Fuzzy Green Chairs

Know what a Stingray is? The one that isn't a Corvette.
A Stingray is a catch-all, as well as a brand name for IMSI catchers. Wasn't that helpful?
It's a device sold to law enforcement that gets put up as a fake cell tower, to catch and monitor your cell phone. You have no idea it's there; the phone operates normally.

One company found a bunch of them in DC. Nobody knows whose they are. The letter agencies are aware of them, but some claim not to know either. Very smart operation, guys.

So it wasn't enough that law enforcement spied on you, now it's all over the place in DC and no one is sure who is doing the spying. Or what's going to be done with, or about it.

Isn't that lovely?

• Panera Bread, Sears, and Best Buy have been hit by breaches. Check your accounts and act accordingly.

Question of the day: Does the color azure make anyone else manic?

The Faceyspaces Saga. On and on and on

• It's interesting to watch the Shitstorm facing Faceyspaces. Zuckerburg had a small point, telling people they ok'd the spying when they signed up. This is true; we know nobody reads the terms - they just hit OK.  Just the other day, I had to ok a license on my phone... rest assured I read the terms.
• And now, Zuckerburg is getting a lot of blowback over the privacy invasion that is the actual business of Faceyspaces. Yes, people, you are the product. Your data is being sold and not only do you lose your privacy, you're not making a cent on this. In case you didn't know, FB owns Instagram, so they have yet another data collector. While we're at it, Google owns YouTube.
• I want to emphasize that the Faceyspaces app on your phone has access to most of your data. It catalogs every phone call you make, as well as every text message. If you have friends that you might not tell your spouse about, FB knows. If you're texting with a 'special friend' that you might not tell your spouse about, FB knows. This is just the start of the info. At very least, uninstall the phone app and use a browser.
• Just because we're on this topic, Zuckerburg also mentioned that their reverse search function, where you enter an email or phone number to find a contact, was scraped, potentially exposing the data of two billion users (their total userbase).
• Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is leaving Faceyspaces. Good move, Steve, but this isn't exactly new.
• What is new (aside from me warning everyone) is that FB has extensive profiles on people who aren't on FB, including a lawyer for the ACLU. This article is not for the faint of heart.
• Hot off the presses: Faceyspaces just suspended another firm for "non profit academic research", which translates to "we've got all your data too".
• Check to see if your data was shared with Cambridge Analytica.
• Annnnnnnnd once again, I'm not a conspiracy theorist - I'm a futurist. Or just a guy who's very concerned about privacy and safety. I TOLD YOU SO.

Twitter is again showing their colors by shadowbanning Ted Cruz's tweets. I'm not a Cruz fan, or a republican fan, or a democrat fan, but they are doing things and need to be called out on them. It's not that private corporations are required to play fair, but they're being very sneaky about it and people need to know. Nowhere does Twitter let people know that they actively discriminate and outright censor everybody to the right of Rob Reiner. I stick up for conservatives in this case because next time, they could decide to start throwing out libertarians. One account was terminated because the owner objected to a court decision. 

What is shadowbanning? Making an account much less visible. It's a discovered then admitted process.  Followers of the account don't see all the tweets.  What kind of 'trusted' platform does this in the dark?

The CEO of Twitter, the infamous @Jack, openly called for a war against republicans recently, on the national stage.  This is a small first step toward disclosure, but Twitter needs to admit its bias and make it put it in their terms. Let the people make their decisions by themselves.

Meanwhile, conservatives (and even 4 or 5 us libertarians) are moving to gab.ai, which absolutely does not discriminate against anyone. Free speech comes with speech you don't like, and this means I have to put up with a small amount of antisemites and what look like nazis. They're ugly, and the scum of the earth, but  deserve free speech as much as anyone else. Like Twitter, you can block or not follow people you don't like.

Speaking of @Jack, an article, quoting anonymous internal sources, alleges that the initial checkmark removals and alt-right bans came directly from Jack.

• Best Buy and Kmart say they're victims of the same third party breach that affected Delta and Sears.

One day we're sitting on the couch, snacking and doing what people do when sitting on the couch (no, not fighting). All of the sudden I hear STOP IT. Huh?  Stop making that noise. What noise? That noise.... you're not doing it right. Huh? You have to take a bunch out at one time and eat them. You can't reach in and get them one at a time. That noise drives me crazy.  

Oh.

Notice my contribution to the discussion largely consisted of Huh?

So I'm minding my own business, as I do, when the wife goes by, on the way to a different floor. Minutes later, I hear the dog shrieking to come in. Wife let him out. The longer he waits, the higher the pitch and frequency of the shrieking. The neighbors probably think he's being abused. My question to you: is my wife being passive aggressive by making me go get the dog?

Because if it is, I need to eat some snacks.

• I just heard about free range eggs. Do they allow the eggs to roam? What does that look like? Do the neighborhood teens wonder if they got more for their drug money?

Overheard: 

I'm out of bullets.

How did that happen?

I shot them all.

• A sex robot inventor said his creations helped save his marriage. He would turn to the robot when his wife wasn't in the mood. This is almost like my concept of Vice Wife; the woman who would take over when the Wife was not able to perform the duties of her office.
• Ever clever, my wife said perhaps she should get a Vice Husband. I'm a fair guy - go ahead. The only duties of office I fail at are mowing and trash.
• I predict the inventor's next disagreement will involve who cleans the doll when he's done.

I don't have much to say about the Cosby trial, other than noticing he's in great shape at comedy gigs and bumbles and stumbles like an aged Hillary Clinton on the way into the courthouse. He was rushed the other day by a topless woman, protesting his actions. The woman was identified as an actor who appeared on his show a few times, whose character was named Roofie Johnson.

• A West Virginia woman was arrested for beheading her boyfriend before telling cops, “You have to take me back and let me get my heads,” as they drove her away from the bloody scene, authorities said. Her lawyer is complaining about the judge asking for a test of mental competence, stating that it tarred his client's good reputation and her impending run for public office.

A man who ate a Carolina Reaper, the hottest pepper known to man, experienced dry heaving, neck pain, and bad headaches, referred to as thunderclap headaches. Who could have imagined that a man eating the hottest pepper on the planet would experience any negative effects?

The next time someone expects sympathy for their migraine, poo poo the idea and tell them to come back when they have a real headache.

• Baltimore, a hell hole even bigger than Philly, is attempting to drive tourism in new and untested ways. A man was jogging nude through rush hour traffic. Note to Baltimore: you might want to try it with a woman. 

Even YouTube isn't immune to hackers. Someone got into YT and deleted all sorts of videos, including Shakira's Vero YT account.  In the spirit of international brotherhood, I have volunteered to sacrifice my time to comfort her on this tragic loss.

• Pro Tip: before you come in the house and yell "Nipple check on aisle three", make sure no one but the owner of said nipples can hear you.

Why is it always California?

A bill has been introduced in California, which would require state-sanctioned fact checkers to approve online content. It's a shame we can't mandate fact checkers for lawmakers.

• Proving that satire is dead, the mayor of London has enacted knife control.
• The UK spends a lot of time laughing at the US, but now it's our turn. The police can stop anyone they suspect of carrying a knife and search them.
• First the ubiquitous spy public cameras, then the ban on speech that hurts feelings, and now Stop And Search for knives. It sounds more like a police state than the great country it was.

After getting cut off in traffic, Texas' own Ryan McFaul did the only thing a reasonable man could do: pulled out his BB gun and shot at a church's windows. The BBs went through the outer pane of the dual pane glass and no one was hurt. McFaul is out on $5,000 bond, with the condition that he holds the gun backwards the next time he shoots.

• Security Theater: Next time you're getting groped by the TSA at the airport, you better have your snacks ready for inspection. In yet another bid to look relevant, the TSA is going to start screening snacks. By the end of the year, look for intense shoelace scrutiny. Inside sources also point to underwear checks.

Canada is Pissed

I take a decent amount of crap online because of my pro Second Amendment views. Also my pro First Amendment views. This is largely on Twitter, as one would guess. It's just a matter of time until tweeters are not allowed to mention the Second Amendment. The most shocking, shrieking rebuke came from a Canadian. This particular Canuckian is a nice lady and we've been online acquaintances for a while. After the Florida shooting, I attempted to explain the Second Amendment and she yelled, as best one can yell in text, that I have the blood of children on my hands. Canadians generally live up to the stereotype of being nice people. Even the border guards are unfailingly polite.

In an email exchange with another Canuckian who is so level, you almost need to check for a pulse, she mentioned she doesn't like our president or our guns. I asked for some specifics and could feel the volume going up and the seething start. I guess I found the pulse.

I (used to) love hearing American jokes and what other countries thought of us. The main object of their laughter was that Americans only know one language. In a complete verification of the joke, Americans will not see the problem with that. 

Now all I hear is hatred for Trump and gun ownership. I really don't want to be lectured about my country and its Constitution by people not living under it (and roughly 50% of the people who do). They seem to think we're all armed to the teeth and the act of walking down the street puts one's life at risk. Please. They advocate gun control, in the form of not having them at all. They think this will stop the mass shootings. Oops - it seems the criminals are performing the majority of crimes, so gun confiscation will do nothing but harm law-abiding people. Here's another mini fact: all school shootings have occurred in gun-free zones.

I'm not sure outside folks are getting our culture or our Constitution. Ironically, they seem quite ok with the First Amendment.

Agoraphobic Mall Trips

Not frequently, but every now and then, a family member pisses me off. When my brother bought his first house, an older lady, whose thinking functions were fading, sold it to him. The house hadn't been redecorated in a while, resulting in what I referred to as 'The Trip Room'. The room came complete with silver mylar wallpaper, which was enough by itself, but also this unimaginable fuzzy green chair. I asked him to preserve just this one room, as some weird sort of tribute, perhaps to the seventies. He, or someone he happened to be married to, rejected the idea with great speed and efficiency.

Now, I hear the kitchen is being remodeled. The kitchen features some quiet but bizarre wallpaper, with tiny pineapples on it. It became a running joke, then I heard it was coming down. Again I asked one small favor... if you're not going to leave the wallpaper, at least leave a few square inches of it on a hidden space somewhere. Again I received an immediate answer in the negative.

My relatively new motto is "I ask for very little. And that's exactly what I get."  But I asked, because if you don't ask, you don't receive. And I'm feeling some kinda way about this. It's not like I asked for $50,000 or to live with them. Or for one of them to mow my lawn. Just a chair or a tiny piece of wallpaper. But nooooooooo.

If he had asked me to keep one small thing because it amused him, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Unless he asked me to clean... that's not going to happen.

• Life is funny. When I was a little boy, Mom would throw her munchkins in the car and take them to the mall. The other day I piled my parents in the car and took them to a mall and dinner.  It's the least I could do.

I'm still working diligently on my agoraphobic certificate. 

As you may remember, agoraphobes stay in their house and are afraid to leave. I can't get the full official certificate, as I still have to work. There are no exceptions. It also happens that whenever I do make it out of the house, I wish I had stayed home. So right now I shall retain my amateur status. Or maybe part-time agoraphobia.. I'll have to ask a professional.

That aside, as is bound to happen once every month or so, I left the house, not on a work mission. Remember mission, as this is another one of those Literary Devices I throw around now and again. I'm not a writer, but I know two or three terms, so I'm throwing them around.

We decided to take my reasonably near-sane parents out to a mall and dinner. They're always delighted to see us, possibly just because it means leaving the house, but I suspect they actually like us or something.

We went to a mall, so the ladies could look at Stuff. My wife has a favorite department store. My wife has many favorite stores, physical and virtual. This particular store is such a favorite that we frequently don't get out into the mall proper, because she's spent so much time there. We were determined, however.

After only two or three bags, weighing thirty pounds each, were purchased, I was unanimously elected to take them to the car or drag them through the mall. This is like choosing between chin-ups and running in the cold for (NOOOO) exercise. The car was pretty far away, so I dragged.

Why was the car far away? Every time we go to this mall, we park right up front. That day everyone and their extended family was at this store, perhaps because it was sunny outside. Yes, they couldn't wait to leave their houses because it was nice outside, so they could go to the enclosed mall. Logic is not our strong suit.

Just as it was last time, the area was heavy with Brow Options. There was a store called Brow Bar. I'm not entirely sure what went on there, but no one was being serviced. It didn't appear they were selling brows and I didn't notice a Brow License anywhere, so we were stymied.

Mom and Wife went into Victoria's Secret. Most people don't bother to find out, but I know Victoria's Secret: it's how they get women to spend so much on so little. Even little girls have little (fully covering) clothes. Now teenagers feel the need to look pretty under their clothes. We're a weird planet.

The menfolk discovered seats in the mall area and took full advantage of them. Twenty minutes later, Dad starts to get a little itchy, as the womenfolk hadn't returned.  I didn't understand the commotion; they would find us when (if) they were done shopping. This could eventually be to my detriment because the more I'm not with her, the more time she has to shop, and by shop, I mean spend. Dad got more and more itchy and probably failed to understand my calm. He called both of them on their phones, neither of which could hear them ringing. This is unlike my wife's phone at home, in which buried people, dead for a hundred years, can hear clearly. So Dad paced while I checked for the one piece of email I get every day or so.

We eventually found them. They had snuck behind us, across the mall to a different store. A store that has the same clothes, shoes, and jewelry in ten sections, displayed by color. Women understand this. Men, as usual, don't have a clue or a chance. It's not like my wife is there a lot, but they greet her by name.

The mall used to be a small affair; two anchor stores with some other stores sandwiched between. At some point they decided to add more stores. Unlike other malls that run east to west or north to south, this one added a cluster of stores outside this exit and six restaurants out back, not connected to the mall. It looked like some sort of tree branch, after the nuclear holocaust. As a manly man and a damn-near considerate person, I offered to retrieve the car so no one (else) had to do more walking. I showed everyone the exit I'd meet them at and asked them to stand there.

Because of the hodgepodge layout, one simply does not drive around the mall, like some sort of Indianapolis speedway at two hundred miles per hour; one drives around a ninety degree side, then out and around a bank that mysteriously popped up out of the ground, obscuring mall traffic. Then past the first mall entrance (or the last mall entrance, depending on where you entered) and around what looked like some sort of truck receiving area, but what in fact was a place for some unnamed Italian outfit to store bodies before they go out for processing.  Attached to the crematorium was a huge parking garage. This is a mall, mind you. The parking garage obscured it. At this point the phone rang. The phone does not ring at home, nor while I'm out doing something; it only rings when I don't want to hear it or I'm doing something that precludes me from answering it. At this point I was in the middle of a U-turn, fortunately with no one else coming. I went to get the phone from its holder and, as always, was completely blocked by the seatbelt. I hate seatbelts. Their only use is to hold your dead body in the seat after the accident. They get in the way of the phone, the radio, the wallet, and any of my wife's parts I wish to touch while we're both in the car.

Wife informs me they're waiting by Jeans House, John's Snotty Upscale Market, Half Foods, and Chicosan's Boutique. These are all stores I never heard of nor visited in the mall, so this wasn't helping me. This was also not where I told them to meet me. I asked a simple question: why didn't you meet me where I asked? We couldn't. You couldn't exit at the mall exit? No, we couldn't get out the doors. I decided to let that pass because if I took any time at all to think about it, it would produce massive headaches and possibly homicidal behavior. She said it was a bit down and brown outside. Oh, the brown section! Down by the thing. Yes, those were directions alright... just not directions for anyone who wasn't standing next to her at that moment. I promised I'd look and guaranteed I'd see her by dinner tomorrow.

Eventually I found the Brown Section, with yet another clump of stores not attached to the mall, requiring circling the outside of the drive and yet another U-turn, fortunately sans ringing phone. Some fellow got out of his car right before I drove up the lane and proceeded to walk, verrrrrry slowly, in the general direction of the store clumpage. I do not drive an electric car, so it makes six cylinders of noise. Noise this fellow apparently did not recognize as a car, so he continued moseying on down the lane, as I prepared to turn onto the main road. He outsmarted me by also turning, ever so slightly as to slow down my turn too. Talk about homicidal urges... this behavior should be punishable by a fine not to exceed five thousand dollars, plus wearing a sign outside the store for a year that says "I'm a slow walking car blocker".

It was all I had left not to zoom past the lot of them and take myself home, where Marshall was impatiently waiting, but in some countries it is considered rude to leave your elderly parents standing outside a mall for a few days (not your wife, though). No matter, I thought, at least we were off to our favorite barbecue place for our favorite barbecue. They even have a vanilla ice cream machine with tiny little cones for dessert and you get to pull the lever yourself. It's the little things....

We drove there, parked the car, got out, walked two steps, and discovered our favorite barbecue place had closed permanently. Not a sound from four people. We stared, mute. BUT OUR FAVORITE BARBECUE PLACE!!! It's not there. It's closed. We cannot purchase barbecue here anymore. No loaded potatoes, fried oprah, pulled this and that.. and no ice cream.  If we were but a few years younger, we would have stood there, crying, and proceeding to have an absolute FIT in the parking lot. No one was around, but I wouldn't let that stop me if I were going to throw a Serious Tantrum. I threw a Medium Tantrum when my wife dropped a candle and smashed five pounds of glass in her store. That day she was having a very serious problem with gravity. Sometimes it works much more heavily on her than the rest of us. So many things dropped and lept out of the cart that I took to calling her My Little Disaster Area. Romantic, no?

So there we stood, on the verge of Serious Tantrum, when my wife came up with  what she thought was the perfect solution: going next door and shopping at the strangely upscale second hand store, where one can purchase pocketbooks no man has heard of at obscenely low prices. What is truly obscene is what the pieces of imitation ugly leather cost when they were new. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars for an exceedingly ugly thing to carry around their shoulders. And I'm not talking fuzzy green ugly, I'm talking brown and brown with strange symbols ugly. It's like some huge joke on the part of the pocketbook industry: hey, let's design some absolutely hideous THING, charge $800 for it, then give a few away to a Kardashian. No matter how ugly or expensive, they will fly off the shelves. And sure enough, the internal plumbing crowd of the world stepped right up and snapped them up wherever they could find them. Some of these bags have individual serial numbers. I have guitars that don't have individual serial numbers. They were less expensive than these pocketbooks too.

Needless to say, at least two of us, probably the ones with external plumbing, were less than thrilled. As there was no Manly Section of the store, we assumed Manly Position, which is standing, arms crossed, heavily frowning, eyes front and staring out into a universe that included sitting and eating barbecue. Finally the ladies released us from torment and we struggled out to the car. It's amazing what not getting out much followed by carrying sixty pounds of purchased goodies around a mall will do to you. The back part of my feet hurt. I've never had a pain there in all my life. There is obviously some serious blame to be laid on this topic.

In a rather ironic moment, I drove down the street to our second favorite barbecue place, Mission BBQ (see, I got mission in there, like an almost professional writer). Mission is a chain that has just entered the area, founded upon respect for all armed forces and police. Vets eat free or reduced price. The food is good and the people are so nice, they had to import them from the South, or wherever else people are nice. Certainly not my area. The sad part of all this, aside from our favorite place closing, is that my friends from Texas laugh hysterically when I tell them we had bbq from a chain restaurant. Apparently every corner down there has a different bbq place, each better than the other one. Note to self: bad form to salivate on keyboard. Well, it's all we've got up north, so we have to call it good. Piss off, you hat-wearin', hornswagglin', sweet tea drinkin', hurricane tornado havin' rodeo state. And gitcher dang old horses offa the main streets before they leap on a twelve cylinder convertible Caddilac with steer horns on the front and a horn that plays Dixie.

You can't pay for vitriolic area-specific insults like that, but I put them before you, out of the goodness of my heart, because I like attention and because we're up to ten readers now. If we all work together, I know we can hit fifteen by Christmas (2020).

Note to British Porn Watchers

This is for our British readers (we don't have any - I just like saying it): the Queen has rubberstamped legislation requiring sites to age-verify. If this is not done, and payment providers and third parties will be required to intervene. If this fails, the site can be cut off, even though it's perfectly legal to view it. And speaking of perfectly legal, there will be censorship of 'extreme sex acts'.

Of course there are a whole bunch of improvements listed (it's for the children). Short story: watch your porn through a VPN. Less short story: more intrusive government, in the name of improvement and safety, can watch you watching porn. This is an early volley into controlling what you can see. England should be up in arms, although it's probably wrapped up in something the royals are wearing or the Department of Silly Hats, measuring one of the more fashionable chapeaus, which can range from six to sixty feet tall. You can tell this is a serious item, because the British are my favorite people. I may well be a Brit in the body of an American (trans-continental?).

Oh yeah, there will be social media fines for Terror Content also.

• Something is up again, as in more of the Shadow Broker releases of NSA weapons. Microsoft is releasing a second set of updates for Windows XP, an incredibly long-dead version, as well as Server 2003, a somewhat less-dead version. Regardless, if you run any version of Windows (or anything else), keep up to date. This is not a suggestion.

Someone brought to my attention that this blog has no cat gifs or blinky graphics. That is all.

• Why are lunatics shooting government officials? There has been a lot of noise made about the violent rhetoric of the left, and some of it is disgraceful, but we cannot blame words, as the right claims. This is the result of action by an unstable human, unable to tell right from wrong and clearly a danger to others. This alone is grounds for involuntary commitment (a topic close to my heart).
• After his name was released, the Internet Detectives went into action and located his Faceyspaces page, complete with all sorts of organizations and 'radical' comments. He was a Bernie supporter. It's amazing that, with all this information in the open, he still went right ahead and shot. FB is the front page of the NSA, fer chrissake. Yes, omnipresent government surveillance will keep us all safe.
• The representative's ten year old son was present at the game.
• The local news is running a segment on how to apply a tourniquet. Local news viewers are always so well-prepared.

in China, Kentucky Fried Chicken is using facial recognition software to predict what the customer will order. It is doing so with the Baidu search engine, the Chinese Google. It's faulty, it's privacy invasive, and it's being rolled out to 5,000 restaurants now. They should post pictures and shame everyone who eats there.. maybe a little blackmail as a new earnings strategy.

• We were behind someone in a BMW the other day. While cutting off another driver, he used his turn signal. No, really! Then out of the blue, he used it again to make a turn. He must've been going to the Happy Place. If the police caught him, it would be a beating for sure.

Another van-related incident in London, this time an anti-Muslim attack. A reportedly drunk man ran down some Muslims, on the way out of mosque. This is unacceptable. Common sense laws must be enacted to battle this sort of thing. Did you know anyone can walk into a dealership and leave with a van? In addition, there will obviously be calls for censorship of the internet, banning encryption, and more cameras, perhaps in everyone's houses.

• Happy Fathers Day to all who fit the profile. Marshall looked up at me and wished me one. I also get a lot of points for not reproducing. It fills my heart with joy when I realize what I haven't unleashed on the world.

Apparently some of us were wrong all along: it was not the Russians hacking the election, it was the Moroccans! They attempted to hijack the election via phishing emails at a school and although they were able to deface a website, they failed Hijacking 101. So the next time someone says Russia did it, you can tell them with authority that it was the Moroccans. Mo Rocca not available for comment.

• This is week two of my brand new auto glass, courtesy of Safelite. A bird pooped on it so I had him shot, but Safelite gets an A and a hearty recommendation.

If you use Firefox, make sure the new speed feature is enabled. If you don't use Firefox, pretend you never read this.

• On social media, you have these 'experts' popping up and referring to themselves as Social Media Influencers. Or Social Media Thought Leaders. What a ridiculous set of titles. Because of the way they want to be my friend and follower, my new title is Social Media Influencer Attractor. But wait - we also have the foodies and travel bloggers. Yes, you can now spend your valuable time (stick with me on this) watching others eat and vacation! We live in great times.

Marshall further enhanced my Fathers Day by 'processing' some paperwork for me. Apparently in Pet World, anything on the floor is fair game, so that stack of neatly-arranged paper to file of shred becomes a former pile of widely-spread papers, sometimes shredded, for good measure. This week's special modification involves water.  The neat pile will sit there, minding its own business, when Marshall appears, soaked from head to tail from a dip in his pool. He positions himself right over the pile and plops right down on top of it. At some point in the future, I will wonder why all my paperwork is brown and/or was waterlogged in the past.

Since the weather has been ridiculously bad lately, Marshall's pool hasn't seen a lot of action. Not to be outdone, he will walk to his water bowl, drink a bit, then proceed to take a paw and paw at the water until most of it is on the floor outside of his bowl. Everybody's a critic. Then he comes over to the paperwork and continues the important task of wetting every piece of paper I own.

Normal people, who don't have blogs, might simply decide not to leave paper on the floor. In this house, we have the organizational skills of a room full of five year olds, so this is not even a remote possibility.

She Looks Like Peter Tork

Just to get this thing kicked off with a bang, over 8,600 vulnerabilities have been found in pacemakers. Don't leave the frigging house.

• So there was only one act of terror over the weekend (that got any press) and that was another van running into people in England, on the London Bridge. There were fatalities.
• There's an awful lot of this going on. I get a strange feeling we're being manipulated. Last time England claimed they needed net censorship. This time they claimed they need worldwide net control (censorship). BINGO. False flag operation, designed to obtain control of the (mostly) free internet. Let's watch closely. Nothing happens out of a vacuum.
• Speaking of which, the policeman who shot and killed three of the terrorists has been suspended.

Your cell provider knows where you are at any moment. Is it ok for the police to know, without a warrant? The Supreme Court will rule. Watch this case, if Ginsburg can stay awake that long.

• This is not new, but the Secret Service got color printer manufacturers to have printers encode date and serial number of the printer on each document you print. This was initially for counterfeiting measures, but now it's for the children. Yet more collusion with government. This is how they outed the latest NSA leaker.
• The leaker, a white woman, stated online that 'Being White is Terrorism.'

Thought for the day: I commit terrorism every day by deliberately being white.

I read that Dickey Betts recently made peace with Gregg Allman. Good timing. This is not the burden you wish to carry for the rest of your life. Please remember this.

• British Airways' IT Glitch, that took down the entire airline last week, was caused, as previously typed here, by a power surge that knocked even the backup system offline. Additionally, outsourcing made it worse, with the foreign workers not having the knowledge to restart the systems. A brand new cause has been found... a systems engineer switched off the power to the IT systems. It was switched back on, which allegedly caused physical damaged to the systems.
• Just a note: switching the power off to the systems is not the same as a large surge or offshore contractors not being able to power up the systems.

Another thing learned from COPS: meth chicks are skinny. I like skinny.

Latest on the students of Evergreen State College: protesters are running around with baseball bats. An administrator released a memo, instructing students to get rid of the bats immediately (or he'd release an even more stern memo).

• Memo to London: Those three men in a van who just ran into people on the London Bridge? They were known to authorities. People called with concerns about them. One was in a jihad film. With all this knowledge, they completed their mission. With one camera for every eleven people, your government couldn't protect you. MI5 says it will be a generation before they catch up - they're woefully understaffed.
• Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.  -Ben Franklin
• Your government isn't going to protect you. You will simply give away your rights, like after 9-11. This applies to all countries.
• In related news, Welsh police have picked up a man with automated facial recognition for the first time. Automated facial recognition is built into US drivers licenses.

Canada's Minister Freeland stood up and gave a rather stunning speech on global leadership, suggesting that Canada should not take a free ride on the US train and step up to take the mantle of Global Leader.

Naturally my Skepticism Meter<tm> ran off the scale, first wondering how much of his family is in the defense industry. But I really like the tone of the speech and how Canada wants to Do The Canadian Thing: Step Up.

With this in mind, we present our Global Leadership Trophy and T-shirt to Canada, with three cheers. Huzzah! (eh?)

And I dare you to read his speech in a voice other than South Park's Canadian accent.

• Rod Stewart is touring with Cyndi Lauper. Concert starts at 8:00. Be there at 9:00.

Just remember: to a dyslexic, bowling is blowing.

Much as I despise phones ringing, I finally found a good use for them: I spent the last week trying to locate a bunch of phones by calling them from other phones. Otherwise I ignore them or shut off the ringer, which makes them even more difficult to find. I wonder if they travel when I'm not looking.

STIGMA

Somebody asked me how to be a good friend/supporter/family member when someone goes to the Happy Place (Booby Hatch, Loony Bin, mental hospital). There are no absolutes, but here are some suggestions:

• find out what the patient wants. If they'd like visits or calls, do so. If they want no contact, don't contact them.
• the family or whoever is home when the patient goes in might need some support or a hand or a burger. Are there kids?
• even if nothing is wanted, it helps to be a solid, supportive friend, in whatever way you can - just being you.
• don't go beyond what is requested, if anything.

'Crazy' is relative. It has been treated poorly since the beginning of time. When Mrs lefty got her bipolar diagnosis, many years ago, she was shunned at work, as if it were contagious. Interestingly, she was shunned by people who spent nights and weekends getting so blasted, you couldn't talk to them.

Musical Stuff, Among Other Detritus

ZZ Top's touring!

As is Aerosmith.

Here is a cleaned-up film of a 1959 Fender factory tour.

Animal psychologists (no, really) discover music that pets prefer.
(Marshall likes Jeff Beck and the blues.)  I wonder how Zappa rates across species....

Internet activity 'to be monitored' under new UK laws...

This is ugly.  Once again, the populace willingly trades freedom for security (and gets neither).

US police using phone tracking as routine tool...

England may be a proving ground but the US always drives the point home.  Without oversight or warrants.
They further argue that cell tower data is not private.
Turn off your phones (yes, even while driving).

Ashton Kutcher to play Steve Jobs...

They deserve each other.

REPORT: Fmr. KGB chief commits suicide...

"He shot himself seven times in the head then hid the gun."

Hookers 'cleaned off London's streets' ahead of Olympics...

So much for private enterprise.  Bloody limey elitists.

Dell agrees to buy thin-client company Wyse Technology

You'll get the same Wyse performance with Dell's non-existent sales and service.

Somewhat belated: Will we be ruled by April Fools?