Colby Chandler, Kodak’s former CEO from 1983-1990 was proud of his cost cutting. He once took a machete to a wood pallet to make the point to his managers. Instead of pouring money into R & D, his cuts created the shareholder value which killed the company.
Here’s a caveat to a recent US ODNI (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) assessment:
“Judgements are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.”
In other words, “our conclusions are not based on facts.”
Publish the “judgement” in the newspaper and you get fake news.
My account was suspended by Twitter for suggesting that, in view of the evidence of the Astra Zeneca vaccine causing blood clots, taking that vaccine did not seem to be an effective way of committing suicide.
Twitter views this as “encouraging suicide.” Its AI algorithms don’t understand sarcasm.
A young woman takes over her father’s drug business.
By the time she points a gun at you, it’s too late.
Everyone betrays everyone else.
Loyalty is a lie.
Honor is a delusion.
Trust is for sale.
Hunter Biden is guaranteed to provide political comic relief for the next four years. Hunter persuaded a young woman from Arkansas who was working at a gentleman’s club in Washington D.C. to have a fling. The baby’s grandfather now lives at the White House. It isn’t clear whether President Biden has asked to spend any time with his new grandchild.
Meanwhile, Hunter’s wife is to (or has) give(n) birth to President Biden’s latest grandchild, whose father is also: Hunter Biden.
Hunter’s babymomma went home to Arkansas to have the child. Hunter denied that the Arkansas child was his and was slapped with a paternity suit: DNA don’t lie. The judge chastised Hunter for failing to appear for a deposition.
It is not surprising that Hunter evaded the Arkansas deposition. The evasion had little to do with the Sickness but a lot to do with his $80/k month no-show job as a board member for a Ukrainian oil company, a position that Hunter won strictly based on merit.
Thankfully for President Biden, the investigation was halted after the parties settled. President Biden’s own role in his son’s sweetheart deal would have distracted from the important work he is undertaking to fight the virus.
There are now three (four?) recognized dangerous Covid-19 variants:
It is not clear whether the reports about the new, 30% more contagious South Africa refers to B.351 or (B?)501, or both of them. The nomenclature will settle down eventually.
4578 active cases of Covid-19 in Bahrain. The last time there were these many cases was early October, 2020.
Every day there is a change in the rules, in the procedures; B.1.1.7 will no more be contained than Covid-19 has; unless the previously ill have immunity, it will spread across the globe. It is starting to look like it will be two years of Covid; another lost year.
2021 Scorecard:
No locusts yet. The Lord of the East Wind Demons must be sleeping.
Imagine if the generals of the Tatmadaw were advising Trump. After arresting Myanmar legislators and closing the parliament, they stated that their reason for invoking the emergency provisions of the Myanmar constitution as justification for the intervention was the pandemic and election fraud.
Trump would have difficulty maintaining that the pandemic was an emergency after denying it for so long. Not even his own infection with the disease changed his mind. But he could have claimed that election fraud required the arrest of Democratic leaders and the imposition of martial law. Who in the military would have stood up against the CinC? A few, of course, but their colleagues would put them in cells alongside other protestors.
It turns out that the greatest defense against a coup in the United States was Trump’s own mediocrity.
I’m sick and tired of QAnon, Pizzagate and other conspiracy theories. When can we get back to hard news?
Every major university’s library, public and private, is a government depository library. This means they have to give you access if you say you’re going to consult the government collection. Usually I just ask what floor it’s on and then don’t bother to go there. Instead I head for periodicals, grab what I can carry and find a comfortable chair to read in.
Unfortunately, there is not always an accessible government depository library nearby and sometimes you have to make do with a county or even a municipal library. Finding a comfortable chair in a municipal library, whether in Miami or Santa Monica, has always been a challenge.
A few years ago, I found myself walking down Wilshire Boulevard and there it was: the Santa Monica library, conveniently located across the street from a Goodwill Industries outlet. With a few hours to kill, how could I not go in?
The homeless had taken over all the comfortable chairs in the Santa Monica library and most of them were simply sleeping. Libraries are popular with recent parolees and those on probation and this one is no exception. Probation officers do not object to their supervisees spending time in a library and those who have released from prison enjoy reading books that are not censored by the prison authorities. Censorship in the library is exercised only in the section where a terminal and an Internet connection are on offer. These are extremely popular; people have to line up to get access.
Finding a place to read in the library is a challenge. I found a few comfortable chairs in a separate, empty section of the library and couldn’t understand why the homeless hadn’t commandeered it. Turned out there was a “Teens Only” sign that I had overlooked. I wondered why the staff looked strangely at me when I sat down to read my periodicals. My guess is that they were told not to engage with non-patrons and I must have looked homeless myself.
At least no one called the police on me for being a predator, but then again, the teen patrons were nowhere to be seen. Back in the adult section, someone had vomited near the book checkout. “I didn’t study library science for this,” I heard one of the staff say as she maneuvered a mop. I dunno: LA, Bukowski–maybe this was some kind of a twisted tribute. Vomiting can be contagious but fortunately no one else joined in.