Brooks Sentenced to 762 Years in Prison

Darrell Brooks, the Waukesha hit and run murderer, was sentenced this week to six consecutive life terms on the six convicted counts of first-degree murder, plus an additional 762 years for seriously injuring dozens of other victims. Such a sentence is difficult to imagine, in an additive sense, for none of us know what will happen tomorrow. We do, however, have a very accurate picture of the past. In 1260, 762 years ago, Kublai Khan became the great Khan of the Mongol empire.

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Twitter’s 8 Bucks Plan

If Twitter: –starts charging $8 for verification to meet KYC (Know Your Customer) anti-money laundering requirements –layers on #Ripple/#XRP –restricts access to verified accounts –now you have a profitable payment ecosystem from/to verified users anywhere in the world. To make Twitter a payments platform like WeChat/TenCent you have to verify users. It will disrupt the international remittance business and provide cheap banking services for the unbanked. Would you pay $8 to let anyone send you money from anywhere in the world?

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Saudis Help Achieve Ukrainian Prisoner Exchange

Perhaps the US would be wise to stop insulting the Saudi petroleum minister and attacking the Saudis generally and instead solicit their help with respect to Brittney Griner.

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More on the Mail; a Trystero in Panama and a Lonely Parrot

The predilection for writing letters did not begin in Bahrain. In another lifetime, I worked for the Panama Canal. One of the benefits, at least as seen by one who suffers the affliction of writing letters, was a provision of the Panama Canal Treaty which gave employees of the Canal access to the military postal system until the end of the so-called “transition period,” which began on the treaty’s effective date of October 1, 1979 and ended on April 30, 1982.

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The Stateless Suckling

An infant lay in a baby carriage in front of the photo studio. I was there to get visa pictures as was the infant’s father, who was from Malaysia. A Thai-Chinese woman in her 80’s made a fuss about the infant, who I wrongly assumed was the child’s grandmother—or great grandmother. “She’s second generation Thai Chinese,” the Malaysian told me. She lives across the street but likes to hang out at the photo studio.

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Drug War News

One undiscussed aspect of the pardon is whether those who are incarcerated on other offenses, but whose presumptive guidelines were calculated based in part on the now-pardoned conduct, are entitled to sentence reductions. Under the Sentencing Guidelines scheme, a federal felony counts for three points and so boosts the defendant into the next column and can double the sentence.

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Laptop Landlords

Property owners who delegate rental management to local companies an who may never even have visited their leased property. Since real estate agents claim that one of their core skills is showing a property and none of these properties are ever shown, perhaps they will unbundle their skills and give home owners a discount. Don’t hold your breath.

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US v. UK

In the US, it’s .” In the UK, it’s ”. When writing Markdown, it’s *. or .* Because it doesn’t matter if a full stop is italicized or not. But after a while, the error ceases to leap out at you. Query: will this lead to the long-awaited unification of punctuation in the English language?

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Typewriters

Typing envelopes is a practical use for a typewriter. By the time you: open a WP program find “Envelopes and Labels” choose label copy addressd paste address connect printer change printer paper feed confirm paper change reject “black ink low” warning insert envelope print envelope throw away envelope for improper geometry print envelope successfully My envelope was already typed. BTW, if you don’t use an ink-jet printer, because laser printers use plastic as ink, the plastic will wear off as the envelope passes through automatic sorting systems.

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A Unanimous Decision

In 1975, the US Senate unanimously agreed to posthumously restore citizenship to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. Statues of the former have been removed; not sure if there were ever any statues of the latter outside of Mississippi.

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