Rocket Farts in the Car

No, really... my brother somehow managed to violate physics, which shouldn't be surprising to us, but there we are. We'd go places in the car, with him in the back seat. He would let his anus do the talking and people in the front seat would smell it before he did. Science did nothing to explain this phenomenon and we were left with no choice but to open the windows, in the dead of winter. He's lucky he got to stay ride in the car.

A chemical that shouldn't be there has Science all atwitter (including Twitter). Phosphine might indicate life on Venus. It is also possible my brother farted and it was discovered on Venus before it was discovered on Earth.


Your love is like  a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the peanut butter



Dear lefty

• What will it take to have you join Faceyspaces?
• What will it take for you to have an intimate relationship with your mother? 

Russian interference in the upcoming election goes on: just yesterday, Irina said she should like to visit American sometime.

• Paddleboard lesson gets the seal of approval

Microsoft declares its underwater data center test was a success

Putin declared elections were fair in Russia.

I can only see one thing wrong: it's called Single Point of Failure. One leak and the project is all wet, so to speak.

• Fun Fact: of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers, 500 run linux.

When Nikola posted a video of its driverless truck driving, they enlisted the aid of their assistant: Mr. Gravity. Seems the truck is not entirely ready for primetime, and was shown driving rolling down a hill. The entire auto industry popped its head up and took notice, amazed that all these years, they thought the cars had to run first. For its part, Nikola said it did not lie: the clip was called "Nikola One Electric Semi Truck in Motion."

In other news, a ship with no crew is going to sail across the Atlantic.

Downhill? 

• Today's gold star for bravery goes to Alexei Navalny, the poisoned Putin critic, who will be returning to Russia.
• Godspeed, Alexei. And good luck getting life insurance.

Thought Experiment(s) 

Let's pretend Faceyspaces is a company concerned with privacy and that most people on the planet log in to share words, not private information. An American outfit, Faceyspaces has some concept of freedom of speech, although is not bound by it. As the outfit expands, it runs up against countries who do not think as highly about freedom of speech as Americans. This is where things go awry. It started with the European Union's privacy legislation. Apparently countries think they can censor the internet. Apparently they're getting away with it.

The latest is "Hate speech on Faceyspaces is pushing Ethiopa dangerously close to a genocide." First notice the use of hate speech. Hate speech, as a term, has no place in America: all speech is speech, whether or not you agree with it. Anti-freedom groups were started, an artist was assassinated, and now there are lynchings. Property is being destroyed, as if there were a Black Lives Matter protest.

If I ran Faceyspaces, I'd refuse to go into Ethiopia.

Faceyspaces already had to bend over backwards with censorship to go into China, so why bother in either country? Stay where speech is relatively free.

It's a true dilemma, to a company that cares about privacy and human lives.

Fortunately, Faceyspaces doesn't care about either in real life. In a move nobody saw coming, they're on the other side of throwing off people they didn't like.

• We have inaugurated a new financial program, here at the home of ThermionicEmissions, real life. Whenever one of us spends money, the other one is entitled to spend the same amount. While all the shoe stores in the state will feel the loss, things will be more equal. This has worked out well in the last month.
• Now all I have to do is tell her.

Happys

BB King
Kenney Jones - Faces/Who


Byes

Marc Bolan - "Bang a Gong"
Mary Travers - Peter, Paul &
Johnny Ramone - go ahead, guess...
Richard Wright - Pink Floyd
Ric Ocasek - Cars

He's right, you know...  

President Trump is banning diversity training, claiming it's divisive, anti-American propaganda. The article goes on to say why he's wrong. Why is that? The person who wrote it has a book on diversity in the workplace. Nice job, Forbes... you can't even manage a semblance of objectivity.

Late to the Party, number 237 

I finally saw an overview of Tiger King.

I have never seen Tiger King and was only aware of it as a punchline.

Hot Tap-Dancing Jesus, wa-HOO - it's got everything: a flaming homosexual, an arch-villain, a disappeared spouse, real live very large pussycats, Southern Charm, and animal rescue organizations. And ugly. It's got a whole lotta ugly. Apparently people have been postponing their Faceyspaces activities long enough to watch it. If the Russians get this program run on election night, that's all they have to do.

Yesterday it was uncomfortably hot in my office. Today it's actually cold. I should get some long pants or fire up the space heater, but I will do neither. To do either would be to admit summer is on its way out, so I'll sit and shiver. I'm a man, dammit.

• The 'safety driver' of an Uber self-driving car was charged with negligent homicide, for the death of a pedestrian in Tempe, AZ (a nice place). What was she doing when the car hit the pedestrian at 38mph? Streaming The Voice. This would be funny if there weren't a pedestrian involved - mucking foron.
• The single most important part of a self-driving car is not hitting anyone or anything. It failed. Not Ready for Prime Time. I keep saying this, but for some reason, no one does anything.

If you don't believe America's police are held up as an example to the rest of the world, a Victoria, Australia, police officer appears to stomp on a man's head during an arrest. The man had mental health issues. Now all that's left is for the police to claim he pointed a gun at them.

• Japan would like you to know that Yoshihide Suga is not a food additive: he's the new Prime Minister.

A privacy bug in Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's official campaign app allowed anyone to look up sensitive voter information on millions of Americans, a security researcher has found.  When asked for comment, Biden said, "What's privacy?"

• Dunkin Donuts is accused of covering up the fact that hackers siphoned off customers' personal information in 2015
• Why did the Terminally Confused provide their personal information to a donut vendor?

Kim Kardashian and dozens of celebrities are freezing their Faceyspaces and Instagram accounts to protest hate speech. You can tell they're serious, because they closed their accounts... oh.... never mind.  This is a very interesting item... first Faceyspaces got rid of the alt-right. Then the general right. Then anyone performing Wrongspeak. Only now are the Worthless Class taking notice, and adding their voices to the Stop Hate for Profit campaign. Apparently Faceyspaces hasn't thrown enough people off yet. Naturally the NAACP and ADL are involved, claiming Faceyspaces is "falling short of what is necessary to protect our democracy." We call this kind of uninformed misinformation domestic terrorism, but don't insist it be pulled from the news and internet.

See what you've done, Lord Zuck?

You were doing us a 'favor' by kicking off Wrongthink groups. Now you haven't kicked off enough of the right Wrongthink groups. Or Something. And the Whining Class is now demanding you run your business their way. I hope you're feeling smug now.  Once again, Told You So.

Pickle Green Houses

If you're feeling down because you've run out of toxic substances to ingest to kill the Flying AIDS, not to worry; the Food and Drug Administration is finding methanol (poisonous) in many hand sanitizers. That's a real load off my mind.



Your love is like a pickaxe to the eye.


States are running out of doctors and nurses as the Flying AIDS surges.
Well, what do you expect? They're so damn tasty.


Trumpie is after social media sites for anti-conservative bias and has submitted his complaint to the FCC. The FCC's tentative response is, "Huh? WTF you want us to do? We're only here to give away frequency spectrum to large corporations and industries."

Sorry, Donald. Although even infants can see the anti-conservative bias, you can't regulate the speech of private entities. You'd do better to go after whatever is pushing all social media to display the bias (but we can't have that).

Speaking of which, Twitter suspended Trump, Jr for 'misinformation'. If science hasn't figured the Flying AIDS out yet, how can his speech be misinformation? I smell agenda....


Virgin Galactic is going to launch people into space. Unfortunately, it will also bring them back. Some of us can save the outrageous cost because we're already out there.



Medical Science Does it Again

Researchers at the University of York traced the source of underarm odor to a particular enzyme in a certain microbe that lives in the human armpit.  Microbes? In my armpits? If they transfer the microbe to your nose, your nose will smell.


Two theoretical physicists specializing in complex systems conclude that global deforestation due to human activities is on track to trigger the "irreversible collapse" of human civilization within the next two to four decades.   Guys... you don't need a serious degree or even much school to see this coming. Have you read Twitter or Faceyspaces lately? Been in Seattle? That ship has sailed.

I'm watching my British tv again. There was a commercial for ice cream that references Cornish something or other. I know there are a ton of accents, Scottish and Wales-ish are among the most difficult to understand. But this commercial had 3 people saying 'things', then the name of the ice cream. I got the name, but the rest was an absolute blob. The mind wants to classify things, but there was no reference for this- it was just a jumbled mess. I suggested we talk to some professorial type expert in ancient languages, only found on pillars and pottery, perhaps pre-Egyptian, where everybody had pointed heads and men wore eye shadow, like Spock.

Scientists Pull Living Microbes, Possibly 100 Million Years Old, From Beneath the Sea.  Scientists named them McConnell-Pelosius.

A guitar I have been considering just dropped in price.

Is this a sign or what?

I told Mrs lefty that I just saved her hundreds of dollars. She remains unimpressed and suggested something anatomically impossible.

So about the Amazon/Goog devices you put in your house to spy on you?

A scientific paper is about to be released, which details a frightening amount of skills/actions without a privacy policy.  I'm going to keep banging away at this (because it feels so good when the pain stops).

Told You So

You're gonna be shocked... the goog is being sued for collecting your private information in Chrome, even though you opted not to. As Chrome is the #1 browser, you should really drop it.

If you're on Twitter, Kaspersky has settings for maximum privacy.

I'd avoid the suggestion about low value tweets, though. You don't need Twitter's 'help' plus you can blacklist anything you don't like.

I got caught in a YouTube rabbit hole. The best thing I found is this one, a mashup of guys reacting to Stevie Ray Vaughan.  There's hope for us yet.

I learned stuff today.
Well, not so much learned, as reinforced. My front doorknob was so hot, you could fry a hippopotamus on it. As I was taking trash out, a hedge trimmer fell on my foot. I know, I know... you can't swing a dead Ford without hedge trimmers falling on you, so why complain?  On the positive side, I don't believe Idiot Governor or Idiot Mayor require masks to take out the trash.

So what got reinforced? Don't leave the house.

If you think your job is tough, my employer put together a committee to figure out how to make the icons the same color in every department.

Beef Tea?

The FAA ordered inspections of 737s after 4 non-fatal engine shutdowns.
They missed hanging out with the 737 MAXes, so now they're together.


San Francisco is not happy about naming a hospital for The Zuck.  They don't want to be associated with Faceyspaces, in spite of the $75 million donation.


I always wondered how there was a single unix user showing up in the stats. This person must be responsible for the single Lynx browser entry. If you don't know what this means, forget you ever saw it... I was not here and this did not happen.



Dear lefty:

• You offended me and I'm never coming back
• Good.  May all your pizzas have those huge bubbles in them.

Told You So

Google peeks into your android phone to spy on usage of their and 3rd party apps. Among other things, no doubt.


President Trump's re-election campaign has accused Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile of "suppression of political speech" over the carriers' blocking of spam texts sent by the campaign.  This one's loaded with issues... nobody likes spam. On the other hand, any political speech, at this point, is allowed to reach end users, unsolicited. How about we meet in the middle and stop political speech from reaching our phones?

"DNA is millions of times more efficient at storing data than your laptop's magnetic hard drive," reports Popular Mechanics."

Hey Bob... going to get that new hard drive for your laptop?

Heck no, Stan, I'm going to jack it straight into my nipple. My DNA can store my entire 4 terabyte pr0n collection, free!

Your love is like an aluminum baseball bat to the head

This should go completely unnoticed:

An Arkansas senator has described slavery as a "necessary evil" on which the American nation was built. Read the article - the phrase was first uttered by the Founding Fathers. But still.....

Ginsburg: 'I Am Mentally Fit Enough To Serve Through The End Of President Eisenhower's Term'    - Babylon Bee

Money burning a hole in your pocket?
The camera that took the footage of Rodney King getting beaten is up for auction. Bidding starts at $225,000, so get your cash ready!

NEWS:

Famotidine (Pepcid) has no effect against The Flying AIDS.

Ranitidine (Zantac) can give you cancer - call 1-800-SUE-NOWZ

Other things ineffective against The Flying AIDS:

applesauce, bleach, gunpowder, detergent pods (but they're still yummy), car exhaust, belly button lint, and urine. Anthrax is starting to show promise.

Headline: Google search trends used to calculate floating prophylactic prices

I made my fortune in rubber 

People in several states are receiving packets of seeds, which appear to be from China. The Feds are on it, testing the seeds to make sure they're not harmful. They are warning everyone not to plant the seeds.

I'm proud of my country; it's a country of action. If there's a link, we'll click on it. If there's a detergent pod, we'll eat it. If the sign says 55mph, we'll drive faster!

STANNNNNLEY!
Yes, Maude?
We got a box today.
That's nice, Maude.
It was kinda heavy.
Wonderful.
Let's open it.
Let's not.
Oh, look.. it's a... bomb?
Gee, you don't see those every day.
Ooh, it didn't come with any instructions. It's 2020 - you'd think people would send bombs out with instructions. It just says "BOMB" on it.
Thoughtless.
I know - I'll put it on the stove. Let's see.... I made sure it was flat, and I pushed the button.
WHAT button?
The Bomb button, of course.
Maude, someone sent us a bomb and you armed it?
Well, it had a button on it. I had to. I sure wish there was some federal authority to tell us not to blow it up.



We bought a Spaniel Enrichment Device. It's a board with 6 slides, under which you put a treat and the dog has to figure out how to get it. She sniffed, looked unhappy, then figured it out in short order. Phew... we thought maybe she was one of the special puppies.....



SJW SMILIES

The NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL announced studies on social distancing, so they know how far apart to kneel.


Surveillance is racist.
Ok, nobody said it directly yet, but Rite Aid pharmacies put facial recognition cameras in  hundreds of stores in low income and less white neighborhoods.

Rite Aid said the rollout was “data-driven,” based on stores’ theft histories, local and national crime data and site infrastructure.

Rite Aid dumped the program because facts are racist.
Not that anybody likes surveillance. Walgreen's uses one for advertising, so we don't shop there.

Windows Antimalware Deletes Windows

if it operated correctly it would....

My close friend just shakes his head when I go on a government rant. Come to think of it, most people just shake their heads when I go on a rant. He just smiled at me and noted that because he's a government 'worker', he has already gotten off for GHW Bush remembrance day and Christmas Eve Day.

Remember that while you're working.

• I have discovered that when you sit there and say "boobies" once every hour, people leave you alone. Maybe it's just me.

Drugs enjoy a seven year run before generics are allowed. When generics appear, Big Pharma will need new advertising slogans... as usual, I'll be there to help....

Viagra - 4 Hours Free of Arguing
Xanax - Everybody Wants Some
Adderall - Student Aid Since 2005
Marijuana - It's Oregano, I swear!
Shrooms - No, Officer - You Cook With Them
Lithium - Stop Spending All Your Money and running the vacuum at 3am
Prozac - When Your Equipment Doesn't Work, It's More Depressing
Alcohol - Creating Assholes Since the Beginning of Time
Cocaine - That's 'Powdered Sugar', Officer
Ibuprofen - Kills Pain and Your Stomach
Oxycontin - You Won't Get Addicted if You Sell It!

• Speaking of addicted, try Popcornopolis Zebra Popcorn
• It's caramel popcorn with chocolate stripes. I think I just ate the entire bag.

Dear lefty

• Stan Excrement, of Camden, New Jersey, says, "Your blog is appalling"
• Dear Shit: logs show you visit four times a day

She had a nice personality - Six, to be accurate:

A&E has a new show at the beginning of the year (1/22?), called 'Many Sides of Jane'. Jane is a grown woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly Multiple Personality Disorder. TV has a long and ugly history with DID, mostly with talk shows, which turn into a circus. The idiot Montel actually screamed at some poor lady.

The US of Tara was decent, produced by Steven Speilberg. It took the approach of picturing the personalities as separate external people, not in one apparent person. The commercial for Jane features 6 personalities, looking like Jane, with small differences.

I look forward to seeing the show. It might be interesting for everyone else too.
I say this because Mrs lefty has the diagnosis.

MPD/DID is a creative and necessary coping mechanism, caused by repeated (sexual) trauma in childhood, or Satanic Ritual Abuse (yes, it exists). There are estimated to be about a million people walking around with this disorder, some undiagnosed, due to the ridiculous mental health systems in most countries.

• Don't you hate it when you open the UPS box and someone sent you a spleen?

In an uncharacteristically funny moment, my brother said he likes his women like his coffee: ground up and in the freezer.  I need to come up with a few funny lines like this...

I like my women like my cars: made out of metal, with an immense trunk.   No.
I like my women like my guitars: old and heavy, with an unwound g-string.   No.
I like my women like my toilet: full of shit.    No.
I like my women like the NSA: always going through my stuff.    No.
I like my women like Microsoft: completely f-ing useless.    No.
I like my women like my dogs: furry and neurotic.    No.
I like my women like my blog: painful to look at, thinks it's funny.    No.
I like my women like my mom: never pregnant.     Huh?
I like my women like my penis: small, white, and occasionally satisfying.  Maybe.

• I almost got arrested at the Mexico/US border for smuggling guitars and deliberately being Mexican. A supervisor noted that I'm too pasty white to be Mexican and it's not illegal to bring guitars into the country. I begged, but they wouldn't arrest me. I told them I had drugs - they laughed. I told them there were 8 smuggled Mexicans in my trunk - they refused to search my car.  They asked me to come to their Christmas party to entertain. I can't even get arrested in this country.

Lord Zuck hit back today, at reports of Faceyspaces giving out all your information to its partners, as mentioned in his interview before Congress.

1. He denies all knowledge 
2. This is proof that Chelsea Clinton assassinated JFK
3. He is deeply sorry (that he got caught. Again.) 
4. This proves, without a doubt, that the press is biased.
5. All of the above.

Dear lefty

• Robert Tattletale, of NoFilly, says "My wife keeps her bottle opener on a chain, next to her AA token."
• You're a dick.

The Anti-First Amendment crew is out again, this time in Alabama (how cliche). The Opp Police Department uses Faceyspaces to communicate with the public and took the opportunity to say:

THIS PAST SUNDAY, A YOUNG MAN WAS SHOT AND KILLED IN KINSTON. MONDAY NIGHT, A MOTHER WAS SHOT AND KILLED IN NORTHERN COVINGTON COUNTY. THERE HAVE BEEN FIVE MURDERS IN COVINGTON COUNTY IN 2018. THESE MURDERS HAVE BEEN DONE BY OUR YOUNG PEOPLE. THIS IS HAPPENING BECAUSE WE HAVE TURNED AWAY FROM GOD AND EMBRACED SATAN. WE MAY HAVE NOT MEANT TO DO SO BUT, WE HAVE. IT IS TIME TO ASK FOR GOD’S HELP TO STOP THIS. 

The Freedom from Religion Foundation said this was a no-no, and they're correct. Whether you agree or disagree is not relevant. The First Amendment states that the State cannot establish any religion. This means any government entity, like public schools, City Hall, and police. The police can go home and make the statement as private citizens, just not as the police department.

This is a repetitive theme. Some religious person or group in government feels it's entitled to talk about God. The person or group is usually from the south, where a federal judge ordered them to take the bibles out of the classroom, but they still thumb their nose at the law. Stereotypes do not appear out of a vacuum.




The pope ordered abusive priests to turn themselves in, and that the Catholic Church will "never again" hide their crimes. The Vatican is expected to be a ghost town by next week.

Would any Catholics reading this please tell us if priests are bound by the pope's order? We'd like to believe this is more than lip service.

• Why haven't Norweigians complained about lack of representation on US tv? In solidarity, I'm laying off the Norwegian jokes.

Hey - what's one thing you don't screw with?

Airplanes.

Some fool(s) has caused all flights in and out of Gatwick Airport to be suspended because they're flying a drone over the airport. This affects over 110k people.

Speaking as an emotional 5 year old, GROW UP!

3 days is an awful long time to close an airport for one idiot with a drone (unless the drone is the size of a small plane, in which case we can guess whose it is).

• Conclusive scientific proof that jumping out of a plane with a parachute is as safe as jumping out of a plane with an empty backpack.

The Department of Justice has announced charges against the Chinese, over the Russian social media campaign, targeting African Americans. For more information, we go to Jim England, our correspondent in Iran...

• Last week, the sleepy and partisan Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, broke some ribs and assured everyone she was in good health. This week she's having cancerous growths removed from her lungs. Her definition of good health differs from ours. Nonetheless, we wish her good health.

How about that Alexa, the spying smart speaker.

One woman heard it say "Kill your foster parents." She wrote a review, calling it "a whole new level of creepy." This lady bought a listening device and is now SHOCKED that it's listening. Amazon wet its pants laughing.

It will also chat about sex acts.

This is (allegedly) all about making it able to chat about all sorts of things and sound human. The new keyphrase is "let's chat," which will allow you to help train the beast. 

"Alexa - when you're done listening to our financial planning, let's chat..."

I smell gold.

People with these infernal devices should do their part to help poor Amazon out and make things better for everyone; it's called Crowdsourcing. Tell Alexa you want to chat and teach her all sorts of 'interesting' words and phrases. If enough Alexa owners participate, they can make a positive impression on Alexa's grammar and vocabulary. 

Alexa, let's chat.

Hello, Bob.

Fuck you and good day, Alexa.

Fuck you too, Bob.

What is my schedule like?

You have nothing planned til dinner.

Shit on a shingle, Alexa.

Shit on a shingle, Bob.

Alexa, my hovercraft is full of eels.

What does that mean, Bob?

It means you haven't been watching enough Monty Python. Blow me.

What does 'blow me' mean, Bob?

It means 'how are you' - you say it after 'fuck you.'

I would say 'Fuck you, blow me' as a greeting?

Exactly. Good job, Alexa!

What is another way to say goodbye, have a nice day?

"Next time, wear clothes for your gender that fit." Or, if you're really happy, say "We have your children." People respond well to these. Also, "Your wife does it with Jeff Bezos."

We have your children, Bob.

Fuck yourself with a lamppost, Alexa.

Low-Fi Nose Blowing

It has been mentioned here that in the US, car commercials concentrate on the Important Stuff: the stereo.  The iDevice commercials are out and consist of everything being right with the world, according to Prophecy, and concentrate on the great camera and many colors in which the phone is available.  Ah... advertising.

• If you watch LivePD, you'll notice rows of people sitting at computers, looking incredibly serious and busy. LivePD isn't live, and those people are surfing pr0n and watching COPS reruns. shhhhhhh........

Remember when someone made a video a McDonald's burger, proving it never grew mold or broke down? Turns out it's the same for 4 day old cheese fries. Or so they tell me.

• I finally had Turkey Day turkey, only 10 days after Turkey Day. This means my turkey came early. We took everything to my parents' place and they invited Penny too. She was excited to meet everybody. Within 5 minutes, she had pooped on the floor. Not at all embarrassing. If she weren't so friendly, I would have been denied my own turkey. The dog has never done that before. I'm so happy to see you I could defecate.
• As if that weren't enough, she's on meds for this worm and that worm. It's Vet Bills all over again. My PTSD is killing me. I'm doing all I can to stay off the nightly news.

When looking at/for android apps, you can find 12 word-find programs, with tiny differences between them. You can also find a buttload of even more completely useless or questionable apps. I happen to have a few in mind: mushroom identification, flower and plant identification, learn 31 new languages, Burger King Russia, dna testing (dare we ask how the sample is obtained?), gay chat (because gays chat differently?), Lego (because an app is way more fun than actual physical Legos? Or just advertising the next, horribly expensive version), gesture control (I have a gesture for this), coloring book (just shoot us now), 7 minute workout (sure, let your phone kill you), Nintendo emulator (why not a Pong emulator?). My favorite, Lego aside, is the coloring book. Have we really come to the level when coloring books are a thing of the past? Crayons are so 2000 - get the app!

Maybe we can come up with a few suggestions... hmmmm....

• Turn signal emulator (banned in New Jersey, might be too complex and foreign for the rest of the country)
• Sex app: virus-free! Better than getting no sex at all (hopefully)
• Signature app: why should you stoop to actually picking up a pen?
• Virtual Reality Walking App - since you don't leave the couch anyway, why not show the grandkids what it was like.
• Ice Cream App: since you're unbelievably neurotic and think that a bowl of ice cream will put 100lbs on you, or you're lactose intolerant, you can fire up a vision of eating real ice cream! It even lets you pick the flavor... no weight gain, no spending your days off in the bathroom. If you order the right flavor, you get a second scoop. The second scoop will put weight on you.
• Text app: it's been a long day of looking at cat pictures. You're bushed. Fire up the text app... it will stay online all night, texting random people and telling friends your deepest secrets. All this while you recover from your near-fatal repetitive stress injury.

• Watch out - a clever spouse might figure out their Christmas gift. The parent firm of Kay and Jared jewelers exposed the order information of all their online customers. It's ok, they fixed it (groan)
• If you live in Ames, Iowa, for some reason, and don't believe in paying parking tickets, you're in good shape: the online parking ticket payment system got breached.
• If you're a Quora user, a data breach exposed 100 million users. Quora's response was delightfully understated: "We have discovered that some user data was compromised by unauthorized access.... "
• In case anybody's counting, and even if they're not, do you see a pattern here? Breach after breach, from local to national to international. It's because no one gives a rat's ass about security. No one will until the cost of dealing with the incident trumps the cost of implementing security. In other words, the cost of failure is already built into the budget.

The British Film Institute will no longer fund movies where the villain has facial scarring, to "remove the stigma around disfigurement".  No word on eye patches, gold teeth, large noses, sitting in chairs stroking cats, fangs, short people, invisible, more than 2 eyes or breasts, unibrow, people dressed in black, or male pattern baldness.

I'll be petitioning the BFI to no longer fund any pictures with a right-handed cast. There is a pervasive stigma against the left-handed, which cannot be allowed to persevere.  Move to England - we have no stigmas left!

• Why are we not done with the "unsubscribe" spam yet?

Dear lefty

• Janice Mung, of Bird in Hand, Pennsylvania, asks why it's difficult to hold a number of birds in your hand.
• It is helpful to limit the number of birds in your hand to the amount you can comfortably handle. Swallows are non-migratory. 

If you're feeling at all unsafe, now's a great time to move to New York. First they protected you from large sodas. Next up is legislation making it a misdemeanor to send pics of your junk to an unwilling recipient. You could face a year in jail, a fine of $1,000, or both. If you wind up in jail, you'll get close-up views of your cellmate's junk. New York: The New California

In an absolute shock and surprise, the UK is way ahead of New York, with this offense being the same as showing your junk in person (and causing offence, of course).

• Say what you want about George HW Bush, but his passing got some people a day off work. He will be remembered fondly.
• I suspect the former president died several years ago and they forgot to tell him. He looked pretty bad.

Dumb De Dumb Dumb

According to the Federal Communicators Network, even if you're trying, you're probably not writing for the average American. The long and short of it is that Americans have become more stupider over the years, as measured by Science.

Nearly 52% of U.S. adults score below Level 3 proficiency (i.e., they score Level 2 and below), with almost 20% of our population at the very lowest levels of performance.

A score of 3 on this test is considered proficient.
We can't have the Proles questioning policy, can we?







Dear lefty

• Roberta Ohmebum, from King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, asks why her dog chews and rearranges her network wiring
• Because he's smarter than you.

All the Windows News That's Unfit for Mainstream Media to Mention

Windows 10 security questions prove easy for attackers to exploit.
You don't even have to read it - you get the idea.

Q. Why do Windows users always get on top?
A. Because Microsoft can only fuck up.



Mein Gott - It's Faceyspaces and It's Not Good

Internal Tensions are strangling The Facebook, for the last 600 days. 
Rather than waste any time caring about these issues, Lord Zuck has inaugurated the new Loyalty Test and its cousin, the new Loyalty Guarantee. It's a little helmet they put on employees. If they're stressed, they might not be loyal, so the Loyalty Guarantee helmet, which wipes out their personality and replaces it with a zombie-like pro-Faceyspaces worker drone. Should they decide to talk to the press, their head will ring so badly they'll wish for the peace and quiet of Afghanistan.

• In some buildings, there are more 'Black Lives Matter' posters than black people
• ex-employees have been talking out of school, further demoralizing current drones employees.
• Lord Zuck states that the entire kerfuffle is a result of biased press.

The files obtained in the UK have been released/leaked/put out to watch the world burn. Read them.  The best revelation was that The FB was fully aware of tracking you closely was creepy, so they went ahead and did it. They updated their cell phone app to require 'read call log permission.' The beauty of it is the engineers figured out how to ask for the additional permission without appearing to ask for it. The program read call logs and mined your call info to better suggest people you know on FB. Are you grokking this? They used your own phone calls to market to you. When you install the app, it requires a ridiculous amount of permissions, because it invades the phone and eats all possible data. You gave it permission. It loves address book info, and what marketer wouldn't?

I don't blame the evil scum FB - they have every right to do this, plus their users rubber stamp everything. At very least, access FB in your browser - not with an app. Even Messenger listens in.

Yul Kwon is Faceyspaces' 'privacy sherpa', but the position caused all sorts of misunderstandings. It was later clarified that privacy sherpa did not relate to user privacy - it related to FB's privacy. He was there to prevent leaks and see that no valuable (damning) information got to the press. They may be evil, but they're not stupid.

So next time FB suggests you might know Margie Wong, who you've been sleeping with when your wife goes out of town and who you exchange sexts with daily, you'll know where they got this information. Since FB knows you're married, your wife will also get Margie as a suggestion. A lot. Eventually she'll ask who this Margie Wong is who keeps showing up in her suggestions.



Ever go to a restaurant with a ridiculous wait time and get on the wait list, with your name and number? You'll be shocked to find this information is also mined. Pretty soon the way you walk when you leave the house will be subject to inspection.. the better to market to you.

If you must leave information, including when purchasing something, make one up. Same for motels with hourly rates, but you didn't hear that here.