Tag: Evil Bastards

“No Standing Army”

Elections, Politics

Everybody knows by now about Uncle Pervy’s latest mouthfart:

“So, the idea we’re gonna cut the defense budget significantly, we can cut it some, but we don’t need standing armies, we need to be smarter than we’re dealing now into how we handle this.”

Of course, the general consensus is all about national defense and blah blah blah.

Here’s my  question for the Has-Been VP, though:

If you have no standing army, how the hell do you propose to disarm the American public and confiscate all those eeeevil black assault rifles?

No doubt he and the other Communist presidential wannabes would probably want to create their own private army (e.g. SS, SA, KGB etc.) out of the Pantifa cadres… that’s always worked quite well for the Russian- and European totalitarians in the past.

Don’t think it would work that well with Americans, though.

Snooping Bastards

Bad News, Technology

Longtime Readers know that I detest the way tech companies strip-mine our personal information so they can sell it off to various other companies.  Here’s one take on it:

Over the weekend, The New York Times ran a frightening story about a small company named Clearview AI that can identify the person in a picture someone uploads to its service. The New York Times said Clearview AI has more than 3 billion images “scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites” and that more than 600 law enforcement agencies have started using it.
The report raises some really valid concerns about our privacy: If a picture of you exists somewhere online, and you participate in a protest or a rally, then it’s plausible law enforcement could upload a picture of you at the rally, run it through the Clearview system and easily find out who you are.

But fear not:

Facebook has a setting that can recognize your face so that you’re automatically suggested as a tag in pictures and video that your friends upload. (It won’t work if a stranger uploads your picture.) It’s not available for everyone, including people under 18. Facebook has been rolling it out in stages, and says it’s turned off by default, but I’ve had it for a while and have no recollection of how or when I turned it on.

  • Open Facebook.com in your web browser.
  • Tap the down arrow on the top right of the page.
  • Choose Settings.
  • Pick Face Recognition from the left side.  If you don’t see it, your account might not have the feature.
  • Next to “Do you want Facebook to be able to recognize you in photos and videos?” select No.

When you do that, Facebook says it will “delete your face recognition template” so you’re no longer recognized.

And if you honestly believe that your “face recognition template” has now actually been deleted, I have some snake oil to sell you, guaranteed to make you live forever, you witless simpleton.

I don’t trust any of these fucking bastards.

The Story Of The Film So Far

Marxists, Politics

From J.J. Sefton at Ace Of Spades :

On a granular level, I cannot imagine the Democrats succeeding in peeling away not just two or three but 20 GOP senators in order to reach a two-thirds majority for conviction and removal. Despite the Democrats attempt to paint McConnell as a Russian agent and/or rigging the trial in Trump’s favor, this too like everything else before will blow up in their face. And yet, they will continue with more smears, more charges and more attempts to sabotage the President and sway voters from now all the way to November. That’s all they have. They have no candidates or positions that even remotely reflect the politics of the average American citizen. They know it and we know it. The only thing left is to either replace the American people with illiterate peasantry from south of the border or, failing that, round us all up and put us in gulags or mass graves.

And the story of the film to come:

The big question remains whither America in a post-Trump (that is, post 1/20/25) landscape? The attempted coup and the concomitant attempt at impeachment means we have a political party and movement that will stop at nothing to attain power. And that means absolute power going forward. The Constitution when it is to be observed will be used as both shield and cudgel, or more than likely abandoned entirely. There is no way to use legal methods and regular order or precedent to thwart them. It is refreshing to see anecdotal things like Martha McSally calling out Manure Raju, Lindsey Graham calling out the Dems’ lust for power during the attempted high tech lynching of Justice Kavanaugh, and more substantively Mitch McConnell going pedal to the metal to confirm as many Trump judicial picks as possible. I hope it’s a bellwether of things to come, and of a dam bursting wide open with an unrelenting torrent of same from now on. Because, sure as G-d made little green apples, the next time the Democrats gain the White House, it’ll be lights out for sure.

There it is, folks:  the political landscape, admirably (and perfectly) summarized in a dozen or so sentences.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD

This one’s for all those institutions (government and corporations) who just have to know what you’re doing all the time:

“It’s not that I have something to hide.  I have nothing I want you to see.” — Anon

So FOAD, the lot of you.

Deal-Killer

Bad News, Politics

Oh, this is charming:

By now you’ve probably heard at least a little something about California’s shocking new “freelancer” bill that went into effect January 1, 2020.  Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) is sweeping and vague but basically it redefines the relationship between employers and employees, effectively ending independent contract work and killing the “gig economy”.
…
Independent contractors across the nation could soon be suffering the same fate as their California counterparts.  A federal version has passed through committee and now sits in the House of Representatives waiting for a floor vote.  This is not a drill.  This is real.

As someone who depends utterly on the gig economy to supplement my shitty SocSec income, let’s just say that I’m casting a very baleful eye on this development.

I can’t see this bill making it into law — I can’t believe it would make it through the House, Senate and be signed by POTUS.

Its title is H.R.2474 — the “PRO Act” — and I would recommend that everyone reading this send a letter (not email, those assholes in Congress have installed layers and layers of screeners to ignore us) telling their Congressweasel and Senator to treat this foul bill like the rabid dog it is, and shoot it on sight.

I’m not going to threaten anybody or anything, but if this bullshit makes it into Federal law, I guess we’ll see just how “real” this gets.  I’ve been destitute before, and at age 65 I have no intention of going through that again.

And if any political wiseguy tells me to learn how to code… let’s just say I already know  how to code.  I also know how to grease a fucking rope — and I’ll leave it to someone else to tell me which one I’d rather do.