Good morning campers here is this week’s NTPN!
Here is a summary of the massive premeditated lie of the turnip that led directly to the failed insurrection. It’s a long read but worth it as it shows how a democracy can descend into chaos when the wrong person gets the ultimate power. Closer to Mussolini’s Fascism than Hitler’s or Stalin’s, Trumpism remains but is weaker; the prime threat to America is still within the gates. Good luck to the new Pres.
The New York DA is looking into whether the Trump Organization illegally inflated the value of some of its New York property assets for loan or insurance purposes, and then deflated the value for tax purposes. The paper trail should make it easier to prove. His banks will be subpoenaed and some are dumping him already as he is so toxic. Work has possibly started on his memorial at Mt. Rushmore, but others want to ensure his actual memories are not so long.
I’m dreaming of an orange jump suit rather than his favourite skin dye, but he will probably freely walk to the grave; the rich usually do. Then again Leona Helmsley didn’t without doing some time, so there is some hope.
I think most of us saw the spectacular flight of the AC 75 ‘Patriot’ where it became airborne. Here is a real yacht to dream about. Cubic money at sea.
Artificial Intelligence is playing a key role in the search for antivirals to treat people that already have COVID-19. A British company PostEra, used a deep learning program to research and analyse more than 14,000 submissions that has resulted in four compounds. In lab tests, at least one candidate killed the virus without damaging human cells, a promising start.
That other great bastion of US freedom, the NRA has gone bust, apparently looted by its own executives. The US trade lobby that represents the 80 or so manufactures of civilian weapons and ammo, will start up again in Texas, calling New York ‘toxic’. Shades of kettles calling pots black to me. The US civilian weapons industry is doing well without them with record sales in 2020. It’s a God given right that every American should own a machine gun; it’s in the Constitution ya’ll know!
The travel section. In the South East UK there is a very pleasant market town called East Grinstead; 14th-century buildings house bookshops and jewellers. But it also has a number of ‘alternative’ houses. Nearby Ashdown Forest was the site of the bizarre WW2 Operation Mistletoe.
Word of the week. ‘Extitutional’; an emerging field of scholarship to describe and analyse the underlying social dynamics of a variety of social arrangements and to explore in the context of how they are constantly shaping and influencing each other. So now you know.
Technology tip of the week. In 2019, a record was set for a computer trying to generate every conceivable password. It achieved a rate faster than 100,000,000,000 (that is 100 billion) guesses per second.
On the dark web guessing an eight-character password can cost as little as US $25. The good news is there are Password managers to address these issues. Most computers now support password storage in either the operating system or the web browser. So when your browser (Chrome, Edge, Safari, Opera, Firefox) offers to store a password, if you are the only user of the device, it is generally OK to accept it as it is immediately encrypted to a high level. The only one I never store anywhere is my bank password.
Healthcare tip of the week. If you cook with gas make sure the kitchen window is open and the stove ventilation hood is clean and switched on. The carbon pollutants released by cooking gas greatly increases the chance of asthma and other pulmonary diseases in kids and the elderly – that covers most of us.
Traveller’s tales. From the pilot during his welcome message: “Cebu Pacific Airlines is pleased to announce that we employ some of the best flight attendants in the industry. Unfortunately, none of them are on this flight. They all have COVID”.
Gasps then stunned silence from the back of the bus; “I don’t mean the ones on board today have COVID”.
The Quiz. Back down under for an eclectic bunch of trivia. I got 9/14 with one guess, it’s not so hard if even Kiwis can do it.
Island Musings
I mowed the lawn today, and after doing so I sat down and had a cold beer. The day was really quite beautiful, and the drink facilitated some deep thinking.
My wife walked by and asked me what I was doing, and I said, “Nothing.” The reason I said “nothing” instead of saying “just thinking” is because she then would have asked, “About what?” At that point I would have had to explain that men are deep thinkers about various topics, which would lead to even dumber questions, thus disturbing my thoughts. She then ignored me as usual.
Finally I pondered an age old question: Is giving birth more painful than getting kicked in the nuts? Women always maintain that giving birth is way more painful than a man getting the cajones scrambled, but how could they know?
Well, after another beer to aid some more heavy deductive thinking, I have come up with an answer to that existential question. Getting kicked in the nuts is more painful than having a baby, and even though I obviously couldn’t really know, here is the logical reason for reaching this conclusion.
A year or so after giving birth, a woman will often say, “It might be nice to have another child.”
On the other hand, you never hear a man say, “You know, I think I would like another kick in the nuts.”
I rest my case. Time for a rum and coke, and then maybe a nap.
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