Department of Treasury denies domestic spying.

Leaks made it to the government and Buzzfeed. Congressional inquiries went unanswered.

The Department of Treasury denies domestic spying.

These departments and this government are completely out of hand. If the opportunity for expansion exists, they'll take it. If the opportunity for spying exists, they'll take it. Any attempted oversight is ignored, stymied, and laughed at. There is no accountability.  And we're paying for the privilege of being spied upon.

• A New York man threatened a Las Vegas style shooting at a Denver company. He stated that he would get on a plane and fly there if they didn't pay him $100. I would have demanded at least enough to cover the plane ticket.

Google admits its new smart speaker was eavesdropping on customers, after a reviewer caught it uploading everything it heard to Google. Google says they have fixed the 'bug', by which they mean they've made it much harder to detect. People are paying for a device that will let Google (or Amazon) spy on you. I am shocked. SHOCKED, that Google eavesdrops.

• The Boy Scouts have announced they will admit girls into the Cub Scouts and establish a program for older girls. This is a big step forward. It's quite original.. you could almost call it something like... girl scouts. That would be a good name.

Faceyspaces went down for a bit the other day. Production in all sectors of America went up and brain cell loss went down 80%.

• I'm home, on a late business call. A long time ago, I learned to mute my microphone at all times, unless I'm speaking. I learned this because it keeps me from imitating my boss' accent or injecting 'witty' comments about the current topic.
• BANG. BANG BANG.
• BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG
• BANG BANG.
• BANG BANG BANG BANG.
• I noticed some noise.
• BANG BANG BANG BANG
• Good thing my mic is muted.
• BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG
• In any other house, this would be amusing or distracting. In my house, it's like a live-action cartoon.*
• Thump thump thump... HEY LEFTY...LEFTY...
• CAN YOU OPEN THE BATHROOM DOOR? I CAN'T GET IN.
• I quietly point to my phone, as if to say WILL YOU LEAVE ME THE $*#& ALONE - I'M ON AN IMPORTANT BUSINESS CALL. BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG does not help my concentration and the boss likes when I listen to him.
• Thump thump thump.
• BANG BANG BANG
• BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG. Because if it doesn't work, keep trying the same solution. BANG BANG BANG BANG.
• Call ends, I take a look. Somebody locked the bathroom door. Gnomes, probably. Since this is a very secure lock, I can probably dislodge it with my Secret Lockpicking Kit.
• Most of my early life was spent looking for phillips screwdrivers. Since my religion forbids putting anything away after I use it, I could never find a phillips driver. Mind you, I had standard screwdrivers all over the place. Now that I'm grown (allegedly), I can only find phillips screwdrivers. Phillips drivers are the one driver that will not go in my Secret Lockpicking Kit.
• Since people keep giving me those really cool multitool knife jobbies, I found my most Swiss version, with the LED flashlight built in. I had to keep adjusting it because the LED would come on by itself. Gnomes, probably.
• After 15 minutes I managed to make the standard screwdriver come out to play and fired up the LED so I could see. POOF - the last forever, low power LED didn't work - the battery was kaput.
• One blind screwdriver insertion and twist later, the door was open and I was muttering to myself much more quietly and not even cursing more than normal. Good thing this lock is very secure.
• This would look like magic to the person requesting access to the bathroom, but she had disappeared during the uninterrupted portion of my work phone call. Gnomes, probably.

* My house is frequently cartoonish. Stuff happens that you often see in cartoons. While 'helping' me cook or do dishes, Marshall sits or lays on the kitchen floor. If I fill his bowl with food, he leaps up to follow me. Unfortunately the floor is some type of lineoleum and he can't get traction on it, causing him to keep trying over and over again, slipping each time. I keep waiting for the banging on pots sound effect that goes with this in cartoons.

The other day I managed to produce absolutely the most perfect, unavailable, cannot reproduce sight gag that ever existed. While taking out the trash, my view down was obstructed. I stepped on a push broom and the handle jumped right up and hit me in the face. You cannot make this happen even if you set it up perfectly, or you are one of the Three (dead) Stooges. Since my nose was not broken, all I could do was laugh (and start mentally typing it up for ThermionicEmissions). Dear readers, I live my life for you.

• "Fatphobia is violence", some fat lady opined online, complete with pictures of her being fat in lingerie. Words kill. In this case, pictures too.

This month's Microsoft patch includes a fix for a tiny issue. You can encrypt messages in Outlook. And if you do, they will encrypt, and the recipient will unencrypt them. The tiny issue is that, with the encrypted message is a plain text copy of the email. To their credit, Microsoft jumped right on this issue, which was discovered in May.

• This Harvey Weinstein affair is tragic and will continue to be in the news for a while. Aside from the heinous nature of his abuses is the heinous covering up by Harvey's famous people and news outlets. Everybody knew what he was up to and nobody spoke up til recently. Now everybody's piling on, which is a step in the right direction. Except Lindsey Lohan, who is staunchly defending him. After five days, even Hillary Clinton spoke up.

An Australian man was hurt by a flying dildo, launched from the naughty bits of an exotic dancer. This is the kind of news story we need. It has it all: injury, physics, and an exotic dancer. Think of her muscular control!