Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

One feature of Facebook that I’ve hated from the  beginning  has been ‘memories.’  It’s  not really about  personal memories, or  shared memories of great  events, just whatever somebody posted on any given day, and then the prompted to post it again, as a ‘memory’.  Well, here’s the deal.  If I  didn’t respond to it  when it was first posted, why should I comment on  it now? and, if I did respond to it at the tie, why are you bothering me with it again.
So, a couple of  days ago I started a new policy of hiding all of them and, despite the fact that it might actually take more time than to select and then hit ‘hide post for 30 days’ than it would just to scroll through and ignore them, but I guess I’m trying to make a very passive-aggressive point, and I’m imagining that there’s some sort of a Facebook customer service department that’s watching and saying “Aha!  There’s another one deleting the memories,” and then I’ll  feel very vindicated if they ever drop the feature.

Which they won’t, because  it’s very popular with a lot of people.  Which is why they are so irritating, and why I hide them immediately.  I’ve definitely noticed an uptick in the amount of good stuff I can see.

I kind of hate to take an easy swipe at Donald Trump over something stupid he said, because it kind of takes away from the last stupid thing he said, which takes away from the last stupid thing he said on and on forever, but what can we do?  They keep coming.

He said today that if he was impeached the market would crash, and everybody would be poorer.  Now, on the one hand, you could look at this as a sign of increasing desperation. He’s reached the “You’ll be sorry!” stage in his childish negotiating process.  It really did sound quite petulant.
But, let’s just deal with the threat itself.  If I recall correctly, there was no major market disruption after 9/11, during Bill Clinton’s impeachment, even after the assassination of  Kennedy.  I’m not sure you can even prove a correlation between world events and stock market events, except that a major  war will probably lead to big profits for weapons manufacturers.  So, I don’t think it’s likely to happen just because Trump gets impeached,  which  a lot of people kind of expect, anyway.
If Trump is saying that if he gets impeached,  he’s going to do something to  deliberately  crash the market, I don’t really think he’s capable of that, any more than he is of actually building a non-stop wall on the Mexican border.  So, if it’s a threat,  it’s an empty one.
The walls  are closing in on him.  As dumb as he  is, I think he realizes that.

It was a really bad day for Trump.  I don’t want to say yet that I  think impeachment is inevitable, because I thought impeachment was inevitable over a year ago and, between the two parties in congress, neither one seems keen to pursue that task.  If there is to be an impeachment, Nancy Pelosi will  be the last person on board.
But today was pretty  amazing, and in a sane universe these would be irreversible developments.  Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, pled guilty to paying the hush money to  Stormy Daniels and  one other hooker, close to 300 grand total, and he says that Trump knew about it, that Trump had ordered him to  do it.  That is fantastic!  Of course, it could develop pretty quick into  a he said/he said, but it’s certainly enough to bring Trump in for one  of them perjury traps. (i.e. an interrogation, in which case they can ask him about  his golf game, his sex life, his businesses, his military record, his grades from  school, whatever, he’ll lie)
Manafort got nailed on bank fraud, tax fraud, and failure to reveal  a foreign bank account.
Here’s the part I  thought was interesting, though.  After posting a tweet blasting Cohen for ratting on him, he posted this tweet re Manafort: “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family.  ‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ – make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’ Such respect for a brave man!”   So, he’s pleased that Manafort didn’t turn on him, which sort of  implies that  he could have.  Or maybe that’s just the conspiracy theory of my mind working, but that’s what it sounds like to me.
Another thing I find interesting is that none of this has  anything to do with Russia, which is great.  Nail him on the financial crimes.
The third case of the day was congressman Duncan Hunter, a big supporter of Trump, who got  charged (along with his wife, who apparently loves fast food a whole lot) with misuse of campaign funds.
It was a good day.  There is  hope.  And by hope I mean hope that Donald J. Trump will die in jail.

I say again because I have written about this subject before, several times in the nearly two years since it first came out.  It is the story of a story forgotten; a story brushed under the rug.  And, it’s why I don’t like Snopes.

They rate it ‘mostly false’ but that’s largely about choosing the phrasing that would give a ‘mostly false’ the most credibility, but even then, when you read through the explanation, it’s mostly true.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/strange-signals-are-probably-extraterrestrial/

First of all, did two scientists publish a paper in which they said signals from other stars probably indicated intelligent life? or something like that, was the original question, and Snopes is being real picky about the word ‘probably.’
What the paper said is the kind of signals emitted were exactly the kind of signals they had predicted would exist, for communication from technological species. So, they said it backed that hypotheses, which is that that is the kind of signals an alien species would send.
The rest of the scientific community, being old poop heads, downplayed and derided  the study.  BUT… they have not disproved that distinctive signals originated from those 234 star systems (out of 2.5 million surveyed), or that those signals were any other than signals from alien, high tech, space faring civilizations.
To the best of my knowledge they have not even tried.  I haven’t heard that NASA, or the European Space Agency, or whoever, have turned their telescopes toward those star systems, to see what is there to be found.
Because this isn’t just discovering life in outer space.  This is discovering the United Federation  of Planets.

Venezuela never gets a break  in the U.S.  press.  People are always on about their hyperinflation, but today Maduro took a fairly radical step to address the issue.  CNN mentioned that the new Bolivars looked very much like the old Bolivars and all  they’d done was to knock off 5 zeroes, and how’s that supposed to help?, and their overall tone was sneering, and I don’t believe they mentioned at all that the new currency is pegged to the national cryptocurrency, the Petro, which is in turn backed by the nation’s oil and gas reserves, which are considerable.
The New York Times did a little bit better.  Near the end of  the article they mentioned it.  Then they said some derisory things about the cryptocurrency and how the oil and gas reserves are already earmarked to paying off their debts.
I don’t know much about cryptocurrencies, I don’t think most people do, but I think it’s a pretty big deal when an entire nation bases its currency, and its economic recovery, on  one.  The knocking off of the zeroes may or may not have a psychological  effect.  Lots of countries with runaway inflation have tried it before,  with varied results.  But the cryptocurrency thing, that’s new.  As far as I know, anyway.
It could inspire confidence, maybe attract international investment.  If the whole cryptocurrency thing is real, and it seems to be, some day Venezuela may be seen as having been ahead of the curve.
But, as I mentioned above, I really  don’t know anything about cryptocurrencies.  So, let’s wait and see.   I wish  them luck.