Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Long time readers know I’ve occasionally commented on the crypto-currency phenomenon, although generally from the outside looking in. However, there’s a new wrinkle showing up in crypto-currency land, and I’m really baffled by it. From The Switch (WaPo), back on November 1:

There’s a new form of cryptocurrency gaining traction among fans of digital cash.

Unlike bitcoin, which has seen its price swing wildly from as high as $19,000 last year to its current level hovering around $6,200, this emerging class of cryptocurrency aims to maintain a stable price — one, single U.S. dollar — at all times.

A cryptocurrency whose price never fluctuates might sound nonsensical, particularly to entry-level traders who want to profit off a cryptocurrency’s appreciation. But many in the industry say the rise of “stablecoins” has in fact been instrumental for active investors — and could represent a crucial steppingstone to the future of money. …

“I don’t know whether the price of that crypto is going to go up or down, but it’s almost certainly not going to be the same as it is today,” said Josh Fraser, co-founder of the cryptocurrency start-up Origin Protocol. “That introduces the problem [for] either the buyer or seller . . . as part of that transaction.”

That’s why many in the industry now see stablecoins as a big opportunity that could fulfill much of bitcoin’s original promise as a medium of exchange.

I tried to do some research on stablecoins, but ran into a jungle of jargon that made little sense to me. I wonder if there’s a really good, readable explanation of how stablecoins bring anything positive to the table. The WaPo article has a lot more, including an early attempt at stablecoins:

But not all was well: In the past several weeks, Tether [provider of an version of stablecoins] has been hit by a massive crisis of confidence. On some exchanges, Tether began trading at well below a dollar, which is not supposed to happen for a currency whose sole purpose is to maintain a solid peg. While the precise reasons for the slippage remain unclear, investors have engaged in a sell-off, and Bitfinex — a major exchange that shares the same management as Tether — took hundreds of millions of Tether coins out of circulation. In one month, Tether lost almost $1 billion in its market cap.

This sort of result leaves me with a suspicion that a purely private form of digital currency may not be an optimal solution to the problem of providing a stable fiat currency. I may be wrong, perhaps a large enough provider can provide stability simply through size.

But it may turn out that the traditional source of fiat currency, government, with all its flaws and vulnerabilities, may still be the best solution. I don’t disagree with the originators of crypto-currency that government is sometimes really undesirable, given how inflation can destroy an economy when a pack of amateurs is running the government, but the winds of the free market may be even less beneficial for a currency.

Libertarians occasionally cite economist Joseph Schumpeter’s remark about creative destruction and how through that process, progress (however you wish to define it) is made. Somehow, applying this to the currency the economy runs on doesn’t seem like the wisest of decisions.

It’s like this seal is on drugs. From NOAA:

In the nearly 40 years that we have been working to monitor and protect endangered Hawaiian monk seals, we have only started seeing “eels in noses” in the last few years. Yet, our researchers have observed this phenomenon three or four times now. We don’t know if this is just some strange statistical anomaly or if we will see more eels in seals in the future.

Hawaiian monk seals forage by shoving their mouth and nose into the crevasses of coral reefs, under rocks, or into the sand. They are looking for prey that likes to hide, like eels. This may be a case of an eel that was cornered trying to defend itself or escape. Alternatively, the seal could have swallowed the eel and regurgitated it so that the eel came out the wrong way. We might never know.

It’s just so odd. Are the eels counterattacking? Or is this a particular source of pleasure for the seals?

In the interests of fairness in the Secretary Acosta affair – or, lack thereof – David Oscar Markus has come to his defense, also in the pages of the Miami Herald.

Then last week, the Miami Herald retold the story of Jeffrey Epstein’s plea deal from over 10 years ago, when Secretary Acosta was U.S. Attorney Acosta. Although Epstein was required to plead guilty, register as a sex offender, pay restitution and go to state prison, there are many — including the New York Times, Miami Herald, and others — who are calling for Congress to investigate Acosta and force him out, equating Acosta’s approval of the deal to Epstein’s actions.

Although it is fair to have an honest disagreement about the Epstein plea agreement, the attacks on Acosta are not justified. As for the merits of the agreement, it is important to remember that the federal government only prosecutes federal crimes.

At the time this case was being investigated, there were serious questions about whether Epstein’s crimes had the required federal nexus. These were traditional state court crimes with local victims, which the federal government decided should be prosecuted by the state system.

In addition, there were legitimate concerns about how a trial would have turned out. These trials are difficult as the Michael Jackson (acquitted) and Bill Cosby (hung jury before eventually obtaining conviction, which is now subject to appeal) cases have shown. Here, prosecutors have said that many of the victims either refused to testify or were going to say things that helped Epstein.

I would actually be relieved if Acosta were exonerated. While I do not give the Department of Labor much credit for improvements in employment rates and that sort of thing, it’d be good for my stomach to be able to consider him an honorable guy.

I see President Trump may have taken a step up with the nomination of former Attorney General William Barr, who served under the late President Bush. I don’t remember a thing about him, but I see Wikipedia says he’s a strong a defender of Presidential power – maybe Trump consulted the same source that I did.

Regardless, it’s good to see he has experience and was thought to have handled the responsibilities ably under President Bush. This may result in a relatively placid transition from Whitaker, whose entire background is clownish, to someone with some heft.

However, it’s worth noting that the link above, from CNN, also contains some of his commentary on the Trump Administration and the activities of then-FBI Director Comey and Special Counsel Mueller, in which he appears to express skepticism concerning the propriety of the investigation. CNN also points to a New York Times article:

Mr. Barr said he sees more basis for investigating the [Uranium One] deal than any supposed collusion between Mr. Trump and Russia. “To the extent it is not pursuing these matters, the department is abdicating its responsibility,” he said.

My understanding of the Uranium One deal was that the subsequent controversy was nothing more than a fictional storm. Standard government procedures were followed, including input from the national security intelligence agencies, and it was approved with signoffs from all relevant authorities, which did not include Secretary Clinton, who was the primary target of this political attack. While I could see calls for reopening that investigation as being valid, if dubious, I think suggesting that investigations of possible collusion to buy a Presidential elections, based on the provided initial evidence, was far more reasonable – and the results since then, consisting of  indictments, guilty pleas, and the conveyance of information by Flynn and others, suggests the Mueller investigation has been more than justified.

But the question that came immediately to mind when I heard about this last night: does Barr require confirmation by the Senate? After all, he was confirmed in 1991. Not that I think he’d be rejected this time around, he might even garner substantial Democratic support, but just out of curiosity, will Trump just try to install him in the position and claim he shouldn’t be proctored?

I knew nothing about Trump’s Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta until I accidentally ran across this article in the Miami Herald, which they climax with a call for his resignation. The context is the prosecution and conviction of a billionaire by the name of Jeffrey Epstein, who’d apparently been taking sexual advantage of teen-age girls.

But these abused women, who had turned to the judicial system for recourse, also are owed an explanation from former Miami-based U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta. He cut Epstein a huge and unmerited break.

Maybe Acosta can include his reasoning in his resignation letter as U.S. Labor Secretary, which he should submit immediately to President Trump.

Last week, as the Miami Herald detailed Epstein’s wrongdoing, we wrote that Acosta, who was said to be on the list of possible replacements for fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, was ethically compromised by his action here a decade ago.

Now, as more unbelievable details have emerged in reporter Julie Brown’s extensive, year-long probe, we are recommending that Acosta resign his current position for allowing a rich, powerful, politically connected man to avoid justice and get off easy — and also for having no qualms about denying all the women victimized by Epstein the justice they had every right to expect.

Worse yet, Acosta made the deal with the devil Epstein, then tried to hide the fact of the settlement — ultimately, 13 months in the county jail — from the victims. How squirrelly. A poorer man who had abused scores of underage girls would have received little mercy and a far harsher sentence, and deservedly so.

I had thought the denizens of the swamp were more or less the bottom of the barrel, but if these allegations are true, then Acosta may be the worst of the bunch.

Perhaps I’m just blathering. This really makes me sick to my stomach, kow-towing to the money controlled by an apparent sexual predator. It’s another example of a swamp no longer filled with alligators, but something much, much worse.

The roller-coaster continues today, my second day of a long vacation, at least as of about 11 Central. The DJI is down about 2.6%, but trending upwards even as I type:

Regardless of the trend, though, it’s worth talking about the state of the American markets. For this phenomenon, I’m actually willing to take President Trump at his word – he’s responsible. That is, during the continued run-up as we transitioned from the Obama Administration to the Trump Administration, many investors took Trump at his word that he would reduce regulation and taxes, and that this would result in a business renaissance. Many investors are conservatives at heart – nothing wrong with that – and are also uninformed when it comes to politics. Sure, for those of us watching politics^[1], it’s been apparent from the beginning that the Trump Administration would be a new kind of animal, the sort with 15 irregular legs, two heads, and zero brains, but for most Americans he’s just the guy occupying the White House and issuing big promises.

Promises that sound good.

So the markets continued on their way, with perhaps a bit more enthusiasm in some sectors.

A few months ago came the dawning realization that the promised actions, many of which were kept, were false promises. That is, actions were promised on the premise that they’d lead to the business renaissance, which has then failed to materialize. While promises like these are not unusual, this boils down to government directly messing with the markets, only most of us didn’t get that. To me, these sorts of promises are de rigeur for Republicans, and I expect they’ll continue in the future, because it’s part of Republican ideology to believe that regulation strangles business and is therefore bad. But in this case, neither deregulation nor lower taxes for business have led to the fabled kingdom.

Then came the tariff wars, and the government interference became a trifle more obvious. When international companies decided to move operations to other countries rather than suffer damage to their bottom-line, President Trump then brazenly interfered directly through criticisms and threats – just think about his outrage at Harley-Davidson moving some of its manufacturing to Europe in order to avoid tariff costs. Or, quite recently, his frantic criticisms of General Motors for shutting down plants, which has been partly motivated by tariff costs and partially by falling demand for smaller vehicles^[2].

Earlier this week, more whiplash as President Trump proclaimed a deal with China, followed by a weak following announcement from China on the same subject.

Today’s plunge, which may disappear by the time markets close, is being blamed on Chinese company Huawei’s CFO being detained in Canada and possibly extradited to the United States, at least by some, but I wouldn’t tie it to a single incident, no matter how large the company. Instead, I think the market is awakening to the frightening realization that the “conservative party” of the United States is beginning to reveal itself as more than willing to interfere in markets as whim takes it. Oh, each action may have a specific motivation, but there’s no plan, no adherence to anything but political convenience, for, after all, it’s not convenient for President Trump to “own” factory closings or bankrupt farmers, and thus we get more and more interference.

And remember the tariff wars? Exceptions, which take the form of lifting tariffs for specific companies that “require” foreign resources and products, are yet another direct interference in the market. It’s not a managed market, yet, but that’s where we’re heading with President Trump, and neither liberal nor conservative really wants that – that’s the land of autocrats, fascists, and extreme socialists^[3].

Thus, market upsets each time an autocratic world leader sneezes. What is an investor to do? I think it depends on your expectations of the next American elections.

If you’re a conservative who sees a re-election victory for Trump and even a reconquest of the House of Representatives by the GOP, make plans to get out of the market right now. Markets thrive on predictability, which means, among other things, a connection between business activities and attainment of business goals. Now that the GOP is revealing itself as an interference entity, that predictability is going to disappear, because political goals do not align with business goals, despite all the effort in the world by certain businessmen to control the activities of government to their benefit. They are simply not compatible, and the frantic efforts to make the incompatible [them compatible] create non-linearities that are difficult or impossible to predict, because we don’t know which businesses have the ears of which influential politicians in Washington, do we? This corruption is the ruin of markets.

If you’re a liberal who sees Trump stumbling into obscurity in two years, and the Senate as a possible fruit of victory as well, you may want to stick around, albeit cautiously. Two years is a long time to wait for politicians and party that actually will respect both norms and laws to resume governance, but if that does happen, we can cautiously hope the markets will come back to trusting that interference in markets will resume through honest & moral regulations.

Of course, the spectre in the background of these remarks is Climate Change. The predictions of climate scientists continue to be met or exceeded, the Trump Administration even released a report indicating climate change is truly underway. If we have another two years of criminal inaction on the part of the GOP, it may impair any investments not directly related to CO₂ or methane abatement.

Or even any investments at all. Along with bank accounts and those dollars you buried in a coffee can in the back yard.

Postscript: Now that I’ve finished writing this post (roughly 45 minutes), I see the market has mostly recovered. This doesn’t invalidate my point, but merely reinforces it. So long as Trump is President, the American stock markets are in for a very rough ride, because now they have to factor in Trump’s misbehaviors as he seeks to keep his base happy. No one can really predict how that’s going to work out.

¹ That includes those of us who are unwilling spectators of this slow-motion train wreck.

² A highly undesirable consequence of the undeclared war between the United States and Russia over the annexation of the Crimea, started by President Obama by orchestrating lower oil prices, which was a direct attack on the Russian export economy. I think their return stroke has been the persistent interference in our elections resulting in the election of a President and party who appears to be equal parts compromised and incompetent, as uncovered in the Mueller indictment of the Internet Research Corporation.

³ No, despite her use of the word ‘socialist’, Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has not exhibited any socialist tendencies with regards to the general economy. If you want a socialist to fear in the Western world, try UK Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who appears to be leading a bunch of dreaming old socialists into a failed past.

My Arts Editor has been ranting about this virtually from the day I met her, so I take a certain amount of pleasure in noting that the medical field is also beginning to recognize the problem. From Austin Frakt in The New York Times:

If part of a hospital stay is to recover from a procedure or illness, why is it so hard to get any rest?

There is more noise and light than is conducive for sleep. And nurses and others visit frequently to give medications, take vitals, draw blood or perform tests and checkups — in many cases waking patients to do so.

Some monitoring is necessary, of course. Medication must be given; some vital signs do need to be checked. And frequent monitoring is warranted for some patients — such as those in intensive care units. But others are best left mostly alone. Yet many hospitals don’t distinguish between the two, disrupting everyone on a predefined schedule.

Peter Ubel understands the problem as both a physician and patient. When he spent a night in the hospital recovering from surgery in 2013, he was interrupted multiple times by blood draws, vital sign checks, other lab tests, as well as by the beeping of machines. “Not an hour went by without some kind of disruption,” said Dr. Ubel, a physician with Duke University. “It’s a terrible way to start recovery.”

It’s more than annoying — such disruptions can harm patients. Short sleep durations are associated with reduced immune function, delirium, hypertension and mood disorders. Hospital conditions, including sleep disruptions, may contribute to “posthospital syndrome” — the period of vulnerability to a host of health problems after hospitalization that are not related to the reason for that hospitalization.

“In addressing a patient’s acute illness, we may inadvertently be causing harm by ignoring the important restorative powers of a healing environment,” said Harlan Krumholz, a Yale University physician who has been calling attention to posthospital syndrome for several years. “The key to a successful recovery after illness may be a less stressful, more supportive, more humane experience during the hospitalization.”

Bingo. It’s easy to point at a test result for some bacteria and say that’s the problem!; it’s a lot harder to point at a process and say the same. Not that there’s no history of doing so, especially in the field of public health. After all, the recognition of lack of sanitation procedures in connection with the spread of cholera is legendary in the field.

But it’s a lot harder, and I doubt it’ll receive the same recognition as developing that new med.

Madrigal:

A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six. It is quite distinct from the Italian Trecento madrigal of the late 13th and 14th centuries, with which it shares only the name. [Wikipedia]

Noted in Slaughter-House Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.:

And now there was an acrimonious madrigal, with parts sung in all quarters of the [railroad] car. Nearly everyone, seemingly, had an atrocity story of something Billy Pilgrim had done to him in his sleep. Everybody told Billy Pilgrim to keep the hell away.

A reader writes about the size of the US DoD:

The Department of Defense is so immense, and its “budget” also so immense, the idea of auditing it to find all the Things is amusing in the least. Even with various smaller components trying hard to to be efficient and effective, there’s so much slop, it’s ridiculous. It employs over 2 million people, operates over half a million facilities at over 5000 locations. A billion here and billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

Perhaps. The proper metric is hard to select. For example, from the world of private enterprise, Walmart employs over 2.3 million people and has over 11,000 locations. On the other hand, the mission and operations of Walmart does not compare to that of the US DoD, the latter having far more complexity.

But, in principle, it should be possible to track the money in the US DoD almost as readily as I’m sure Walmart tracks its cash flow.

One of the salient problems of climate change agreements are cheaters. Here’s Nobel Winner Professor William Nordhaus, from a report in WaPo:

Nordhaus has blamed the lack of climate policy progress on the strong incentive for what economists call “free-riding.”

“People free-ride when they jump the turnstile on the subway,” he said. “Nations free-ride in military treaties such as NATO when they enjoy the benefits of the strong U.S. military to protect them while doing little to pay for the common defense.”

And when it comes to climate change, he said, free-riding is “particularly pernicious.”

Unfortunately, no solutions to this particular problem are presented in the article. Obviously, it’ll end up being a matter for international law, which may mean it’ll require attention from the sometimes impotent United Nations.

If the United States wasn’t substantially in a position of denial when it comes to this problem, I’d say that it might be a good idea for Congress to pass legislation that would target cheaters in the future. I would suggest that perhaps tariffs would be automatically applied for those nations found to be in violation of their international obligations, except that there’d be a certain dark irony to such a proposal, given the United States’ decision to pull out of just such agreements.

Corporate entities could also face reprisals, including those of an existential nature, for endangering the future of the human species.

I wonder what the climate change community has come up with in this area.

Just for complete reporting concerning The Revolution at Rosedale, my Arts Editor reports gift cards may be bought for cash.

I see WaPo caught Representative-elect Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), arguably the favorite of the progressives in Congress these days, in a blunder:

Ocasio-Cortez claimed on Twitter that $21 trillion in “Pentagon accounting errors” could have paid for 66 percent of the Medicare-for-all proposal. Her tweet references an article in the Nation, a left-leaning magazine. The specific line about the missing $21 trillion comes from research by Mark Skidmore, an economics professor at Michigan State University. …

Skidmore’s paper clearly talks about Pentagon “assets” and “liabilities.” This key distinction was duly noted in the Nation article that Ocasio-Cortez referenced on Twitter.

To be clear, Skidmore, in a report coauthored with Catherine Austin Fitts, a former assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development who complained about similar plugs in HUD financial statements, does not contend that all of this $21 trillion was secret or misused funding. And indeed, the plugs are found on both the positive and the negative sides of the ledger, thus potentially netting each other out. But the Pentagon’s bookkeeping is so obtuse, Skidmore and Fitts added, that it is impossible to trace the actual sources and destinations of the $21 trillion.

But it did not appear in her tweet, which clearly implied that the $21 trillion could have been used to pay for 66 percent of the $32 trillion in estimated Medicare-for-All costs.

“To clarify, this is to say that we only demand fiscal details [with health and education], rarely elsewhere,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a follow-up tweet.

“The point, I think, was more about how we care so little about the ‘how do you pay for it’ when we are talking about war and military spending,” her spokesman wrote in an email. “It’s only when we are talking about investing in the physical and economic well-being of our citizenry that we become concerned with the price tags.”

Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing that’ll dent her credibility, between getting things wrong, and then frantically backfilling. In fact, the Pentagon undergoing an audit indicates we’re also paying attention to the financial details, even though this is the first such audit, so I suspect the conservatives will just use the explanatory e-mail from her spokesman as another bit of ammunition to discredit the Representative-elect.

Representative-elect Ocasio-Cortez needs to get her ducks in a row before trying to comment on just about anything. Right now she’s a leading target, and she has to be flawless or risk becoming irrelevant.

Related to the GOP frantic clutching at waning power comes this editorial from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Wisconsin citizens elected a new governor and attorney general in November.

Now, leaders of the state Senate and Assembly intend to rush through bills that would reduce the authority of the incoming elected leaders while raising taxpayer costs. They want to pass them as soon as Tuesday, in an extraordinary session, so that Gov. Scott Walker can sign the new rules into law before leaving office in January.  Details just came out Friday, with the first public discussion in the Capitol on Monday and a potential vote by Tuesday. …

This is about keeping the citizens in charge of their government.

It doesn’t matter which party is coming in and going out of office — we would say the exact same thing. In fact, we would shout it — just as we are now.

Let them know who’s boss.

Tell them you are.

And this from what Steve Benen characterizes as a conservative paper.

The phrase litmus test has appeared in campaigns and debates over judge nominations over the last few decades to indicate what one side or the other side thinks is an illegitimate standard that the candidate to meet. For example, their stand on abortion is sometimes considered a litmus test in which the liberals are outraged that it’s used as a standard, while for the conservatives either you’re against abortion or you’re not worthy of the post for which you’re a nominee.

Well, I think a new litmus test is on the horizon, and I think the non-extremists will get to use this one:

Nominee, what are your views on the actions of the GOP-controlled legislatures’ lame duck sessions in Michigan and Wisconsin in 2018 with regard to their attempts to negate the power of the incoming Democratic seat-holders?

If they dissemble or endorse those activities, I’d say they failed the litmus test and should be rejected by the Independent voter as inimical to the health of the Republic.

She’s not happy with her fiancee, I think.

In Starship Troopers II: Hero of the Federation (2004), the series transforms from a bad knock-off of the original novel to a sci-fi / horror akin to the classic Alien series, with no philosophical connection to book from which it supposedly originated. While the plot is more or less serviceable, it’s not really believable. It’s somewhat messy in the details, fails to deliver up sympathetic characters, and when characters are revealed to be under Bug control, it just caused some laughter. And theme? Hard to see any theme here.

At the end, a clumsy and ineffective anti-militarism scene is tacked on, as if to make up for the rest of the schlock. And that’s just about all it is.

In light of the 2016 attempt by the North Carolina GOP-controlled legislature to strip the incoming Democratic governor of certain powers (now bogged down in the Courts), and recent similar activities in Wisconsin and Michigan, I wonder how long it’ll be before state Constitutional Amendments begin appearing forbidding lame-duck legislative sessions in which the duties and powers of the various branches of government are modified.

This sort of shit didn’t used to happen all the time.

Scientists and science geeks love nothing more than a good natural mystery, and it appears there’s one brewing off the coast of Africa, between the continent and the northern tip of the big island of Madagascar. National Geographic has a longish pop-sci report:

I’m beginning a new hobby, and naturally it’s going to be taking up a lot of my time. I’m not abandoning the blog, as it’s how I like to vent opinions, but I may not be as active as I have been.

If you’re not a computer security professional, you may not be aware of the magnitude of the attacks on the computer systems on which we rely. Andrew Burt and Dan Geer on Lawfare can give you a taste:

Attack surfaces have expanded beyond any organization’s ability to understand, much less defend against, potential adverse events. Common interdependencies, once assumed secure, are not, rendering entire protocols, infrastructures, and even hardware devices susceptible to exploitation.

So large is the deluge of potential security threats that a new phrase has entered the lexicon for information security professionals: “alert fatigue.” One 2015 study, focused on malware triaging efforts at over 600 US organizations, found an average of 17,000 alerts generated per week, with only 4 percent of such alerts ever investigated. And that’s just malware alerts. The information we have at our disposal about our vulnerabilities does little in the way of mitigating them.

This serves as an intro to a paper they’ve written for the Hoover Institute. I’ve not read it, lacking free time. But this alert fatigue is a warning that our systems are too vulnerable. Long ago, I briefly worked for Siemens Energy Automation Systems (long enough ago that I’m not sure I have the name right and I don’t even know if that entity is still around), a division of Siemens that supplied computer systems for controlling electrical grids, and I know that, at the time, many of those installations were available via the Internet. I know because I found myself debugging systems on the fly in other states and countries, without ever leaving Minnesota.

In retrospect, that’s an amazing lapse. It’s like putting a webcam in your bathroom so people can watch you do your thing. (Yeah, yeah, I’m sure some people do that, too, but I’m making a point here.) Now, I do recall some of my colleagues traveling to do the same sort of work, indicating that at least some of our customers had the proper level of paranoia, but I suspect that was a minority.

But I really do wonder how many systems that are on the web really shouldn’t be.

Out at Rosedale (Roseville, MN) they’ve opened the most upscale food court I’ve ever seen. It’s called The Revolution and looked, at least in spots, delicious. Too bad I won’t be partaking. Why?

Only credit, debit, or gift cards? Really? This pronouncement, once you think about it, is mostly just garbage. Let’s do a quick dissection:

1. Smoother service. Really, folks, we’ve all learned how to wait in line. Really. And, you know what? Your long, slow lines are going to be one hell of a lot longer and slower if you lose connections to the central credit servers. I’ve seen it happen and, if you’re lacking a cash option, your customers are not going to have a happy experience. They’ll have all those wonderful smells, cash in their pockets, and yet not be able to buy any of those products that smell so good. Ah, of course, you could equip your vendors with those big old credit card manual processors. Remember them? <klunk, klunk, scribble> They will be significantly slower than straight cash.
2. Cashless terminals. Sure, of course it’s logical that the presence of cashless terminals require your entire facility be cashless. Of course they do! (Why are you shouting?) Of course … Of … course. Oh, wait. Maybe not. Logic. So much for that point.
3. Cleaner. This might possibly be true. But, given the lack of cries of calamity, I doubt it’s a major problem. How about just issuing latex gloves to the cashiers?
4. Easier. No, just no. But I’ll defer this explanation.
5. Safer [for customers]. No, not really. A stolen credit card means a big drain on your account, and while the issuer will cover [most] of it, that just means higher interest rates for everyone using credit. Cash is not open-ended like a credit card, and, depending on how it’s carried, can be more difficult than a card to subtly steal. And not nearly as attractive to thieves who know how to use a stolen credit card.
6. Safer [for vendors]. Yes! You’re right! Cash must be moved physically, and many merchants prefer to take a discount on their profits to handling cash. It makes sense. BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER TO ME. Your problems are your problems. Don’t impose them on me.
7. No-Cash. This policy is legal [although the informal reasoning presented in the link provided eludes me] but unfriendly to those of us who don’t care for plastic, whether their reasons are monetary or ecological. A little confused on that last point? Plastic is, after all, plastic. Consider this: Best Buy has stopped issuing plastic gift cards, because they’re, well, plastic. They’ve gone with paper, which is presumably recyclable. So you’ve lost those folks who think it’s more ecological to go with cash than credit cards. (I don’t actually know if that’s true or not.)

Now, back to the Easier point. In the short-term, many customers find it easier to use credit cards. Some use it for acquiring more and more stuff, others for budgeting.

But I’m a software engineer, and I’ll tell you what – credit cards are now all about computers, and what we’re generating here is a data trail for consumption by the Big Data analysis centers. These are used for a variety of operational purposes, but functionally, they’re mostly the same – how to extract more money from your wallet. As a consumer, I might like that (no, I’m not kidding – think of how hard it is to find stuff you want if you have specialized needs), but then again I might not. Discipline can be a problem for some folks.

Other purposes are more sinister, and mostly center around acquiring other information about you, such as your habits, your acquisitions, your physical locations, all the sort of things that most people would prefer to be kept out of sight. Which is not to say that they aren’t anyways. We spray off data every time we go online, every time we cross the visual field of a surveillance camera, etc etc. But it takes a lot of effort to bring all those things together, because the databases are disparate.

Which is why I dislike this scheme. By forcing you to disgorge your data into their computers, they learn a whole lot about you in a way that doesn’t require cross-referencing schemes across multiple databases. This is basically a corporate grab of data that they can analyze and make more money off of.

Not to mention they’re forcing you OUT of the generally accepted monetary system of the United States, and into the corporate controlled monetary system of credit & debit.

So, call me a crank if you will, and I’ll regret not sampling the pizza, but “Revolution” this is not. This is all about corporate profit and how to maximize it at your expense. And shitty, fallacious signage.

Found in Rosedale, located in Roseville, MN, is this quite impressive moose.

If moose were to evolve to this standard, the wolves wouldn’t stand a chance. Time to contact some rogue genetic engineers….

Looking for a new residence, she’s just not sure this one’ll do for her thousands of offspring. Maybe something a little taller?

Falling into the same category as Terrordactyl (2016) is Big Ass Spider! (2013), which concerns the Army losing track of a corpse of someone killed by a mutant spider. When the corpse shows up in the morgue of a local hospital, and the spider escapes into the ventilation system, pest exterminator Alex offers to go after “it,” whatever it is, in exchange for voiding his hospital bill.

By the time he and his informal partner track it down to the physical plant of the hospital, the Army has arrived and boggles up his attempts to take down the spider, which is only a foot or two across.

Things go rapidly downhill after that, as the spider escapes the building and rapidly begins harvesting “food” (that would be humans) in preparation for reproducing (although it’s not clear with what it might have mated with in order to fertilize the eggs), with Alex in dogged pursuit, and one might say competition with the Army, in particular the second-in-command, a lovely Lieutenant Karly. Their firearms are useless against the carapace of the spider, and Alex is having problems applying poison to the spider. By the time the spider spawns, Karly is another item on the menu. And the spider?

Well, it’s big ass.

This is another entry in the evolution of the role of mythical monsters in the psyche of Western Civ. Representative of the divine in the early centuries, it exchanged those responsibilities for the role of being the devilish offspring of scientists, but now they’re becoming the creatures we must overcome to assert our dominance in the local neighborhood, even as they are a result of our own miscues. For all this may be played for horrific laughs, it can be seen as societal training for future treatment of monsters, extra-terrestrial or domestic, political or physical.

As a movie, it’s not bad, but not great. We had more fun with it than we expected, to be honest, and there are minor names in the cast as well, which may explain why it didn’t descend into that layer of movies known as cultishly bad. It was competently acted.

But, still, it was silly.

I wasn’t paying much attention when our late President, George H. W. Bush, served his one and only term as President. He ran the Gulf War, and I do remember friends in the Reserves going off to serve in the war. He served as a pilot in World War II, shot down and rescued after completing a dangerous mission; went on to a private career in the oil industry; his government service included a stint as a Representative, director of the CIA, and Vice President to Ronald Reagan, before his election to the Presidency. I suspect he was limited to a single term as President because the extremist wing of the party, which had gotten started in earnest under Reagan, couldn’t abide Bush’s vision of an honorable and sober approach to governance, and while he won the nomination, he lost the general election.

Rest in Peace, President Bush. Whatever the blemishes of which I’m not aware, I think they’re more than balanced by dedication to good.

With regard to rank-choice voting in Maine, a reader writes:

Preaching to the choir, of course, but his lawsuit is complete bullshit. RCS [RCV] is effectively like holding actual multiple rounds of voting until someone gets a majority, but does it all in one go, saving a ton of money and time.

But it’s true that most American elections are not majority victory, but simple plurality victory. Incidentally, Minneapolis is using RCV, with the most recent race resulting in the election of Jacob Frey after four rounds. I recall no complaints regarding the use of RCV.

Since the Maine electorate chose through referendum to change to RCV (twice!), I don’t think his lawsuit has a chance of succeeding, but we shall see.

The acting Attorney General, Matthew Whitaker, is attracting scandals like rotting meat attracts flies. Steve Benen provides a helpful summary:

The sheer volume of controversies surrounding acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker – who was only appointed to the job three weeks ago – is extraordinary. New reports, each of which are deeply embarrassing to the nation’s top law enforcement official, seem to pop up with alarming frequency.

Just over the last week or so, Whitaker has faced credible allegations of having violated the Hatch Act and having run a dubious child-care facility in Iowa. Today, the news went from bad to worse.

The Washington Post, pointing to Federal Trade Commission documents released in response to a public records request, reports that Whitaker not only helped lead a scam operation called World Patent Marketing, but he was well aware of complaints from defrauded customers.

Despite the complaints, Whitaker “remained an active champion of World Patent Marketing for three years – even expressing willingness to star in national television ads promoting the firm, the records show.”

A Bloomberg News report twisted the knife.

And I’ll just stop there. There’s so much more, but it makes me nauseous.

Matthew Whitaker, tough guy and wannabe AG.

So after I stopped laughing at this zero-peg on the morality scale, and the lying liar who keeps on stocking the swamp with the largest alligators ever seen in the Federal government – much bigger than Obama’s alligators, one might envision Trump saying – I’ve begun to wonder about misdirection.

Whitaker’s ludicrous. Whitaker’s a joke. I’m not a lawyer, and even I can tell he’s a joke. Even if I take into account Trump’s predilection for selecting candidates to fill roles based on physical appearance, and willingly grant that Whitaker looks like an AG, his record still makes him a joke.

So while the reporters and the pundits and the basset hounds those of us venting pressure run around penning pieces on this pathetic joke, I have to wonder what the hell Trump thinks he’s up to behind the smoke and mirrors. This entire AG thing makes so little sense that it’s as if Trump were suffering from dementia.

All I can think is maybe, just maybe, his preferred nominee is being kept in the wings until the new Senate convenes, where he’ll have a more substantial majority, and can nominate someone who won’t be blocked by any two GOP Senators by the name of Flake (retired), Corker (retired and utterly irrelevant even when he wasn’t), Murkowski (erratic), or Collins (easily fooled anyways). With a 53-47 majority, Trump can lose three Senators and still have his selection confirmed, since Vice President Pence will always do his bidding.

Will it be Whitaker? Or will he pick some other tough guy, like Clint Eastwood, instead?

Our new Attorney General Eastwood attends every hearing in Congress with a six-shooter on his hip, by command of President Trump. He’s also not permitted to wash his hair.

Or is there something deeper going on? Or is it just that he can’t unglue himself from the TV to pursue this very serious matter any further?