Posts in the “news” category

October, 2024: Multiple media outlets are reporting that Donald Trump’s plans will bankrupt Social Security in six years and lead to cuts in social security benefits.

Per Snopes, one day after the school shooting in Perry, Iowa, Donald Trump said, “It’s horrible, but we have to get over it.”

In other news, The Guardian reports that the cost of sugar has surged to its highest level since 2011 because of global warming, including a dry spell in India and the drought in Thailand.

April 12, 2010: I just read that Palm is seeking a buyer. Moments like this always raise the question for me, "If I had the money, would I buy Palm?"

Of course the logical response to that question is "What would I do with them if I owned them?", or more precisely, "How would I make money off my purchase?"

My free Back To Now app is now available for iOS and Android devices. For more details, see our blog post on the Valley Programming website.

I missed the news about Bill Withers passing away. A lot of times when I’m putting around I sing “Ain’t No Sunshine.” That and “Use Me” are probably in my Top-50 favorite songs of all time.

It was interesting to read that he was a 31-year-old factory worker making bathrooms for 747s when he wrote Ain’t No Sunshine.

He also intended to replace all of the “I know” lyrics with a third verse, but other musicians told him to leave it as it was. “I was this factory worker puttering around,” Withers said. “So when they said to leave it like that, I left it.”

I’m not a big fan of how Bill Gates made his money, but I applaud his call for a nationwide shutdown of the United States to deal with the coronavirus.

As I’ve written before, the President of the United States needs to order a nationwide shutdown. Anything else is just going to prolong how long and how hard we have to deal with the coronavirus, and how many deaths there will be. As I posted before, dealing with this on a state-by-state basis is like having a “peeing section” in a swimming pool. We are, after all, “One Nation Under God.”

You can read more of Mr. Gates’ comments at this Business Insider short story, which has a link to his paywall-blocked op-ed on the Washington Post.

After my previous post about electing people who don’t believe in science, I came across this post about having a “peeing section” in a swimming pool that sums up my feelings about not having a nationwide lockdown.

We are, after all, “One nation under God.”

Remember all those people having a good time on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale a few weeks ago? According to their cellphones, this is where they went when they left the beach.

~ image comes from this video

I think a lot of people in the United States will remember the New York Times front page for March 27, 2020, for a long time.

“As of last weekend, the nation had 17,000 confirmed cases, but the actual number was probably somewhere between 60,000 and 245,000. Numbers are now starting to rise exponentially: As of Wednesday morning, the official case count was 54,000, and the actual case count is unknown.”

~ from this story in The Atlantic

The thing I don’t understand about modern-day republicans is that back in the day they were known as being fiscally conservative, but these days, especially with Trump and McConnell in control, they are racking up insane levels of debt.

I can seeing racking up debt during a time when the economy is down, but racking up debt when unemployment is at all-time lows is like creating enormous credit card debt while you have a huge income, i.e., you create credit card debt that exceeds your income, no matter how high your income is. It makes no sense, and it puts a horrible burden on the future United States economy.

For more information, see this Washington Post story.

Just days after two domestic terror attacks, here are two quotes I saw today:

Donald Trump: “There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly. That will do much to put out the flame...”

Dalai Lama: “Violence derives from anger and anger clouds our ability to think straight and properly assess what is happening. Anger in turn is related to fear and anxiety. What we need to learn is how to cultivate the positive emotions that counter destructive emotions like anger and fear. Compassion, for example, brings self-confidence and the ability to act transparently. It strengthens trust which is the ground for friendship.”

The best stories of the weekend are IBM buying Red Hat, and a dog that pretends to be a stray to get food outside a McDonald’s. Oh, and the Red Sox beat the Dodgers to win the World Series last night.

Bloomberg has a nice article about business strategy titled, Best Buy Should Be Dead, But It’s Thriving in the Age of Amazon.

Various pieces of interesting news of late:

• A video of how Sinclair Broadcasting is controlling local news stations
• Mark Zuckerberg responds to Tim Cook’s “glib” criticism
• The “Play Framework 3” roadmap
• Walmart-Humana sounds wild, but makes sense
• Flip is a Scala library for “pure-functional information theory and probability distribution”

On a personal note, sales of Functional Programming, Simplified have already exceeded my expectations. (Thank you!)

Lost in the recent announcement about JPMorgan Chase, Amazon, and Berkshire Hathaway combining forces to get into the employee insurance business is the fact that they are already self-insured employers. I read that in this Business Insider article, where I also read that 80% of large companies are already self-insured.

Okay, sorry for this rant, but I have had a very bad experience with Toyota regarding my 2006 Toyota RAV4, and I'm upset about it.

My rant is short: The RAV4 I currently own was my first Toyota purchase, the overall experience has been very poor, and I've just spent three days trying to get this latest RAV4 problem resolved. Toyota acknowledges this problem is a design flaw, but now it turns out that Toyota's "customer care" people don't actually care.

I found a little bit of good news in the mailbox this morning, a little royalty check from the Amazon Kindle eBook publishing program:

The check wasn't for much, but hey, it's a start. If you're new to my website, the check is for my two Kindle eBooks, shown below:

All the Toyota recall news lately remind me of the problem I've had with a klunking noise in the steering column of my 2006 Toyota RAV4, which leads me to wonder: Hey Toyota, where's my RAV4 recall?

As a quick followup to my earlier gallstones diet advice article, after I lost a lot of weight recently — 38 pounds in less than 12 weeks — I started suffering from long boughts of feeling light-headed and dizzy, almost like I was drunk, with the room spinning around me. Thinking I might be dehydrated, I started drinking a lot of fluids, but that only helped a little bit, barely enough to keep me from another trip to the ER.