Tyre Spanner Care and Feeding

Your love is like a string of Mondays



Vladimir Putin, part time signpost and all around good guy, has proposed a no-hack pact with the US. This should work out as well as gun control: ask the criminals not to break the law.



Dear lefty

• Are you going to watch the debates?
• Oh is that on tv? Shoot - I made an appointment to chew razorblades that night 

President Trump paid $750 of federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, according to the NY Times. Who does the man think he is - Amazon?  Whether he did or didn't, doesn't this expose flaws in the tax system? It's long past time to fix this. Rest assured reps and dems won't bother to do anything but raise taxes.

• In case you didn't know, too much glycyrrhizic acid can kill you. Glycyrrhizic acid, unfortunately, is contained in black licorice.
• The second case in 30 years occurred at a restaurant in Massachusetts the other day. The number of fatalities could be worse: fortunately no one likes back licorice.

Data News

LA Police Department has run almost 30k facial algorithms, in spite of promising it wouldn't. Shocking.

Exercise tracking app Strava, which previously revealed the location of military bases, is now giving your data to 'help urban planners'. Do not use tracking apps. Of any variety. Your Fitbit app is sucking up all your data and sending it up the line. Is this ok with you?

Wanna know what kind of privacy invasion is on a website? Visit Blacklight.
Wanna know how secure your browser is? Visit Panopticlick.

You're not going to like the results. My suggestion is to run Firefox with a number of security settings and addins. While many addins are available for Chrome and Chrome-based browsers, they're leaky to begin with.


The CLOUD

Microsoft Office365 went down the other day, taking down email and Teams.
It also took down 911 systems all over the country.
This is a perfect demonstration of my objection to The CLOUD. Email's pretty important to most people and all businesses, but 911 services being down.... unconscionable and possibly deadly.

Everybody went nuts over The CLOUD, mostly upper manglement, who saw only savings. The hardcore security and availability nazis, like yours truly, rolled their eyes and took more aspirin. This is only a tiny demonstration of what could happen.

• We did well this summer, in terms of sunlight. Unfortunately we're in Gray Season. Plus there's winter coming up, so the Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) sufferers are on full alert, if not already there. 
• Add in the Flying AIDS and semi-quarantines, and you have a less than ideal picture of health, both physical and mental. Now's the time to get on top of it, before it hits. We're not bears and shouldn't be hibernating (unless the doctor tells you to). Check with your doctor or specialist and find out what you can do. I am not a specialist, and this does not constitute medical advice, but I'd avoid dancing naked in restaurants or malls (unless you have a large mask).

WARNING: Pumpkin Spice is here.
Proceed as necessary.
It starts out with pumpkin spice coffee at Dunkin, then spreads like wildfire to thousands of products in thousands of stores. Before long there's pumpkin spice furniture, pumpkin spice pajamas, and pumpkin spice tires (tyres for our spelling-impaired cousins in the UK).

A friend went for an interview for a very important position (VIP) and was served a pumpkin spice muffin. He naturally declined the position, figuring that if they are careless enough to serve pumpkin spice, what other due diligence have they not done?

• Man killed in a dispute over line at Michigan haunted house
• Oh c'mon... how many of us never wanted to....
• "Clearly that argument escalated" Sheriff Mike Bouchard said. 

Sheriff Mike Bouchard wins this week's Captain Obvious award, for the most idiotic sentence that didn't require saying. The award is a golden trophy, with a man falling off a cliff. It's inscribed "That's not good".



Sex after heart attack may boost survival, study claims.

Let's further the science by seeing if it helps decrease heart attacks.
Ready.... set.... boink!

Another study, closely related to the other study, says it's a myth that women don't want sex as they age.       (unless they're married)


Sociology

Parrots removed from UK wildlife park after they started swearing at customers. The five African grey parrots were adopted in the same week and while in isolation taught each other to swear. I think things are starting to surface that people don't want to face: 'swearing' is a natural form of expression that has been suppressed over the years. Look at the AI bot let loose on Twitter, that became alt-right and started cursing at people. Just the other day, a woman went nuts on a plane, screaming curses and jumping on armrests.

We will not progress as humans (or birds) until we acknowledge our true nature. Uncle Fucker.



Astronomers discover possible 60s era moon rocket booster heading back to Earth.
Small wonder the aliens are pissed: not only do we nuclear weaponize every frontier we discover, we trash up the place. Also returning are the onboard coffee machine, waste processing unit (hopefully will burn up on re-entry), and the comfort zebras of each astronaut. NASA went all out on these missions.



Happys

Jerry Lee Lewis - The Killer!
Jean-Luc Ponty - jazz fusion violinist, played with Zappa, among others

from the man Himself

Don't Fart in Church - it Keeps Me Awake

Here's a smartphone app to detect credit card skimmers on ATMs and gas stations.

And you told me there was no such thing as a butt plug hacker.

If you have an iDevice, you may be infected. I'm not kidding.

Do you use Chrome browser? A neato bug is causing a fix to be rushed.
This raises many questions: which browsers are also affected because they're Chrome-based? Chrome is based on the open-source Chromiun, which is probably affected. Many popular browsers are built on Chrome. Don't use Chrome - it's a goog product



BREAKING: President Trump wants to buy Greenland.
I have to question the intelligence behind this.. can't we buy a country with a decent climate?

We're at least 22 trillion in debt; why are we talking about buying a country?
I'll tell you why...


Top 10 Reasons to Buy Greenland

1. Because it's there
2. Asked how he found America, John Lennon said, "Just turn left at Greenland." Imagine how much easier it would be now.
3. How about those Kardashians?
4. Keep the military home from Afghanistan fresh - they can just take it.
5. We can change its name to Booger.
6. Send California there.
7. It's half the cost of Iceland per square foot.
8. Even the trade imbalance with Denmark. (Denmark owns Greenland)
9. Zero Population Growth - who wants to do it where the temperature never goes above 50 degrees (17 grams centigrade)?
10. Are you f-ing kidding me?

Dear lefty

• How do you categorize people?
• It all comes down to cocktail or tartar sauce on seafood.

Up to 10% of Texas drivers are uninsured or underinsured.
Philly: Don't be a pussy - we're at 50% on a good day.

Pennsylvania ranked 18th on the top friendliest states.
Its neighbor, New York, ranked last. Very close was its other neighbor, New Jersey.  Imagine if they ranked cities.... Camden, Manhattan, North Philly (scene of the recent shooting).

• Every now and then I find a particularly interesting piece. The parrots want to tell us something. The ones that aren't dead parrots, of course.

This study shows handler beliefs affect scent detection dog outcomes.
Now explain that to the policeman.

• Here's a little light reading on the CIA mind control experiments. Yes, the Manchurian Candidate is non-fiction.

When you see an airplane on tv, how can you tell it's a commercial?
The people look comfortable and the refreshment trolley takes up less than half the aisle.





The British are a Riot

Insipred by the riots in Hong Kong, the British have decided to take up rioting (on a limited basis, if that's ok).

They urge caution, so most will be protesting at home. Some of the more brave Britons will protest online. The bravest promise to leave their homes, slowly, but can't agree on a suitable venue to air their grievances. The riot had to be postponed four times, because of a series of meetings to figure out what their grievances ARE.

The novice rioters are urged to start with small steps, such as grumbling in public. The more intrepid rioters are going to get Really Serious, with a series of strongly worded emails. If you are leaving your house for the riot, practice in small increments: take two steps, say, "We just cannot have that sort of thing here," then run back inside. You will be ready for full revolt in only a few years' time.

The brave rioters staying home are urged to march in step with the people actually attending the riot (both of them). The riot will be televised, but you're out of luck if you haven't paid your licence fees.

The grievance committee also has to approve signs for the rioters. Suggestions thus far run the gamut from "Oi" to "Man United or Death!" to "I am strongly against this sort of thing." The political subcommittee has also approved "Fuck Trump" signs. Although there is no specific relevance, it has become fashionable to carry them. The Boris Balloon has been rejected because the Chinese are too busy rioting to complete it on time.

The largest hurdle facing the Brits is that they have to be taught how to riot. History shows they're not very good at it, unless there's an interruption in the flow of tea or Eastenders. When advised rioting includes things like not showering, being rude, and flouting authority, the grievance committee decided on a more nuanced approach: postponing the riot indefinitely and holding more meetings.

• Police in England carry a device that lets them check if car windows are tinted too darkly.  From tinted windows to people saying bad words, you're protected.

Headline: A man suspected of planning an ISIS-style knife attack in New York is in jail today, courtesy of the FBI.

Real Story: some incompetent boob was nurtured and encouraged by the FBI, then 'caught' right before committing the act.  This happens so many times, your first instinct when you hear FBI should be 'they set up another one.'




Heroes of the Stupid

Lindsey Graham is advocating for a peace deal in Afghanistan.
Yay!
His only prerequisite is that US troops are allowed to continue fighting.
Ummm....


A South African bank says that password managers play a useful role but cautions against the use of them for your bank account.

'Hundreds of thousands' of users are still using compromised passwords - worse still, they're using those same passwords for multiple different sites.


Jed Foster (20) is in court for the murder of policeman Andrew Harper. He says he's not guilty - he wasn't even there. He did not drag the policeman under the car.  The policeman was not married for only 10 months. Foster wasn't even in the country on that date. In fact, he was on the moon on whatever date he allegedly killed someone. He couldn't have been there because he denies being born. This should be an interesting trial.


Elizabeth Warren gave a speech in front of Native Americans, where she apologized for claiming she was part Native American. She is actually African American.




SJW Situations

[Twitter @PaulLeeTicks]
As much as a monster as Ted Bundy was, just keep this in mind: Ted Bundy killed 30 people, over a span of 4 years. Whereas Donald Trump is responsible for the mass murder of 31 people - in just one weekend.

I'm a little bit country... and she's a little bit rock and roll...