Today Kind of Sucked

No accidents, or anything else, it just sucked.

That is all.

Interesting

This is interesting.

Basically, using a hardware (Raspberry Pi based Pi Hole) ad blocker, he has secured a massive reduction of bandwidth on the network in addition to significant increases in loading speeds on the web.

Short version:

• They discovered that ¼ of all internet connections were ad related.
• They needed significant customization to avoid blocking some desired content, particularly Twitter.
• Their smart TV (Samsung) stopped phoning home and spying on them, but continues to work.
• As an aside here, it also showed how much smart-TVs, at least those from Samsung, spy on their owners, and it's a sh%$-load of spying.
  
• Video player ads are gone.
• Much of the delay on web pages was that ad serving auctions were being done in real time, so page loads had to wait for those to complete.

One of the things that is not explicitly stated, but it patently obvious, is that it is the end user who is carrying much of the cost of this advertising, through either bandwidth, or their own time.

It really is remarkable just how much the "High Tech" business ecology is based on monetizing the commons or flat out taking from the users.

Call me naive, but it seems to me that there is an opportunity here to create legislation to make online advertising a bit less abusive.

Why am I not Surprised

It appears that the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™ has a solution to Apple's decision to restrict the ability of advertisers to track users across the web, it will just insert malicious tracking code into websites in its iOS apps:

Meta's Instagram and Facebook apps on iOS devices have been injecting JavaScript code into third-party websites from their custom in-app browser, gaining access to data that would be unavailable were those pages loaded in a stand-alone, WebKit-based iOS browser.

In-app browsers – implemented in native Android and iOS code using a component called a WebView – allow native app users to interact with websites without leaving their apps and opening free-standing browser applications. For this purpose, iOS offers WKWebView, part of the WebKit framework, and the more recent (and more privacy protecting) SFSafariViewController, part of the SafariServices framework.

Meta's apps rely on WKWebView, the more capable and customizable of the two options, both of which represent alternatives to opening web links in the iOS version of Safari.

"This causes various risks for the user, with the host app being able to track every single interaction with external websites, from all form inputs like passwords and addresses, to every single tap," explained developer Felix Krause, founder of fastlane.tools, in a blog post exploring the privacy implications of Meta's apps.

………

"The code in question allows us to respect people's privacy choices by helping aggregate events (such as making a purchase online) from pixels already on websites, before those events are used for advertising or measurement purposes," said Andy Stone, communications director at Meta, via Twitter.

Yeah, Andy, we believe you.  You are protecting people's privacy, just like you have claimed, and have been shown to have lied, every other time.

This sort of sh%$ will continue until Mark Zuckerberg is frog-marched out of Facebook headquarters in handcuffs.

Not a Surprise

It turns out that cable news has a greater contribution to political polarization in America than does social media.

This isn't to say that social media does not make the world a far worse place, but that it is not to blame for this explicit ill:

The past two election cycles have seen an explosion of attention given to “echo chambers,” or communities where a narrow set of views makes people less likely to challenge their own opinions. Much of this concern has focused on the rise of social media, which has radically transformed the information ecosystem.

However, when scientists investigated social media echo chambers, they found surprisingly little evidence of them on a large scale – or at least none on a scale large enough to warrant the growing concerns. And yet, selective exposure to news does increase polarization. This suggested that these studies missed part of the picture of Americans’ news consumption patterns. Crucially, they did not factor in a major component of the average American’s experience of news: television.

………

We first measured just how politically siloed American news consumers really are across TV and the web. Averaging over the four years of our observations, we found that roughly 17% of Americans are politically polarized – 8.7% to the left and 8.4% to the right – based on their TV news consumption. That’s three to four times higher than the average percentage of Americans polarized by online news.

………

Besides being more politically siloed on average, our research found that TV news consumers are much more likely than web consumers to maintain the same partisan news diets over time: after six months, left-leaning TV audiences are 10 times more likely to remain segregated than left-leaning online audiences, and right-leaning audiences are 4.5 times more likely than their online counterparts.

While these figures may seem intimidating, it is important to keep in mind that even among TV viewers, about 70% of right-leaning viewers and about 80% of left-leaning viewers do switch their news diets within six months. To the extent that long-lasting echo chambers do exist, then, they include only about 4% of the population.

So, it's all Fox News' fault?  

I dunno.  Given that our polity rewards political extremism, particularly on the right, I would argue that the political media industrial complex is more generally at fault.

They fancy themselves gatekeepers, but refuse to call out falsehoods and extremism for what they are.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

And in yet another case of law enforcement overreach, it appears that police are using blood drawn for state-mandated tests in New Jersey to conduct DNA tests used to target their relatives.

This is horrible from a civil rights and a public health perspective:

If you were born in the United States within the last 50 or so years, chances are good that one of the first things you did as a baby was give a DNA sample to the government. By the 1970s, states had established newborn screening programs, in which a nurse takes a few drops of blood from a pinprick on a baby’s heel, then sends the sample to a lab to test for certain diseases. Over the years, the list has grown from just a few conditions to dozens.

The blood is supposed to be used for medical purposes—these screenings identify babies with serious health issues, and they have been highly successful at reducing death and disability among children. But a public records lawsuit filed last month in New Jersey suggests these samples are also being used by police in criminal investigations. The lawsuit, filed by the state’s Office of the Public Defender and the New Jersey Monitor, a nonprofit news outlet, alleges that state police sought a newborn’s blood sample from the New Jersey Department of Health to investigate the child's father in connection with a sexual assault from the 1990s.

Crystal Grant, a technology fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, says the case represents a “whole new leap forward” in the misuse of DNA by law enforcement. “It means that essentially every baby born in the US could be included in police surveillance,” she says.

It’s not known how many agencies around the country have sought to use newborn screening samples to investigate crimes, or how often those attempts were successful. But there is at least one other instance of it happening. In December 2020, a local TV station reported that police in California had issued five search warrants to access such samples, and that at least one cold case there was solved with the help of newborn blood. “This increasing overreach into the health system by police to get genetic information is really concerning,” Grant says.

………

According to the New Jersey lawsuit, police had reopened an investigation into a cold case and had used genetics to place the suspect within a single family: one of several adults or their children. But police didn’t yet have probable cause to obtain search warrants for DNA swabs from any of them. Instead, they asked the state’s newborn screening lab for a blood sample of one of the children.

There needs to be legislation forbidding the use of DNA evidence collected under non-criminal auspices without a search warrant. 

There should also be legislation forbidding the use of commercially collected data for law enforcement purposes if such collection would be unlawful for the government.

The powers we give to our law enforcement is chilling.

Speaking of Our Boys in Blue

Police in Kansas City are refusing to fight crime because they are throwing a tantrum over the conviction of one of their own for manslaughter.

This is not an uncommon behavior.  We have seen this in a number of cities when prosecutors have decided to try crooked cops.

It's more the rule than the exception.

Jackson County’s top prosecutor said a recent claim by a Kansas City Police Department captain that officers could not investigate a break-in without a warrant was false.

Jean Peters Baker on Tuesday discussed a recent lawsuit filed by a Kansas City man who said police told him they could not investigate a burglary he reported because their hands were “tied.” A voicemail left by the captain regarding the burglary, Baker said, was erroneous in its claim that as the result of the recent conviction of a KCPD detective Eric DeValkenaere, the department changed its policy.

A spokesperson for the police department confirmed Tuesday that department policy has not changed.

………

Just after 1 a.m. on July 15, Fox, who lives near the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus, heard a bang as someone broke down the door of his neighbor’s home. Then he saw someone moving inside the house.

Fox called 911. He feared the suspected burglar might next come for his home, with his wife and two young children inside.

Police showed up quickly, but left in a matter of minutes, Fox said. They didn’t go into his neighbor’s home, nor did they close the front door. Upset by their inaction, Fox took to Twitter the next morning, posting a video critical of KCPD’s response.

Within several hours, Fox alleges in his lawsuit, he faced harassment and intimidation from members of the department regarding the video he posted. This included a voicemail from Capt. James Gottstein claiming the DeValkenaere ruling limited officers’ abilities to enter private property without consent.

“That ruling had a direct impact on what we can do, which is affecting you and I don’t agree with it, because we should be able to meet your need,” Gottstein said in the voicemail. “I’m sorry you had that experience, but many citizens are going to have that same experience. And it’s kind of out of the police’s hands at this point until that judgment is overturned on appeal so that we can go back to our business to keep citizens safe.”


While Baker said she doesn’t know widespread this misinformation is within the police department, she has heard it come up in some instances, including in the case of Mackenzie Hopkins, a woman killed in Kansas City in January.

Hopkins was found beaten to death 12 hours after a 911 call was placed from her phone in January. Her 4-year-old daughter was also found critically injured. The woman’s family told FOX4 at the time that members of KCPD said their colleagues could not immediately enter the house when they arrived because of the DeValkenaere decision.

………

In March, DeValkenaere, a former Kansas City police detective, was sentenced to six years in prison in the 2019 killing of Cameron Lamb.

Lamb, 26, was backing his pickup truck into his own garage when DeValkenaere fired several shots, killing him. DeValkenaere claimed Lamb was armed, but prosecutors say the gun found near him was planted. The former detective was ultimately found guilty of second-degree involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action.

DeValkenaere’s conduct was reckless, prosecutors said at the time, and violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

Jackson County Circuit Court Judge J. Dale Youngs, who delivered the verdict late last year, said DeValkenaere and his partner did not have a search warrant or an arrest warrant, which would have allowed them to be on the property. They did not have consent to be on the property and there were no circumstances where someone was being harmed or in imminent danger that would have permitted it, he said.

On Nov. 19, just hours after DeValkenaere was convicted, an internal email was sent to members of KCPD, labeled “Extra Daily Informant.”

“Please review legal bulletin No. 20-04,” it read.

Drake said the legal bulletin to which it referred is not publicly available, according to Missouri Sunshine Law. Asked whether she could summarize the contents of the legal bulletin, she declined.

If cops refuse to enforce the law if they are required to follow the law, then they are little more than a state sanctioned criminal gang.

Support Your Local Police

In Mississippi, a police chief was caught in a racist screed where he bragged about shooting black people:

In a recording obtained by MCIR, a Mississippi law enforcement officer can be heard bragging about killing 13 people in the line of duty, saying, “I shot that n----- 119 times, OK?”

In that recording, the supervising officer can be heard using slurs toward those Black or gay and telling another officer, “I don’t give a f--- if you kill a motherf---er in cold blood.”

JULIAN, a civil rights and international human rights organization, shared the recording with MCIR and identified the officer as Sam Dobbins, the White police chief of Lexington, a 85% majority Black town on the edge of the Mississippi Delta.

Contacted for comment, Dobbins said he was unaware of the recording.

Asked whether he killed 13 people in the line of duty, he replied, “That’s something we don’t discuss, period.”

He also denied using slurs. “I don’t talk like that,” he said.

Cardell Wright, JULIAN’s paralegal and the president of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, obtained the audio from former officer Robert Lee Hooker who made the tape, calling the remarks on tape “appalling, racist, hateful and detrimental to the welfare of the people. This recording proves that the oppressors no longer wear white sheets, but they wear law enforcement uniforms.”

………

UPDATE, July 20: Francine Jefferson, JULIAN’s Mississippi state director of organizing, said the Lexington Board of Aldermen voted 3-2 to fire Dobbins. The two who voted to retain him were Richard Spencer, the White former mayor of Lexington, and Charles Simmons, a Black alderman.

Charles Henderson has been appointed interim chief.

“This firing is a victory for the community,” Jefferson said, “but the board is still ignoring the issue.”

She said Henderson has been the subject of a number of complaints by residents, and that the current culture of policing “must be rooted out completely.”

It won't be rooted out until you get rid of the racist and abusive cops, and those who tolerate their presence.  That's over 90% of the force. 

The only thing surprising here is that he got fired.

It's Called Doing Your F@#$ing Job

It appears that the Harvard MBA types are having conniptions over a phenomenon called, "Quiet Quitting."

Some employees, instead of putting in long hours of unpaid overtime and volunteering at every opportunity, instead come into work when they are supposed to, do their assigned tasks, and at the end of the week day, go home.

They also do not check their emails or Slack on the weekends or while on vacation........the horror.

It is eminently reasonable for employers to demand that their employees do their jobs.

It is not reasonable at all for employers to demand that their employees destroy their families, their health, and their lives to demonstrate performative overwork and anxiety.

Lisa Souza, an insurance claims adjuster, regularly volunteered to work on weekends and holidays but the strain was compounded during the pandemic as colleagues retired early or stayed home out of health concerns.

Her workload increased significantly, and she was given projects outside her field, such as setting up new software applications.

......

So in spring of last year, “I said I’m done. I’m not going to volunteer anymore.”

Millions of Americans are taking a similar approach. Burned out after logging excessive hours or duties during COVID-19, they’re resolving to meet their job requirements but not go beyond. No toiling late into the night. No calls on weekends. And no pushing themselves to the brink even during regular business hours.

......

The mindset even has a trendy new moniker, “quiet quitting,” popularized by TikTok creator Zaid Khan in a video late last month that has drawn millions of views.

The idea that self destructive overwork is owed to an employer is dangerous and wrong.

Posted via mobile

Travel Day Again

 I am returning to the Baltimore area, where I can go back to annoying my wife, my kids, and my cats.

And they ate Robin's minstrels, and there was much rejoicing.

Look Out Below

Ouch


Not good


Worse than the height of the pandemic

Home sales are falling off a cliff, again, just 14 years since the last real-estate crash:

“Tighter monetary policy from the Federal Reserve and persistently elevated construction costs have brought on a housing recession,” said National Association of Home Builders Chief Economist Robert Dietz.

The confidence of builders of single-family houses, after the second-biggest plunge in the data last month, fell again in August, the eighth month in a row of declines, having gone downhill every month this year, “as elevated interest rates, ongoing supply chain problems, and high home prices continue to exacerbate housing affordability challenges,” according to the NAHB.

………

Homebuilders cut prices to prop up s

ales and limit cancellations: 19% of the builders said they cut prices over the past month to “increase sales or limit cancellations,” the NAHB said. This was up from 13% of the builders who’d reported having cut prices in the prior month.

In terms of cancellations: Based on data from John Burns Real Estate Consulting, the cancellation rate homebuilders experienced in July, despite their efforts to limit them by cutting prices, spiked to 17.6%, out-spiking lockdown April 2020:

The most alarming bid of all of this is that it is shaping up as a repeat of 2008, and that was just 14 years ago.

To quote (not) Talleyrand, "It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake."

Unsurprising

The difference will quite literally kill you

It turns out that physical buttons work better than touch screens in cars.

This shocking news surprises absolutely no one, except for automotive marketing departments, the interface designers who are paid to f%$# up user interfaces, and, of course, Elon Musk:

The screens in modern cars keep getting bigger. Design teams at most car manufacturers love to ditch physical buttons and switches, although they are far superior safety-wise.

That is the conclusion when Swedish car magazine Vi Bilägare performed a thurough test of the HMI system (Human-Machine Interface) in a total of twelve cars this summer.

Inspiration for the screen-heavy interiors in modern cars comes from smartphones and tablets. Designers want a ”clean” interior with minimal switchgear, and the financial department wants to lower the cost. Instead of developing, manufacturing and keeping physical buttons in stock for years to come, car manufacturers are keen on integrating more functions into a digital screen which can be updated over time.

So in what way have these screens affected safety? Vi Bilägare gathered eleven modern cars from different manufacturers at an airfield och measured the time needed for a driver to perform different simple tasks, such as changing the radio station or adjusting the climate control. At the same time, the car was driven at 110 km/h (68 mph). We also invited an ”old-school” car without a touchscreen, a 17-year-old Volvo V70, for comparison.

One important aspect of this test is that the drivers had time to get to know the cars and their infotainment systems before the test started.

………

The carmakers are keen to point out that many features now can be activated by voice. But the voice control systems are not always easy to use, they can’t control every function and they don’t always work as advertised, which is why the voice control systems were not tested in this experiment.

The results speak for themselves. The worst-performing car needs 1,400 meters to perform the same tasks for which the best-performing car only needs 300 meters.

This is the modern equivalent of tail fins, which at their height were impaling and slicing pedestrians.

Based on my experience with my rental car this week, I had the profound misfortune of being "upgraded" to a Ford Expedition with all the bells and whistles, because they were out of midsize cars. 

It looks, and drives, like the Exxon Valdez, and all of the bells and whistles, whether it's the multi-function screen, or the dial type shifter, make things worse.

I don't like the fact that getting into the vehicle resembles climbing K2, and I dislike the view out of the vehicle, you can literally hide a kindergarten class from the driver, even.

It's Jobless Thursday Again

Initial Claims


Continuing Claims

And it came in better than expectations, with initial unemployment claims falling marginally last week.

Expect more sado-monetarism from the Federal Reserve: 

New applications for unemployment benefits inched down last week, a sign the labor market is holding up as the broader economy shows signs of slowing.

This is what happens when you have something north of 10 million people out of the workforce because of various levels of Covid induced disability.

If the Fed wants to make employment more precarious for workers, and they are giving every indication that this is their ONLY tactic to reduce inflation, they are going to have to collapse the economy to bring the supply and demand ratio in labor back to the before times.

Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, declined slightly to a seasonally adjusted 250,000 last week from a downwardly revised 252,000 the week before, the Labor Department said Thursday. Claims totals have hovered around this level since hitting a high for the year in mid-July, and are above the 2019 prepandemic weekly average of 218,000.

The four-week moving average for claims, which irons out weekly volatility, declined to 246,750, a decrease of 2,750 from the previous week’s revised average.

Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo, said the labor market is strong but is showing signs of softening. “We are starting to see demand for labor weaken,” Ms. House said. “You can see that in terms of things like job postings for new hires but also seeing that in terms of the rise of initial jobless claims.”

Continuing claims, a proxy for the total number of people receiving payments from state unemployment programs, edged up to 1,437,000 in the week ended Aug. 6 from a revised 1,430,000 in the week ended July 30. Continuing claims are reported with a one-week lag.

We are in for some interesting economic times.

People that I Neither Respect nor Support

One such person Liz Cheney, whose lopsided primary loss to Harriet Hageman has the "Very Serious People" expressing their unhappiness.

They are both awful people who have pursued policies that are bad for America and the world.

That Liz Cheney was right once in her life does not mean that her lionization is justified.

As to her opposing Donald Trump's coup attempt, to quote comedian Chris Rock. "Yhat’s what you’re supposed to do."

She should no more subject to adulation for this behavior than I should be for not baking my cats into pies.

In other election results, it appears there was an upset in the special election to replace the late Don Young in Alaska, with Democrat Mary Peltola likely to win the race to fill the last few months of Young's term.  She was likely helped in this by being the only Democrat in a race with 22 candidates.

For the next term, her success is less likely, as the top 4 primary vote getters, her, Sarah Palin (how I long for the day when I can add her to my list of They Who Must Not Be Named), Nick Begich III, and Tara Sweeney will compete in a ranked choice vote general election.

As to Lisa Murkowski, and what will likely be a tight race with Republican Kelly Tshibaka, the 2nd paragraph of this post applies to Ms. Murkowski as well.

This is Their Definition of Success

We're now find that since Brexit, immigration from the EU to the UK has plummeted.

The good folks at the Grauniad treat this as another catastrophe that serves as an example of how the campaigners to leave the European Union have failed to deliver.

To put it mildly, the pro Brexit forces have not covered themselves with glory at any stage of this enterprise, but this counts as delivering on one of their promises.

This is a success by the Brexiteers standards.  This is something that they actively promised would be a direct consequence of disaffiliating from Brussels.

The number of EU citizens moving to the UK has plunged since Brexit closed the doors to low-paid workers, according to a report.

The dramatic decline in migration from the EU has hit hospitality and support services hard. But the Migration Observatory (MO) at the University of Oxford and ReWage, a group of independent experts, have said that while Brexit “exacerbated” chronic labour shortages in Britain, it was not the only cause.

Data shows that just 43,000 EU citizens received visas for work, family, study or other purposes in 2021, a fraction of the 230,000 to 430,000 EU citizens coming to the UK a year in the six years to March 2020, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates.

Of those who migrated – as opposed to travelling for business or pleasure – to the UK in 2021, EU citizens accounted for just 5% of the number of visas issued. “The figures available so far are therefore consistent with the possibility of a large decline in EU immigration,” says the report, titled “The end of free movement and the low-wage labour force in the UK”.

What they are saying here is that the they has a sad because they cannot use low wage immigrants to keep down wages.  It's called labor arbitrage, and it is a major contributor to corruption and inequality.

Brexit has been a bismol in this managed by its supporters, but what is going on here is an example of things going as planned.

Posted via mobile.

Seriously?

After its IPO imploded in one of the most spectacular failures since Juiciero, I kind of figured that Adam Neumann's days of being a darling or the venture capital crowd was over.

To quote Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, "I was misinformed."  It appears that the "Geniuses" at Andreeson Horowitz have decided that Neumann's latest meth addled fever dream is a good place to put their money.

How could anyone in their right mind do this?  Unless your goal was to ensnare unsophisticated rubes and cash out before the bezzle collapses, what possible reason ……… Oh, now I get it:

Venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is investing in Flow, a real-estate startup led by former WeWork executive and co-founder Adam Neumann.

The firm, known as a16z, is investing $350 million in Flow at a valuation above $1 billion, said a person familiar with the matter, making it one of the largest-ever investments for an early-stage startup. Flow was founded earlier this year.

Co-founder Marc Andreessen said in a blog post that Flow would seek to address problems in the rental-housing market, which he described as the inability for renters to own equity in their homes and a lack of social bonding between neighbors.

Mr. Neumann previously tried to reinvent work by adding a vibrant social community to shared office space as chief executive of WeWork. The company soared to a $47 billion valuation before pulling its planned public listing in 2019 amid mounting concerns over its financial state and Mr. Neumann’s management style. WeWork went public in October and is now trading at a market capitalization of $4 billion.

This is EXACTLY the same scam that Neumann ran at WeWork, jump into an existing and mature market, but use new age bullsh%$, such as WeWork's vegan only snacks and kombucha, to secure enough VC money to monopolize the space, and then change monopoly rents.

………

In a July trademark-application filing, an entity affiliated with Flow described its services as including cryptocurrency trading, providing an online social-networking platform, real-estate development, and temporary accommodations. It couldn’t be determined how Flow plans to incorporate cryptocurrency into its business.

As if it could not be any more obvious that this is a transparent fraud, they are adding cryptocurrency to the mix.

If we had meaningful fraud and RICO enforcement against the Banksters, Andreeson and Horowitz would both be making license plates in prison, because they have been doing the same pump and dump fraud for decades..

On Travel

Work is sending me to New Hampshire go a few days.

No more detail about what I am doing, because I do NOT blog about work.

I'm flying Southwest into Manchester.

Posted via mobile.

Good

It appears that investors are losing their minds over a new law in Sierra Leone will allow local communities to have a veto of projects which steal their lands and poison them.

Good.

The current Neoliberal international economic model is little more than abusive colonialism with plausible deniability:

It is a struggle that communities across the world have faced: stopping companies from grabbing their lands, polluting their environment and forcing them to relocate.

When a major investor sees an opportunity to profit from a mine or large-scale agriculture, long-established ways of life, and even land ownership rights, often prove to mean little. 

But in one West African country, Sierra Leone, the rules of such struggles may be about to change drastically.

Under new laws passed this week, companies operating in Sierra Leone will have to obtain the express consent of local communities before starting mining, industrial or farming activities. Residents owning land will be able to veto any project affecting it. And the government will have to help pay for any legal fees that the local communities incur in negotiations — meaning it will most likely finance legal expertise used against the companies.

Environmental and land rights experts have hailed the laws as a bold step for the nation of eight million people, which remains among the world’s poorest despite extensive natural resources, and even as intensive mining and palm oil and sugar cane plantations have led to deforestation, landslides and soil erosion.

………

The legislation has also generated pushback, with companies warning that it would hamper any new land development. At least one significant investor said that he would not attempt new projects in Sierra Leone because of one of the new laws.

Transnational investors basically arguing that if they cannot steal from the local population, taking their land, their clean water, and their health, it would be bad for business.

To quote Emilio Estevez in Repo Man, "F%$# that."

Nonprofits and international organizations have long fought to force governments and businesses to seek consent from local populations before starting large-scale projects, with Latin and Central American countries at the forefront of this fight.

And rather unsurprisingly, Latin and Central American countries have been subject to repeated coup and regime change efforts sponsored by countries where these investors come from.

………

Mr. Conteh, the legal expert at [legal nonprofit] Namati, said that until now families could easily be dispossessed of their lands, either because they had little proof of ownership, or because companies would strike deals with intermediaries.

………

Some firms have also criticized the legislation. Gerben Haringsma, the country director for Sierra Leone at Socfin, a Luxembourg-based company that has grown palm oil in the country for a decade and has faced accusations of land grabs, argued that the laws would make new large-scale investments in agriculture impossible.

The thief complains when theft is made illegal.

Destroying Public Health

This was a forseeable response to the overturn of Roe v. Wade:

My teen daughter was asked by her doctor when was her last menstrual period. She said “it’s regular, no need for dates”. When I asked her why the reply, she told me that doctors can no longer be trusted and they should become accustomed to not knowing. Welcome to the new America.

— MommaT (@tweetmommybop) August 13, 2022

The Supreme Court's corrupt and partisan decision is going to kill a lot of people.

Quote of the Day

In response to my mentioning Elon Musk's admission that his "Hyperloop" project was just a ploy to destroy California's high speed rail project, my son Charlie, who is on the Autism spectrum, replied:

Elon Musk, you f%$#ing killed a rail project, and claim to be autistic?

You lying liar!

(I may have left off a few F-Bombs here)

Needless to say, I do not normally endorse the stereotyping of any group, but in this case, the stereotyping is being done by a member of the group, and it was funny as hell, AND Charlie gave me permission to quote him.

I'm not on the spectrum myself, (Sharon* who is a special education professional, asserts otherwise, but I do not have a formal diagnosis) but this is funny as f%$#.

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

Linkage

• Engineer Attempts to Understand How His Cat Can Sleep Through Anything Except the Opening of a Can (Laughing Squid) A self described "Cat Engineer: answering life's greater questions.  (Video below)
  
• How Tavistock Came Tumbling Down - by Sue Evans (Common Sense) How the UK's now closed center of excellence for gender dysmorphia became overwhelmed and abandoned counseling and understanding patients, and became a pill mill.
  
• We Don't Need No Stinkin' Harvard: Why the Crew, and not the Captain, Will Save America (Black Agenda Report) On the elite school Neoliberal Mafia, and how it destroys countries.
  
• Southern Baptist Convention Says It Faces Federal Investigation for Sexual Abuse (New York Times) If your pastor knows that God is on his side, fine another who prays that he is on God's side.
  
• Climate activists fill golf holes with cement after water ban exemption (BBC) Villages were running out of drinking water, but the rich pigs need their greens maintained.
  
• Modern US Warmongering Is Scaring Henry Kissinger (Caitlin Johnstone) This is f%$#ed up and sh%$.
• How Marxism solves today’s greatest mystery in the WWE (Carl Beijer) What's not to love about a Marxist analysis of Vince McMahon's corporate machinations?
  

 

Cat Engineer is a job I want to have:

Light Posting Tonite

 I am at an urgent care place having Sharon evaluated following a car accident.

She seems fine, but the same cannot be said about her car.

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Biden Has Been Very Good on This

While I have disappointed more often than not by Joe Biden, the people that he has hired to work antitrust and privacy are doing some good work.

Case in point, the aggressive actions by Lina Khan as Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are a major shift by the previously somnolescent organization.

This time, they are going after the stalker-capitalists:

The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday it would begin considering new federal rules to expand online privacy protections by targeting online surveillance and lax data-security practices by technology companies.

The FTC’s action, on a 3-2 vote divided along partisan lines, spurred immediate criticism that the agency is taking on a role better suited for Congress. If adopted, the rules could impose significant new responsibilities on businesses that handle consumer data, including potentially barring certain kinds of data collection and handling practices.

Of course it was a party line vote.

“Firms now collect personal data on individuals at a massive scale and in a stunning array of contexts,” FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan said in announcing the action. “Our goal today is to begin building a robust public record to inform whether the FTC should issue rules to address commercial surveillance and data security practices and what those rules should potentially look like.”

The move is the latest indication of the five-member commission’s more aggressive approach under Ms. Khan, a Democrat who has been a vocal critic of big business, particularly large technology companies.

Her criticism is not of big businesses, it is of monopolistic businesses.

………

The FTC said it would be examining a range of concerns about the online environment, including the widespread use of algorithms to manipulate and leverage data, security practices that leave data vulnerable to hackers, and the growing evidence that some platforms might be “addictive to children and lead to a wide variety of mental health and social harms.”

The FTC also is expected to examine possible discriminatory effects of algorithms based on legally protected characteristics such as race, gender, religion and age, the agency said. It also suggested it would examine tactics companies use to coerce consumers into sharing their data.

………

The FTC’s action opens up a public comment period on the issue. Any rule could take years to enact.

Ms. Khan has made a number of moves to lay the groundwork for potential rule-making since taking office last year, including by voting with the FTC’s two other Democrats to change internal procedures to expand her control over the rule-writing process.

Early in his term, President Biden ordered the FTC to look at writing competition rules in a number of areas, including “unfair data collection and surveillance practices that may damage competition, consumer autonomy, and consumer privacy.”

This, along with similar actions is a very good thing.  

I would hope that these new, and desperately needed, changes to regulatory philosophy remain in force long enough to both change the culture of the regulatory organizations and to remake the economy in a freer and fairer way.

Well, That's a Damn Shame

5 weeks after an Italian auto executive took delivery of a £20 million super-yacht, it caught fire, and appears to be a write off.

Thankfully, the 7 crew and 9 passengers were evacuated without injury. 

Am a bad person because the destruction of a multi-million pound toy of some overpaid executive makes me smile?

To quote Descartes last words, "I think Not."

A brand-new £20m superyacht has been destroyed by fire in the Balearics weeks after it was delivered to its multimillionaire owner, the Italian car industry boss Paolo Scudieri.

The 43.7-metre Aria SF caught fire on Thursday afternoon while anchored at Cala Saona, on the west coast of Formentera, according to Salvamento Marítimo, the Spanish sea search and rescue agency.

Seven crew members and nine passengers on the ship were unharmed and evacuated to other boats nearby, but the Aria is thought to be unsalvageable. The cause and origin of the fire are as yet unknown. The yacht will be towed to Ibiza later on Friday.

The yacht, which had a gym and a pool and could accommodate up to 10 guests across five staterooms, was delivered to Scudieri late last month.

………

Scudieri, the president of Adler-Hp Pelzer Group, an automotive parts supplier, is estimated to have built up a $500m fortune. He owns a Ferrari that he races in the Ferrari Challenge, a race series for Ferrari owners.

I am amused.

I Hate Microsoft Updates

 45 minutes waiting after booting up for it to finish.

Another Labor Data Point

For the first time in more than 3 decades, reporters at Reuters have gone on strike.

As journalism has moved from a craft to a college educated profession, at least in their own minds, reporters have become less supportive of labor, and less inclined towards labor activism.

This is a big change:

Reuters on Wednesday alerted customers that its U.S. journalists planned to go on strike in response to ongoing contract negotiations between management and the NewsGuild, which represents its unionized staff.

Why it matters: It's the first time in over 30 years that Reuters' unionized staff have prepared a strike over contract negotiations, per the NewsGuild.

Details: Nearly 300 Reuters journalists are walking off the job for 24 hours on Thursday "in protest of management's slow-walking contract renewal negotiations," according to a statement from the NewsGuild.

There is a greater significance to this:

• The unions are becoming more aggressive and less tolerant of management delays.
• Workers who used to think of themselves as professionals, and so not the sort to go on strike or picket have realized that this is not true.
• The end of worker loyalty to their employers.  They now realize that if they take care of the job, their bosses will not take care of them.

I've always wondered what would happen when employers could no longer strip-mine employees loyalty.  It looks like we are about to find out.

An Explanation for Folks Who Have Played the RPG Paranoia

It appears that some of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago were Sensitive Compartmented Information. (SCI)

This is a big deal.  This is a couple of steps above Top Secret.

Think of it as, "Ultraviolet Clearance," from the game role playing game Paranoia on steroids.

(on edit)

The computer is your friend.

Word of the Day

Have you heard about, "Splooting?"

It is a behavior engaged in by some wild animals. They splay themselves on the ground to stay cool during hot weather.

It’s baking hot in New York, which can only mean one thing for the city’s small mammal population: it’s splooting season.

This week, with temperatures reaching 95F (35C), the city’s parks department urged residents not to worry about the health of squirrels seen sprawling on the ground, legs extended behind them like a person whose arms gave out halfway through a yoga class. “On hot days, squirrels keep cool by splooting (stretching out) on cool surfaces to reduce body heat,” the department tweeted.

Perhaps even more remarkable than the phenomenon itself was the word the government agency used. Splooting? Is that a real thing?

The science certainly is. Squirrels’ bellies have less fur than other parts of their bodies, so splooting helps them cool down, says Dan Blumstein, a professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA. It’s a popular trick among mammals, including the marmots he studies, which “on hot days will lie on rocks as it gets hot, because the boulders are still cooler”, he says.

………

Grant Barrett, a lexicographer and co-host of the radio show A Way With Words, explains that the term comes from Doggo language, a form of canine-inspired internet-speak that has grown into its own tongue. Typically appearing on social media with pictures of dogs, the language features an array of cutesy words including “bork” (a version of “bark”), “mlem” (a kind of tongue movement) and “pupperino” (self-explanatory).

While I have made a lot of various German compound words, "Backpfeifengesicht," is a classic, the English language, has its own marvelous idiosyncrasies.

Time for the Thursday Economic Update

And, wouldn't you know it, initial unemployment claims rose to their highest level in 2022, up to 262,000, and the US Producer Price Index (PPI) fell to the lowest level since October, down to 9.8% year over year and down ½% for the month.

If the Fed were not hell bent on making the world safe for useless rich people, they might consider a pause in their rate hikes.

Me, I still think that they are going to raise rates by 75 basis points (¾%) at their next meeting.

U.S. workers’ filings for unemployment benefits edged up last week, reaching their highest level so far this year.

Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, increased to a seasonally adjusted 262,000 last week from a revised 248,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said Thursday. The weekly number has been on an upward trend since reaching a 50-year low in March.

Last week’s total was slightly above the prior 2022 peak set in July of 261,000 and was above the 2019 weekly average of 218,000.

And

U.S. suppliers raised prices in July at the slowest annual pace since last fall as energy costs dropped, adding to signs price pressures in the economy have eased slightly.

The producer-price index, which generally reflects supply conditions in the economy, increased by 9.8% annually in July, the smallest annual rise since October 2021’s 8.9% increase, the Labor Department said Thursday. Producer prices climbed 11.3% in June from a year earlier.

Producer prices decreased a seasonally adjusted 0.5% in July from the prior month, down sharply from June and the first decline since April 2020, when the pandemic drove the U.S. economy into a short, deep recession.

The PPI report comes a day after the Labor Department said consumer prices rose 8.5% in July from the same month a year ago, down from a four-decade high of 9.1% in June. Taken together, the latest price data suggest that inflation pressures could be easing.

262K initial claims is not a horrible number, it was pretty typical in the before times, and the decrease in both consumer and producer inflation is good news.

The Fed, of course, is a servant of capital, so it will continue to try to beat down labor.

Too Expensive

I mean seriously.  Who would pay ¼ million dollars just to shoot John Bolton?

OK, who apart from about ⅔ of his former cow-orkers would even consider paying ¼ million dollars just to shoot John Bolton?

What's more, paying the money to the  Islamic Republic of Iran, or the their Republican Guard is EXTREMELY difficult due to sanctions.

How could they possibly expect to get any takers for this offer. 

………

Wait

………

They are paying the would be contract killer, not the other way around?

Damn, the line of applicants will be longer than that for the opening to be Katy Perry's boob adjuster:

The Justice Department charged a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on Wednesday with planning to assassinate John R. Bolton, who served as the national security adviser to President Donald J. Trump, as payback for the killing of a senior Iranian official.

The charging document, filed in federal court, read like the synopsis of an international espionage novel — but the scheme, had it been carried out, would have resulted in the murder of a prominent American critic of the government in Tehran, and the plot’s disclosure has further jolted an already shaky relationship between the United States and Iran at a critical moment in negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program.

………

The accused plotter, Shahram Poursafi, 45, is not in custody and remains at large, presumably in Iran. Pictures purporting to be Mr. Poursafi show a man with fashionable glasses, wearing Revolutionary Guards fatigues or clad in stylish Western-style clothes.

………

It was a ruse, prosecutors said. Mr. Poursafi was working on behalf of his government to recruit a network to murder Mr. Bolton, likely in retaliation for the United States military’s killing in January 2020 of Qassim Suleimani, the top commander of the Revolutionary Guards, a branch of Iran’s military that is a power base for the country’s ruling military and political elites, officials said in the court filing.

………

By November, Mr. Poursafi had been introduced to several other Americans on an encrypted messaging platform, and made a stunning offer to one of them, the person who turned out to be the informant: He would pay $250,000 to “eliminate” Mr. Bolton, who had left the White House in late 2019 after a tumultuous year-and-a-half tenure.

One of the things that officials in the United States seem to forget is that in the United States, where guns are plentiful and easy to get, and our society has relatively free travel, is that they are even more exposed than the political leaders they so glibly try to whack.

This has never been good policy.

Boycott Amy's Kitchen

In response to unionization activities, Amy's Kitchen has engaged in a vociferous anti-union campaign, which has culminated in their shuttering their San Jose factory in response to workers unionizing.

Organic frozen food company Amy’s Kitchen dealt workers another blow in an ongoing series of retaliatory actions in response to workers’ demands for safer conditions, fair pay, and a union. Last month, Amy’s Kitchen announced the abrupt and unexpected closure of its San Jose, California, facility, whose workers have been organizing with Unite Here, a union representing approximately 300,000 workers in Canada and the U.S. Workers at Amy’s Kitchen have been organizing since the start of the year and say that the company has shown a pattern of retaliation, including firing a worker after he spoke to management about his concerns, a lack of bathroom breaks, and penalties for sick days. Now, the company has escalated their union-busting and shut down an entire facility, resulting in over 300 workers losing their jobs.

………

Employees at the manufacturing headquarters in Santa Rosa have also experienced safety concerns. Over the last decade, the Department of Labor’s Office of Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has fined the company more than $100,000 to settle federal health and safety violations at the California location, with additional incidents at the Oregon and Idaho locations. Complaints have detailed workers getting their fingers or pieces of their fingers amputated by machinery, and others describe an employee fracturing their hip while tripping over a forklift. Most recently, workers filed a safety complaint that was opened by Cal/OSHA on Jan. 26 of this year saying they have not been given access to the bathroom or drinking water during shifts. After multiple requests to their managers for better working conditions went unheeded, they filed the complaint.

Workers have been keen to point out the incongruity between Amy’s Kitchen’s public image as a socially responsible brand that uses organic ingredients and the inhumane treatment of their workers. Grocers and co-ops have been showing solidarity with the workers and are boycotting Amy’s Kitchen products. Rosa, likewise, said she hopes Amy’s consumers will boycott the products in support of the worker’s unionizing efforts.

According to Tho Do, Northern California Organizing Director at Unite Here, the company performed union-busting activities including requiring workers to attend anti-union meetings, disciplining employees for participation in labor activities, and firing two employees for supporting the union. Unite Here is seeking a temporary injunction to stop the alleged practices.

There is a special place in hell for hypocrites who claim to be making the world a better place, and sh%$ can it all when it becomes inconvenient.

F%$# them.

A Podcast Recommendation

I've been listening to Keith Olbermann's new Countdown podcast, and it's pretty good.

The first episode was a bit weak.  Unsurprisingly, it was too self-referential, but subsequent episodes, particularly his homage to Baseball sportscaster Vin Scully, are pretty good.

It's the same formula  as the original show, plus some dishing on his days on MSNBC and ESPN.

I pop it in for my commute.

I do wish that it was not distributed by the rat-f%$#s at the the criminal enterprise formerly known as Clear Channel Communications™ though.

No interviews yet.

Better than Jon Stewart or Trevor Noah

I am referring, of course, to John Oliver, whose take down of Alex Jones is simply epic.

Stewart was always too deeply into both-siderism, and Noah, while freer about his opinions, does not go deeply enought into the topics.

Oliver kicks ass and takes names:

You can watch him on Youtube, if, as I do, you do not have HBO Max.

Cue Inspector Renault

I'm shocked! Shocked! To find that gambling is going on this establishment!
Your winnings, sir.

So, the 2018 background investigation of Brett Kavanaugh was a all a charade directed by Donald Trump and his Evil Minions™. 

The Trump administration micro-managed the investigation, studiously avoiding things like allegations of sexual misconduct and serious financial irregularities. (6 figures of debt mysteriously vanished shortly before his nomination was announced)

Back when then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was undergoing his Senate confirmation hearing in 2018, the FBI set up a tip line to field information regarding the mounting sexual assault and misconduct claims piling up against him.

We already knew that the FBI didn’t investigate a number of these tips, even those made first-hand by the accusers themselves. We’ve known from the start that the “investigation” that laid a clear path to Kavanaugh’s confirmation was a total sham. But I guess there’s something comforting about finally hearing it confirmed by the head of the FBI himself.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, has been hounding FBI Director Christopher Wray about the investigation process for years. He raised questions about the tip line and what was done with that information in 2019. In March of 2021, he sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking the Department of Justice to investigate the investigation, which he called “fake.”

This week, Whitehouse finally got Wray—who somehow still has his job—to admit that the FBI did not investigate the tips that came in. Rather, they “reviewed” them, but only to separate out the relevant ones about Kavanaugh. They then sent those tips to the Trump White House, to do with whatever they pleased, which definitely didn’t include any sort of investigation.

Yes, why does Christopher Wray still have a job? 

He's been covering this up for years, and this is a legitimate reason to kick is sorry ass to the street.

Quote of the Day

The money produced by art has not disappeared. The issue is not that the people of the world value television less than they did in the 1990s. The reality is that the people with the most money have devised, at every turn, new and more bulletproof ways for them to make and keep more money, and for the people who make things to make less. This is the eternal story of labor and management; it just has hot people in it, in this case.

—Kelsey McKinney at The Defector

This grows out of a discussion of the precarity of the financial situation of Emmy nominated actress Sydney Sweeney, despite her being the latest, "Big thing," finds her financial situation uncertain.

There is, of course, more money than ever going into entertainment, it's just that the parasites, managers, executives, brothers-in-law of the executives, are extracting a greater proportion of the product of their workers than ever:

………

In 2021, Endeavor mogul Ari Emanuel made $293.7 million in stock awards. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav made $246.6 million in total pay. Disney Chairperson Bob Iger took home $45.9 million. Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings made $38.2 million; his co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, also made $38.2 million. I do not care that some of this money was made in “options” or “bonuses” or the other kinds of ways that rich people hide how they pay themselves. That’s how much they made; that much money, which might have gone anywhere and to anyone in the way that money does, instead wound up stopping with them.

………

But Sweeney isn’t one of those people. She comes from a family that could not afford to financially support her at all when she finished school. She will not have the luxury of relaxing as her inheritance pours in. Everyone deserves to be able to take six months off to have a baby. Everyone. The fact that Sydney Sweeney cannot is a reminder that the reason American workers do not have paid family leave is also the reason each generation has more nepotism babies than the last. We do not tax rich people enough and they do not pay their fair share; the fact of that, over decades, has intruded upon and warped every aspect of American life. Sweeney has to work, like everyone else, and has to do so for whatever she can get, and she has to do it knowing that what reaches her was the absolute minimum figure that people who are paid much more than her had determined that she would be willing to take. She’s not alone.

The money paid to Sydney Sweeney is for a service which has value.  The amount of money paid to Emanuel, Zaslay, Iger, or Hastings is completely out of proportion to the value that they provide.

There is a f%$# load of dead weight in our system, and it is not that kid delivering pizzas or that home health aid changing sheets.

The Latest Inflation Numbers are Out

Inflation fell by more than expected to 8.5% year over year.

In fact, driven by the rapid decline in gas prices, consumer prices actually fell marginally in the month of July:

The pace of price increases slowed in July as energy costs dropped, pulling annual U.S. inflation down slightly from a four-decade high.

The Labor Department on Wednesday said the consumer-price index, a measure of what consumers pay for goods and services, rose 8.5% in July from the same month a year ago, down from 9.1% in June. June marked the fastest pace of inflation since November 1981.

On a monthly basis, the CPI was flat in July after rising for 25 consecutive months, the result of falling energy prices such as gasoline. Core CPI, which excludes often volatile energy and food prices, eased to 0.3% last month, down sharply from June’s 0.7% gain.

………

The average national price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline fell to $4.00 on Wednesday, more than $1 cheaper than in mid-June but still higher than a year ago, according to OPIS, an energy-data and analytics provider owned by Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

Food prices could moderate in coming months as supply improvements filter through to consumers, Mr. Bethune said. “For the things that really eat a hole in our pockets, gasoline and food, we’ve seen the turning point in gasoline and I think we’re on the cusp of some declines in food.”

Of course, this won't stop the Federal Reserve from raising rate, because they want to put an end to wage increases and increased unionization, because worker power is always the problem.

Fact Checker, My Ass

Remember when Washington Post "Fact Checker" Glenn Kessler listed the report of a 10 year old rape victim being forced to leave the state of Ohio in order to get a potentially life-saving abortion?

Kessler did his "Due Diligence", and implied that the doctor was not to be trusted, because, it was only one doctor, and that when he contacted child welfare agencies across the state, "None of the officials we reached were aware of such a case in their areas," and, when the truth came out, he added the correction, "Unlike similar Ohio county agencies we contacted, Franklin County officials did not offer a response."

It appears that Kessler sees it as his mission to fight against the perception that,  most succinctly stated by Stephen Colbert, that, "Reality has a well known liberal bias," which is an odd position for a fact checker to hold, but he is what he is.

His debunking turned out to be wrong.  The alleged rapist was charged, and all the circumstances, including the necessary regulatory filings were confirmed, so the story was true.

What is important here is the, "None of the officials we reached were aware of such a case in their areas," quote, because he made that up. It is flat out fabulism. 

Over at The Lever, Andrew Perez, dug a little bit, and by dint of freedom of information act requests, got the email exchange between Kessler and the Franklin County Children Service DID respond to Kessler's inquiries, and noted that, "Their agency could not comment on specific cases, because this information is treated as confidential under Ohio law."

So basically, Kessler made up the quotes, and non-quotes in his column.

Given his previous history:

• He called Bernie Sanders' statement that there were millions of Americans working two jobs false because it was only 8 million Americans, which is only about 5% of the workforce. (WTF?)
• That a Republican plan to privatize Medicare did not end Medicare as we know it, because it kept the name.
• Claiming that Bernie Sanders (Yeah, he has an issue with Bernie) statement that there are over ½ million bankruptcies a year caused by medical issues is false, because the study cited was not peer reviewed.
• Claiming that the Sander's statement that the Trump tax cuts overwhelmingly benefited the rich and large corporations was false, contradicting the Post's own reporting.

It appears that there is a pattern of dissembling in order to promulgate a right of center viewpoint.

Still, I would note that this latest case is particularly egregious.

This is not just a hack pundit tying themselves in knots to support their own preconceptions, this is a case where a complete, and almost certainly knowing, falsehood was published.

For this, and plagiarism, the response should be an immediate termination.

Pass the Popcorn

Over the past 24 hours, the FBI executed a search warrant on Donald Trumps residence in Mar-a-Lago, and The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled that the IRS must turn over Donald Trump's tax returns to the House Ways & Means Committee.

Needless to say, both of these, at least when executed against a former President* of the United States, are unprecedented.

As to the first, I do not believe that a violation of the Presidential Records Act would be sufficient to stage a raid.  If I had to venture a guess, it would be that some of the documents are being used to grease the skids of some sort of deal between Trump, or Jared Kushner, and some foreign entities, which would merit an unnanounced FBI raid, as opposed to some Library of Congress lawyers showing up to the front gate with a court order in a U-Haul.†

As to the latter, the House Ways & Means Committee has the statutory right to request tax returns from anyone at any time, on the theory that since they write taxes, they are allowed to examine returns for loopholes and the like.

Of course, a detailed examination of Trump's taxes would undoubtedly reveal that the six times (twice thrice?) bankrupt real estate mogul is a crap-load poorer than he admits to.

I am intrigued.

^*It's just an asterisk, no note.

^†It's a Watergate reference.

If Gordon Brown Does Not Shut Up, Someone Will Accuse Him of Being a Member of the Labour Party

Seriously, talking about poverty and inequality? 

I'm pretty sure that Kier Starmer will have former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown turfed out for saying, "Britain is creating a left-out generation of young boys and girls, without the cash to participate in what their friends are doing and whose childhoods are starting to resemble shameful scenes from a Dickens novel."

Labour does not do those things any more.

Boris Johnson and the Tory leadership candidates should agree an immediate emergency budget tackling the spiralling cost of living, Gordon Brown has said, or risk “condemning millions of vulnerable and blameless children and pensioners to a winter of dire poverty”.

………

“The reality is grim and undeniable: a financial timebomb will explode for families in October as a second round of fuel price rises in six months sends shock waves through every household and pushes millions over the edge,” Brown writes in Sunday’s Observer.

“The more the Conservative leadership election heats up, the more the remaining candidates have resorted to claiming the moral high ground. Raising debt is ‘immoral’, Rishi Sunak is saying. ‘High taxes are immoral,’ retorts Liz Truss. But there is nothing moral about indifferent leaders condemning millions of vulnerable and blameless children and pensioners to a winter of dire poverty.”

He adds: “Boris Johnson, Sunak and Truss must this week agree an emergency budget. If they do not, parliament should be recalled to force them to do so.”

It follows the Bank of England’s grim forecast last week that inflation will soar to 13% in October. There have also been predictions that UK energy bills could reach more than £3,600 a year this winter.

Given the fact that Starmer seems more interested in purging the party of people who do things like walk the picket lines and criticize him at meetings that he is at supporting, well, labor (with or without the "u"), what the hell is Gordon doing?

Tweet of the Day

If you ever doubt that you can change your path in life, just remember that this person went on to become the Senate's top defender of hedge funders and private equity #inspiring #inspiration pic.twitter.com/dG7li95DqZ

— Dan Amira (@DanAmira) August 8, 2022

We may not make anything in the US any more, and our entrepreneurial class is corrupt and incompetent, but credit where credit is due, the opportunities to sell out in the US remain unparalleled.

It Seems That the Bloom Is off the Rose

One of the assets that Elon Musk has generally, and Tesla Motors has in particular, has been the willingness of the public, and regulators, to overlook the constant dissembling (lying) of Elon Musk about things like delivery schedules, price, capabilities, and the existence of his products, because he was seen as a visionary man of singular genius.

Some of these are merely annoying, (Tesla's poor build quality) some probably constitute securities fraud (demonstrating non-existent solar shingles), and some kill people, like Tesla's Autopilot and related self-driving features.

In the space of 3½ months, his behavior has led people to realize that they are not dealing with an, "Eccentric genius billionaire," but rather an, "Actually dangerously delusional  rich guy," 

All of this without his even pausing at, "Donning a superhero costume and pursuing criminals at night," which is a bit of a bummer, because I was hoping that he would be inspired by his first college mascot, and we would see him in an Oom Gert suit. 

More significant than seeing an electric version version of the Batmobile, is the fact that regulators are no longer blithely tolerating his deceptive business practices.

Case in point, after nearly a decade of lying about the capabilities and schedule of its self driving technology, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has filed complaints against Tesla and its dealer network for false adverting.

This should have happened years ago:

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) last month filed two complaints against Tesla alleging that the car marker violated state law by misrepresenting that its vehicles can drive autonomously.

The complaints [1, 2] [PDF] were filed with the Golden State' Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) and allege that the company violated its manufacturer and dealer Occupational Licenses.

At least five times between May 28 and July 12 last year, the complaints assert, Tesla made misleading statements about its advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) using terms like "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving Capability," in conjunction with claims that the system can navigate to a destination "with no action required by the person in the driver's seat."

"Instead of simply identifying product or brand names, these 'Autopilot' and 'Full Self-Driving Capability' labels and descriptions represent that vehicles equipped with the ADAS features will operate as an autonomous vehicle, but vehicles equipped with those ADAS features could not at the time of those advertisements, and cannot now, operate as autonomous vehicles," the complaints say.

………

Tesla has until the end of this week to respond by filing a Notice of Defense if the company wishes to challenge the accusations. Otherwise, the matter will be resolved by a default decision.

If Tesla chooses to respond, there will be discovery and response filings, leading to a hearing before an OAH administrative law judge. And if Tesla dislikes the result, it has the option to file an appeal in Superior Court.

………

In June, the US National Transportation and Highway Safety Administration expanded its investigation of Tesla's ADAS to an engineering analysis amid a broader inquiry into a dozen other automakers' ADAS systems that began last year.

Oh, did I forget to mention that the Feds are looking into this bit of humbug as well? (Nope, mentioned this 2 months ago, but then it was just the NTSB, which only gathers information, and now it is the NHTSA, which can issue regulations and assess penalties.)

Tesla dominates the numbers in driver assist involved crashes, even though they are a small fraction of the cars with advanced driver assistance programs.

As to whether this is an issue of their technology, Tesla has never used Lidar, and has now eschewed radar, or as a result of their overselling their capabilities, I'll leave it to the regulators.

In the interest of completeness though, it should be noted that Tesla appears to be engaging in deceptive practices to minimize the number of reported accidents:

………

The supposed absence of accidents during ADAS usage may be the result of intentional disengagement – automated systems disabling themselves moments before impact. NHTSA is looking into 16 accidents involving Autopilot in which Tesla vehicles struck parked emergency vehicles. In its report [PDF], the NHTSA said, "On average in these crashes, Autopilot aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact. "

This is not just fraud, it is murderous fraud, and applying the criminal justice to Tesla managers, including Musk, who have promulgated this should happen sooner rather than later.