One year ago today: April 16, 2020, a familiar situation.
Five years ago today: April 16, 2016, less of a screech.
Nine years ago today: April 16, 2012, 479cc.
Random years ago today: April 16, 2015, I wait an hour.
This could be my lucky day. I try every April or other April to clear out my phone lists, determining which numbers are still active. Who remembers Jag, the best guitar player I had in Hollywood? He’s back in the loop and have I got news. That’s the same Jag firs mentioned in this blog way back on August 27, 2010. He was great at playing rhythm and had the advantage of never having heard most of the music we played. That meant he could capture the “theme” of the song. But he finally graduated and went away to college. And that is what we focus on this morning.
This picture is an Iranian mine clearing vehicle. Called the Taftan, it is a British invention from the Second World War. At the far left is a rotor that slaps the ground with weighted chains to detonate a path through minefields. The cab, at the far right, is armored with a crew of two. I crawls along at around a mile and a half per hour and has to be well-protected from enemy countermeasures. The reason it’s here is because the original picture had various features disabled, one of which prevented me from linking to it.
As before, it becomes an issue of whether anybody has a right to put a picture on my computer and tell me what I can or can’t do with it. Yes, it is their picture, but it is my computer and I want to make a distinction. The people out there think if they, for instance, get your name, it becomes their property. Am I not doing the same with their picture? No, and what’s more, that is not the contentious point. Close, but not the same. With your name, you are not getting into their computer and altering what they can do with their equipment.
What they do may be wrong, but you are not disabling anything their computer can do. If you do, that would be trespassing. There’s a principle involved here. You record people’s names for other than the stated purpose, they do the same with your pictures. Freedom rests on the limitation that you have to allow others the same freedoms as yourself.
Because I found the missing labs, I don’t have to go into Miami today. This frees up $60 and six hours. If you see a picture of the shed floor in place, that means I used these productively. I may take the day off just as likely. I’m not used to such good luck. This is where you heard it first, but many years ago. The world’s first stage-friendly drum machine, designed for ease of use. And I will forbid any built-in disco-cuban-rumba or spastic Japanese drum beats. This device will incorporate at least six major design departures from the crap on the market today. What they are is a highly protected secret as only I know how.
My calendar marks April 20 and the opening of the Frank social media site, but this morning I see they are doing something. The site is not a free-for-all, it will block violence in its various forms. And you can’t use what they call the n-word, the f-word, the c-word, or mean-mouth the big guy upstairs. I’m watching for how it treats celebrities who have been banned from other sites. I hope it causes a landslide because I never liked the way the tech biggies call everybody far right. My feeling is the world is full of moderates and they need a voice of their own.
The site is a web app, so the biggies are right off saying it lacks “functionality”, but that is never a permanent in the programming world. The article can’t just end there, it must go on to say that the founder is being sued for $1.6 billion over his statement of “voter election fraud”. You see the libtard slant? That if there was fraud, it wasn’t the bad guys to blame, but the voter. Which brings up another slippery one that I’d like to describe as a definitive example of how the corrupt left does business, and what Americans are up against. Keep reading.
Iraqi “COVID” graveyard.
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Since I have no photos for you this afternoon, here is a puzzle that is reputed to stump 95% of viewers. This diagram contains 11 squares, most people can only find 10. Give it a whirl before the answer, which appears near the bottom of today’s post.
This story comes from Kansas City, which it typical of Democrat-run operations. The people that live there long-term grew satifaction with the situation and did not notice the Democrats creeping in and taking over the city administration. Like Washington and Oregon, the leftoids sneak in a little at a time, establishing a foothold, then passing bills and budgets to bring in more of their kind while the sleepy public only wants to carry on without worrying about the mundane operations of the city. But now this.
There is a main road through the city called Paseo. It’s been that way for as long as anybody remembers. You see, Kansas City has a bylaw that no street name can be changed without the consent of over 70% of the property owners on the street. Here’s how the leftist pulled a fast one, or two, actually. First they tried the sneak approach. One morning last year people on the street were shocked to see the Paseo street signs being removed and replaced with Martin Luther King Jr. signs. They were outraged and got the Paseo signs taken down.
This is how the left works. The city council, dominated by the rotten left, used the taxpayers own money to embark on a massive publicity campaign about honoring black leaders and anybody who didn’t was a white supremist. With this massive distraction going on to put the citizens on the defensive, the city council waited for a slow period when they had a quorum and voted out the 70% rule. And this morning, people on Paseo street were again watching the MLK signs go up. Never turn your back on leftists, they know every dirty trick in the book and have no moral qualms about using them against neighbors.
There are already reputedly some 600 streets named after MLK, who is a total fraudster. He is not a real Reverend or a real Doctor and his real name was Mike King, like it says on his gravestone. He was a vile bigot, who stole, lied, and plagiarized his way through both his “degrees”. But at the time he got his degrees, the leftist had taken over most campuses in this country and gleefully awarded King his false certificates. They would later say they felt they were helping a black man against the white system.
The American and Canadian college systems are case studies in how communist sympathizers gained control of the schools. The people who built King’s were the likes of Abner Berry, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Bayard Rustin who you can look up yourself. All card-carrying communists, most were convicted felons and sexual deviants. And it is their converts to this deception that masterminded the fake aura of Barack Obama, same tactics, same process. And the media never mentions how MLK used church money for regular visits to prostitutes. Yes, the police organizations know about it, but face it, whose side are they on? The side that gives them paychecks.
My guy at the lumber yard says sales have plunged to record lows. Nobody is buying the lumber any more than the story the lumber mills can’t meet the demand. The mills always have a surplus capacity and there are hordes of people looking for work. I was the first customer y’day morning and they did not have change for a fifty.
ADDENDUM
What’s this, DRI (Digital Rights Ireland) is promoting a class action against Facebook for the big data breach. Ah, so a few hundred million people did have something to hide after all. Rumor is they are seeking €12,000 for each person’s data. That’s well above the $3,500 value this blog placed on it, and enough to really singe the Zuck’s play-doh hair. This could prove an interesting case because of a twist. While I maintain FaceBook did nothing wrong in considering all that data as their property once it was given to them, they are responsible for how it they use it. That’s an important distinction.
I warned long before this blog began the dangers of having large amounts of data in a single, easily accessible spot. People who grew up in the last half of the 1900s witness the huge increase in government record-keeping during the 1960s. But it was still decentralized. The health department didn’t talk to the DMV didn’t talk to the school boards who didn’t talk to the passport office. As long as that information was spread thinly everywhere, pretty much only the police had the money and manpower to sift through it all.
The legal principle here, as I see it, is not who owns the data, but can it be used to cause harm? I have no doubt FaceBook will try everything to claim it is free speech and the information belongs to them. I personally feel the opposite, that if I give you my data, it is for a specific one-time use and never becomes your property. The principle here is how the data is used. Compare it to a knife. If I give you the knife and you use it to harm somebody, it is not a question of who owns the knife. If FaceBook caused harm, they can be held accountable.
The hitch is that in America, proving harm can be a tricky affair. One by one you get nowhere, but enter the Irish. While each’s damage will be argued to be trivial, there are 1.5 million potential legatees, making the collective damage a real cause. And the European courts have a history of not siding with anybody who keeps too many files on other people. More interesting is I know of a whole group of people who will think of me should it happen. It is Democrats and Liberals who always want your ID first. They hate anonymous speech, as they have to counter with facts and figures instead of retaliate against the speaker.
[Author's note: the square most people don’t see is dead center, staring you in the face, around the four small squares. No, I did not look up the answer, Ken.]
