It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's a very good unemployment report, with initial claims falling by 12,000 to 216,000, the lowest number in almost 6 months, and continuing claims fell by 26 K to 1.86 Million. 

A lot of this is people getting back to work after hurricanes Helene and Milton, though it should be noted that layoffs are up 3.7% year over year.

Meanwhile, PCE prices rose by .3% month over month, a bit higher than expected, which would seem to imply that the Federal Reserve will moderate any rate cutting.  (My guess would be ……… Naah.  Homie won't play that game today.  I should probably never play that game.)

Wages continue to (slightly) outpace inflation, which in my mind is a good thing, though in the mind of the Federal Reserve, not so much.

Not a clue where this all goes.

Deep Thought

I continue to mask to protect myself and my family.

There are good things, like not getting Covid, not getting Long Covid, and not dying. 

There are bad things, like when it chafes, the feeling of moistness on my face, and when a strap snaps.

The worst is when a sneeze catch me by surprise, and I end up ensnoterating my mask.

Yeah, I Work There

Normally I don't just publish a press release, but Antenna Research Associates is my workplace, so I am posting this without comment:

OceanSound Partners Acquires Antenna Research Associates, a Leading Provider of Integrated Radio Frequency

OceanSound Partners (“OceanSound”), a growth-oriented private equity firm that invests in technology and technology-enabled services businesses serving government and highly-regulated enterprise end-markets, today announced the completion of its acquisition of Antenna Research Associates, Inc. (“ARA” or the “Company”), a leading provider of integrated radio frequency (“RF”) and advanced communications products to the aerospace and defense (“A&D”) end-markets. ARA’s management team, led by CEO Logen Thiran, will continue in their operational roles and as investors in the Company. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 1963, ARA enables the U.S. Department of Defense and other national security-focused customers to modernize legacy platforms and deploy next-generation systems that enhance situational awareness, threat detection, and advanced communication capabilities. The Company leverages its over 60-year heritage in electromagnetic spectrum expertise, combined with scaled innovation, engineering, manufacturing, and testing infrastructure to design, develop, and deploy advanced antennas and other mission-critical RF solutions across several use cases, including Communications, Tactical RF, and Radar-Critical Subsystems. ARA’s core differentiation lies in its ability to leverage active electronically scanned array (“AESA”) technology applied in size-, weight-, power-, and cost-constrained applications.

“ARA’s comprehensive RF solutions portfolio is well positioned to address critical U.S. Department of Defense priorities such as the modernization of legacy technology systems and development of lower-cost and high performance unmanned aerial systems (“UAS”) and counter UAS solutions to better manage threats from U.S. adversaries,” said Joe Benavides, Managing Partner of OceanSound. “Since its founding in 1963, ARA has developed a portfolio of over 50 patents used in the delivery of differentiated RF systems and, more recently, innovative products leveraging small form-factor AESA technology to become a leading provider of RF solutions to the A&D market. ARA’s ability to miniaturize their products enables the development of small, low cost, higher-volume platforms such as drones, low earth orbit satellites, man portable communications and other mobile A&D platforms.”

“We are at an important inflection point in ARA’s development and are thrilled to partner with OceanSound, whose expertise in the A&D technology market will be invaluable, to accelerate ARA’s growth and strategic transformation primarily focused on making complimentary investments in and acquisitions of technology solutions,” said Thiran. “As the defense industry continues to demand advanced, low-cost technologies, our team is focused on building sustainable partnerships with customers to develop and deploy cost competitive, high-performance technologies to address the rapidly evolving requirements of the Department of Defense. OceanSound’s partnership approach will enable us to continue fielding innovative solutions leveraging the RF spectrum to better serve the needs of the market.”

“We are excited to partner with Logen and the current management team who have deliberately transformed ARA through targeted acquisitions of technology capabilities and then cross-selling the resulting differentiated solutions portfolio to higher value A&D programs,” said Jeff Kelly, Partner at OceanSound. “ARA’s long history of innovation and its reputation as a trusted technology partner to A&D customers positions the company well to meet the increasing demand to modernize our country’s defense posture. We will work closely with ARA’s management team to enhance the Company’s RF capabilities and customer relationships, that, together with additional strategic acquisitions, will enable ARA to deliver a more complete portfolio of advanced technologies to the A&D market.”

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP served as legal advisor to OceanSound. Raymond James & Associates, Inc. and Akerman LLP served as financial and legal advisors, respectively, to ARA.

About Antenna Research Associates
Established in 1963, ARA is a leading provider of integrated RF and advanced communications products, including components, assemblies and subsystems, to the aerospace and defense end-markets. ARA maintains deep specialization and differentiation in active electronically scanned array antenna capabilities utilized in size-, weight-, power-, and cost-constrained environments. ARA was founded in 1963 and is based in Laurel, Maryland. For more information, please visit https://ara-inc.com/.

About OceanSound Partners
OceanSound Partners is a New York-based private equity firm that pursues control investments in technology and technology-enabled services companies serving government and highly regulated enterprise end markets. OceanSound employs a partnership approach, working closely with founders, entrepreneurs, and executives of middle market businesses to drive transformational growth. For more information, please visit www.oceansoundpartners.com.

That is all.

Quote of the Day

If Nazis Are Involved, Nazis Are the Lede.

—Jamison Foser

He makes what should be the obvious lede in a New York Times article about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.

This is what he is referring to:

Nearly two weeks ago, before Donald Trump and JD Vance began lying about Haitian immigrants eating pets, the New York Times ran a lengthy piece headlined “How an Ohio Town Landed in the Middle of the Immigration Debate” that noted “by most accounts, the Haitians have helped revitalize Springfield … But the speed and volume of arrivals have put pressure on housing, schools and hospitals” and attempted to explain both. Sprinkled throughout the narrative is praise for the Haitian immigrants and the effect they have had on the city, as well as criticism – some of it extremely racist. And then way down at the very end of the article, more than 70 paragraphs deep, came this striking image: “On a recent Saturday, about a dozen Nazi sympathizers — masked men in matching red shirts, black pants and boots — waved swastika flags as they marched in downtown Springfield near a jazz festival. At least two of the men, who authorities said were outsiders, carried rifles.”

It was in the 3rd to last paragraph.

More generally, he is talking about how the media in general, and the Times in particular engage in a style of journalism that magnifies the lies:

………

Imagine a man, let’s call him Bob, is standing at a bus stop, waiting for the 5:10. He’s wearing a Dave Matthews Band hat and doing a crossword puzzle on his phone. Now imagine another man, let’s call him Bill, who has twice been convicted of random assaults and just got out of prison, walks up to him and punches him in the face and says “I hate the Dave Matthews Band.”

Would you expect a news report about this assault to focus on Bill’s history of violence, his previous convictions for assaulting people, and his time in prison? Or would you want news reports to focus on the Dave Matthews Band and the polarized reaction to their music? You’d expect a focus on what the assault and Bill’s history of violence say about Bill, right? There are, to be sure, deeply held views both pro and con about the Dave Matthews Band, but the Dave Matthews Band quite obviously is not the story here, right?

Note that this sort of coverage only applies to Republicans.

In 2000, you literally had high school kids showing that the Washington Post and the New York Times misquoted Al Gore in order to reinforce the idea that Gore was a serial liar.

This IOKIYAR coverage of politics is endemic to the national news media, and particularly bad in the Times and the Post.

Only Democrats can have trust issues, only Democrats can tell a lie, only Democratic lies can be called lies, and Nazis are never the lede.

Not Murdered Yet

Mawage

As of today, by the Gregorian calendar, Sharon* and I have been married for 30 years.

By the Hebrew calendar, our anniversary will be on November 11.

I am not surprised that she is still with me, she is, after all, a famously stiff necked woman even by the standards of our famously stiff necked people.

I am a bit surprised that she has not murdered me.  She has not even tried. (It would be a crime of passion, not premeditated, so it would be something like a cast-iron skillet, a knife, a brick, a beading needle, or a plaster of Paris bagel and cream cheese paperweight)

If she had, it would have been completely justified, as my family and friends could attest to.

2 kids, 3 States, 5 domiciles, 7 cats (so far), 11 cars, and two people who have managed to put up with each other for 3 decades.

It's kind of a miracle.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

There is Crazy Rich Guy, There is Bond Villain, and Then There Is

Quoting Cerebus………Elon Musk having a "Compound" for his many children and baby mommies.

He is officially bat-sh%$ insane with an apocalyptic view of the future of the world.

His estranged daughter, Vivian Wilson, nailed it when she said that he, "Want[ed] to seem like the CEO from Ready Player One."

It is notable that the New York Times used the term, "Compound."

Rich people have estates, terrorists have compounds:

On a quiet, leafy street of multimillion-dollar properties, one stands out: a 14,400-square-foot mansion that looks like a villa plucked from the hills of Tuscany and transplanted to Austin, Texas.

This is where Elon Musk, 53, the world’s richest man and perhaps the most important campaign backer of former President Donald J. Trump, has been trying to establish the cornerstone of an unusual family compound, according to four people familiar with his plans.

Mr. Musk has told people close to him in recent months that he envisions his children (of which there are at least 11) and two of their three mothers occupying adjoining properties. That way, his younger children could be a part of one another’s lives, and Mr. Musk could schedule time among them.

Directly behind the villa is a six-bedroom mansion that Mr. Musk helped purchase, according to two of the people and public records. The total cost of both properties was about $35 million. When in Austin, he often stays at a third mansion about a 10-minute walk away, the people said.

Three mansions, three mothers, 11 children and one secretive, multibillionaire father who obsesses about declining birthrates when he isn’t overseeing one of his six companies: It is an unconventional family situation, and one that Mr. Musk seems to want to make even bigger.

Sounds a little bit crazy, huh?

A proponent of in vitro fertilization, Mr. Musk believes strongly in increasing the world’s population. He has even offered his own sperm to friends and acquaintances, including the former independent vice-presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan, according to two people familiar with his offer. Ms. Shanahan turned him down.

Sounds a little bit crazier, huh ?

………

In a biography published in 2015, Mr. Musk worried that educated people weren’t having enough children. “I’m not saying like only smart people should have kids. I’m just saying that smart people should have kids as well,” he said. “I notice that a lot of really smart women have zero or one kid. You’re like, ‘Wow, that’s probably not good.’”

His views seem to echo those of his father, Errol Musk. The elder Mr. Musk, who is 78 and has seven children with three women, praised his son’s “good genes” and desire to have many children.

“You breed horses,” Errol Musk said in an interview in September. “People are the same. If you have a good father and a good mother, you’ll have exceptional children. If you have no children, I feel very sorry for you.”

Yeah, there is a f%$#-ton of racist Apartheid born eugenics and family pathology there, ain't it?

This guy is nuts.

I Voted Early

Not a Long Video

I voted early, and it went very quickly.

Accompanied by my intrepid, if somewhat half-assed cameraman Charlie Saroff, I was in and out in 15 minutes.

I would have been out in 10, but I thought that it would be cool to use the digital marking machine.

I lost 5 minutes waiting for those, and then switched to the old fashioned stations with a pen.

I'm surprised that it went so quickly.

There were 11 early voting stations in Baltimore County, so I went after I picked up my kid at the train station.

Vote early and often.

Quote of the Day

I Dunno, Man, If the Business Model Is Guilting Liberals Into Paying Out of Some Sort of Civic Duty, Then Perhaps They (And I Include Many Journalists in This, Not Just Management) Should Stop Sh%$ting on Those Liberals.

—Duncan "Atrios" Black

The New York Times and the Washington Post, among others have been complaining about criticism, the Times Maggie Haberman has suggested that a, "Vast Left Wing Conspiracy," set up to criticize the press.  (The actual quote is, "An industry ……… that is dedicated toward attacking the media," but that is a distinction without a difference.)

The mainstream press has been presenting false balance in response to false claims of journalistic bias from the right, and now that the sane people are pushing back, their feelings were hurt. (And their pocketbooks, but that is another story)

If you cannot call a lie a lie or call a liar a liar, you are not a journalist, you are a stenographer.

Safely at Oakland International Airport

Probably not noteworthy, except for the fact that our plane was a Boeing 737 MAX 8.

No MCAS issues or fuselage plugs blowing out, so far.

The next leg of the trip is a 737-700.

Heading Back to Charm City

Just found my seat for the flight back.

Obviously, this will be a light posting day.

Posted but mobile.

The Election is Over

You know how they say that it's all over when the fat lady sings?

This is not true.  It's all over when Insane Clown Posse raps.

In this case, Violent J had endorsed Harris:

In what surely comes as a heartbreaking disappointment to Donald Trump, Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J has endorsed In what surely comes as a heartbreaking disappointment to Donald Trump, Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J has endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Kamala Harris for president.

Speaking with comedian Troy Iwata for a recent segment on The Daily Show, Violent J confirmed that Harris is his preferred pick for the White House, saying “I want her to win because she’s a Democrat, and I love my mom.”

.......

Speaking about why he prefers Democrats to Republicans, Violent J explained, “My mom said the Democrats are saying less taxes on the poor, more taxes on the rich.” When asked about the taxes he pays, he enthusiastically claimed that he pays “up the fucking anus, and I’m happy about it. I pay double what they ask.”

Good.

Posted via mobile.

Epic Retro Hotel Sign

We are staying at this hotel and heading back to Baltimore tomorrow morning.

This Business Will Get out of Control. It Will Get Out of Control and We’ll Be Lucky to Live Through It.

Cue Freddie Dalton Thompson

Israel has now launched missile strikes against Iran.

This is not, and has never been, about the safety and security of Israel, it has been about Benjamin Netanyahu's determination to stay in power at any cost.

The Israeli army launched airstrikes on military targets in Iran overnight into Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces announced in a statement.

"In response to months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran against the State of Israel – right now the Israel Defense Forces is conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran," IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a statement released to the media.

………

Several strong explosions were heard in Iran's capital Tehran and the nearby city of Karaj city, Iranian state media initially reported overnight into Saturday.

The New York Times further reported that Iranians said that other explosions were occurring in other cities in Iran, including in Isfahan and Shahid. 

Iran's Fars News Agency reported that according to the information they currently have, the targets of the Israeli attack were military bases in western Iran. It was also reported that there are currently no signs of an attack on nuclear or oil facilities.

This is about Netanyahu wanting to prolong the war to prolong his time in power.

He would destroy the whole world to stay in power and stay out of jail.

For Your Mental Health and Relaxation

Think of this as a way to lower your blood pressure in this crazy world of ours.

We were down in Nescowin, Oregon for a memorial service for my stepmom.

Neskowin is a beach community on the coast of Oregon, and it is beautiful. 

The first post is a video with sound of the ocean on Sunday, followed by panoramic pictures in chronological order, followed by regular pictures in chronological order. 

We came in Friday afternoon, which was beautiful, 18°C and clear, a rarity on the Oregon coast in October. 

It was still that way on Saturday until about 2, when crowds started rolling in, and if anything it became even more beautiful. 

On Sunday, it was rainy and foggy and chilly, but more beautiful still.

Pictures are after the break:

No Blogging Tonight

Shabbat dinner work 20+ relatives, and I am tired.

Another Day, Another Defamation Lawsuit

In this case it's the Central Park Five, innocent teens railroaded into prison for a crime that they do is not commit.

You may recall that Donald Trump bought full page advertisements calling for them to be put to death.

He had never apologized for this, even after the kids were exonerated.

They are now suing Trump for defamation over comments that he made about them during his debate with Kamala Harris.

A group of men who were exonerated in the rape and assault of a woman in Central Park in 1989 have sued Donald Trump for continuing to suggest that they are guilty, including at the presidential debate in Philadelphia last month.

The Central Park Five alleged in a federal defamation lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania that Trump falsely claimed during his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris that the men pleaded guilty after being charged in the case as teenagers and that they had killed someone. The defendants in fact were cleared of wrongdoing. And the victim of the infamous attack suffered life-threatening injuries but survived.

At the time of the crime, Trump took out a full-page newspaper ad calling for a return of the death penalty in New York, a move widely seen as a reaction to the attack on the jogger, directed at those who had committed the assault.

After a re-investigation of the case and after another suspect’s DNA confirmed his involvement, the defendants, who were Black and Latino, were cleared of wrongdoing. By then, they had served years in prison.

......

The new lawsuit stems from Trump’s comments at the debate, which was watched by 67 million people on Sept. 10, according to court papers.

In a portion of the debate focused on race and politics, Harris, the Democratic nominee, said she wanted to remind voters that Trump had taken out the newspaper ad suggesting the perpetrators of the jogger attack should face the death penalty.

Trump issued a muddled response, first suggesting that the teens pleaded guilty before he seemingly backtracked.

“They admitted — they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately,” Trump said. “And if they pled guilty — then they pled we’re not guilty.”

We are incredibly lucky that Trump is so incredibly stupid. 

Now I Get It

I had a bathroom scale in the trunk of my car (long dull story) and I brought it in the house so that I could weigh the luggage that we were checking. (Don't judge me)

It's a digital scale, which is more marketing than anything else, it has an encoder reading marks on a rotating, while the analogue version has your eye reading Marla on a rotating disk.

I needed to get the weight of our bag, it needed to be under 50 lbs, and the bag was large enough that it covered the readout.

So I weighed myself (none of your f$#@ing business, that's how much) and then I weighed the suitcase and me, and subtracted the difference.

The latter confirm was unstable enough that the number never settled.  

In the old style scale, I could simply look.

But this was a speaking scale, something that I had always thought was useless, so I could put the suitcase in the scale and hear the weight.

It was overweight, and I made adjustments.

I had always thought that a talking scale was worse than useless.

I stand corrected.

Posted via mobile.

At the Gate

Flying to Portland International Airport, and then driving to Nescowin on the Oregon coast for a memorial for my step mom.

Changing planes in Sea-Tac.

I'll probably post some more during the layover.

Posted via mobile.

Screwing Up in Reverse

It appears that Elon Musk's Ecch (Twitter) will not be subjected to the regulations accorded to "Gatekeepers" under EU regulations because he has destroyed the site's ad revenue.

So, Ecch is not subject to increased scrutiny for the potential harms to users because it has become a cesspit of racism, fascism, and trolling.

Following an investigation, Elon Musk's X has won its fight to avoid gatekeeper status under the European Union's strict competition law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

On Wednesday, the European Commission (EC) announced that "X does indeed not qualify as a gatekeeper in relation to its online social networking service, given that the investigation revealed that X is not an important gateway for business users to reach end users."

Since March, X had strongly opposed the gatekeeper designation by arguing that although X connects advertisers to more than 45 million monthly users, it does not have a "significant impact" on the EU's internal market, a case filing showed.

A gatekeeper "is presumed to have a significant impact on the internal market where it achieves an annual Union turnover equal to or above EUR 7.5 billion in each of the last three financial years," the case filing said. But X submitted evidence showing that its Union turnover was less than that in 2022, the same year that Musk took over Twitter and began alienating advertisers by posting their ads next to extremists' tweets.

I am certain that Elon's stans will claim that this is evidence of his genius, but I put it down to his being a lucky moron.

Literally Pro Teen Pregnancy

Why yes, the state Attorneys General of Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho are demanding that mifepristone be banned because it deprives the states of teen pregnancies, why are you asking?

This is some seriously f%$#ed up sh%$:

Three Republican attorneys general filed a complaint in federal court on October 11 arguing that their states have a right to pregnant teenagers, and that right is being violated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

………

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, and Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador—all Republicans—take issue with this. Abortion access decreases teen pregnancy, and they seem to think that is a bad thing.

“Remote dispensing of abortion drugs by mail, common carrier, and interactive computer service is depressing expected birth rates for teenaged mothers in Plaintiff States,” the attorneys general allege in the complaint, which was filed before forced birth enthusiast Judge Matt Kacsmaryk in the Northern District of Texas’s Amarillo Division. They claim that decreased births constitute “a sovereign injury to the state in itself,” and causes downstream injuries like “losing a seat in Congress or qualifying for less federal funding if their populations are reduced.” In other words, uteri are state slush funds, and girls owe the state reproduction once they are capable of it.

………

Bailey, Kobach, and Labrador’s argument treats teenagers as breeding stock. The complaint is shocking in its brazenness. But it is a natural outgrowth of the conservative legal movement’s efforts to subordinate women: Girls choosing not to give birth is wrong, and men can go to court to set it right.

These people are not the opposition, they are the enemy, and they are evil.

Headline of the Day

Streaming’s Slow Enshittification Continues As Netflix Kicks Users Off Cheapest Ad-Free Tiers

—Techdirt

Yeah,this pretty much nails it.

This raises a linguistic issue, before Cory Doctorow coined the term, there was very little discussion, much less any awareness, of how companies, particularly tech firms, were going out of their way to screw their clientele over time.

Now that we have a word, we all know.

Eric Arthur Blair (aka George Orwell) described this phenomenon in his description of Newspeak.

We’ve illustrated repeatedly how as streaming subscriber growth has slowed, streaming giants have had to pivot to some bad industry habits to ensure Wall Street gets those sweet improved quarterly returns. That’s included everything from utterly pointless layoff-creating mergers and price hikes, to annoying new restrictions and a steady increase in ads (that you have to pay more to avoid).

Streaming giants want to drive users to advertising because there’s greater profit potential in charging more for ad placement and collecting user behavioral ad data than there is in subscriptions. So that’s the direction the industry is headed, whether consumers like it or not. Some people don’t mind the ads; personally they just remind me that I’m living in a shallow dystopia.

Last year, Netflix stopped selling its cheapest $11.99 ad-free tier in the U.S. and UK. Last week, it started warning customers still on that plan in the UK and Canada (and soon the U.S.) that the plan will soon be shut down. There is a $7 per month ad-based plan, but you’ll need to pay extra if you want to do anything with it (multiple concurrent streams, 4K, share your password).

………

But the price of that introductory ad-based will also rise endlessly, disproportionate to product quality, feature restrictions, and shrinking device support. The need for improved quarterly returns (at any costs) creates a consumer “pricing funnel” that forces consumers to pay more and more money for a product that’s often getting worse (the traditional cable and broadband industries perfected this thanks to monopolization) with a steady uptick in monetizable restrictions.

………

To be clear, consumers still find value in streaming services like Netflix, and it remains an improvement over traditional cable because of cost and the ease of cancellation. But with “subscriber churn,” becoming an issue as cost-conscious users binge watch a service catalog then cancel, I can absolutely guarantee that these companies will find creative new ways to make cancelling annoying and difficult.

………

You’re also going to see a growing number of harmful sector mergers as executives (who have run completely out of ideas) try to boost stock valuations and grab tax cuts via purposeless consolidation. Consolidation whose only result historically has been more debt, higher prices, worse quality products, and layoffs.

And as more and more subscribers get annoyed and head to the exits (and alternatives like piracy), executives will blame absolutely everything (VPNs! China! Regulation! the wokes!) for their inevitable downfall, having learned absolutely nothing in the process.

Of course they will have learned nothing.  To quote Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

The Studios Are Refusing to Distribute? Imagine That

The award-winning documentary about the successful union effort at Amazon's JFK 8 warehouse in Staten Island, Union has been unable to find a studio willing to distribute the film.

There could be a number of reasons for this, the increasing hostility of the studios towards unions generally, the fear of retribution from Jeff Bezos, etc. 

Basically, studio executives are being chicken-sh%$s:

To someone not completely enmeshed in the state of the entertainment business, the documentary Union might seem like it has the trappings of an attractive nonfiction sales title: a dramatic story arc culminating in a history-making news event, close access to key players, a charismatic central character, glowing reviews and a premiere at a prestigious film festival.

And yet the film, which documents how an unconventional grassroots group organized the first-ever U.S. union at an Amazon warehouse, is coming to select theaters on Friday without the backing of any major entertainment companies. Months after the Brett Story and Stephen Maing-directed film screened at the Sundance Film Festival and won a special jury award there, the filmmakers announced they had turned to theatrical self-distribution in the absence of any major studio or streamer deals. With the move, a press release in June noted, the team was “recognizing the difficulties faced by political documentaries in distribution of late.” 

Social-issue documentaries have had a rough time of it lately, with longtime impact-driven company Participant Media shutting down in the spring and consolidations reducing the number of buyers interested in this kind of fare in the space. But Union, with its detailed portrait of a consequential American labor story, is an especially salient example. The filmmakers’ current self-distribution plan may ultimately target their intended audience just as effectively, or even more, than a conventional, mainstream release. But their story also offers a glimpse into the bind that some nonfiction filmmakers are facing in a cost-cutting, risk-averse market. 

Naah, the executives are chicken-sh%$s, and they are still suffering from butt-hurt from the strike earlier this year.

This was never goping to make a lot of money for the studios, but it would have made money nonetheless, but they won't want their workers to get uppity, I guess.

Yet another reason why the big studios should be broken up.

More Climate Change Weirdness

While this is hurricane season, the emergence of a micro hurricane in the Caribbean is not how things have gone in the past.

5 miles in diameter, cyclonic, and hurricane force winds.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the water is almost as hot as a bathtub:

A hurricane so small that it could not be observed by satellite formed this weekend, surprising meteorologists and even forecasters at the National Hurricane Center.

Hurricane Oscar developed on Saturday near Turks and Caicos, and to the northeast of Cuba, in the extreme southwestern Atlantic Ocean. As of Saturday evening, hurricane-force winds extended just 5 miles (8 km) from the center of the storm.

This is not the smallest tropical cyclone—as defined by sustained winds greater than 39 mph, or 63 kph—as that record remains held by Tropical Storm Marco back in 2008. However, this may possibly be the smallest hurricane in terms of the extent of its hurricane-force winds.

………

Writing in his summary of Oscar's development on Saturday afternoon, National Hurricane Center forecaster Philippe Papin noted that the hurricane was only discovered due to a last-minute flight by Air Force Hurricane Hunter aircraft.

"It is fair to say it's been an unexpected day with regards to Oscar," he wrote in his 5 pm ET advisory. "After being upgraded to a tropical storm this morning, a resources-permitting Air Force Reconnaissance mission found that Oscar was much stronger than anticipated and in fact was a tiny hurricane. It is worth noting that remote sensing satellite intensity estimates are currently much lower."

 This is not normal.

Headline of the Day

Trump Evasive About Raising Pa. Minimum Wage While Pretending to Work at McDonald’s in Bucks County

—The Philadelphia Inquirer

A suggestion for the New York Times, hire whoever wrote that hed, and have them give lessons.

This is how news is handled, not with the equivocation and both-siderism that one seems to be the rule at the Times.

The McDonald's was closed, no one paid for any food, there were no customers, and the franchise owner refuses to pay his workers well.

That is the story:

While visiting a McDonald’s in Bucks County on Sunday, former President Donald Trump failed to answer a question about raising the minimum wage even though an overwhelming majority of Pennsylvania voters support an increase.

Trump, 78, “worked” the fry cooker at a McDonald’s — which was closed to the public for the event — in Feasterville.

………

The beginning of the question is cut off, so it’s unclear if the reporter was asking about raising Pennsylvania’s minimum wage specifically. At $7.25, the state’s minimum wage is aligned with the federal rate, and is one of the lowest minimum wages in the country. It hasn’t been changed since 2009, the last time the federal minimum wage was increased.

“It’s a beautiful thing to see these are great franchises and produce a lot of jobs and it’s great,” Trump went on. “And great people work in here too.” As several reporters shouted again about the minimum wage, he continued to ignore them.

Trump’s obfuscation could mean something to the more than three-quarters of all Pennsylvanians who somewhat or strongly support increasing the state minimum wage.

That's because in Donald's world, paying decent wages is for suckers.

An Update to Yesterday's Story

Remember when I noted that Ron DeSantis was threatening prosecutions against TV stations for running political ads that he did not like? 

It seems like only yesterday.  Wait ……… It was yesterday.

It now turns out that the lawyer who was tasked with sending these letters out has said that he was instructed to by the Florida Governor's office.

That's a criminal conspiracy:

Letters that threatened Florida TV stations with criminal penalties if they aired a political ad backing a referendum that would repeal the state’s six-week abortion ban came directly from Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office, according to the attorney who signed and sent them.

Attorney John Wilson said that he resigned as general counsel for the Florida Department of Health rather than “complying with the directives” of DeSantis’s executive staff to send more cease-and-desist letters to TV stations running the ad.

“I did not draft the letters or participate in any discussions about the letters prior to Oct. 3,” Wilson wrote in an affidavit filed in federal court Monday. Instead, he said, three attorneys on the governor’s staff gave him the letters to send.

………

In an earlier letter, Wilson condemned the actions of the administration. “A man is nothing without his conscience,” Wilson wrote in a resignation letter on Oct. 10 obtained by the Miami Herald. “It has become clear in recent days that I cannot join you on the road that lies before the agency.”

………

Wilson also wrote in the affidavit on Monday that the governor’s office told him to find outside attorneys to “assist with enforcement proceedings” against TV stations that ran the “Caroline” ad.

How about a federal prosecution.

Bueller?  Bueller?  Garland? Garland?

Ponch? Ponch?

So, the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ has decided to buy votes in Pennsylvania. 

This is, as they say, a violation of black letter law.

Why is he not being arrested right now?

Oh, yeah, right, Merrick F%$#ing Garland:

Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, said law enforcement should look into Elon Musk’s new ploy to give $1m to a registered voter who signs a petition supporting free speech in key swing states each day until the US presidential election.

Legal experts have said it appears to violate laws that prohibit giving incentives to people to register to vote. On Sunday, Shapiro expressed similar concerns. Monday is Pennsylvania’s deadline to register to vote.

“I think there are real questions with how he is spending money in this race, how the dark money is flowing, not just into Pennsylvania, but apparently now into the pockets of Pennsylvanians,” Shapiro told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “That is deeply concerning.”

Later in the interview Shapiro added: “I think it’s something that law enforcement should take a look at. I’m not the attorney general any more of Pennsylvania, I’m the governor, but it does raise serious questions.”

This raises no question at all.  It's illegal, and you can get up to 5 years in Club Fed for this:

Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal. See 52 U.S.C. 10307(c): “Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his name, address or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose of  encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both…” (Emphasis added.)

I am not a lawyer, but the above IS from a lawyer.

Arrest him, then do a psych evaluation, and then place him under the conservatorship of James Parnell Spears.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

pic.twitter.com/glSwzoXCJR

— WholesomeMemes (@WholesomeMeme) October 21, 2024

This is indeed true, unless, of course, they can see the bottom of their bowl.

Speaking of Snollygosters

When Elon Musk showed off his "autonomous" humanoid robots, they were not autonomous, they were operated by remote control by humans:

After Elon Musk provided his "long-term" vision for autonomous, humanoid robots at last week's "We, Robot" event, we expressed some skepticism about the autonomy of the Optimus prototypes sent out for a post-event mingle with the assembled, partying humans. Now, there's been a raft of confirmation that human teleoperators were indeed puppeting the robot prototypes for much of the night.

Bloomberg cites unnamed "people familiar with the matter" in reporting that Tesla "used humans to remotely control some capabilities" of the prototype robots at the event. The report doesn't specify which demonstrated capabilities needed that human assistance, but it points out that the robots "were able to walk without external control using artificial intelligence" (the lack of a similar AI call-out for any other robot actions that night seems telling).

How is this not securities fraud, and why hasn't he been arrested?

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

"So in an effort to highlight his claim that Kamala Harris never worked at McDonald’s, Trump pretended to work at a closed McDonald’s where he served pretend orders to supporters pretending to be customers" https://t.co/KykzMAZz9F

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) October 21, 2024

What, you mean that Trump is a snollygoster?

Well knock me over with the out of control 116,851 ton MV Dali.

Who Had Arnold Palmer’s Penis on Their Election 2024 Bingo Card?

Lord knows that I didn't.

Heck, if you had presented this as a story to the editors of The Onion, they would have sent it back as too over the top.

Something is deeply wrong here.

The best comment about this comes from the Golf great's daughter, who noted that Arnold Palmer detested Donald Trump:

Golf legend Arnold Palmer’s daughter said she was “not really upset” by the lewd story former President Donald Trump told about her father at a rally in his hometown on Saturday.

Peg Palmer Wears, the 68-year-old daughter of the golf icon, told the Associated Press “there‘s nothing much to say” about the story the Republican nominee chose to open his rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, surrounding Palmer’s manhood.

“This man was strong and tough,” Trump told the crowd in a perplexing speech on Saturday. “And I refused to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros. They came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable.’ I had to say it.”

………

Palmer, a longtime Republican, died in September 2016 before Trump’s first electoral victory. He golfed with other presidents, including George H.W. Bush and Dwight Eisenhower—a man he looked up to as an ideal leader, The Washington Post reported after his death.

However, Wears previously indicated her father was less enthusiastic about Trump‘s candidacy. In 2018, Palmer’s daughter said in an interview with The Sporting News that he was “appalled by Trump’s lack of civility and what he began to see as Trump’s lack of character” before his death.

 What a surprise.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

“The Republican Party is a threat to Democracy, which is why you need to vote for Democrats. And as president, one of the first things I’ll do is make sure the Republicans get a say in my administration” is not a coherent argument for a campaign. https://t.co/q4XaYKzfGl

— Alex Fernie (@FernieCommaAlex) October 11, 2024

Yes, this is completely incoherent.

Also, it typifies the rot in the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) and the rest of the very serious people types operating inside the DC beltway.

The thinking is, "These people cannot be bad, I was just at a cocktail party with them."

Yeah, This is a Big Deal

One of the secrets to the US victory against Japan during WWII was vastly superior logistics.

The US could operate and resupply ships at great distances from their home ports, while the Japanese were far more reliant on getting supplies in port.

It was, and is, a big deal in any sort of naval conflict, and it remains a capability that is generally lacking in other naval powers at this time.

One of the advances in technology that has found its way onto warships, vertical launch cells, has thrown a bit of a spanner into this while logistics process, since reload loading the cells requires equipment that can only be used in port, or rather, it was, as the VLS reloading underway has been demonstrated recently.

The U.S. Navy has achieved a significant breakthrough in maritime combat readiness by successfully demonstrating the Transferrable Reload At-sea Method (TRAM) on a warship in open waters for the first time.

This innovative technology allows warships to rearm their missile systems while at sea, drastically reducing downtime and enhancing operational effectiveness.

The historic demonstration took place on October 11th, off the coast of San Diego, where sailors aboard the Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Chosin (CG 65) used the hydraulically-powered TRAM device to load an empty missile canister into the ship’s MK 41 vertical launching system (VLS).

One interesting question raised is whether this is compact enough to operate on the far more numerous Arleigh Burke class destroyers, which carry a similar missile loadout.

It it does, it means that surface combatants won't have to be pulled out of an operation to reload.

Pass the Popcorn

We have gotten another dump of Special Prosecutor Jack Smith's election interference case.

While some folks are claiming that this is attempted election interference, I would argue that it is more just an alignment of the facts, and timing of the delays that Trump and his Evil Minions™, including the 6 conservative justices on the Supreme Court.

Between this, and Arnold Palmer's penis (more on that later), this has not been a good week for the Trumpster fire:

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Friday unsealed the appendix of source materials underpinning special counsel Jack Smith’s massive legal filing that detailed the evidence collected against Donald Trump in the federal D.C. election interference case — though the document was heavily redacted and appeared to contain few new revelations.

The unsealed and unredacted portions of the 1,889-page appendix included transcripts of interviews with the legislative committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, excerpts from former vice president Mike Pence’s autobiography, a transcript of a Trump White House news briefing after the election in November 2020 and a transcript of a 2023 CNN town hall interview with the former president.

Trump’s legal team had opposed making the materials public so soon, arguing that Chutkan’s releasing them now could appear as though the court was trying to affect the upcoming election. But Chutkan disagreed, saying that withholding the documents could amount to election interference.

Trump's legal team has spent years delaying this.  If they had not, this would have been out while the primaries were still going on.

Tough sh%$ folks.

………

One portion of the appendix that adds new detail is a less-redacted version of a previously released transcript from the House Jan. 6 committee, which indicates Trump was told of the Jan. 6 riot as early as 1:21 p.m. that day.

………

Trump didn’t send a video message telling people to go home until 4:17 p.m. — nearly three hours after his apparent conversation with the valet.

Chutkan had previously unsealed Smith’s detailed 165-page filing, which contained a thorough account of the evidence investigators had gathered with footnotes indicating the source of the materials. It was meant to convince the judge that Trump could still be prosecuted even after the Supreme Court ruled this summer he had broad immunity.

The appendix was far less explosive, but it still underscored Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the election results.

The appendix included dozens of statements by swing-state lawmakers, agencies and officials contradicting allegations of election fraud by Trump and his campaign, along with Pence’s written account of his repeated refusals to go along with Trump’s plan to not accept the outcome. Prosecutors have argued that Trump’s chargeable conduct was in his private capacity as a candidate and not subject to presidential immunity, including his dealings with state officials in the alleged phony elector plot.

Also included in the appendix were transcripts of Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger where he pressured the state official to “find 11,780 votes” to flip the state’s result and key post-election memos by Trump’s private attorneys concocting a plan to submit fake slates of electors from swing states to throw the election to the GOP-controlled House.

This really isn't anything new, but to the degree that this puts Trump on his back heel, this is a good thing.

Looters Gotta Loot

The A16Z's defense industry expert just said that the war in the Ukraine has presented investors with unprecedented opportunities for looting.

I should note that this is not a direct quote, but what she said could only be summarized to something like this:

It’s remarkable how quickly things can change. While the tech industry was trying to keep defense tech at arm’s length just a few years ago, that sentiment has completely reversed.

“The war in Ukraine changed everything about how young people think about the Department of Defense’s work, and really the important mission of deterrence and making sure that we invest in the next technologies,” Katherine Boyle, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said onstage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women conference on Tuesday.

Boyle, who cofounded a16z’s American Dynamism fund and has backed defense tech company Anduril and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, said onstage that she would get “laughed out of rooms” when she asked about whether companies were selling their technology to the Department of Defense. Now, Boyle said, founders she speaks with are motivated by America’s national security and deterring war and armed conflict. “We have a company that literally has said: Xi Jinping is setting our product strategy,” Boyle noted.

So, I guess when Andreeson Horowitz isn't gaming initial coin offerings to cheat people, they are now looking to using the defense industrial complex to cheat the taxpayers.

F%$# that.

No

Can Stanford Tell the Difference Between Scientific Fact and Fiction? Its Pandemic Conference Raises Doubts

—Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times

Stanford has been captured by conservatism and by its role as the birthplace of many tech bros, and as such, we find that its support for pseudoscience has been purchased by its reactionary and delusionary (and very rich) alumni.

The first two paragraphs tell you all you need to know:

On Oct. 4, Stanford University’s newly minted president, Jonathan Levin, opened an on-campus conference about pandemic policies by expressing the hope that the proceedings would “bring together people with different perspectives, engage in a day of discussion, and in that way, try to repair some of the rifts that opened during COVID.”

He was followed to the lectern by the conference organizer, Stanford public policy professor Jay Bhattacharya, who described the event’s goal as fostering “dialogue with one another rather than having a situation where the goal is to destroy people who disagree with you.”

Jay Bhattacharya is one of the prime movers behind the "Great Barrington Declaration" which said, "Just get everyone sick, it will be fine, and I want to go to the movies."

The Great Barrington crowd was wrong and dangerous and ignorant, and and remains wrong and dangerous and ignorant.

That Stanford's president gave his stamp of approval to a group of people whose scientific credibility ranks somewhere around that of flat-earthers is yet another sign that Stanford is overrated.

Speaking of Handcuffs

How is it that Ron DeSantis is making against TV stations carrying ads that he does not like not a criminal conspiracy to violate those stations civil rights?

A federal judge feels similarly, though he did not break out the cuffs:

A federal judge ordered Gov. Ron DeSantis’ state Health Department to stop threatening television stations with criminal prosecution if they kept running ads in favor of an abortion amendment on the ballot next month.

In a sharply worded ruling on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker rebuked the DeSantis administration for trying to quash what he called constitutionally protected political speech.

“To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” Walker wrote, granting a request for a temporary restraining order. A hearing for a preliminary injunction is scheduled for later this month.

The ruling puts a temporary halt to one of DeSantis’ most brazen attempts to defeat Amendment 4, which would overturn the six-week abortion ban he signed into law.

On Oct. 3, the Florida Department of Health sent letters threatening to criminally prosecute television stations if they did not stop running an ad that features a woman named Caroline who was diagnosed with brain cancer two years ago while pregnant with her second child. In the ad, the woman says Florida’s six-week abortion ban would have prevented her from receiving a potentially life-saving abortion.

I've said it before, and I will say it again:  Today's Republican Party is not the opposition, it is the enemy, and they are a clear and present danger.

Once again, I quote what historical novelist Robert Graves put into the mouth of Germanicus Caesar, Republicans "Must be struck into the dust, struck down again as they rise. Struck again while they lie groaning, while their wounds still pain them; they will respect the hand that dealt them."

Grifters Gotta Grift

Gee what a surprise.  Donald Trump charged room rates well over the normal rates for Secret Service agents at his Trump International Hotel.

So, he set things up so that the agents had to stay there, and then padded their bills.

This is fraud, pure and simple:

During Donald Trump’s presidency, his D.C. hotel charged the U.S. Secret Service 300 percent or more above standard government rates on multiple occasions, and at times charged the government agency more than it did other patrons — including a Chinese business and members of a foreign royal family, according to a new report released Friday by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

The authors of the report, which is based on Trump International Hotel room records from September 2017 and August 2018, argue that Trump violated the Constitution’s foreign and domestic emoluments clauses, which were designed to prevent the president and other federal officials from enriching themselves at taxpayer expense.

The House Democrats’ report cites several previously undisclosed instances in which Trump International Hotel charged the Secret Service rates that were not only above the normal government per diem rate but above rates it charged other patrons. The report is based on records Democrats obtained from Trump’s former accounting firm, Mazars USA, along with corresponding special waivers authorizing the Secret Service to make payments above normal government rates.

When Eric Trump visited the hotel on Feb. 22, 2018, two of the rooms the Secret Service rented were charged at $895 each, a 450 percent mark up of the government rate, according to the report. The same evening, more than 100 rooms at the 263-room hotel were rented out at rates lower than $895, “including at least one room rented out for just $150,” the Democrats found.

………

The Washington Post has extensively reported on expenses the Secret Service incurred at Trump properties while agents were protecting him and his family during his time in the White House.

In 2022, The Post reported that U.S. taxpayers paid Trump’s business at least $1.4 million for Secret Service agents’ stays at Trump properties for his and his family’s protection. Receipts and invoices previously obtained by The Post have highlighted not just high charges for rooms at the luxury properties but additional fees, including a $1,300 “furniture removal charge” to the Secret Service in 2018 at Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland.

 Handcuffs please?

Not Enough

The criminal organization/consultancy McKinsey & Company will pay at least $½ billion to settle charges that it was a criminal co-conspirator with big pharma drug pushers.

Of course, they are denying wrongdoing.  (Of course, they are lying about that)

McKinsey & Co. is nearing a deal with US prosecutors to pay at least $500 million to settle federal probes into its past work helping opioid makers boost sales, according to people familiar with the matter.

A settlement, which could be announced in the coming weeks, would resolve criminal and civil investigations by the Justice Department, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing a confidential matter. The terms haven’t been finalized and could still change.

………

The settlement would add to penalties that McKinsey has already paid US states for its past work with drug companies that produced highly-addictive painkillers. The privately held firm, which said it generated a record $16 billion in revenue last year, agreed in 2021 to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle claims by states that it helped fuel the country’s opioid epidemic by providing sales analysis and marketing advice.

Note that they were doing this while they were consulting with (among others) the FDA, a clear conflict of interest.

Considering the company's long record of aiding and abetting corruption, one has to wonder why they are accredited to consult with the government.

McKinsey is to business ethics what Ebola is to French kissing.

Best Healthcare in the World

We have an interesting rundown on how the hospital chain Parkview Health has monopolized the healthcare in parts of Ohio and Indiana and used this monopoly to charge more than almost any other healthcare system in the nation.

The kicker to all of this?  Parkview is (nominally) not-for-profit:

………

Over more than a decade, Parkview Health has demanded that the people of north-eastern Indiana and north-western Ohio pay some of the highest prices of any hospital system in the country – despite being headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which currently ranks as the No 1 most affordable metro area to live in the United States. For 10 of the last 13 years, Parkview hospitals on average have been among the top 10% most expensive in the country, a Guardian US analysis of cost estimates based on data submitted to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid shows.

Parkview’s steep prices are the product of a more than two-decade campaign by hospital executives to establish market dominance in Fort Wayne and to squeeze revenue from a pool of patients and employers who feel they have no better alternatives, according to interviews with more than 40 current and former Parkview employees, patients, local business leaders, lawmakers and competitors, as well as leaked audio recordings of meetings and hundreds of internal billing, patient and policy documents obtained by the Guardian.

During this period, Parkview has taken over six former rival hospitals and built up a network of almost 300 sites for its physicians and providers, forming a ring around its gleaming regional center, which some staff refer to in private as the “Big House” or “Emerald City” for its ritzy amenities and green corporate branding.

This consolidation, former employees say, has allowed Parkview to control referral flows, routing primary care patients to their own costly specialists and facilities, even if those patients could get the same services elsewhere for less. It has also increased Parkview’s leverage in negotiations with health insurance companies, as they bargain over procedure prices on behalf of employers that offer the insurers’ health plans to their workers.

Insurance industry sources say Parkview’s growing web of hospitals makes it hard for any insurer to offer a viable health plan locally without including the chain’s facilities in their network, an advantage that has helped the not-for-profit extract high prices and earn a reputation as one of the toughest negotiators in the state.

This is healthcare should not be run by private actors, even those that purport to be charities.

Not-for-profit healthcare has been good business for Parkview as it has been for hundreds of other ostensible charities across the US which operate nearly half of the nation’s hospitals. In exchange for generous tax breaks, these institutions are required to provide free and discounted care to poor patients, but many have faced criticism for skimping on charity care, demanding high prices and giving executives exorbitant salaries.

Since 2019, Parkview has raked in more than $2bn in revenue annually, enabling the system to give dozens of its executives and top doctors six- and seven-figure annual compensation packages. Before his retirement at the end of 2022, Parkview’s longtime CEO, [Mike Packnett] an avowed Christian who publicly styled himself as a “servant” leader, took home nearly $3m from the not-for-profit, according to the system’s last publicly available IRS disclosure.

Why aren't there IRS regulations capping the remuneration for charities?  I see no reason that any of them should make any more than the President of the United States.

………

Since the 1990s, hospital systems across the US – for and not-for-profit alike – have relentlessly chased after market power, executing nearly 2,000 mergers with little pushback from overwhelmed federal antitrust regulators and indifferent state authorities. Research from the American Medical Association found that by 2013, 97% of healthcare markets in the US had little competition and were highly consolidated under Department of Justice antitrust guidelines. By 2021, that figure had risen to 99%.

With consolidation, academic researchers have consistently found significant increases in prices. A 2012 research survey concluded that when hospitals merge in concentrated markets price hikes were “typically quite large, most exceeding 20 percent”. A 2019 study found that prices at hospitals enjoying local monopoly power were 12% higher than those in markets with at least four competitors. A study released earlier this year identified dozens of hospital mergers that it said regulators could have flagged as likely to diminish competition and raise prices. Those mergers did, in fact, result in average price hikes of 5% or more, the researchers found.

We really need to start criminalizing these behaviors.

Unfortunately, since the late 1970s, these criminal acts have been addressed with salutary neglect.

Anti-competitive behavior is technically criminal, and was once treated as such.

Make antitrust great again.

My Initial Reaction Was Less than Somber

All you need to know about him in one picture
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in a firefight in Gaza.

Rather refreshingly, this did not involve dropping a large bomb in an area largely populated by non-combatants.  

It also appears that this was happenstance, and not an intelligence coup.

Hopefully, this will lead to an end of hostilities:

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed early Thursday in the Gaza Strip, the IDF confirmed. Hamas sources told Reuters that there are indications that suggest that Sinwar had been killed in an Israeli operation in Gaza. The IDF added that there were no signs of the presence of hostages in the area in which Sinwar was killed.

A DNA sample from the body was sent to the Institute of Forensic Medicine, and dental images were sent to the police's forensic science unit. The DNA sample was compared to a sample from Sinwar collected when he was in Israeli prison. The military and the Shin Bet security service said that there have been dozens of operations over the past year and the past few weeks in the area where Sinwar was killed, which "limited Yahya Sinwar's ability to act... and led to his elimination."

Money, identification documents and combat equipment were found on the bodies of the terrorists. The troops that encountered the terrorists were not in the area for a targeted killing operation and did not have prior intelligence that Sinwar was present there.

The soldiers that killed the three are in training to be squad commanders, and are not part of a commando unit. It was operating in the area to locate Hamas members. Before dawn on Thursday, the troops began to suspect that there were Hamas members in the building and opened fire, including the use of tank shells and shoulder-fired missiles. Troops subsequently used drones to examine the building and located the bodies. Explosive devices had been planted in the building. Combat engineers were deployed to the site and neutralized them.

So it appears that his killing was just luck, though as Branch Ricky noted, (He might have been quoting John Milton) "Luck is a residue of design."

The world is a better place without him.  When he was jailed by the Israelis, it was for torturing and murdering Palestinians.

He was a particularly nasty piece of work, even by the standards of the region.

One hopes that this will provide an opportunity for the fighting to end, but I do not think that this is the case, and I lay that on the door step of Benjamin Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו), who will do anything to stay in power and out of jail, including prolonging the carnage.

………

Einav Zangauker, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, reacted to the news by addressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying, "You got your image of victory. Now reach a deal." She added that "now, more than ever, the lives of my son Matan and the other hostages are in concrete danger... Netanyahu, [Defense Minister Yoav] Gallant, and the chief of staff have already said themselves that Hamas has been defeated militarily. A year after the failure [on October 7], this is the time to leverage the accomplishments and use [Sinwar's] elimination to take a diplomatic step that will bring our loved ones back home."

She added, "If Netanyahu does not take advantage of the momentum and does not stand up now and take a new Israeli initiative, even at the cost of ending the war, it means that he has decided to abandon my Matan and the other hostages, with the aim of prolonging the war and entrenching his rule."

Netanyahu is a greater threat to the state of Israel than Sinwar ever was.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, after last week's horrible number, we see a bounce.  As to the whether of not this week's numbers are a dead cat bounce, or whether last weeks numbers were an outlier.

Initial claims fell from 260,000 to 241,000, still not a good number, and continuing claims rose from 1.861 million 1.867 million.

The numbers are better than forecast, but still are weak.

Also, US industrial production fell, but that appears to be an artifact of the Boeing strike and the hurricanes, at least in part, while retail sales rose.

Damned if I know what is going on here.

Kamala, Keep Lina Khan

Because what she does is both good policy and good politics.

Case in point, the Federal Trade Commission has banned the roach motel business model:

It will soon be easy to "click to cancel" subscriptions after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) adopted a final rule on Wednesday that makes it challenging for businesses to opt out of easy cancellation methods.

“Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription,” FTC chair Lina Khan said in a press release. “The FTC’s rule will end these tricks and traps, saving Americans time and money. Nobody should be stuck paying for a service they no longer want.”

The heart of the new rule requires businesses to provide simple ways to cancel subscriptions. Under the rule, any subscription that can be signed up for online must be able to be canceled online. And cancellation paths for in-person sign-ups must be just as easy, offered either by phone or online.

In guidance released Wednesday, the FTC recommended that businesses keep "three guardrails in mind" to ensure cancellation methods comply with the law. First, customers cannot be required to talk to a live agent or chatbot to cancel if that wasn't required for sign-up. Next, any phone cancellation methods cannot include charges and must be offered during normal business hours. And finally, canceling services in person must always be optional.

To comply with the rule, businesses offering "negative option marketing" such as subscriptions, automatic renewals, and free trial offers—to both consumers and other businesses—are prohibited from misleading customers. They must clearly disclose all terms of the deal prior to accepting payment, including explaining how much and how often customers will be charged, when free trials or promotions end, any deadlines to avoid charges, and, importantly, how to cancel.

………

That provision is designed to end unfair and deceptive practices that the FTC found, such as inadequate disclosures about free trials or sneaky auto-enrollments. Those "practices have been a persistent source of consumer harm for decades," the FTC's notice on the final rule said, "saddling shoppers with recurring payments for products and services they never intended to purchase nor wanted to continue buying."

………

There were only a few major changes to the final rule following the public commenting period. Notably, the FTC dropped a provision that would have required businesses to send annual reminders about recurring charges, as well as another prohibiting promotions or deals offered during the cancellation process in efforts to retain customers without customers opting in to seeing those offers.

The FTC said that it's only dropped these provisions for now, noting that the Commission plans to keep the record "open on these issues" and may seek additional comments.

Of course, the Supreme Court will end up hearing this after wack-doodle corrupt Matthew Kacsmaryk issues an injunction against this, and then say that the Federal Trade Commission has no authority to regulate this, because the right wing dirtbags on the court want to return us to the days of Lochner.

OK, I Think That I Understand a Bit of Family Jargon Now

There is a term that is used in family, "Comyuckle," that generally means lame person.

It's used as a loving insult inside the family.

I thought that it was some sort of Yiddishism that came from my mom, but I could never find anyone outside of the family who used this term.

Well, I did another search today, and I found this mention from the Joy of Yiddish:

While visiting with my 94-year-old mother earlier this year, we were talking about the everyday person on the street. She said, “You know, Chaim Yankel!.” I instantly cracked up as she did as well. My husband who was sitting with us had never heard of Chaim Yankel. Mom and I were both stunned.

I grew up on Long Island and my husband in Queens. Yet he never heard of him. So I did a quick check with others. A good friend from Long Island had also never heard of Chaim Yankel, but my friend from the Bronx knew instantly who he was; she, too, started laughing as she hadn’t heard his name mentioned in a long time.

In his splendid book, The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten gives two definitions of the Yiddish term Chaim Yankel:
1. A nonentity, a nobody, any “poor Joe.”
2. A colloquial, somewhat condescending way of addressing a Jew whose name you do not know — just as “Joe” or “Mac” is sometimes used in English.

So, "Comyuckle," is probably a corruption of Chaim Yankel.

Needless to say, I need to share this with my sibs.