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From Around The Internet – May 2018

America’s elite colleges struggle to integrate low-income students
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Mario Batali’s restaurants in Las Vegas will close
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Mortgage rates have been rising at a pace not seen in almost 50 years
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Spotify Eases ‘Hateful Conduct’ Playlist Policy After Outcry
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Pornhub launches VPNhub, its own virtual private network app
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May 24 or before
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Acer’s Predator Helios 500 gaming laptop is a Core i9 powerhouseThere are also Nitro and Predator Orion desktops.

Both the Orion 5000 and Nitro 50 will reach North America in July with starting prices of $1,499 and $799. If you’re looking for the $999 Orion 3000, you’ll have to wait until October.

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Sony says it’s the beginning of the end for PS4

The whole statement is largely designed to reassure investors that all is well, and it is, save for PSVR and Vue, both of which are performing below expectations. Again, no specifics on how PlayStation plans to tackle that beyond “increasing user engagement”, but Kodera seems unfazed, noting that the company will aim for more “realistic” growth in the coming period.

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Advertisement:

VIOTEK NB32C 32 Inch Curved Computer Monitor Full HD 1920×1080 Large Widescreen Samsung Panel With HDMI DVI VGA For Desktop PC

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Is bitcoin being manipulated by traders? The US government has opened a criminal probe

Note that this has been ongoing. If I am not mistaken bloomberg has been reporting on this back to at least January.

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Brothel ban question divides residents in Nevada county

Opinion:

Note that this article states the claim that legal prostitution somehow increases illegal prostitution.  And there is data that illegal prostitution has been putting legal, regulated, brothels out of business.  Nineteen brothels operate in Nevada, down from 36 in the peak years of the mid-1980s.  There are some counties where brothels are legal but where none exists because illegal prostitution makes the tightly regulated business in a questionable economy difficult. Nevada was hit hard by the 2008 crash.

But the suggestion, the correlation, that somehow the legal brothels are what has increased illegal prostitution is not valid.   Also, the arguments from religious groups that all prostitution is about human trafficking is stupid. Conflating the two separate issues as though they are the same issue is stupid.  Thinking you are helping prostitutes by listening to people who hate prostitutes is upside down and crazy.  Don’t pretend you are trying to help someone when the obvious agenda is to hurt someone.

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Advertisement:

History of Prostitution

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News Round UP 10/18/2017

White men who work out at least seven-and-a-half hours a week are nearly twice as likely to suffer from heart disease than those who do a moderate amount, a new study shows. But the study may have a non-factored bias in that white men who work out too much may be trying to relieve stress from jobs, eat unhealthy at fancy restaurants and are trying to work the fat off, and so on. Men who exercised a more moderate amount did not share the 27% increase in risk to their artery system.

 

Roy Price resigns as Amazon Studios chief following sexual harassment allegation

From article: While Weinstein’s scandal involves more than 30 women who have accused him of harassment and assault, Price faced one accusation of harassment. But Price also faced larger questions from actress Rose McGowan, who accused the studio head on Thursday of ignoring her claims that she had been raped by Weinstein.

The following is opinion:

Here is a clue.  When you are raped, call 911.  You don’t call a studio head hoping to get a big check or get someone fired so your friend can get the job.  And no, just because actors and actresses think they are important does not mean that they are or that they can bypass the demeaning experience of proving allegations the same as poor people.  Just saying “I am proof” does not make it so.

That said:

From article:

Under California and federal law, companies are required to investigate claims of workplace harassment.

But note, accusations of rape go way beyond workplace harassment and should be reported to the law by the victim or their advocate.  Never assume the company where you work is your advocate.  How a company investigates workplace harassment or worse depends on the company and the remedy varies and may or may not be transparent since the job of a company is to get work out of employees and not to baby sit them or keep crap stirred up.

Although acting is a peculiar situation, the way companies once tried to deal with general employee situations was to simply say workers may not date or engage in sex with one another unless married.  If employees were caught dating they were both fired.  The understanding prevented some of the current situations but of course many considered the ban draconian.  Still, it was more even handed and more fair to all employees.

Just as big of a problem in the workplace is not sexual harassment but employees attempting to use sex to gain an advantage with the boss over other employees.  The rule also helped to try to prevent that unfairness.

In Hollywood that casting couch has not just been used by those in charge of casting to take advantage of people.  Perhaps just as often it has been used by people who want to get a job they would not otherwise have gotten so that too often the better actor did not get the part.  Whether fair or not, the reaction of many unemployed actors listening to the various actors aggrandize  over how they were “abused” is “yeah, we know, that is how you got the job to become rich and famous and meanwhile I am working at fast food because I am not a whore.  I would have shot his dick off and he damned well knew it.”

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Windows 10 is beginning a new cycle of update hell when some of us could not update the previous version because they wanted us to do a flash upgrade on our computers.  Although some flash updates can go off without a hitch, many of us know that is not always the case.  And here is a clue Microsoft, we buy computers to actually do stuff that we need to do, not to have our bandwidth wasted and our time wasted with endless cycles of updates.  Some of us have sucky dsl and the updates are ridiculously time consuming and then they won’t even install.  Put an OS on a computer and leave it alone until we decide to buy a new computer which given the crap being sold needs to be purchased every few years anyway.

Some websites–I guess paid to promote the crapware–pretend to be all excited about the new update even though they admit part of the new OS actually degrades some previous features and apps.  The new system will support–I guess–new virtual reality headsets such as Microsoft’s HoloLens.  But will the average computer that isn’t a gaming computer actually support the feature in a meaningful way?  I don’t know.

Like I said, I haven’t even been able to install the last update to Windows 10 on this HP computer that was supposed to be a good one.  And thankfully I stuck with Windows 8.1 on my older Dell Computer which I hate just as much as this HP.  On my older Dell with Windows 8.1, at times, I actually lose the hard drive until I turn my DSL off.  I know it is some kind of IRQ conflict that develops because of something happening with the DSL but still it is WEIRD.

Fox News Poll: Roy Moore, Doug Jones neck-and-neck in Alabama Senate race

Part of it may be the endless deep state propaganda against Trump or the fact Trump didn’t support Moore. Part of it may be that while the average person in the South still has religious beliefs, those beliefs do not translate into hate. Certain issues that once might have gotten Republicans votes, such as opposition to gay marriage, now raises eyebrows. Even Moore’s wording on immigration raises flags to some Trump voters. “Use our military to protect border.” “If the wall has to be built…” And again, Trump didn’t support Moore. But as an article I read pointed out the Alabama election may not be so much about who people are voting for but who they are voting against. And to some degree, Obama and then Trump won in part because people turned out in large enough numbers to vote against Hillary.

 

 

 

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Former Music Manager Lou Pearlman Dies In Prison At 62

Cousin of Art Garfunkel, Pearlman began as an accountant and founding a helicopter taxi service.  Then he began leasing blimps.  One of  the blimps crashed and Pearlman moved toward a penny stock operation.  An initial public offering in 1985 for Airship International (ticker symbol: BLMP) raised $3 million in what may have been a “pump and dump” operation where while he was getting other investors in he was quietly selling his stake in the company.

Trans Continental would become the cornerstone of Pearlman’s Ponzi scheme of 84 businesses of varying degrees of legitimacy, in which investors contributed to the company’s Employee Investment Savings Accounts (EISA) program.

More blimps were involved in accidents.

The group the New Kids on the Block gave him inspiration to get into the music industry with boy bands.   He invested in the bands such as Backstreet Boys,  NSYNC, and others.  The he ended up getting sued by most of the bands and it was discovered how he had defrauded investors in his Ponzi scheme.

He fled the country and was arrested in Indonesia in June of 2007, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiracy, money laundering, and making false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding.

 

 

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8-20-2016 – News, Gossip, Rumors, Opinions

Rumors are swirling that someone important is about to check into a hospital as secret service has been reported checking several out.  The rumor is that Hillary Clinton will be the patient.  Some have suggested that her team itself put out a phony medical report as part of a disinformation campaign and to hurt the credibility of anyone who might get a hold of a real report.  Some say the report was also to distract from the obvious health problems she has been experiencing on the campaign trail.

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Gunnar Bentz apologizes for the garage bathroom incident but makes clear that the news media still does not have the story right.  The general consensus of many is that people inside of Brazil did in fact shake down members of our Olympic Team.  Whether you want to call it robbery or not, there was a shake down.  And for our media to attack members of Olympic Team without knowing the facts has been disgraceful.

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Someone over on CBS calls Trump’s call for African-American voters disgraceful. They and Hillary seem to perfectly happy with the plight that is too apparent in too many black communities.  Somehow the elite media, and Hillary, thinks stating the obvious is disgraceful.  Their attitude seems to be that why tell the truth when a lie is so much more fun.

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In this electronic age should D.C. be made virtual world so that Senators and House Members can be made to stay in touch with the people they are supposed to serve and less in touch with those who lobby them.  In other words, shouldn’t members of Congress live in the states they are elected from and just computer-commute to work.

Case in point. Evan Bayh has 2 multi-million dollar homes in D.C..  He has a condo in Florida.  But in the state for which he wants to be Senator, he has a one-bedroom condo in Indianapolis listed at $59,000.  And in Indiana, the state he wants to serve, he is listed as an inactive voter because it can’t be confirmed that he actually lives there.

So I think it would be so cool if D.C. were made a virtual world.  Not only in that world could they conduct the people’s business but they could be like in a video game.  Yeah, jump those barrels.  Jump them.  Whoops.  Someone just gave you a virtual wedgie.  Oh watch it Nancy Pelosi, Sarah Palin has just entered your cave and she is after your witches broom.

Anyways…

Hope everyone has a good day.

 

 

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James Deen Goes All Martial Arts As Porn Is Attacked

Okay, he is fighting mad, but he is using the law and not his fist to demand that his porn company not be discriminated against by California.  He has filed a complaint against mixed martial arts company Bellator and its owner Viacom, alleging that the companies have violated the same HIV regulations for which James Deen Productions was cited. His effort is not to cause Viacom problems–although it might seem that way–but is an effort to draw attention to what he described as the “unfair persecution of the adult industry”.

Deen’s complaint with California’s division of occupational safety and health (Cal/OSHA) alleges that the mixed martial arts company has failed to comply with state policies aimed at preventing exposure to blood borne pathogens, according to Deen’s announcement. Normally, workers file Cal/OSHA complaints against their employers. But the investigation into the condom practices of Deen’s company stemmed from a complaint by the Aids Healthcare Foundation, a nonprofit that is critical of the porn industry and has advocated condom requirements. Cal/OSHA announced penalties of $77,875 to Deen’s film production company, also known as Third Rock Enterprises, based on what some consider a frivolous complaint because as far as is known, no workers were found to have contracted any disease.

Whether the porn industry should use condoms or not is an open question. Testing does generally prevent accidental spread of disease though not always. Still, that said, the adult industry should do more to encourage the use of condoms. HIV/AIDS is a costly epidemic that continues to devastate communities. Just because there are better treatments now than when it began does not mean that its spread is not a tragedy.

Remember, sexual fantasy can be fun but reality has consequences. Whether condoms are worn in porn or not, be kind to yourself and practice safe reality.

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Someone in New Jersey was LUCKY and won the Powerball

The winning numbers were 25 66 44 5 26 with the Powerball 9.My mother’s birthday was the 9th and so why I didn’t bet 9 as the powerball is beyond me.  I didn’t though.  I could have at least got $4 but no.

Lottery officials said one ticket, purchased in New Jersey, had the winning numbers.  They won the 9th (there is that 9 again) highest US lottery prize in history; $429.6 million.