February 1, 2021

Yesteryear
One year ago today: February 1, 2020, beyond the pipes, yew!
Five years ago today: February 1, 2016, except it’s not metal.
Nine years ago today: February 1, 2012, more unique than today.
Random years ago today: February 1, 1982, remarkably philosophical.

           Another great-looking morning as we put some finishing touches on the window and shelving. No stimulus money has arrived, so as the BitChuters put it, Biden is skeeving even on that promise. Man, is that guy screwing up big-time. C’mon Joe, I need my money, and it is my own money back, to build, you know, belongings and stuff. Also, with music back in the picture, my budget is getting thrown off perpenzontal. I don’t mind, since it is pump-priming. But it’s a triple whammy. Three things, music, car, and household, were not seriously in the mix when the last major budget revision was done five years ago. Meanwhile, see if you can guess what this picture is. Hint, meow, meow. Ah, you got it already.

           So, you think our phony lockdowns are bad? Look at Canada. All international flights must land at five designated airports and anyone testing anything but healthy by a known bad testing system has to stay at an “approved government facility. For two weeks, for $2,000, at their own expense. It turns out, these facilities are airport hotels owned largely by friends of their totally corrupt Prime Minister, the son of the worst Prime Minister in Canadian history.

           What’s this push for social security for gig workers? Well, that’s your first indication they admit for all their claims of computer solutions to everything, they are getting old. Changes to such laws do no reflect a positive concern for people’s retirements, but that politicians realize if they don’t dole out some piddling retirement money, most of these folks are going to wind up on expensive welfare programs. It’s a vicious circle. When you tax income, people can’t put away for their own retirement, so you have to tax them more to give them social security. The solution, as always, is a flat sales tax—but that loosens government control and they won’t have that.
           And we have not heard the last of GameStop. Note, I reported the fund that got stung first as Melville, but it was Melvin Capital. Oops, but so what? And Google’s refusal to cut out the funny stuff means Australia could switch to Bing—an equally rotten piece of work. And as predicted here, there is a surge in fake vaccination cards, which will result in “official” cards carrying your ID and picture, just you wait and see. Because, Glen, that’s what they were really after in the first place. Duh. Even die-hard Democrats are beginning to smell something. The party is okay with vaccination ID but not with voter ID cards. Double-duh.

Picture of the day.
Wind turbines.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
           It’s too cold for much and I again neglected to buy room heaters during the summer, which is the only time they are really available any more since the collapse of the American way. So let’s take a sarcastic view of the world situation. Robinhood, a free stock trading platform, is going down. The two important events were that this company suspended or limited trading at a critical moment in the GameStop occurrence and Google stepped in to manipulate the negative comments. Both show the degeneracy of the new Internet elite, and how compromised these companies have become to corporate-think, and how beholden they’ve become to their fellow billionaire bed-mates.
           Why would I say such a mean thing? Because I remember when the very premise of the Internet was to hold the big bastards to task by sharing information. Robinhood deserved the hundreds of thousands of negative comments, yet Google deleted 100,000 of them. That is also counter-productive as Internet platforms that claim protection under Section 230 should have no censorship rights, or surrender that protection.

           Rumor has it the Redditor Raiders are next targeting silver. They went after AMC (movie theater) stock, but found it was just as vulnerable to corporate jamming as GameStop. But silver is another matter. Top consideration is that it is vastly a huge market compared to a single stock, but it is also the most stage-managed commodity by banks and big traders. I have not bought silver in years, having learned the hard way what the system can and will do to screw the working class. Nonetheless, I’m watching for the new demand to drive prices up.
           Once again, I don’t believe the typical Redditor understands the market. But same as GameStop, any moves that are not predicted by the giant trader’s algorithms can throw matters into disarray. I believe the true losses from GameStop are many times the low $12 billion but not as high as the $70 billion claimed by some sources. Silver is manipulated more by banks than Wall Street.

           What else? There are ever more countries establishing splinter Internet operations to get away from big tech dominance, that’s an encouraging sign in most ways. Amazon is now proud of handing over private Ring files to authorities without the silly bother of a warrant. VideoLan, a product I’ve used for 16 years, turns 20 years old today, but still has cumbersome features that have never been put right. Many of the gifs seen here are VLC snapshots, and will be again if I can ever find the Photoscape disk to reinstall the app on this computer.
           The International Business Times reports China has “personally identifiable data” on 4/5ths of American adults. I would be comfortably in safe zone, because the real way to have nothing to hide is to not tell anybody you may have some. Let me guess what these millions of supposed adults have in common. No privacy structures in place. Buy things on-line with a credit card in their own name. Weak password stragegies. And above all, the child-like fancy they have nothing to hide, as if they have some say in the matter. So, the Chinese have their medical histories, so what? What are they gonna do with that information anyway? Create a new virus?

ADDENDUM
           I’ve received ten nine comments on my report of compulsory cell phone law, please look it up yourself. It was some court in Oregon saying you have to fork over the password or be treated as if you had pled guilty to something. But what disturbed me was the number of comments that favored this situation. Guilty until proven innocent has plainly gained favor with the generations taught that freedom is bad. It reminds me of an incident in around 2002. I’ll give some details, just keep in mind, in any work of this size, a certain number of repeats are inevitable. But 2002-2003 was a bigger year for heat attacks than for blogging.
           I treat all musicians with guarded distance when it comes to private details, such as my home address, surname, and often give them coded information. So if it turns up, I know who the blabbermouth is. Such was the case with the Hippie back then. Basically what happened is his parole officer showed up during a rehearsal and demanded my information “for her files”. I gather from her reaction when I told her to fuck off that most people would comply with this shit. She went off, about how she was required by law to know who her charge associated with. Which earned yet another “fuck you”.

           You see, what happened is the Hippie began siding with her to save his own skin. I don’t care who she is, she is not putting my name on somebody’s criminal records. I told him not to tell her anything about me because I had committed no crimes. As usual, I parked around the corner so she could not get my license number—and she went berserk. I heard afterward she indeed had the right to get my ID, but since she didn’t, what could she do? Have another fit? The Hippie thought my last name was Smith and that I lived in Ft. Lauderdale—information he no doubt handed over to the bitch. Just doing her job? The Nazi excuse.

Last Laugh