Category Archives: News and Notes

Updates, new commentary, announcements, and more. Enjoy!

Google’s 1.2 Billion Record Oops

23 Saturday Nov 2019

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Quite the breach there, Google.

For well over a decade, identity thieves, phishers, and other online scammers have created a black market of stolen and aggregated consumer data that they used to break into people’s accounts, steal their money, or impersonate them. In October, dark web researcher Vinny Troia found one such trove sitting exposed and easily accessible on an unsecured server, comprising 4 terabytes of personal information—about 1.2 billion records in all.

While the collection is impressive for its sheer volume, the data doesn’t include sensitive information like passwords, credit card numbers, or Social Security numbers. It does, though, contain profiles of hundreds of millions of people that include home and cell phone numbers, associated social media profiles like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Github, work histories seemingly scraped from LinkedIn, almost 50 million unique phone numbers, and 622 million unique email addresses.

“It’s bad that someone had this whole thing wide open,” Troia says. “This is the first time I’ve seen all these social media profiles collected and merged with user profile information into a single database on this scale. From the perspective of an attacker, if the goal is to impersonate people or hijack their accounts, you have names, phone numbers, and associated account URLs. That’s a lot of information in one place to get you started.”

Maybe linking al those accounts wasn’t a good idea. Of course, it made logging in so easy. Faster access to the cat videos and such.

Better Stick with TPC

20 Wednesday Nov 2019

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The print media is shrinking and dying – GateHouse and Gannett merge, commence layoffs.

So, go with the online, independents. Here’s a splendid piece from TPC!

BIG DOIN’S USA – A Glance Around the Nation-Shaped Kind of Place

Squaw’s Lament: Calling Electoral Business a Little Early
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Cometh the GREAT QUADRENNIAL BLACK MASS of 2020. It’s not even going to be close.
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They are the most persistent little termites in all the annals of Insect-dom, but the coup isn’t working as intended. It’s slowing things down, yes, but they just can’t defeat the evil Orange Man. The hearsay-Ukraine “impeachment” charade is collapsing in real time, exactly like the Russia! Russia! Russia! hoax before it. The star witness, intimidated by mocking laughter, said there was no crime. The hoaxers won’t even pull up the “real” witness; they can’t even bring themselves to mention his name. By the way, it has C-I-A in it! (One just can’t make this crap up). What’s next?
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The 2020 election sure as hell won’t get them anywhere. The sacrificial lamb is Elizabeth Warren, who is a FULL .000000278% Native Amerikan Endien.
Crypto Fashion (Vox Day)
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Squaw Warren speakum with multi-forkem tongum. Drink ‘em big fire wah-tah. Wantz um superum-size taxum. Seriously, her wealth transfer plan calls for a top tax rate of effectively 158 Insane Percent!

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That’s not going to work, even if it stood any chance of passing the corrupt Congress. 100%+ taxes + negative interest rates + unlimited funny money + any of the other issues ≅ civil war now, not 2033. It also, for practical purposes = Trumpslide 2020.
…

AT TPC

Public Schools = Child Torture

19 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by in Legal/Political Columns, News and Notes

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When I wrote in my book about the schools being prisons and treating children worse than prisoners of war, I was dead serious. But, even I wasn’t fully aware of what goes on in many Illinois schools (and, rest assured, other states too). This is one of the most damning reports I have ever read on the subject.

The spaces have gentle names: The reflection room. The cool-down room. The calming room. The quiet room.

But shut inside them, in public schools across the state, children as young as 5 wail for their parents, scream in anger and beg to be let out.

The students, most of them with disabilities, scratch the windows or tear at the padded walls. They throw their bodies against locked doors. They wet their pants. Some children spend hours inside these rooms, missing class time. Through it all, adults stay outside the door, writing down what happens.

In Illinois, it’s legal for school employees to seclude students in a separate space — to put them in “isolated timeout” — if the students pose a safety threat to themselves or others. Yet every school day, workers isolate children for reasons that violate the law, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois has found.

Children were sent to isolation after refusing to do classwork, for swearing, for spilling milk, for throwing Legos. School employees use isolated timeout for convenience, out of frustration or as punishment, sometimes referring to it as “serving time.”

Of course, some fools want to run to other government criminals for help. B’rer Fox, Br’er Wolf… Homeschool or die. Serving time? Why haven’t the police arrested these child abusers?! These monsters deserve to be rounded up, chained together, doused in oil, and burned alive. Just damn!

Chick-fil-A Caves?

18 Monday Nov 2019

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Could be that years of whining by the “alternative” community has taken its toll.

Beginning next year, Chick-fil-A will move away from its current philanthropic structure, Bisnow has learned. After donating to more than 300 charitable organizations this year, the Atlanta-based fast-food chain will instead focus on three initiatives with one accompanying charity each: education, homelessness and hunger.

“There’s no question we know that, as we go into new markets, we need to be clear about who we are,” Chick-fil-A President and Chief Operating Officer Tim Tassopoulos said in an interview with Bisnow. “There are lots of articles and newscasts about Chick-fil-A, and we thought we needed to be clear about our message.”

The new initiative will no longer include donating to organizations like the Salvation Army, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Paul Anderson Youth Home, Chick-fil-A says, all of which sparked criticism in the past from the LGBT community due to the organizations’ stances on homosexuality.

Big Paul would not be pleased.

Self-Driving Cars and Cat Videos

14 Thursday Nov 2019

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May be all that’s left after the full effects of 5G are felt.

There’s No Safe Way to Implement 5G

Similarly, in an article8 on the Environmental Health Trust’s website, Ronald Powell, Ph.D., a retired Harvard scientist of applied physics, notes “there is NO SAFE WAY to implement 5G in our communities; rather, there are only ‘bad ways’ and ‘worse ways,’” and rather than argue about who should have control over its deployment, we should focus on preventing its employment altogether.

Indeed, mounting research9,10 suggest the proliferation of 5G for the sake of faster wireless internet could be a public health disaster, so if 5G does end up “replacing cable internet for good,” humanity may be in for a devastating shock in coming decades, if not sooner.

While it may take years to fully ascertain the full effects of 5G, there are early warning signs. People have reported mass die-offs of bees around 5G towers in California,11 for example, and residents in Gateshead in the U.K. started reported insomnia, chronic nosebleeds and stillbirths after the installation of streetlamps that emit 5G radiation in 2016.12

‘No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe,’ Scientific American Says

In an October 17, 2019, article,13 Scientific American warns “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe,” and that “contrary to what some people say, there could be health risks.” The article, written by Joel M. Moskowitz, Ph.D., director for the Center for Family and Community Health in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, notes:14

“The telecommunications industry and their experts have accused many scientists who have researched the effects of cell phone radiation of ‘fear mongering’ over the advent of wireless technology’s 5G.

Since much of our research is publicly-funded, we believe it is our ethical responsibility to inform the public about what the peer-reviewed scientific literature tells us about the health risks from wireless radiation.”

B-b-but, faster streaming mooovies!

In unrelated news, another extremely low-effort gun control false flag school shooting perpetrated by another white nationalist terrorist Asian teenager with mental issues. Could this have been carried out to save face for the Congress Truffle Lesbo?? Or, just to give Bernie something else to get worked up about? Sad.

Decades of Darkness

12 Tuesday Nov 2019

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From a very good interview with a very good radio man:

“No, I’m pessimistic,” Savage says bluntly. “I think Donald Trump, even if he wins a second term, it is the last gasp of America as we know it. I think we’re going to enter years and years, if not decades of darkness.”

“I see the mass of illegal immigrants, who are illiterate even in their own language. They have none of our shared values. They will never be Americans and embrace the values that built this country. They’ve been steeped in hatred for this nation by the media and the universities. And they have a very dim view of our nation, even though they love the benefits that have accrued from far better people than them,” he concludes.

He’s right about almost everything. On the pessimistic side, it could be longer than decades – it’s possibly permanent. On the other hand, an uprising just might fix things. There’s light that way.

A Self-Policing 1984

11 Monday Nov 2019

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It’s probably too late by the time people start making recommendations like “academic freedom champions.”

Fewer than half of students consistently support freedom of speech and two fifths favour censorship and no-platforming of controversial speakers, research has shown.

A “culture of conformity” may also be having an effect on undergraduates, who are often too intimidated to espouse unpopular views on campus, according to a report by the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange.

Deep-rooted reform is needed at universities, which should establish academic freedom champions reporting directly to the vice-chancellor, it says.

And it’s not just in the UK. Depending on how one looks at the problem, the US is either a little better or much worse. The good news is that soon there will be nothing left to conform to.

Tom Ironsides on Veteran’s Day

11 Monday Nov 2019

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Literally, this is how Tom passed last Veteran’s Day. From Chapter 10 of The Substitute:

   He was just sitting down when Bolt addressed him by name:

   ‘Dr. Ironsides! Dr. Ironsides, please stand back up. In addition to holding a Ph.D., our favorite sub [many of the kids applauded that], our favorite sub also served in the Marine Corps, retiring as a Colonel, wasn’t it? And, many of you don’t know this, but he also worked for the CIA. Dr., Col. Ironsides, can you please say a few words? And, on behalf of all of us, thank you for your service!’

   Tom waited for the renewed applause to die down and then he spoke, without the need of any microphone: ‘You don’t know what I did!’ He hadn’t expected to say those words and they had a silencing effect on the whole room.

   ‘I spent almost thirty years as a warrior, destroying and killing as ordered. For the most part, I waged war so rich men could get richer. I watched poor men die. I killed many of them. Some of their wives. A few of their children. People much like you… You’re welcome.’

   The very few who knew, looked him in the eyes as he sat down. Most were shocked by the blunt and horrifying short speech. There was no more applause.

 

Goodbye, 007?

07 Thursday Nov 2019

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Tom Ironsides may have come along at just the right moment.

In London with the ‘No Time to Die’ actresses, part of The Hollywood Reporter’s Next Gen Talent list, as they open up about bringing James Bond into the #MeToo age: “There is an evolution.”

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Never has that been so critical for a Bond film. When it’s released April 10, the $250 million No Time to Die will be the first entry in the series to land in a #MeToo and Time’s Up world. And while the $7 billion franchise may forever be best known for its womanizing namesake agent, director Fukunaga (True Detective, Beasts of No Nation) and producer Barbara Broccoli have worked hard with both Lynch and de Armas to create a new type of female Bond character who is much more fully realized than the “Bond girls” of films past.

“It’s pretty obvious that there is an evolution in the fact that Lashana is one of the main characters in the film and wears the pants — literally. I wear the gown. She wears the pants,” says de Armas, curled up in a chair in the lobby of London’s Charlotte Street Hotel.

Buy his debut novel, The Substitute, today.

PS: A fiction pro has completed his reading of the book and declared it both a success and a perfect depiction of the public school system. His review will be along shortly with more to follow.